<p>Besides the Ivies, MIT, and Stanford, are there any other schools where one could get an "ivy league education" peers se? This is something a lot of people put into question since many people get rejected by the ivies, so I was just wondering what people would say. </p>
<p>Only about a hundred such schools.</p>
<p>@JHU518: Don’t lump the Ivies together, they aren’t all the same and I hate to be blunt about that. The other top 20s(and even top 25) are basically like the lower Ivies with exception of some that I think are better than those and kind of like in between. I’m not going by selectivity (so thus I wouldn’t be judging by the number of international awards students win upon graduation. This is often just a function of how bright and outgoing the students are and they would likely have been able to repeat the feat at another selective or “non-selective” university), I’m going by quality and rigor of educational experience (based on some “exploring” I’ve done mainly in the science curriculum. Generally, humanities and social sciences at these schools, with the exception of economics, are pretty standard and the quality is more of a function of who students get to work with and how much money the depts can throw to its undergrads for scholarship and research. Science education varies wildly however). I believe these “middle” places are Berkeley, JHU, Northwestern, Washington University, and Duke (though I do believe the former 3 are at least more rigorous than Duke’s programs, Duke is indeed very good). I only speak of undergraduate education here. I think Vanderbilt, Emory, Notre Dame, Rice, and Georgetown are great schools, but the rigor of the academics is probably more like the" lower" Ivies at these institutions. That doesn’t mean they aren’t very good, just that they lack a lot of the intensity that a lot of the other programs have (though a person going to these schools will indeed deny it, I’ve looked at course websites from basically all of these schools out of curiousity, and for the large part, there is a pecking order, though sometimes it’s on a dept by dept. basis. All top 20s will challenge a huge chunk of the student body, but some will to a much larger extent and at higher levels. Lots of the other schools are just less laid back.).</p>
<p>*note: when I talk about rigor, I don’t mean grading practices because in such a case, Vanderbilt, JHU, and Emory would be considered harder than normal. I’m talking about the actual level of content taught in the course and the level of assignments and exams and that sort of thing. For example, while Vanderbilt and Emory generally curve science courses to a B- (or sometimes C+) and Harvard curves them to a B, I can go look and see that Harvard’s counterpart is normally significantly harder. And likewise, you would not know that organic chemistry is actually harder at Emory than Vanderbilt or that gen. biology is actually harder at Vanderbilt than Emory if you just look at the grading curve (the chemistry distribution at Emory is the result of exams with a F to C- average being curved up and Vanderbilt’s is often the average already being C+/B-. The situation is reversed for biology apparently). But the point is, a lot of the stress at some “lower” ivies like Cornell, comes from the grading and lesser so the content. </p>
<p>If I was just speaking on Universities as a whole, then Duke is now basically with those in terms of caliber (it’s graduate programs and professional programs have improved much more than UG I think, and thus the whole uni resembles those schools better and lesser so the UG units, though, like most top 20s, it is as selective as those).</p>
<p>There are literally dozens of colleges and universities that provide stellar undergraduate educations. Below are just a few of them:</p>
<p>Amherst College
Boston College
Bowdoin College
Bryn Mawr College
California Institute of Technology
Carleton College
Carnegie Mellon University
Claremont McKenna College
Colgate University
College of William and Mary
Davidson College
Duke University
Emory University
Georgetown University
Georgia Insitute of Technology
Grinnell College
Haverford College
Johns Hopkins University
Kenyon College
Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Middlebury College
Northwestern University
Pomona College
Rice University
Stanford University
Swarthmore College
Tufts University
University of California-Berkeley
University of California-Los Angeles
University of Chicago
University of Illinois-Urbana Champaign
University of Michigan-Ann Arbor
University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill
University of Notre Dame
University of Rochester
University of Texas-Austin
University of Virginia
University of Wisconsin-Madison
Vanderbilt University
Vassar College
Washington & Lee University
Washington University-St Louis
Wellesley College
Wesleyan University
Williams College</p>
<p>Any of those colleges/institutes/universities provides a world class education. You Americans definitely have it good! ;)</p>
<p>I personally am a fan of the Liberal Arts Colleges and the better Public schools as a person who did science. For some reason, many of these places may actually be better at educating in science than most, or a significant amount of those listed in the top 20 national universities. </p>
