<p>“If you want to enter politics, why are you considering a PhD?”
Why can’t one do both? </p>
<p>You can, but getting a PhD won’t actually help you get elected to anything, I hope you understand (nor would going to an Ivy or Ivy-equivalent or top LAC).</p>
<p>And your classification is weird. Columbia College is closer to the UofC than any other Ivy in “vibe”, for instance.</p>
<p>I guess what I am trying to say is that I have enough information to make a decision on UChicago.</p>
<p>PurpleTitan,</p>
<p>Harvard and Stanford are Harvard and Stanford. I have nothing to say about them.</p>
<p>The number of qualified applications is irrelevant. A good candidate can attend many other schools. If Yale expands, enrollment in its popular majors will rise, demand for its popular classes will rise, resources will be overtaxed… The school doesn’t seem to have a good plan to deal with those issues. I’m not on the Yale forum, so I’ll leave it at that.</p>
<p>Belittling the awareness and sophistication of others does not strengthen your argument. You are not the only one on these boards who does that.</p>
<p>Note:</p>
<p>Harvard has the highest Social Science PhD production rate among universities in Reed’s most recent listing.</p>
<p><a href=“Doctoral Degree Productivity - Institutional Research - Reed College”>http://www.reed.edu/ir/phd.html</a></p>
<p>Columbia, despite its Core and locale, is probably not closer to UChicago than the other Ivies are. I’d say Yale is (or was) the closest: residential house system, not in soul-sucking NYC, similar PhD production rates to Chicago’s, strong Humanities tilt, more than one interdisciplinary Humanities and Social Sciences program for undergraduates, and according to anecdotes I’ve heard, an intellectual vibrancy that’s only a tad more toned-down than Chicago’s. Princeton might work too, but it’s not in a city or a short walk from a city. </p>
<p>OP,</p>
<p>Columbia is in New York. I wouldn’t say that its campus is dead, but a good chance exists that if you go there, your college experience will be more about the city than about the school. (I went there for two years.)</p>
<p>Exodius, just to be clear–it’s not “Reed’s” listing, it’s the National Science Foundation’s (although Reed does a good job of reporting the data). And across almost all categories, LACs punch above their weight (and above elite private or public institutions) in sending graduates into PhD programs. For the OP, this is a clear argument for LACs over Ivies, in my opinion.</p>
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</p>
<p>LACs typically give smaller faculty-led classes at the frosh/soph level, but research universities typically give more offerings (and more frequently, like every semester or year instead of every two years) at the junior/senior level (plus graduate level offerings for the most advanced students). So which type is better for quality of education depends on the student’s needs and wants. Of course, within types, there can be significant variation as well. In addition, the content of the courses can vary; for example, some LACs and research universities have a more mathematical emphasis in their economics courses (better for pre-PhD preparation, though not so important for the more common pre-professional economics majors) than other LACs and research universities.</p>
<p>Exodius:</p>
<p>You have a valid point only if Yale doesn’t already have an excess of resources for its undergrads and is already strained to the breaking point when it comes to capacity of classes and other resources. Maybe I’m wrong, but I kind of doubt that’s true. Frankly, I doubt that a 15% increase in the undergraduate population will even be noticed. Especially if Yale targets the growth in students who are interested in fields that have traditionally been underrepresented at Yale (like science and engineering, which Yale has made noises about wanting to grow).</p>
<p>OP, despite the fact you may like individual parts of a school, it’s obvious that you are just brand hunting. If finances matter, why aren’t you looking at schools like Alabama where you would go for no cost at all or ASU? Because of the brand. So don’t pretend it’s not all about prestige. When searching for colleges, one must consider the OVERALL experience. Columbia and Dartmouth are VERY different schools. Harvard and Yale are light years away from each other. Aside from students who have no care for anything but prestige, it’s hard to imagine a student who would be equally happy at 2 of the Ivies, let along all 8. The Ivy League is just an athletic conference. That’s all. Try to see past that and you would be amazed at the dozens of amazing schools that would be more than happy to have you for no cost at all.</p>
<p>One of the “luxuries” available at some (not all) of the most highly selective colleges is the ability to declare or change major pretty much at will, as long as one has passed the major’s prerequisite courses and will be able to complete the major without excessive delay in graduation. This probably requires the colleges in question to maintain extra capacity in each major in order to accommodate changes in student demand, since such changes can happen much more rapidly than tenured faculty turnover will allow reallocating faculty between departments and rearranging other resources among the various departments. So, even if Yale (for example) is under capacity, it may not want to add students in order to maintain the reserve capacity in each major.</p>
<p>State universities and some private universities may have different motivations; any excess capacity may be seen as wasted capacity, so enrolling each major and campus to the limit may be the usual practice. Of course, this can mean competitive admissions processes to declare or change major if the desired major is at full capacity.</p>
<p>An example of what can happen if students are unexpected interested in courses or majors that have insufficient capacity:
