“Beauty is truth, truth beauty,–that is all
Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know.”
– John Keats
Kenyon, followed by some others.
Actually, a few of us have mentioned UNC-CH and I agreed it’s on par with UVA in terms of perceived reputation due to perceived admissions difficulty.
However, neither would have made my personal top 5 list even if I had the stats to be a viable admit ~2 decades ago as neither really had any coverage in East Asian history/politics to the depth I wanted back then.
Incidentally, if I was applying for PhD programs in my areas of East Asia History/Politics, neither would make my list period as their coverage in my areas of interest are exceedingly minimal/non-existent at the graduate level.
Rankings are in the eyes of the applicant as can be evidenced by the variation in replies.
I’m going to swing this back to the OP…what do YOU thinkmare the top five? And why?
Honestly, I have no opinion until I have more information. These schools have very different personalities.
Among the LACs – and second overall – Vassar would appear to attract the most academically prepared students:
http://www.businessinsider.com/the-610-smartest-colleges-in-america-2015-9
The most important lesson for the OP and other international students to take from this fundamentally silly exercise is to understand why the exercise was fundamentally silly: There is no consensus in the United States about how colleges rank. There’s probably consensus that Harvard outranks Case Western, in most areas, at least, but there’s absolutely no consensus on differences between reasonably similar institutions, and there’s no consensus on how to compare a top-20 LAC to a top-20 research university.
I could easily make a case for any of Middlebury, Oberlin, or Vassar to be first among the LACs mentioned, and I could make a case for any of the public universities or Tufts or Emory to outrank any of them or to be outranked by all of them. The differences among them are meaningful, but they aren’t consistent or unidirectional.
That said, I am absolutely appalled at how many of you fail to recognize Wisconsin as one of the strongest public universities in the country. UVa is preppier, prettier, and more exclusive in its admissions; Wisconsin is a first-rank academic institution. It is being challenged – as are many public universities, certainly including UVa a few years ago – by know-nothing state politicians, but it is much stronger than many of you are giving it credit for. UNC may be up to its level at this point, but that would be a very recent development; UVa almost certainly isn’t, except maybe for some of its professional schools, which are top quality.
You sound very much like my father who has had a deep admiration for UWisc-Madison since he first heard of it in the late '40s back in China. He would have put it on par with elite Us…including the Ivies.
To this day, he still sometimes asks me why I never bothered to apply to UWisc-Madison(Mainly size of school).
I’ll give my view on some southern ones:
Emory
William and Mary
University of Virginia
UNC Chapel Hill
Wake Forest
Emory
William & Mary
UNC Chapel Hill
Tufts
Fordham
What is your goal in finding out this information?
If you are simply curious about how Americans in general view these colleges, you are asking in the wrong place. CC is a tiny bubble of people who spend a lot of time thinking about and looking into colleges. Even most college-educated Americans haven’t heard of many of these or know nothing about them unless they have been involved in the college search for their kids, or whose occupation would be related in some way (working in academia, hiring, etc.)
Here’s an example. I won’t rank the colleges, but I’ll tell you what my opinion/knowledge of each of these schools was before I had a particular interest in looking at colleges:
Tufts University - never heard of it
Brandeis University - never heard of it
University of Massachusetts–Amherst - knew it was a state U
Middlebury College - never heard of it
University of Wisconsin–Madison - knew it was a state U
Grinnell College - never heard of it
Fordham University - never heard of it
Vassar College - knew it was prestigious
University of Virginia - knew it was prestigious
College of William & Mary - knew it was prestigious
Wake Forest University - heard of it but didn’t know reputation
University of North Carolina–Chapel Hill - knew it was prestigious
Case Western Reserve University - never heard of it
Oberlin College - may have heard of it, but no opinion on prestige
Kenyon College - never heard of it
Emory University - knew it was prestigious
You can probably guess what area of the country I’m from. And even those southern schools I knew of in a general way, I couldn’t really have ranked. Now that I have been on CC I’ve heard of all of these and have a positive impression of all but I couldn’t rank them.
Am I safe to assume that Chinese are of one people under the control of one belief system and therefore have a similar understanding of college rankings of reputation or whatever matrix? Americans on the other hand are a mixed group of different kinds of people whose views vary widely and are hard to understand to the Chinese. For example, how many Chinese would choose a lesser known college over Harvard? Many Americans do. So Americans’ rankings of your colleges may make no sense to you or to other Americans.
@eiholi I would agree that international Chinese students have the hardest time getting accepted at TOP tier schools because there seems to be only a few colleges that are known back home. They all apply to the same top schools (Stanford, Berkeley, Harvard, etc…), so that makes the acceptance rates for them extremeley small. This is a generally statement general statement of course.
Harvard is one of the most desired, most highly thought of schools in the world, to Americans as well. Most students who apply to Harvard and get in would do anything to make it work financially and logistically.
Most Americans don’t care about rankings unless you’re talking about college football ones. People on this forum are either students or have had students go through the college search process. That means we have discovered schools and options all over the United States. US News Rankings are not based on public perception. If you’d like to know how rankings are calculated, here it is: http://www.usnews.com/education/best-colleges/articles/how-us-news-calculated-the-rankings
Most kids don’t care where they go. Their parents say they have to go to a school and they go because their parents are paying for some/all of it. Students attend their local community college 10 minutes from home because it’s 10 minutes from home, not because it’s a highly ranked community college.
There is not a fascination with academic college rankings outside of College Confidential.
I think we cannot skip subject of interest, too - a kid with CS experience who’s admitted to CS + chc (honors) at UMass Amherst is going to receive a topnotch education.
This, even though UMass Amherst has not been listed overall.
@JHS Sadly you pointed out the reason I cannot give UW Madison the credit it used to deserve in a ranking. Because of budget cuts AND because the Scott Walker basically gutted any hope of tenure, (they have tenure in name only and work at the pleasure of politicians who can cut them or their departments at any time) the school has lost several of its top professors. Many of the best ones–the ones that COULD leave–did leave.
It’s unclear that it can continue to attract new professors of the same high caliber. Also UNC and UVA are top institutions, despite your clear love for UWMadison. UNC is a top research U and UVA is a public Ivy IMHO, and it’s not about the architecture or the weather.
@Jpgranier actually there is a large portion of Americans who don’t judge colleges based on football, other than: Does it have a team? No? Oh good! I can actually get some studying done.
The OP chooses not to answer questions that will help in understanding so I will close this thread.