<p>OK so my friend, who is going to BYU next year, said that BYU education was just a knotch below Ivy league. I wasnt going to argue with him or anything, but I never thought that BYU was as high quality as he says it is. Is it really one notch below the ivys?</p>
<p>College</a> Search - Brigham Young University - BYU - SAT®, AP®, CLEP® </p>
<p>College</a> Search - Harvard College - SAT®, AP®, CLEP®</p>
<p>Ill take that as a no</p>
<p>Sounds like we know exactly where Romney learned how to manipulate the facts and how to stretch the truth.</p>
<p>I guess it all depends on how many notches that kid thinks there are.</p>
<p>yeah, this kid probably also thinks that mormons are genetically smarter than everyone else.</p>
<p>Well, it is in one way...last I heard, it was the only college in the country with a higher yield than Harvard.</p>
<p>In other words, it's the first choice of virtually everyone who applies.</p>
<p>Selectivity does NOT equal academic quality.</p>
<p>That said, BYU is a strong school. I wouldn't say that it's Ivy caliber, but it's strong nonetheless.</p>
<p>
[quote]
Sounds like we know exactly where Romney learned how to manipulate the facts and how to stretch the truth.
[/quote]
</p>
<p>If true, most likely from his Harvard MBA and JD pedigrees than his BYU education.</p>
<p>
[quote]
only college in the country with a higher yield than Harvard
[/quote]
</p>
<p>It'd be interesting to see a current set of figures on yields for ALL United States colleges.</p>
<p>BYU tends to rate highly in college rankings based on "revealed preference", a system which compares the actual choices made by students who are offered admission to multiple schools. Students who choose between BYU and other schools tend to prefer BYU. For example, one recent "revealed preference" study rated BYU ahead of schools like Northwestern, Johns Hopkins, Berkeley, and Pomona.</p>
<p>However, many people see this as demonstrating the flaws of the "revealed preference" system, rather than as demonstrating the strengths of BYU. The system may accurately "capture" the preferences of students who are accepted at BYU. However, it fails to "capture" the preferences of students who have zero interest in BYU, and who don't even consider applying to this school. </p>
<p>If qualified students were selected at random (rather than from the BYU admit pool) and asked about their college preferences, then it seems likely that BYU would be rated much lower than the other schools listed above (as it is, for example, in USN&WR).</p>
<p>Again, admissions statistics are not the same thing as academic quality.</p>
<p>There is only one study so far of revealed preference of college students admitted to more than one college, and that working paper by Avery, Hoxby, et al. is being prepared for peer-reviewed publication. I have proposed to Avery by email before that a way to monetize the study (or, really, a follow-up study) would be to allow online look-up of the preference patterns of various combinations of students, seeded by criteria selected by each student. For example, a student who has utterly no interest in BYU could do a look-up on the preference ranking of all students who didn't apply to BYU. A student interested in BYU could similarly ask for the preferences only of other students who applied to BYU. Or you could do any other kind of specialized search you like, such as the preference rankings of would-be engineering majors or whatever. </p>
<p>As another reply has already noted, and as Avery, Hoxby, et al. took care to say in their working paper, preference is just that, preference, and doesn't necessarily indicate which college has "high quality" (the words of the OP in this thread). </p>
<p>If "Ivy" is the question, take a look at </p>
<p>College</a> Search - University of Pennsylvania - Penn - SAT®, AP®, CLEP®</p>
<p>College</a> Search - Cornell University - SAT®, AP®, CLEP® </p>
<p>and if how many notches there are between echelons of colleges is a concern, consider </p>
<p>College</a> Search - University of California: Berkeley - Cal - SAT®, AP®, CLEP® </p>
<p>College</a> Search - University of Utah - U of U - SAT®, AP®, CLEP®</p>
<p>I wish my parents agreed that it was below the other schools on my list. They really believe BYU could give me an equally good education as the top LACs on my list. Another reason the yield is so high is because people like me may end up there not because it's their first choice but because it's 40,000 a year less than where they actually want to go.</p>
<p>Intercollegiate Studies Institute's Choosing the Right College: The Whole Truth about America's Top Schools review of BYU <a href="http://www.isi.org/college_guide/sample/2008/brig.pdf%5B/url%5D">http://www.isi.org/college_guide/sample/2008/brig.pdf</a></p>