<p>That “Ivy Plus” list makes no sense. Why Wellesley and Smith, but not Bryn Mawr or Barnard? Why Williams and Amherst, but not Davidson or Middlebury? Who makes this stuff up?</p>
<p>the University of * Washington*?</p>
<p>Both my kids were born there, but neither wanted to apply for college.</p>
<p>Higher education in Washington has already been cut 44 percent since 2009. State legislators are still debating how much to cut this year.</p>
<p>I can hardly wait until barrons and bclintock get wind of this one …</p>
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<p>Maybe xiggi and goldenboy buried the hatchet and then put their heads together …</p>
<p>It’s interesting that NYU Law and Business as well as all three of Michigan’s major professional programs were included but not their undergraduate divisions.</p>
<p>To be fair NJSue, Williams and Amherst have higher cachet than Davidson or Middlebury but I do find the exclusion of Barnard and the inclusion of William & Mary sort of strange.</p>
<p>Can anyone name a US president during their lifetime that did not go to Harvard or Yale? It’s hard to do. I guess schools may matter. </p>
<p>I think,</p>
<p>Kennedy was Princeton.</p>
<p>Nixon- Duke</p>
<p>LBJ Somewhere in Texas, the only one that might have not been in an elite school.</p>
<p>Please stop it with the Ivy Plus society. Anyone who thinks that an arbitrary list of colleges that were chosen by people who needed to identify a bunch of colleges for the dating/social club they were starting means anything is the complete antithesis of elite. It’s not “elite” to be impressed by this. It’s completely arbitrary. And tacky as hell, too.</p>
<p>Reagan was a graduate of Eureka College in Illinois.</p>
<p>Nixon’s undergrad was Whittier. He went to law school at Duke.</p>
<p>Jimmy Carter’s alma maters are listed as Georgia Tech, Georgia Southwestern and the U.S. Naval Academy.</p>
<p>Nixon was Whittier for undergrad, Duke for law school. LBJ was a teacher’s college. Clinton was Georgetown. Carter was USNA. Reagan was Eureka. Ford was Michigan. For us old farts, Eisenhower was USMA and Truman was the school of hard knocks. Obama was Columbia So that’s 3 of 12 who went to Harvard or Yale (the Bushes and Kennedy).</p>
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<p>They didn’t label it as “elite”; you did, quite subconsciously. Like it or not, these people probably feel it’s much easier to find high-quality potential dates in this pool, much like recruiters have an easier time finding a high concentration of talent at elite schools. Less time/resources wasted. Don’t judge.</p>
<p><a href=“http://www.ivyplussociety.org/about.html[/url]”>http://www.ivyplussociety.org/about.html</a>
Also, read this disclaimer:</p>
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<p>Yeah, it means about as much as the USNWR rankings, doesn’t it?</p>
<p>Gerald Ford U of Michigan
James Carter Georgia Southwestern College & Georgia tech
Dwight Eisenhower- US Military Academy
Ronald Reagan- Eureka college</p>
<p>Obama also started out at Oxy.</p>
<p>I am increasingly skeptical of this voluminous research so often quoted by annasdad.</p>
<p>For those just joining in, annasdad’s interpretation of this research has been questioned on other threads. Some have questioned whether some of what he cites even qualifies as “research”</p>
<p>Exactly, alh. But the questions and comments get conveniently ignored.</p>
<p>The voluminous research so often quoted by annasdad is a summary of nearly 2,500 studies from the 1990s, expanding on nearly 2,600 studies from the 1970s and 1980s summarized by the same authors in Volume 1 of their work. The authors are two professors of education who have essentially devoted their lives to examining the impacts of colleges on students’ lives.</p>
<p>You are more than welcome to question my interpretations. I await, however, any refutation of the research itself.</p>
<p>Now the research only goes through 1999 (with a few studies from as late as 2002). It is altogether possible that there is later research that contradicts what I’ve reported. I eagerly await any such reports - got any?</p>
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<p>No, because the Ivy Plus is completely arbitrary. (“Hey! Let’s include Amherst!” “Sounds good!”) The USNWR rankings are based on data. You (generic you, not you specifically, annasdad) may put different weights on the variables than USNWR does, but it’s quantitatively data based and pretty transparent. It’s pretty easy to look at the data USNWR provides and re-weight it in your own head according to the criteria you care more or less about.</p>
<p>I don’t have a problem with the people who started IvyPlus and why they started it. I just think it’s amusing that you would use their selections as the final word on “who is elite.”</p>
<p>BCG2015, you’re a college freshman - how do you “know” the benefits of social networking at elite schools? BTW, I bet the networking pools at Ole Miss or Texas A&M are pretty darn powerful, too, in their own way.</p>
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<p>Except that the variables have been exhaustively examined in numerous studies and found to have no validity at all in terms of assessing the quality of education, and only very limited validity in assessing socioeconomic outcomes of college.</p>
<p>Yes I did not specify grad or undergrad for the presidents. Reagan is definitely one that made it without an elite school. I wasn’t alive at the time, but I would have also considered West Point one of the top colleges.</p>