<p>meh, SEC sports is where its at.</p>
<p>Well none of these schools are in the SEC, so that doesn't matter. I wouldn't really consider Vandy sports to be SEC sports, or at least SEC-quality sports.</p>
<p>Honestly, the posts about Duke attempting to compare itself to Harvard more than any other elite school in the South are true. Rice, Emory, Vanderbilt are pretty much happy with who they are, but Duke has this incredible inferiority complex when it comes to that. They have around the same admissions percentages as Rice (give or take 3%), and are slightly lower than Emory and Vanderbilt, yet they have been able to convince themselves, as well as the rest of the nation, that they aren't peer schools with these schools, but rather with Harvard-Yale-Princeton, which are schools that have 10-15% lower admission rates.</p>
<p>^^ I guess you haven't checked out Vandy baseball, or, last year's basketball team. They are a young hoops team this year, but still hold their own against many of the SEC opponents.</p>
<p>On what planet is Vandy ranked below UVA and Davidson?</p>
<p>Ok. I'm from Florida and go to a very prestigious public school.</p>
<p>The top four are definitely:
Duke
Vanderbilt
Rice
Emory (it may be tied with Rice)</p>
<p>This excludes Johns Hopkins and Georgetown.</p>
<p>After on this year's admissions stats, Vanderbilt may rise above Duke. In fact, way more people are applying to Vanderbilt in my class than Duke.</p>
<p>
[quote]
Location: the 941
[/quote]
</p>
<p>Pineview, by any chance?</p>
<p>"Any ranking that has Florida or Georgia above Tulane literally makes me laugh out loud. I can't wait for the new rankings to come out so that Tulane moves back up to around the level it should be and people on message boards such as this one stop grossly underrating it" </p>
<p>How are UF and UGa not just as good if not better than Tulane? I know tons of kids who are dying to get into UF, but (and I live two hours from New Orleans) I don't know ANYONE who has even thought about going to Tulane... </p>
<p>UF:
GPA above 3.75: 82%
SAT: 1140-1360
Class Rank-top 10th: 76%</p>
<p>UGa:
GPA above 3.75: 64%
SAT: 1130-1320
Class Rank-top 10th: N/A</p>
<p>Tulane:
GPA above 3.75: 23%
SAT: 1190-1370
Class Rank-top 10th: 50% </p>
<p>Tell me how Tulane is "grossly" underrated?</p>
<p>This is the most hilarious thing I've read.</p>
<p>Duke is NOT respected as some deity in the South. Thank you for your opinions, but I feel like you'd be better at picking which Mesoamerican temple was "top tier" in their culture than picking which are the best universities in the South. If your stated goal was to pick which Southern universities are the most respected in the North, then this thread would be pretty solid.</p>
<p>That's not the case though.</p>
<p>Here are the best schools in the South from a majority Southern viewpoint (the viewpoint that managing directors of firms in Charlotte, Atlanta, Birmingham share. You might be entitled to think that Texans' opinions vary slightly, but they're more equitable to the West coast than the South.)</p>
<p>1) Rutgers at North Carolina. Duke is a great school, but lost its charm long ago. The only reason any Southerners still express interest in the school is if they have family connections to the school. This is one of the scariest places the South has to offer and many young Carolinians still make trips to see this "Haunted House" circa Halloween. We're not talking about horror movie fright here, but more similar to the fear you have of that crazed step-aunt with big cocaine problems and an over-exaggerated inferiority complex.
2) Vanderbilt. Continues to become increasingly popular with Northern refugees now that all that cultural inferiority seems to be under the table. Quickly rising in the ranks of acceptable schools to have on your resume at NYC firms and tightens its grip atop that list at most of the Deep Southeast's big moneymakers.
3) U of V. A surreal place, but Joe Cocker would say it's all right.
4) Davidson, W&L. Powerhouses of the liberal arts.