<a href=“No Calc 101 for you! - Parents Forum - College Confidential Forums”>http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/parents-forum/1556885-no-calc-101-for-you-p1.html</a>
<a href=“Is anyone else having trouble getting into Intro CS classes? - Math/Computer Science Majors - College Confidential Forums”>http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/math-computer-science-majors/1683380-is-anyone-else-having-trouble-getting-into-intro-cs-classes.html</a></p>
<p>UW-Madison has a real-world atmosphere:</p>
<p>Whether you show up to class or can handle the coursework is up to you. Many either cannot hack the difficulty of the classes and drop out due to that, or party too much and simply fail to do what’s necessary to pass. It’s why freshmen are told that only about two-thirds of them will graduate. </p>
<p>So no, it is not high school.</p>
<p>I had an intro-level Botany class in which we were given the opportunity to brew beer. I was 19… brewing beer. The academic application was apropos of the course material and the end product got me a date or two. My prof was a Brit; I made pale ale and porter (English by birth and nurturing); and I felt sincerely complimented when he gave me an A. </p>
<p>Anyway, the multiple choice section choices were not A-D… they were A-L. And that was maybe the easiest class I took at UW. </p>
<p>UW is not world-renowned for its high school atmosphere…</p>
<p>prezbucky, if a lot of kids from her high school go there, it may seem a little that way. My son has a ton of friends from high school at UW and they are all living off campus together as sophomores and juniors. Part of the reason is that leases come up in the fall for the next August, so freshmen haven’t had time to make a lot of new friends before committing to roommates and housing for the following year.</p>
<p>Also, AnnieBeats, the OP said earlier that she has safeties and matches. I missed that before as well.</p>
<p>@AnnieBeats
“So don’t pretend it’s not all about prestige.”
I thought I made it clear earlier that prestige- in the academic world- was indeed a factor. However I am also saying, that I have reasons for picking some prestigious colleges over others. I have done extensive research on what colleges would be a good fit for me, and I am not merely hunting for prestige. If I was, I would be applying to Princeton, UPenn, Cornell, Northwestern, Emory, Rice, WashU, Brown, Colby, and a host of other top-ranked schools. I have a list of match and safety schools I absolutely love, but I was asking in this thread, for advice on choosing to go the LAC route or the Ivy League/Top Research University route.
Also, whether you like it or not, there is a great difference in the academic quality and overall undergraduate experience of ASU and Dartmouth or Alabama and Swarthmore. And my parents and I are willing to pay for that difference. I really don’t know how you can compare Arizona State and Alabama to the colleges I have expressed interest in.</p>
<p>@ucbalumnus:</p>
<p>Yes, but colleges generally have a grasp on the percentage of students who switch majors from what they intended and where they switch to so can plan for that. For instance, almost all the STEM fields have some attrition/bleeding away. Yale’s STEM attrittion rate isn’t different from Harvard’s or Stanford’s, but they traditionally haven’t admitted as high a percentage of kids intending to major in a STEM field as Harvard or Stanford.</p>
<p>Yes, there is attrition, but rising initial interest can still mean that post-attrition enrollment is higher than anticipated.</p>
<p>For example, CS courses have experienced a rapid rise in interest in recent years:
<a href=“CS106A enrollment reaches record high”>http://www.stanforddaily.com/2012/10/04/cs106a-enrollment-reaches-record-high/</a>
<a href=“Stanford's summer introductory CS classes now require application for enrollment”>http://www.stanforddaily.com/2014/07/13/stanfords-introductory-cs-classes-require-summer-applications/</a>
(Stanford is not unique in this respect.)</p>
<p>I don’t think you have to do anything extraordinary on the national level to get into Ivy Leagues - most of the people I know who went to one for undergrad, including the students I worked with when I was at Columbia, had not done any anything nationally noted. It of course helps, but most of them were regular high-achieving kids (by which I mean extraordinary already in a lot of different ways, but they weren’t all Intel winners or played at Carnegie Hall or whatever).</p>
<p>I don’t understand why you can’t apply to both kinds of schools, anyway. You could pick a few of each and apply to them, in addition to your matches and safeties.</p>
<p>I don’t think LACs or universities provide a “better” experience - it’s going to be very subjective and based upon the desires and personality of the student themselves. The professors are likely to have been educated at the same places, as elite LAC jobs are pretty competitive. (Take a look at the professors at Amherst and Swarthmore and you’ll see that not only were they educated at similar places to the professors at Yale and Harvard, but at the time of hire they were similar in profile to some of those Yale and Harvard professors who were hired at the assistant professor level.) The best LACs will have resources comparable to some of the best universities - scaled down in size, of course. (No, Amherst’s libraries will not have the same number of volumes as Harvard’s library - but you won’t need all those volumes anyway as an undergrad, and with interlibrary loan you can probably get virtually anything you want.)</p>
<p>The biggest difference is going to be</p>
