<p>Underrated: Emory, Wisconsin, undergraduate at Catholic universities (Notre Dame, Georgetown)
Overrated: undergraduate Stanford and Columbia (I know it has good programs but the antics that the "students" pull make it look ridiculous)</p>
<p>A shoutout for Cal State-Northridge? Where did that come from?</p>
<p>Underrated: Northwestern, Wake Forest, Boston University, Colorado College, Haverford, Dickinson, UC Santa Barbara</p>
<p>Overrated: Harvard, Brown, Tufts, Stanford, Wash U, Dartmouth, Duke</p>
<p>Coureur,
Does having a dog in this fight make one's opinon less valid or somehow not objective? Personally, I think referring to any of these schools as overrated is silly. It seems like exploring the underrated schools is a far more productive and illuminating discussion.</p>
<p>My list is a result of reading 4 years worth of posts on CC along with some observations of the east and west coast students that attend Wash U.</p>
<p>I just don't buy the argument that Wash U "gamed" the system to get where they are. I used to work in advertising so I understand the power as well as the limits of marketing. Wash U wouldn't sustain that consistent ranking purely from marketing - they've got a good product and had one long before many of the students who now attend had ever heard of it. Wash U has also taken leaps and bounds in the last ten years, since Wrighton came to campus with an agressive building and fundraising campaign and before that, Danforth was a leading force in bringing Ivy educated professors to campus, especially from Princeton, his alma mater.</p>
<p>I also forgot to list the HYP admits who just can't believe that they didn't get admitted to Wash U as another reason it gets the overrated label. Seriously, if it was on the East coast we wouldn't be having this argument.</p>
<p>COLORADO COLLEGE......it is the forgotten top 30 LAC, nobody has heard of it, and yet it is an amazing school.</p>
<p>overrated: Virginia, NC, Michigan, UCLA</p>
<p>Under: Tufts, Rice, G'town, William & Mary, Davidson, Wake Forest</p>