UC Berkeley, cornell, vanderbilt, emory, georgetown, notre dame, northwestern, UCLA, Michigan, UNC
What are your thoughts? Be sure to let me know your region! Feel free to rank or just comment. This is expected to be subjective and I’m curious so I want to take a poll (and what better way to do that than a college forum?) We don’t need to start a debate on how to quantify any of this.
My tiers (will be somewhat different from other people’s because I look at alumni accomplishments: http://talk.qa.collegeconfidential.com/college-search-selection/1682986-ivy-equivalents-p3.html):
Ivy/Ivy-equivalent: Cornell, Northwestern, UC Berkeley, (Georgetown)
Near-Ivies: UMich, ND
Good private/public: Vandy, Emory, UCLA, UNC
From the Midwest; lived on both coasts.
curious as to why gtown is in parenthesis?
G’Town almost meets the criteria I set for being an Ivy/Ivy-equivalent (not quite, but just barely miss in one category).
I second @PurpleTitan’s (post #1) analysis (I’m from Virginia).
I would move Vandy up one.
This discussion is begging someone to bring up the topic of undergrad prestige/respect vs. graduate vs. overall. And someone will no doubt mention that as wonderful as the faculties are at the large publics, an undergrad’s access to them is generally not going to be as good as at the privates. It’s probably much easier for a boneheaded undergrad student to get in and to graduate from the bigger publics, so ranking even Berkeley ahead of Emory or Notre Dame would be questionable.
I don’t see Berkeley and Michigan on different levels.
Vandy seems to be following the exact same playbook that Duke used to move from being a regionally known southern school (like Vandy, Emory, Tulane, and Rice) to being an Ivy-equivalent:
Combine high-level athletics with a work hard/play hard student body and use merit scholarships to attract academic stars.
Even though they are getting kids with high test scores now, they still are not producing high-achieving alums at the same rate as the near-Ivies. Maybe in another 2-3 decades. Then, if they can grow their endowment and be good at sports, they may become like an Ivy-equivalent like Duke in another 2-3 decades.
In order (for me):
Cornell, Berkley, Georgetown, Northwestern, Michigan, Emory, Vandy, Notre Dame, UCLA, UNC
Cornell, Berkeley, Northwestern
Vandy, UCLA, Georgetown, Michigan
Notre dame, UNC, Emory
@moooop, while the top publics like Cal and UMich may be easier to enter than ND or Emory (and these days, that’s debatable for OOS applicants to UMich or any applicant to Cal), they are definitely not easier to graduate from.
The top publics do not practice grade inflation and (unlike some privates*) feel no compunction about failing students who don’t make the grade.
As for undergraduate access, that would depend on the major (the less popular majors would still have relatively few students and many upper-level classes in most departments are small); the publics are larger in part because they have larger departments but in large part because they have many more majors/departments. It would also depend on how proactive a student is. Definitely less hand-holding at a large public.
Regardless, undergrads can’t be doing too badly at those places because , on a per capita basis,Cal sends more undergrads on to get PhDs than ND does (UMich is about the same as ND; I don’t have Emory data). In terms of sending undergrads on to elite MBA programs on a per capita basis, Cal is again better than ND (UMich is again about the same as ND). All are better than Emory: http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/business-school-mba/1224650-top-feeder-colleges-to-americas-elite-b-schools-p5.html (note that Cal and UMich are a little over 3 times as big as ND or Emory).
*Mind you, I attended a private that is more known for grade deflation than grade inflation, so that was not an advantage in my case. LOL
I second @MegaMetalHead. I’m from the west coast, went to college on the east coast, and live in Asia.
I also second PurpleTitan’s first post, if you’re looking at undergrad. Things may change depending on specific programs or departments .
East coast (attended UNC graduate school)
I’m from the South (Atlanta, specifically).
For a straightforwards answer I tend to group Northwestern, Vanderbilt, Emory, and Georgetown together, with Cornell, Berkeley, Notre Dame, UCLA, Michigan, UNC together. If I had to rank them, I might go something like Northwestern, Georgetown, Vanderbilt, Emory, Cornell, UC-Berkeley, UCLA, Michigan, and UNC-Chapel Hill.
I have a tough time placing Notre Dame. On the one hand, I know it’s a good school; on the other hand, i feel like I mostly hear about it through football, and my mind is also colored by the fact that I am in academia and the other schools have good to excellent programs in my field and related fields while Notre Dame does not. I would definitely put it after UCLA, probably after Michigan, not sure if before or after UNC.
I’m talking mainly about my perception of undergraduate education at these schools in the here and now, and not alumni accomplishments.
And I know my Southernness weights heavily in my opinion, because I have a very high opinion of Vanderbilt and Emory. I went to high school when Emory was beginning to make the transition from excellent regional private to a more nationally known school, and when Vanderbilt was still one of the places that great Southern high school students went if they were wealthy or got a scholarship (along with Emory, Duke, and Tulane).
I’ve always wondered about undergrad vs grad. I’ve heard people more about grad school, but most people can’t tell the difference when people say, “i graduated from ___”. Right?
That’s what ive heard most about the public vs private reputation debate because going by research published and phds given out (mostly what world rankings are based on) it wouldnt even include md, jd, mba, ms/ma. Just doctorates.
From an employment perspective, don’t most of them get the same companies?