<p>-Size. LACs are small, generally < 2,500 students, while Ivy Leagues tend to be more medium-sized, with between 4,000 and 10,000 students (and then there’s Cornell, with 14,000+ undergrads). That’s going to affect your class sizes a little (most classes at the Ivies are still pretty small) and also the number of people you interact with over your four years, as well as the number of on-campus organizations and social activities. Size will also affect the classes offered - larger universities tend to offer a wider range of specialized upper-level electives (“Japanese Politics in the Interwar Period”). But, again, the elite universities have more resources and they’re also pretty likely to offer those kinds of seminars - just fewer of them, because they have fewer professors overall. Also if you go to one in a consortium, like Amherst or Swarthmore, you can take those classes at a nearby research university if you want.</p>
<p>-Lack of grad students, or at least any significant number of grad students. So you don’t have to compete with grad students for attention from professors, which means more direct roles for you in the research of your professors; you also don’t have to take classes taught by grad students. However, I’m not sure that either of those things bothers Ivy League students too much, as the grad students sole-teaching classes tend to be advanced grad students who aren’t too far away from new assistant professors themselves, and in some cases may be more interesting than their professors. And the trade-off to having grad students in the lab is that you can do more interesting, cutting-edge research, because the professors have their assistance.</p>
<p>Also, I agree that your grad degree is going to really be the name-brand that will be important when you run for office. However, if you want to go into politics, you definitely don’t need a PhD in political science, nor do you probably want one. Political science is very different from politics.</p>
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</p>
<p>Well what is the difference? It doesn’t seem like you know the difference. Aside from the USNWR rankings, you haven’t named any major differences. Alabama and ASU have AMAZING aid and fantastic honors colleges. If you are going to be applying to Swarthmore and Dartmouth, you have to write an essay writing about WHY you actually want to go there. It’s arguably the most important essays. You can’t just generalize about academic quality. I believe that is the biggest reason why my daughter got into Swarthmore. She researched and spoke to faculty about the curriculum. She actually WANTED it. And she will be attending Swarthmore after her gap year.</p>
<p>On to your second point, YES, there is a huge difference in the academics at those schools. Perhaps not in quality, but there are huge academic differences between Brown and Yale and Harvard and Dartmouth. They may all be top ranked schools, but the undergraduate experience at these schools are VERY different. The curriculums are different. The student bodies are different. The campus life is different. The campus area is different. The access to resources is different. And the overall environment is different.</p>
<p>Now, I’m not naive. I know I can’t convince someone who is set on prestige that it doesn’t matter. BUT you should go on the school websites and visit the schools. It will open your eyes.</p>
<p>Lastly, can you identify the differences that they would actually be paying for? </p>
<p>I implore you to do more research. Research job recruiting. Research best value colleges. Research internships. Research colleges with the happiest students. You would e surprised with what you find.</p>
<p>@AnnieBeats:
“Well what is the difference? It doesn’t seem like you know the difference. Aside from the USNWR rankings, you haven’t named any major differences.”
Must I post my “Why ____” essays to assure you that I know the difference?</p>
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</p>
<p>Annie, I think you are wildly exaggerating. They are more similar than they are different, and for sure the student bodies are similar–look at how many kids apply to more than one of them.</p>
<p>Maybe you could help the OP by sharing details on what these differences are?</p>
<p>@AnnieBeats:
Top 10 Happiest Students, Princeton Review <a href=“Princeton Review: Top 10 Colleges With the Happiest Students : News : University Herald”>http://www.universityherald.com/articles/10759/20140805/princeton-review-top-10-colleges-with-the-happiest-students.htm</a>
- Vanderbilt University (Nashville, Tenn.)
- Claremont McKenna College (Claremont, Calif.)
- Clemson University (Clemson, S.C.)
- Tulane University (New Orleans, La.)
- Virginia Tech (Blacksburg, Va.)
- Rice University (Houston, Texas)
- Kansas State University (Manhattan, Kan.)
- Bowdoin College (Brunswick, Maine)
- Vassar College (Poughkeepsie, N.Y.)
- Hillsdale College (Hillsdale, Mich.)
So???
Best Value Colleges, Princeton Review <a href=“Best Value Colleges 2023 Rankings | 209 Best Value Colleges | The Princeton Review”>http://www.princetonreview.com/best-value-colleges.aspx</a>
Top 10 Public Colleges/Top 10 Private Colleges
1.The University of North Carolina at Chapel/Williams College
2.New College of Florida/Harvard College
3.University of Virginia/Swarthmore College
4.North Carolina State University/Yale University
5.University of Michigan—Ann Arbor/Princeton University
6.University of California—Los Angeles/The Cooper Union for the Advancement of Science and Art
7.University of Florida/Vassar College
8.College of William and Mary/Massachusetts Institute of Technology
9.Truman State University/Amherst College
10.State University of New York at Binghamton (Binghamton University)/Pomona College
So?</p>
<p>Relying on rankings still eh? I’m done. If you care about undergraduate experience, you would do real research. Googling someone else’s list is not research. You don’t have to post your essay. But I guarantee that you will not get into any school if prestige is the reason why you want to go. I PROMISE you that. I’m finished with this.</p>