6) UNC. Similiar to Virginia, but more liberal and simply not as good.
7) Rice/Emory. Similar players, different locale. Not much to it.
9) UT-Austin. Nobody really knows what's going on with Texans, but occasionally some of them venture into the South and tell tales of black gold breathing dragons. Good at football, which means they must be a good school.
10) Tulane / William & Mary. Amazing history. Well respected throughout the Southeast. Kind of like that little brother who isn't the MVP of the football team and valedictorian or the wash out druggie, just kind of there.
12) Wake Forest / Furman. Really on a low level and at this point it's best to resort to other flagship state schools, i.e. UGA, UF.</p>
<p>Georgetown is in absolutely no shape or form a Southern school. It is however a preferred choice among the Northern schools i.e. Ivies etc.</p>
<p>
[quote]
Wow, some very distorted opinions in here.
[/quote]
</p>
<p>I'm with you G.P.Burdell, but from my experience CC-goers much favor schools that have excellent liberal arts programs as opposed to excellent STEM, and further private schools are much preferred to public ones. I can't really quarrel with an opinion, though. All things equal, a good humanities school with poor science will look a lot better than one that's the opposite in opinion polls. That more or less implies GT will not break most peoples' top 10's even in the South (since I know that's what you were thinking).</p>
<p>I just let that slide. Engineers know that it's been a Top 5 school for the last 10+ years, so it doesn't really matter what others think.</p>
<p>Based on the opinions of schools like Rice, Tulane, Wake, and Davidson, you can tell this place is full of people with little to no real world knowledge.</p>
<p>Are you trying to say that Rice has poor science programs, G.P.Burdell? I think you may be a little confused on that point.</p>
<p>"How are UF and UGa not just as good if not better than Tulane? I know tons of kids who are dying to get into UF, but (and I live two hours from New Orleans) I don't know ANYONE who has even thought about going to Tulane... "</p>
<p>No offense, but you seem fairly ignorant. I'm guessing that you're young and favor the public schools in your region, which appears to be the state of Florida. For starters the admissions numbers you posted are outdated. You're posting numbers from the worst admissions year in the school's history following Hurricane Katrina. The current admissions numbers aren't far off from schools like USC or Boston College. I'm not going to look, because frankly I don't care and if you're concerned you can check, but off the top of my head the current acceptance rate is 27% and the 50% ACT range is 28-32 I believe. All other numerical criteria (such as professor/student ratio, endowment per student, % of profs with PHDs) would also point to Tulane being a superior university.</p>
<p>As far as prestige goes, Tulane is a member of ivy league clubs in major cities across the country, such as the Cornell Club in NYC. The school was also an original member of the proposed southern ivy league along with Duke, Vandy, and Rice. If you want a little anecdotal evidence, I sat in interviews with bulge bracket IBanks in NYC and had them tell me that they only interview students from top schools. I don't really know how anyone can realistically believe that UF or UGA is a better school or has more national prestige than Tulane.</p>
<p>Why do I think Tulane is grossly underrated? Because prior to Hurricane Katrina the school was historically ranked in the 37-42 range. The hurricane has caused a pretty steep fall in the rankings, even though the school has seen tremendous positive academic growth the past two years. The data currently being used by US News is from 2007-2008. Since then the administration's attempt to rebrand the image of the university has been extremely successful. Admissions records were shattered the past two years for total number of applicants as well as quality of the incoming classes. As someone with intimate knowledge of the university, there's a very good possibility that Tulane is stronger now than when we were ranked in the high 30's-low 40's. It will take a while for the rankings to correct and have Tulane rated appropriately, but it will eventually happen.</p>
