<p>Informative, your name is not very accurate. </p>
<p>Look at the individual colleges. Trinity University in Texas is considered regional. The average SAT score of a student there is higher than at UCLA. The distinction is that the so-called national universities do more research and have more programs. Most of the universities in this group are big, public universities. Many of them are not very selective. The Ivy league schools are all in this category but so are the Walmart universities. Outside of the top 40 or so, most of the national universities are average schools. (Tulane being the exception). Penn State, Michigan State, Forham, Marquette? These are elite schools? Look at the regional universities, both bachellors and masters lists and you will find several that would rank in the top 50 if they were in the national university category and many that would rank in the top 100. You have a small minded view.</p>
<p>As far as the liberal arts colleges, the top are better than all national universities (in their fields) except Harvard, Yale, Princeton and Stanford. Williams, Swarthmore and Amherst have brighter students than Duke, Chicago, Northwestern, Georgia Tech, UCLA, Penn, Cornell, etc. These schools just don’t have large numbers graduating with business, nursing, engineering or agriculture degrees. The students at Harvey Mudd (no. 18 liberal arts) are typically brighter than at Vanderbilt (no. 17 national research).</p>
<p>“Williams, Swarthmore and Amherst have brighter students than Duke, Chicago, Northwestern, Georgia Tech, UCLA, Penn, Cornell, etc.”</p>
<p>college Admit % SAT midrange
Williams 20% 1310-1530
Amherst 16% 1310-1530
Swarthmore 17% 1340- 1530
Penn 18% 1350- 1530<br>
Cornell Arts & Sciences 17% 1300- 1510
Cornell engineering 22% 1360-1520
U Chicago 27% 1370- 1560
Duke 19% 1340-1530
Northwestern 27% 1360-1530</p>
<p>Data is 2009 per 2011 US News, and Cornell Institutional Research pages for 2009. Ideally in all cases to make best comparison one would like to use Arts & Sciences colleges of the universities only, and also engineering colleges to compare for Swarthmore, but of these universities only Cornell provides a breakout by college.</p>
<p>“Informative, your name is not very accurate.”</p>
<p>LOL, RisingChemist, Informative believes in the Top 20 National Universities & the 5 Top LAC’s basically, he has blinders on when it comes to any other school!</p>
<p>Many of the regional universities and colleges started out as teachers colleges (a.k.a. “normal schools”) or as urban Catholic colleges serving upwardly mobile, working class families. What makes them “regional” is that they did not, historically, educate students primarily for a national job market (or to push the academic research envelope). They’ve served local and regional needs for trained teachers, accountants, government officials, clergy, etc. </p>
<p>However, regional boundaries aren’t all they used to be. Some of these schools (like Villanova or Loyola University MD) are fairly hard to distinguish from their “national” counterparts (such as Boston College, Holy Cross, or George Washington).</p>
<p>There is a Trinity in Texas? Must be a great school, even though no one has heard of it. lol. This is the problem with these schools. No one has heard of them. Good luck getting your resume past an HR rep at any fortune 500 company with “Trinity in Texas” granting your degree.</p>
<p>Well, informative, that is just the type of elitist attitude we would expect from you, a Princeton graduate, who looks down on anyone who did not attend an Ivy League school. Good luck to you on this forum!</p>
<p>Regarding the regional colleges, my opinion is built on perception from individual schools. </p>
<p>Don’t strawman the argument into LACs, RisingChemist. You know that the bulk of admissions standards at most regional colleges are complete garbage and significantly laxer than the likes of PennState. </p>
<p>Yes, you have the occasional Cooper Union in there but you have significantly more Santa Clara Colleges. These aren’t just “average” schools. Outside the few exceptions, these are often “bad” schools ranking in the top 5.</p>
<p>The reason Regional colleges tend to be systematically weaker is that most colleges that choose to offer graduate degrees offer PhDs. The standards needed to grant PhDs are low and even universities such as ASU offer them. Master’s degrees also play a rather insignificant role in the US so universities strive to award PhDs.</p>
<p>The colleges that want to grant graduate degrees but do not have the resources are, therefore, squeezed in the middle between LACs, which do not strive to participate in graduate education, and national universities.</p>
<p>I would also like to note that LACs often have a unique culture and perspective toward teaching. This is completely absent in Regional Colleges. Many, such as the CSUs, are in fact lower tier state schools with the same huge class sizes as national universities. Few (if any) of the LACs are bottom tier state schools.</p>