<p>So what I’m hearing is that for science ivies, and then everything else is pretty standardized?</p>
<p>Too many to list. Ivy League level would also be a stigma for engineering outside of cornell and Princeton.</p>
<p>I thought Columbia engineering was pretty good?</p>
<p>Princeton > Cornell > Columbia . . .</p>
<p>Columbia is after Princeton and Cornell for sure. But there are so many other schools that may not be as selective or renowned as the ivies with better engineering programs like Wisconsin, UIUC, UT-Austin, Georgia Tech, etc.</p>
<p>The following 48 schools, like the 8 Ivies, all claim to meet 100% of demonstrated financial need for all admitted students, and rank in the top 50 US News “national universities” or top 50 “national LACs”.</p>
<p>Amherst College
Barnard College
Bates College
Boston College
Bowdoin College
Bryn Mawr College
California Institute of Technology
Carleton College
Claremont McKenna College
Colby College
Colgate University
College of the Holy Cross
Connecticut College
Davidson College
Duke University
Franklin and Marshall College
Georgetown University
Grinnell College
Hamilton College
Harvey Mudd College
Haverford College
Macalester College
Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Middlebury College
Mount Holyoke College
Northwestern University
Oberlin College
Occidental College
Pomona College
Rice University
Scripps College
Smith College
Stanford University
Swarthmore College
Trinity College
Tufts University
University of Chicago
University of North Carolina—Chapel Hill
University of Notre Dame
University of Richmond
University of Southern California
Vanderbilt University
Vassar College
Washington and Lee University
Washington University in St. Louis
Wellesley College
Wesleyan University
Williams College</p>
<p>Franklin W. Olin College of Engineering also claims to meet full need. It is currently unranked (“program too new or too small for U.S. News to calculate a ranking”) but probably belongs in one of the top 50 lists.</p>
<p>Source: <a href=“http://www.usnews.com/education/best-colleges/paying-for-college/articles/2013/09/18/colleges-that-claim-to-meet-full-financial-need-2014”>http://www.usnews.com/education/best-colleges/paying-for-college/articles/2013/09/18/colleges-that-claim-to-meet-full-financial-need-2014</a></p>
<p>I have never really understood this, but out of curiosity, what does a university/colleges ability to meet 100% of demonstrated financial need mean for the quality of education at said university/college? </p>
<p>It usually means they are extremely well resourced and can not only afford to meet need, but can also afford to fund various programs, give grants that would otherwise not be available at many poorer schools, and generally attract a strong student body. It’s not a perfect measure by any means (Georgia Tech is a much better school than Emory for physics and math, even though it doesn’t come close to meeting need), but it does indicate that a school will likely be in the top 5% of colleges in terms of general academic quality. </p>
<p>It’s all a bit misleading though. the schools determine the need - therefore one school can estimate one applicant having less need versus another school despite the same financial information reported by the applicant. </p>
<p>
</p>
<p>Not really. There are science subjects where the Ivy League schools are not automatically considered the top eight schools. Non-science subjects where there is no external accreditation, or where the external accreditation standards leave a lot of real or perceived “headroom” for “better” versus “acceptable” programs to exist, may be even less standardized. For example, economics departments vary considerably in how much math is used and required of economics majors (ranging from just one semester of calculus for business majors to two or more years of math like that which is more commonly taken by math majors).</p>
<p>However, it is not always obvious how the content or rigor of different schools courses in nominally the same subjects compare, other than looking into individual courses like bernie12 mentioned. PhD students might have some basis of comparison, but seeing (for example) general chemistry as a frosh at one’s undergraduate school may seem harder than seeing it again as a TA at one’s PhD school (after spending the last four years majoring in chemistry / chemical engineering / biochemistry / etc.), whether or not the general chemistry courses differ in rigor.</p>