<ol>
<li>Duke</li>
<li>UNC/UVA</li>
<li>Vanderbilt/Emory/Rice/Davidson</li>
<li>William & Mary/Washington & Lee</li>
<li>Wake Forest</li>
<li>Tulane</li>
<li>Florida/Miami</li>
<li>Georgia</li>
</ol>
<p>The schools in #2 and #4 can be switched; there's not a big difference, and many people would prefer the smaller environment.</p>
<p>In terms of classroom experience, I'd put the rankings as</p>
<ol>
<li>Davidson</li>
<li>Duke</li>
<li>William & Mary/Washington & Lee</li>
<li>Vanderbilt/Rice/Emory</li>
<li>Wake Forest</li>
<li>Tulane</li>
<li>Miami</li>
<li>Florida</li>
<li>Georgia</li>
</ol>
<p>I think people on this board underrate Duke. No, it's not on the same level as HYP, but it is in the tier below it with the other Ivies. The acceptance rate of Duke vs. those schools might not be the same (though Duke's rate will decrease this year given the extremely large rise in both ED and RD apps--of course, there are a few other schools that are in the same situation), but you have to keep in mind that these other Ivies have the "benefit" of the Ivy name, which drives a greater number of people to apply. If you use test scores as a basis for comparison, you'd find these schools are more or less the same (I know, I know, test scores don't determine intelligence...I just think they are more indicative of the quality of a school's students than acceptance rates are). Frankly, most of the people at my school that have gone to Duke were accepted to at least one other Ivy but chose Duke because they preferred not to run the risk of leaving college with hypothermia;). </p>
<p>Haha...sorry for my rant. To get to the point, Duke is the top school in the South (but not necessarily the best "Southern school," because as many have said, it's not really Southern). Though this is purely anecdotal evidence, the person from my school that got accepted to Vanderbilt ED is struggling in AB Calc. The people that got in ED to Duke are doing just fine in BC or multivariable calculus. The other subjects follow this same pattern. This isn't to say Vandy isn't a wonderful school, but from what I've seen in this year and past years, Duke students are better academic performers in general. A lot of students from my school also go to UVA, and while they are all really intelligent, the caliber of students that attend Duke seems higher to me.</p>
<p>A lot of people on CC have been turned off by Duke because there are a few posters that infiltrate this board with "Duke=HPY" posts, but don't view the entire Duke population as insecure prestige whores because that's just not the case.
Wow..that was a long post. Sorry for that :)</p>
<p>Oops, I forgot UNC and UVA up above. They'd go between #5 and #8.</p>
<p>Tulane is better than UF? LOL</p>
<p>According to pure academic rankings like those of the National Research Council, or the USNWR grad school academic reputation rankings, UT-Austin and Duke are the top two - by a fairly decent measure. UT is stronger than Duke in terms of overall faculty strength and PhD programs, but Duke has the edge for professional schools. </p>
<p>Good summary of schools with top overall PhD and professional programs</p>
<p>This is fairly recent data that correlates well with the NRC rankings, where UT-Austin is the strongest school in the south in terms of breadth and depth of academic programs, with Duke a close second.</p>
<p>Of course most people are only concerned with undergrad 'prestige', not institutional program strength that is more the realm of academics and grad students. At the undergrad level, selective schools like Duke, Rice, Vanderbilt, W&M, UVA, etc. are the strongest.</p>
<p>"12) Wake Forest / Furman. Really on a low level and at this point it's best to resort to other flagship state schools, i.e. UGA, UF."</p>
<p>What.</p>
<p>Undergraduate Peer Assessment scores of southern schools in USNWR Top 50</p>
<p>(JHU and Georgetown included as southern since Florida and Texas schools are)</p>
<p>4.5 Johns Hopkins
4.4 Duke
4.3 U Virginia
4.1 Wash U
4.1 U North Carolina
4.0 Georgetown
4.0 Georgia Tech
4.0 Rice
4.0 U Texas
4.0 Vanderbilt
3.9 Emory
3.7 W&M
3.6 U Florida
3.5 Wake Forest
3.3 Tulane</p>
<p>Florida and Texas are more southern than BMore and DC...</p>