<p>Harvard
Princeton
Yale
Stanford
MIT
Caltech
Columbia
Duke
Cornell
Berkeley/Chicago</p>
<p>bball, you will realize the strength of graduate departments has little to do with ranking of an undergraduate education . Funny, I was talking to my cousin who is pre-med at WUSTL and I asked him how much the med school helped him. He said "med school?, what does WUSTL's med school have to do with undergrad?" I told him the views of some on this site and he basically said "those are high school kids who have no idea." </p>
<p>If "graduate departments" matter so much why are Amherst, Williams, Dartmouth, Swarthmore, etc so successful at recruiting and graduate placement. </p>
<p>I went to Columbia before Dartmouth and I can tell you I'd rather have a slightly less known professor who took his class out to dinner and wrote amazing recommendations than the lectures with T/As I had at Columbia any day. Do you think Tuck has anything to do with a Dartmouth undergrad's experience? It doesnt. But how about Dartmouth's 2.5 Billion dollar endowment for only 6500 students? Outside of HYPS it is the highest per student and that means grants, research money, and complete attention on undergrads. I personally got over $10,000 of grants, and the weren't hard to come by. In fact I saw a recent ranking of engineering grad and saw Dartmouth at 47 and Penn/ Columbia at 28, which to me is remarkable considering 90% of Dartmouth engineering is made up of undergrads. </p>
<p>Top ten-twelve:</p>
<p>1) Harvard
Princeton
Yale
MIT
Caltech
Stanford</p>
<p>2) Columbia
Brown
Dartmouth
Penn
Duke</p>
<ul>
<li>(Cornell for science/ engineering)</li>
</ul>
<p>...engineering is one area where graduate rankings might have more value...along with other "vocational" areas such as film, music, art, etc.</p>
<p>
[quote]
Top ten:</p>
<p>1) Harvard
Princeton
Yale
MIT
Caltech
Stanford</p>
<p>2) Columbia
Brown
Dartmouth
Penn
Duke</p>
<ul>
<li>(Cornell for science/ engineering)
[/quote]
</li>
</ul>
<p>Pretty much agree with this list - except I'd probably substitute Cal for Duke</p>
<p>You would.</p>
<p>I thought the rankings were based on undergraduate academics? Well, if they are, may I ask how schools like UCB crack the list? I know I put UCB in the top 10, but that's when I was looking at the overall excellence of the institution. In terms of incredible grad school placement and attention towards undergrads, the list would have to include Williams, Amherst, and Swarthmore maybe even moreso than most of the ivies aforementioned in this thread. Williams has better grad placement than Cornell, Duke, Dartmouth, Penn, and even Stanford in some special cases. Slipper, some of the points you just made (large per student endowment, undergrad focus, amazing and intimate professors) do not necessarily make the school higher. For instance, many of my friends at Harvard complain about professors focusing too heavily on their research and using TAs for crucial discussions. However, you still list Harvard as the number 1 institution in this country. I agree with you as I always have in that respect. </p>
<p>IvyGrad:
I don't realize why you think Duke as not a top 10 school. The truth is, I really don't care. I have seen you assiduously post messages like..."Ivy wannabe" and I find that unbelievable considering that most of the people I met at orientation turned down Brown, Cornell, Upenn, etc. for Duke. While I believe Duke has a way to go before reaching top 5 levels, i think that it is very comparable to Dartmouth, Penn, and Columbia. </p>
<p>Bball:
The truth is, you are needlessly intertwining grad school power with overall undergrad experience. If we were to acclimate both parts then Umich, UCB, NYU would all be sitting alongside HYP.</p>
<p>your cornell argument with science/engineering is an unfounded one. You are saying Cornell is not as good as the others in the social sciences and humanities. Who are you trying to kid. Cornell beats Duke, Brown, Dartmouth in Economics. Cornell's english department, classics, and philosophy departments are ranked in the top as well.</p>
<p>The ivies in no particular order. I know that fills only the top 8, but every other school is a TTT and should be burned to the ground.</p>
<p>Topics such as these are pretty redundant....Why is there a new one like every other day?</p>
<p>How do you know that bball? its not like undergrad programs are ranked individually. I'm fairly sure you are making those things up.</p>
<p>How insightful, shizz. LOL</p>
<p>Hey bball87, may I ask how your department rankings are being fabricated? I only ask because they would prove useful to me as well. From the perspective as a potential Philosophy major, I think I can testify to the strength of Duke's department. Where should I start? </p>
<p>Robert Brandon (Ph.D. 1979, Harvard). He has published articles in Philosophy of Science, Studies in History and Philosophy of Science, Biology and Philosophy, PSA 1980 and PSA 1982, some of which have subsequently been anthologized. </p>
<p>Alex Rosenberg (Ph.D. 1971, Johns Hopkins) He has held fellowships from the National Science Foundation, the American Council of Learned Societies, and the John Simon Guggenheim Foundation. 1993 Rosenberg received the Lakatos Award in the philosophy of science.</p>
<p>Owen Flanagan (Ph.D. 1977, Boston University) He has also had visiting positions at Brandeis, Princeton, Harvard, and La Trobe in Australia as well as several fellowships from the National Endowment for the Humanities. In 1998, he was recipient of the Romanell National Phi Beta Kappa award, given annually to one American philosopher for distinguished contributions to philosophy and the public understanding of philosophy. He was also awarded a Fulbright Research Award in 2001-2002 to study Buddhist and Hindu conceptions of the self.</p>
<p>Güven Güzeldere (Ph.D. 1997, Stanford) He is a founder of Stanford Electronic Humanities Review, a founding associate editor of Psyche: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Research on Consciousness, and a founding member of the Association for the Scientific Study of Consciousness. </p>
<p>These are just a few. So, obviously the department is pretty comparable to just about any institution you can name. This information is all on the Duke site if you need confirmation.</p>
<p>"Topics such as these are pretty redundant....Why is there a new one like every other day?"</p>
<p>Because high schoolers like to argue about trivial matters</p>
<p>Its not like adults don't</p>
<p>Philosophy Department at Cornell, judge for yourself, looks pretttty good to me.</p>
<p>Richard Boyd (Professor) - Ph.D. MIT, 1970).