<p>@ucbalumnus: Agreed (many non-Ivies are better than several of the Ivies for science or are identical. Like Emory, ND, Vanderbilt, and Cornell appear quite similar overall among the private schools. Brown and Penn are not too different from these either. Berkeley in science is better than a significant portion of Ivies/good non-Ivies in physical sciences and Tech/computational and is also better than many in biological UG. However, y’alls intro. biology…not that good, but the advanced and intermediate courses are great training, likely better than the places I just mentioned. Also has an excellent chemistry dept. from what I see that is stronger than most of those for UG’s I think) General chemistry (non-honors), with a few exceptions (like Caltech and maybe Washington University generally has the same exact curriculum and course content. The question is how the exams differ across institutions that do use the standard curriculum. For example, I notice that pre-multiple choice Berkeley was one of the more rigorous examiners among top schools (and still currently writes better MC tests than some schools do free response honestly. Like instead of just doing mainly computation and variable manipulation, there will be more interpretation of graphs/data and plenty of questions asking to truly explain a phenomenon) because they were testing from more of a conceptual point of view and tended to ask more applied/connect two/multi-concept problems. At some selective schools, most professors for it give very “straightforward” exams where you can essentially just master the problem types and be set, but some schools are much better at setting expectations. I am actually pleasantly surprised that Emory, for example, has a majority of sections do quite well in writing decent exams for a good student body. Don’t get me wrong, I still view the exams as relatively easy at this point because I’m kind of experienced at tutoring and TAing, but I do recognize what types of questions/prompts challenge students and which ones are essentially freebies for those who did the work. Most instructors tend to write exams that have many free response and MC questions that require them to use what they learned to analyze a new situation. Like instead of several questions that merely require folks to “write the rate law for X” or “compute equilibrium constant/concentrations” it may be like: “Explain experimental manipulation to the system that may reveal the order of the reaction with respect to Y that does not involve initial rates” or a teacher may, on the exam basically give students information about how hemoglobin works and lead them to derive the equilibrium conditions that explain the bohr shift or examine clinical scenarios where something is going wrong with breathing/blood (like diabetes, hyperventilation, cardiac arrest, etc) where they can use equilibria to explain the results. </p>
<p>Basically, instructors can choose to just present standard material and then assess in a standard fashion, or they can use the seemingly simple material to show students the complexity via the assessments.</p>
<p>But on the whole, general chemistry is very standard content wise: I’ve seen the largest variations among selective schools in physics and organic chemistry courses. Physics varies by the level of conceptual and mathematical depth and organic chemistry varies a lot in the content/pedagogical approach. With the latter, some schools have instructors just stick to the basics and some have most instructors go far beyond a typical sophomore organic chemistry course and choose to challenge students with assessments at very high levels (they will have a significant portion of applied/explanation problems or novel mechanisms whereas some schools have instructors where it is primarily a content overload and primarily memorization of that content is tested. There is little derivation or application needed at these schools. It’s a “know it or not” situation. Berkeley is one of the better ones 
in this class as it has many/most instructors stress the former. Some other selective schools…not so good. Seems that the caliber of this course correlates well with the caliber of undergraduate chemistry education at each selective school. The places that have larger or fairly well known chemistry programs tend to have a lot of rigor in this course).</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>Which of Berkeley’s organic chemistry courses are you referring to?</p>
<p>Chemistry 3A, 3B for biology majors
Chemistry 112A, 112B for chemistry, chemical biology, and (112A only) chemical engineering majors (note that the course number signifies that it is nominally an upper division course, although students in these majors typically take it as sophomores, unless they are junior transfers)</p>
<p>Note that Berkeley also has different general chemistry courses:</p>
<p>Chemistry 1A, 1B for all majors other than chemistry, chemical biology, and chemical engineering majors (many only require 1A)
Chemistry 4A, 4B for chemistry, chemical biology, and chemical engineering majors (junior transfers with courses equivalent to 1A, 1B take another course to cover the remaining material)</p>
<p>Berkeley also has different introductory physics courses:</p>
<p>Physics 8A, 8B for biology and architecture majors; requires one semester of calculus
Physics 7A, 7B, 7C for physics and engineering majors (most engineering majors need only 7A, 7B); has co-requisite of Math 1B, 53, 54 (calculus 2, multivariable calculus, linear algebra and differential equations)
Physics H7A, H7B, H7C honors version of the above</p>
<p>Note: if you want to look at tests from Berkeley (science and engineering) courses, you can look here: <a href=“Exams - Tau Beta Pi, California Alpha Chapter”>https://tbp.berkeley.edu/students/exams/</a></p>
<p>@bernie12
