<p>Ummmm....cool?</p>
<p>ummmm.....</p>
<pre><code> http://www.thecrimson.com/article.aspx?ref=506807
</code></pre>
<p>rather be happy and get a better education....</p>
<p>For the Daily Princetonian to publish something like this seems pretty embarrassing.</p>
<p>more puzzling than embarrassing, when there are so many other, more substantive stories to tell this time of year. perhaps professor katz, loyal harvard alumnus that he is, pitched the idea to the prince. he was also quoted heavily in an older USAtoday article on the topic, a byerly fave.</p>
<p>How is publishing this article embarrassing for the Prince? It's just giving an objective view...</p>
<p>I believe that most people would agree that Harvard has the best brand name in the world, but not necessarily the best education (undergrad or grad). </p>
<p>Princeton has the best undergrad education in the world, of course. (haha). Even better than Oxbridge, in my opinion.</p>
<p>Old news... Harvard has always had better name recognition.</p>
<p>Here is the most important sentence in the piece.</p>
<pre><code>"It's the Rolls Royce of American higher education. Rolls may or may not be the best automobile, but people think it's the best."
</code></pre>
<p>Personally I'd rather drive a Bimmer (better driving experience)</p>
<p>It's embarrassing, check, because Princeton is saying in its daily newspaper--for all alumni, students, faculty, prospective students, parents, counselors, other Ivies--indeed the whole world--we are not the best and Harvard is. I, for one, would not want to go to a school that considered itself 2nd best.</p>
<p>They are not saying that Harvard is the best. They are saying it is the most recognized name. Way different.</p>
<p>The VERY first paragraph in the article clearly states Harvard is widely considered the best:</p>
<p>"Which is the best college in America?</p>
<p>Old Nassau may be number one in the hearts of Princetonians and in the U.S. News & World Report annual college rankings, but Harvard still stands first in the minds of the general population."</p>
<p>From the Harvard Crimson: "Alum Giving Rate Hits 17-Year Low:<br>
Figures may reflect alums’ dissatisfaction, drag down Harvard’s ranking"</p>
<p>Where I live, McDonald's and Subway have much better name recognition with the man on the street than do any of the restaurants with top Michelin or Zagat ratings. What does name recognition prove, exactly?</p>
<p>I wouldn't mind sending my second S to Princeton or Stanford.
That'll take a few more years and by then one of these two schools probably will have the same name recognition as what Harvard has today.</p>
<p>I think Janet Rapelye, Dean of Admissions, should get full credit for candor, and for acknowleging the risk Princeton is taking (which Yale is afraid to take) by casting aside the early admission crutch next year and going head to head with Harvard and others in the regular admissions pool.</p>
<p>From an interview with her today in the Princeton Alumni Weekly:</p>
<p>Q: "The New York Times recently published a chart projecting how selective schools would fare in competing for students with multiple acceptances. Does Princeton have its own projections like this?"</p>
<p>A: "Our numbers are slightly different when I look at the students we lose, and who we lose them to. Our biggest losses every year are to Yale, Harvard, MIT, and Stanford. A large portion of the Stanford losses are engineers And our biggest losses are to Harvard, and that will continue. I know that makes our graduates very uncomfortable, but that has been true forever. Again, there is no one stronger than Princeton to stand up to Harvard, and I am willing to have those admitted [student] overlaps and to try very hard to convince them to come to Princeton. And this is where we need alumni to help us to help us convince these students that Princeton is the very best place to be an undergraduate in this country."</p>
<p>Many of the undergrads, however, feel that this insistence on being "the very best place" is a misguided approach. Rather than seeking a student body who choose a school simply because it's the best known, they are thrilled that Princeton students have long chosen the place because they love it. Frankly, I am disappointed in that last sentence from Rapelye. It reduces the educational process to a capitalist, marketing viewpoint. There are many wonderful schools, and different institutions offer excellent opportunities for different students.</p>
<p>To be honest if I were the editor of the Prince I probably would have canned the article. On the other hand knowing how the Prince gives students plenty of leeway I'm not surprised to have seen this run.
Much of it is recirculated Stanley Katz who happens to be one of Byerly's favorite Princeton profs.
Also it seems Dean Rapelye has given this plenty of thought the last two years and feels comfortable with dropped ED. I'm certain they will still be more than able to seat the type of class they want and have so in the past.
I wonder if this would have been implemented without Harvard's bold first step?</p>
<p>Its nice to see a student paper which doesn't view itself as a party line propaganda machine. The Harvard Crimson, similarly, never hesitates to bite the hand that feeds it.</p>
<p>When Levin was making noises about doing away with early admissions 3 years ago, the YDN was cheering him on. Now that Levin seems to have lost the courage of his former convictions, the YDN seems to have suffered a similar loss of confidence in Yale's ability to compete.</p>
<p>See: "Before Taking the Lead, Yale Needs to Catch Up"</p>
<p>I'm surprised you never commented on my son's toon.</p>
<p>Playing the "low expectations game", eh? Rapelye is too, to a certain extent. </p>
<p>The thing to remember is, Harvard only has 1,650 seats, and they aren't planning to increase that number anytime soon. The overlap group may grow a bit, but there are practical limitations. </p>
<p>Many of the people Princeton could count on in the ED pool - including recruited athletes (17% of the class) and the legacies (14% of the class) - will still be applying and will be reliable, high-yield matriculants.</p>
<p>I don't think the news story is really much news to those who keep track of the whole college-admissions thing. It's pretty widely known that even among HYPS, H > YPS in the minds of applicants.</p>
<p>The real question is: is that in and of itself a good enough reason to enroll at H? There are reasons to think it may be and reasons to believe that it may not. To each his own.</p>
<p>I personally find it admirable that the Daily Princetonian had the guts to not only put up this article but that it did so in the first page. You can't live under a Yale-type inferiority complex forever; you've got to admit that cross-admits see things a certain way, and then have to go about and agressively change that. In many ways, I think the fact that the Daily Princetonian put this up is a positive sign that Princeton is going about doing just that. If anyone's got a chance to overcome the strength of the Harvard brand-name, I'd say it's them.</p>