<p>yea ok... upenn is lower than berkeley and duke...?</p>
<p>forgetting wake forest collegeparent....bc and at least 5 of those schools < wake forest</p>
<p>university of rochester as well?</p>
<p>Ranking strictly by "wow factor" </p>
<ol>
<li>Harvard</li>
<li>Stanford</li>
<li>MIT</li>
<li>Yale</li>
<li>Princeton</li>
<li>Caltech</li>
<li>Columbia</li>
<li>Dartmouth</li>
<li>UPenn</li>
<li>Brown</li>
<li>Cornell</li>
<li>Duke</li>
<li>Johns Hopkins (for pre-meds)</li>
<li>Northwestern</li>
<li>UChicago</li>
</ol>
<ol>
<li>Mit</li>
<li>Berk</li>
<li>CIT</li>
<li>stanford</li>
<li>cornell
give you 1 guess what this is ranked by</li>
</ol>
<p>If you're ranking it by undergraduate engineering, the list would be:</p>
<ol>
<li>MIT</li>
<li>Stanford</li>
<li>Caltech</li>
<li>Princeton</li>
<li>Cornell</li>
<li>Berkeley</li>
</ol>
<p>watch your language, and i dont know who said it, but I agree, UCB is better than Stanford, but lets not have that argument again.
MY rank of top 8 colleges:
Amherst
UChicago
Northwestern
Oberlin
Reed
UCSC
Iowa
Seattle</p>
<p>wait, you don't agree, well than maybe you shouldnt take my word for it on where to apply to college, just like I didnt take PR or USNWR or Fiske or whoever's. So lets stop trying to compare apples to oranges to bananas to kumquats, and just agree that every college in the world has had at least one successful graduate, and with hard work and the right chemistry between you and the school, you very well may be the second.</p>
<p>I think (like Alexandre) that buckets are the most sensible way to rank. </p>
<h1>1 Harvard, MIT, Princeton, Stanford and Yale</h1>
<h1>2 Caltech</h1>
<h1>3 Brown, Columbia, Dartmouth, Duke, Penn, Amherst, Williams, Swarthmore</h1>
<h1>4 Northwestern, Cornell, Chicago, Johns Hopkins, Berkeley, Pomona</h1>
<h1>5 Michigan, WUSTL</h1>
<h1>6 UCLA, UVA, Carnegie Mellon, Emory, Georgetown, Rice, UNC-Chapel Hill, UTA, Vanderbilt</h1>
<p>I agree with some of your groupings, but I would bump Cal to bucket #2, I would merge bucket #3 and bucket #4 and add Michigan to that bucket. I also do not believe in mixing LACs with research universities. They offer totally different experiences.</p>
<p>So, end of the day, I would say the buckets would look like this:</p>
<h1>1)</h1>
<p>Harvard University
Massachuestts Institute of Technology
Princeton University
Stanford University
Yale University</p>
<h1>2)</h1>
<p>California Institute of Technology
University of California-Berkeley</p>
<h1>3)</h1>
<p>Brown University
Columbia University
Cornell University
Dartmouth College
Duke University
Johns Hopkins University
Northwestern University
University of Chicago
University of Michigan-Ann Arbor
University of Pennsylvania</p>
<h1>4)</h1>
<p>Carnegie Mellon University
Emory University
Georgetown University
Rice University
University of California-Los Angeles
University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill
University of Notre Dame
University of Texas-Austin
University of Virginia
Vanderbilt University
Washington University-St Louis
University of Wisconsin-Madison</p>
<h1>5</h1>
<p>Boston College
College of William & Mary
Georgia Institute of Technology
New York University
Tufts University
University of Illinois-Urbana Champaign
University of Southern California</p>
<p>Alexandre, I think you have to add the LACs. There is no fine line between Universities and LACs (example, Dartmouth/ Brown/ Princeton/ etc).</p>
<p>Berkeley is a great Univerisity, but at the undergrad level I don't see it higher than (my group four) and your group three.</p>
<p>You can certainly add LACs. I would put Amherst, Swarthmore and Williams in group 3. I would put Bowdoin, Carleton, Middlebury and Pomona in group 4. </p>