</p>
<p>What is the basis of your comparison? Browsing course descriptions, syllabi, and old exams on the college sites? </p>
<p>@tk21769:
Yes. The college websites will also post current exams. At many schools, general chemistry just isn’t changing (I remember several of my college professors saying they hated it because its almost like a bunch of random concepts thrown together that are no taught in a particularly stimulating way). Seems like a stagnant service course at most places.</p>
<p>@ucbalumnus: I was referring to both. 3a and 3b have instructors who teach at a higher level than the typical organic sequence at many selective schools and the 112 is much more similar to schools with a more rigorous sequence or is closer to the more rigorous professors. Again, I’ll use where I know for sure as the comparison. 3a and 3b, looks like the couple of medium level instructors we have/had at Emory(there are basically, 2 low level instructors, 2 medium, and 1 sort of “hard” instructor, and 2 very difficult instructors). 112 is somewhere between the hard and very difficult instructors. As for your physics classes: Very rigorous indeed (Looks very similar to Georgia Tech. Emory is pretty bad at physics, whether it’s for pre-meds or science majors. Last I checked, Vanderbilt was not rigorous either. I would expect ND, Cornell, and RIce to compare more favorably with Berkeley, but have not checked
yet). </p>
<p>And indeed, that’s the site I looked at (so I already knew the deal with chemistry and physics). One thing I love is you guys’ biochemistry sequence. It’s clear that the school is teaching everyone, whether they are going into industry, graduate school, or medical school, so it actually focuses on chemistry, mathematical, and general concepts at a high level. Emory’s is split into a biology version and a chemistry version, and both just suck because the professors are watering them down for the pre-med crowd (it would basically be an introductory biology class with more details in the chemistry dept. and harder exams, and in the biology department, I swear that 1 professor’s class is easier than her own introductory biology course. She teaches and asks questions in a more provocative way in intro. biology than she does her 300 level biology course…It’s clear that they are just giving the crowd what it wants, a free high grade on their transcript by a course that most medical schools recommend, but is not on the MCAT. When the new MCAT comes, it’s probably going to cause problems, because the biochemistry on it and the GRE biochemistry go far beyond a regurgitation based metabolic biochemistry course). And unfortunately, we aren’t the only selective school like this… 
. At least the chemistry department now offers a second semester of biochemistry through a new prof (only been here for 3 years and revived the course her first year here and did it far better than when it existed before) which is actually focused on problem solving and experimental underpinnings (it’s more of a chemical biology course and is case based). </p>
<p>However, if you could see our and some other selective school’s biochemistry vs. y’alls, you would probably be pissed that people seriously regard these other places for biology undergraduate and think the schools should be embarrassed. I mean one could scream the “instructor specific” issue, but when it appears that instructor is always the one (and only one) teaching it, it tells me that the school has no way of controlling or does not care about the standards as long as students are satisfied. Schools serious about UG science education care about the standards and what is being taught more than the students’ comfort level, period. And seriously, students at the schools we went to are supposed far more talented than average students, so should be taught as though that is true. It shouldn’t hurt that much to expose students who aren’t that good (as happened in general chemistry last semester at Emory). There are other majors for them or they can try harder in the next class.</p>
<p>Don’t bother looking at organic chemistry at some schools: You would be in shock that students there call it “hard” (Vanderbilt’s is not hard for example and they swear up and down it is…oh well, at least they’re telling the truth when they say some of the biology classes are hard. Them claiming that their organic chemistry sequence is difficult is akin to Emory studentswho decide to jump up and down claiming that intro. math and most intro. biology instructors are challenging, which is totally false. In both parties, either those students, their instructors, or both are not that good. Instructors not getting the easy material across that well or students not matching up to their incoming credentials ). </p>
<p>
</p>
<p>Probably because it is a stagnant service course taken mostly by students not majoring in chemistry:</p>
<ul>
<li>Biology majors.</li>
<li>Most engineering majors.</li>
<li>Often geology, environmental science, and physics majors.</li>
<li>Sometimes an option science for computer science majors (e.g. choose courses from physics, chemistry, or biology for the science requirement).</li>
<li>Pre-meds.</li>
</ul>