Philosophy of science, philosophy of psychology, epistemology, philosophy of language, philosophy of mind. </p>
<p>Charles Brittain (Associate Professor of Classics - D.Phil. Oxford, 1996). On leave 2004-2005.
Ancient philosophy (Hellenistic, Christian and Platonist epistemology and psychology). </p>
<p>Andrew Chignell (Assistant Professor - Ph.D. Yale, 2003). On leave Spring 2005.
Kant, early modern philosophy, epistemology. </p>
<p>Matti Eklund (Assistant Professor - Ph.D. MIT, 2000). Joining the Sage School in Fall 2005
Philosophy of language, metaphysics, philosophy of logic. </p>
<p>Michael Fara (Assistant Professor - Ph.D. Princeton, 2001). On leave 2004-2005.
Metaphysics, philosophy of language, philosophical logic. </p>
<p>Gail Fine (Professor and Chair of Department - Ph.D. Harvard, 1975). On leave 2004-2005.
Ancient philosophy. </p>
<p>Tamar Szab</p>
<p>Well, I think topics like these have merit. Almost everyone I know here is intelligent and a high achiever. We simply want to get the very best of our lives and we want to go to the very best of schools to help achieve that. I think that's a very noble aim. However, some of us are severely splitting hairs trying to compare Dartmouth to Duke, Columbia to Penn, and Brown to Cornell. It's all the same folks.</p>
<p>BBall.....uhm I feel sort of awkward telling you this, but I was not trying to justify Duke's philosophy department's prestige based on where the faculty went to school! LOL We have people from Harvard, MIT, Princeton, Boston U, JHU, etc. We have amazing internships in Greece and even Geneva. I really could care less where the teachers went, I just care about what they did after they left. Obviously, Duke's professors have accomplished a great many things. I seriously feel like you are perpetuating this debate because you are suffering from buyer's remorse. Are you doing law? Because if you are than I must mention that Duke/Penn/Dartmouth/Columbia has always had much better placement than Cornell. Cornell insists on its grade deflation, which hurts it grad placement number because 50% of Law school admissions are grades.</p>
<p><a href="http://www.econphd.net/rank/rallec_b.htm%5B/url%5D">http://www.econphd.net/rank/rallec_b.htm</a></p>
<p>i think the big thing about cornell that gives us the perception that the other ivys are better is the fact that it has such a large undergraduate population and the acceptance rate is so high. It feels as if their students arent up to par with the other top 10 members though this may not be true. I know personally that mostly everyone in my school who applied to Cornell got in and we have 8 people going there next year while everyone was rejected by HYPS which just gives us the impression that those are the better schools since they are harder to get into.</p>
<p>i agree with you, that some of the students are HYPSMC rejects, and Penn and Columbia rejects prob. However, there are reallly some off the chart kids at cornell and if you do not think so yourself, you are just ignorant. I am not sure what your background is, but I can assume you are probably going to HYPS, since you bring it up youself. Idk what your achievements are and what your academic standing was in high school. However, I can attest that there are some reallly strong kids at Cornell. BTW, acceptance rate is really not that revealing. Look at the U of Chicago, 40 percent of the students who apply get accepted, but it's really hard to get into</p>
<p>Wow, bball you are using a site that ranks schools according to how many papers they have published and their respective author counts. THIS IS INSANE. Duke is 35 on that list, yet Merril Lynch and Goldman Sachs cannot get enough of Dukies. Dartmouth does not even crack the top 50, yet Dartmouth grads consistently have much higher grad placement into top business schools than Cornell ones. Why is that?</p>
<p>"Look at the U of Chicago, 40 percent of the students who apply get accepted, but it's really hard to get into"</p>
<p>That is one of the most contradicting statements I have seen. I know some really outstanding kids at the University of Houston, does that mean the institution can touch a Harvard? University of Chicago is excellent despite its acceptance rate. I think Georgetown proves that acceptance rates don't go that long a way.</p>
<p>Simply, I think b-ball confuses graduate strength with undergraduate strength. And Chicago IS easier to get into than all of the schools ranked above it in USNEWS.</p>
<p>anecdotal evidence is always nice to hear. I will tell you right now, me, myself included and 7 other kids got accepted to Duke this year. The 2 who got in ED had low 1400s and 92-93 unweighted GPAs, we don't weight and one got in with 88 average 1380, recruited fencer. With Northwestern, 6-7 kids got in, myself included, not one is attending, I was close to attending. Just b/c a school like Northwestern has an acceptance rate near 30 percent says nothing about how good a school it is and how hard it is to get in there. WUSTL has an acceptance rate of 20 percent and an SAT average that is probably a 100 points higher than it was just a few years ago. Any school can play this game w. selectivity, however, it says nothing about the quality of the school. You, the one who brought up selectivity, the acceptance rate at Cornell this year was 26 percent. Lastly, before I leave, only 2 kids got into Princeton this year from my school. You will not be surprised, or maybe you will, one had a 1250 90 average, recruited fencer, and the other 1370, 94 average, fabulous violin player. The kid with the 1370 did NOT even get into cornell, he got into some other places, but he didn't hit many places, but hit Ptown.</p>