<p>As for Cal, the faculty is too good and the departments too strong for it to be left out of group 2. </p>
<p>Obviously, we each have our opinion and there are tiny differences between one group the the one right above or below it, so there is room for manoeuvering.</p>
<p>i hear of people going to stanford, caltech, harvard, MIT, a couple yale, a lot of UCB.. but i dont know a single person at PRinceton?? for awhile i found myself believing that princeton is just an imaginary school ;p. is its undergrad class THAT small? it cant possibly be smaller than caltechs'</p>
<p>how come none of you'll think WashU is that hot?</p>
<p>is it cos it's in the midwest?</p>
<p>personally i think that if they renamed Washington University in St. Louis (huh, its not in washington?) to something more marketable... it would have a lot more brand recognition.</p>
<p>its an awesome school.</p>
<p>This is the number I came up with.</p>
<p>TOP 25</p>
<ol>
<li>Harvard (1)</li>
<li>Princeton (1)</li>
<li>Yale (3)</li>
<li>MIT (5)</li>
<li>Stanford (5)</li>
<li><p>Cal Tech (8)</p></li>
<li><p>U Penn (4)</p></li>
<li><p>Duke (5)</p></li>
<li><p>Columbia (9)</p></li>
<li><p>Johns Hopkins (14)</p></li>
<li><p>Dartmouth (9)</p></li>
<li><p>Cornell (14)</p></li>
<li><p>Northwestern (11)</p></li>
<li><p>WUSTL (11)</p></li>
<li><p>University of Chicago (14)</p></li>
<li><p>UC Berkeley * (21)</p></li>
<li><p>Brown (13)</p></li>
<li><p>Rice (17)</p></li>
<li><p>U of M - Ann Arbor * (22)</p></li>
<li><p>Emory (20)</p></li>
<li><p>Carnegie Mellon (22)</p></li>
<li><p>UC Los Angeles * (25)</p></li>
<li><p>UNC - Chapel Hill * (29)</p></li>
<li><p>University of Virginia * (22)</p></li>
<li><p>Georgetown (25)</p></li>
</ol>
<p>i have no idea why some of you are putting penn so low... first of all, wow factor puts it above dartmouth which is known for it's drinking... and it has a better undergrad program than berkeley in my opinion</p>
<p>I believe the reason people put Penn primarily as the 5th best Ivy is because the only reason it gets consistently high rankings is Wharton. The College at Penn isn't as strong as the colleges at Harvard, Princeton, Yale and Columbia. </p>
<p>Just my 2 cents as to why...</p>
<ol>
<li>Yale</li>
<li>Stanford</li>
<li>Harvard</li>
<li>Princeton</li>
<li>MIT</li>
<li>Caltech</li>
<li>Columbia</li>
<li>Dartmouth</li>
<li>Duke</li>
<li>Upenn</li>
<li>Brown</li>
<li>Cornell</li>
<li>Duke</li>
</ol>
<p>brown>dartmouth</p>
<p>This is ridiculous. SO MUCH pumping of schools here. I think there should be a CC rule, you cant rank your own school.</p>
<p>Look:</p>
<p>Alexandre: Went to Michigan: Puts Michigan up there with the Ivies, which its not.</p>
<p>Jaug: Wants Columbia: Tries to put Columbia with HYPS</p>
<p>Cujoe: Loves Penn: Tries to make it seem that 7 is "low". Yeah right, Penn college is no better than the other Ivies, maybe except Cornell.</p>
<p>Mesaboogie: Loves Brown: Says its better than Dartmouth.</p>
<p>Slipper, I think Columbia and Penn are both in the top 8 schools, I think which one is actually higher is a matter of what atmosphere you like</p>
<p>Brown is arguably better than Dartmouth, I think they are around the same</p>
<p>Penn college is not better than Columbia college</p>
<p>Hmmmm, Michigan is cool, awesome public school...not up with the Ivy's unless you consider costs</p>
<p>Slipper1234 is dead on. Really, none of us has the objectivity to rank any of these colleges. The ones we get accepted to we subconsciously place higher and those we get rejected from the opposite. And then we try to justify it by saying</p>
<p>"But they don't know Dartmouth like I do! It's really underrated and I bet the professors are nicer here then at Cal Tech and on and on and on..."</p>