<p>For many of these students, it is also only a peripheral requirement, rather than a core requirement, so that the students may not be devoting as much effort and interest in general chemistry as they do to their other courses. But it has to cover the hodgepodge of topics that those various other majors want their students to learn from the course. So it may not be surprising that chemistry faculty (and TAs where such are used) are not too enthusiastic about teaching that course either.</p>
<p>Note that Berkeley has modified its typical chemistry sequence for most biology majors and pre-meds to reduce the number of chemistry courses (i.e. those taught by the chemistry department) from four to three (Chemistry 1A, 3A, 3B – 1B is not required for 3A or 3B). Pre-meds typically take an upper division biochemistry course (usually MCB 102) to complete their pre-med chemistry requirements. <a href=“https://career.berkeley.edu/Medical/PrepChem.stm”>https://career.berkeley.edu/Medical/PrepChem.stm</a></p>
<p>@ucbalumnus: Yes, that is the reason. I don’t disagree with it. I just excluded a comment on why that is the case. The person I allude to didn’t say they hate teaching the course (they teach organic. Said that pchem was much better, for example, and even analytical, which is quite dry), they actually said they hated the course when they took it. However, this suggests that it is not even stimulating enough for chemistry majors. And I think 102 is the one I saw. It looks way better than our counterparts, bio 301 and chem 301. </p>
<p>Also, I have to be blunt when saying this, but it seems like pre-meds usually have the lightest freshman courseload among those listed, yet also kind of need a background in it for MCAT preparation so you think they would actually want to devote more time to it or want it to be more stimulating, but this is not the case. Seems their attitudes (in general) won’t allow for that sort of thing which would cause the course to likely increase in rigor and thus lower the chance of a good grade (though, there are these things called curves that result in the same distribution as the watered down version). The others, I could understand, however, I feel that there is a way to design a general chemistry/intro. chemistry courses that target and could make it stimulating for every type of crowd (I don’t think the others outside of pre-med, except may bio majors would, who are mostly pre-med, would mind any changes that by coincidence result in more rigor if it is actually just “better”). However, that would require too much effort on the part of the faculty. </p>
<p>Emory chemistry is trying to propose a new curriculum structure that I think will not work at a place like Emory (where basically only pre-meds are taking 1st year chemistry), but is very innovative and could work at places with more diversity among people taking it. Currently, it would basically have only 1 semester of general chemistry that basically everybody takes (including those with 4/5, which is stupid IMHO because I feel they are already competent in general chemistry and taking it again would only serve to teach them a little more, of what are rather forgettable concepts, that they did not see in AP and perhaps lower their GPAs for no reason because they aren’t really learning anything new. In addition the addition of AP students will cause the enrollment to skyrocket and perhaps just lower the quality). The second semester would turn into like 4-6 options. An intro. physical chemistry (would focus on thermo/statistical mechanics I guess, not the quantum stuff), intro biological chemistry, intro. analytical and intro. inorganic chemistry, intro organic. </p>
<p>So at a school, where most first year chemistry students are pre-med, we automatically know that all of them will migrate from gen. chem to inorganic (you know, because many of them are drones, and med. schools say, 1 year of “inorganic” and they don’t know better to understand that this includes analytical and physical chemistry. And let’s be honest, most pre-meds won’t even use their AP credit to place into honors sections, they aren’t going to Pchem or much less, analytical or biological). Inorganic will have sky high enrollments and will turn into a low quality course that both me and you call “general chemistry 2” lol. It’s “cute” for a place with more students serious about chemistry and doing actual science, but no a pre-med heavy place where most are just trying to fulfill requirements, rack up A’s, and fill their resumes. My idea would be to have such new second semester options in place for students seriously considering chemistry and to just leave the traditional system. I would just strongly encourage chemistry majors/those more interested than normal to not take inorganic, but one of the other options. I suppose more serious biology majors would consider the biological chemistry option, but there probably aren’t many of those. </p>
<p>Another question, as someone who knows the department is: “Who the hell is going to teach all of those!” because we currently appear somewhat stretched. Worse, supposedly all of these new freshmen courses will have a lab component. I wish them the best of luck.</p>