<p>UChicago has weird essay questions, so I'd give it to another place</p>
<p>I hate this thread. I say burn it to the ground. What a pathetically unproductive and masturbatory way of discussing the comparative quality of different colleges.</p>
<p>i understand what you are saying about the per capita ratio with Harvard Law schoo. However, this list does not measure the # of accepted / # applied. The last time I checked, many of those schoos on that list have only 2 divisions if not only one, such as arts/sciences and engineering. Places like Northwestern and Cornell have many schools, and trust me, not all of these kids apply to law school and medical school.</p>
<p>Unis:
1. MIT
2. Cal Tech
3. Stanford
4. Harvard
5. Cornell
6. Columbia
7. Dartmouth
8. UC Berkeley
9. U of Chicago
10. Johns Hopkins</p>
<p>LACs:
1. Williams
2. Pomona
3. Carleton
4. Claremont McKenna
5. Middlebury
6. Colgate
7. Amherst
8. Reed
9. Tufts
10. Brandeis</p>
<p>it is kinda funny, i must admit, having a bunch of high school students (myself included) talking about colleges like we know so much about them. Our sources: WSJ ranking and US News and Harvard Law School profile.</p>
<p>I graduated from College (this site is my favorite procrastination source while at my computer) and I swear many things reveal themselves after being in college and out of it. Senior year of high school I had no idea (and hence I ended up transferring), but after being at a couple top schools and visiting friends who go to most of the top schools you learn a lot. That plus in grad school you meet a lot of alumni from different places. I think myth #1 is..."WUSTL has a good med school, it must be the third best for pre-med" Its just not true. The biggest thing I have learned is how well the people who went to the top LACs have done. The biggest benefit of going to a top school is that they are feeders into top grad schools and there is more of a safety net. A 3.5 GPA Duke grad with a decent GMAT and work experience will get into a top 10 MBA program, I can't say the same for a Miami grad. On the other hand, I have also seen how important a good GPA is to getting into a good med/ law school regardless of where you went.</p>
<p>I believe that:</p>
<p>1) There are far more than 10 universities that can legitimately and fairly be considered to 10. To say that there is a difference between #10 and #11 when you have over 2,000 universities seems a little extreme. You take Harvard, MIT, Princeton, Stanford and Yale, and most people will agree, those are top 10 universities. But after that, how do you differentiate between Brown, Cal, CalTech, Chicago, Columbia, Cornell, Dartmouth, Duke, Johns Hopkins, Northwestern and Penn (I will not mention the 12th school because that would make me biased! LOL)? It simply cannot be done. I think one can group universities in large pools of equally excellent universities, but to assign rankings is simply futile. There is no way that anybody can honestly prove that Dartmouth is better than Cal or that Duke is better than Northwestern. Why? Because it is pretty obvious that they are all equally excellent in totally different ways.</p>
<p>2) LACs and Research universities cannot be lumped together.</p>
<p>I agree Alexandre, but I think LACs can be lumped together with research universities. People choose between Amherst and Columbia, and for that reason you have to take both in account. The problem is its very difficult to quantify which is "better" between these two. The truthful answer is both have very different advantages. Research universities offer perhaps greater opportunity, but less accessibility and vice versa. Different types of students can thrive in either environment.</p>
<p>Slipper, if one wishes to lump LACs and Research Universities together, the groups of equally good universities would have to be larger and more varried. Other than Harvard, MIT, Princeton, Stanford and Yale, you would have 20 or so universities that could make a legitimtate claim at being top 10 schools...everything from the leviathans of education (Cal) to the very specialized (CalTech) to the purely academic (Swarthmore). By separating the LACs and the Research universities, you at least have a narrower focus.</p>
<p>slipper, idk what your deal is, but UChicago is pretty tough to get into. It's high acceptance rate is not revealing of anything, first, examine who applies there to begin with. I do not think any person (average) will waste their time applying to a school that requires 3 essay questions. Even some realllly bright kids will not apply b/c of the time-consuming application. I will tell you this, I do not care what WUSTL claims, I still give the edge to Chicago in ANY category, grad placement, prestige, etc.</p>
<p>" Even some realllly bright kids will not apply b/c of the time-consuming application."</p>
<p>What's your point? If Trenton Community College had you complete 73 essay questions, would its prestige have risen? </p>
<p>To put my two cents in....</p>
<p>Alexandre, I agree that many of the schools aforementioned are on the same playing field with one another. However, in terms of grad placement/prestige, the gap becomes wider. I just cannot see Northwestern placing students into Harvard Law at a rate that Columbia does, or Cornell placing kids into Wharton MBA at a rate that Duke does. The facts are just not there. However, I clearly agree that these schools will garner one the same magnificent education that he/she is looking for. The OP asked which schools are top undergrad institutions. Now, how does one measure academic prowess? Well, I suppose we should first look at faculty, grad placement, and, to a lesser extent, prestige. With that said, I DO beleive that we can make a discernable ranking with those factors (albeit a few ties do exist):</p>
<p>First cluster
HYPSMC
Second Cluster
Upenn, Columbia, Duke (I put these three together because they are all sooooo similar to one another. They even attract the same applicants and have equal yields with respect to one another)
Dartmouth (What can I say, Dartmouth is awesome. I do not think i need to divulge why.)
Third Cluster
Northwestern, Cornell, Uchicago (in some departments, Uchic is in the 2nd cluster)</p>
<p>DO these clusters not seem fair?</p>
<p>Penn Columbia and Duke have tons of the same applicants. At Columbia visits, most of the kids were visiting Duke the next week. At Duke, lots of the people had gotten into Columbia/Penn/Cornell as well. Thats what I can say from my visits.</p>
<p>
[quote]
I believe that:</p>
<p>1) There are far more than 10 universities that can legitimately and fairly be considered to 10. To say that there is a difference between #10 and #11 when you have over 2,000 universities seems a little extreme. You take Harvard, MIT, Princeton, Stanford and Yale, and most people will agree, those are top 10 universities. But after that, how do you differentiate between Brown, Cal, CalTech, Chicago, Columbia, Cornell, Dartmouth, Duke, Johns Hopkins, Northwestern and Penn (I will not mention the 12th school because that would make me biased! LOL)? It simply cannot be done. I think one can group universities in large pools of equally excellent universities, but to assign rankings is simply futile. There is no way that anybody can honestly prove that Dartmouth is better than Cal or that Duke is better than Northwestern. Why? Because it is pretty obvious that they are all equally excellent in totally different ways.</p>
<p>2) LACs and Research universities cannot be lumped together.
[/quote]
</p>
<p>Wow. I don't disagree with a single word in this post!</p>
<p>And then the world ends...lol</p>
<p>Not quite DevilMayCry. The question is not so much one of placement as it is one of respect. Wharton MBA or Harvard Law's admissions committees hold all of those schools in equal esteem. Whether or not more applicants apply and chose to enroll is another story. There is no distinction between Dartmouth and Cal and Northwestern and Columbia and Cornell and Duke. They are equally prestigious and impressive. You know my groupings. Many people on this forum try to justify why one school is superior to another. But those reasons are never concrete and are certainly not real or shared by adcoms and recruiters.</p>
<p>Somebody call a shrink...Ivy_Grad isn't feeling well! LOL</p>
<p>University of South Dakota<br>
University of Idaho
University of Montana
U. of Wyoming
U. of Arkansas
U. of Delaware</p>
<p>those football schooolsss</p>
<p>isn't this is one of the signs of the apocalypse? LOL.</p>
<p>hehehehe</p>
<p>LOL</p>