Tufts vs Harvard vs Vanderbilt vs Upenn

Colleges and Universities A-Z Tufts University
1

Hey guys,

Within the past few weeks, I’ve blessed with some incredible college choices, but these acceptances also come with extremely hard decisions to make. I was accepted into Harvard, Vandy, Upenn, Tufts (and Emory, Vassar and WashU In St. Louis but I’ve wiped these off my list) however, I can only go to one of them. I care less about general school reputation and more about my specific major. I’m also not enchanted by Ivy League status so saying “go to Harvard because its Harvard” wouldn’t be very helpful. I’ve lived in Philly for the most part of my life so I’m looking forward to leaving Philly and exploring other parts. I’m majoring in either IR or Computer science. I’m also not really into sports. Here are my verdicts based on my campus tours.

Vanderbilt- I loved the campus and the general student body vibe. However my major concern is the Greek life thing. I stayed for an overnight on a Friday and the excessive drunkenness and the party too hard of frat boys raises a red flag for me. Also the “Southern” vibe and the rich preppy stereotype bother me. Another concern here is also the hate or negative comments I’ve seen on Vandy’s forum. Apart from that great academics and Nashville which is also a great city to live in.

Tufts- I absolutely fell in LOVE the moment I stepped on campus. The students were super friendly and I saw in them who I
want to be while in college. Great food (seriously guys check out Dewick’s food!) and a beautiful campus too. I also loved the personal and intimate feel on campus and the general student vibe. It’s also just outside Boston which means lots of internship opportunities. If I didn’t have these great options I’d have committed to Tufts already without looking back. However, the way people (my parents) keep saying Tufts is not academically up to par with Upenn and Harvard sort of make me think twice.

Harvard- Great campus and it’s just outside Boston but there seemed to be a cut throat and overly competitive vibe which I’m not sure I want. Also hard to turn down because “it’s Harvard” (oops sorry). I’ve tried hard (maybe too hard to love Harvard) but the connection just isn’t there.

Upenn- I’m almost certain I won’t be attending. Too close to home and I think I’ll fit in more at one of the other three.

Cost is also not a factor since I received little to no aid from these schools. Btw I’ll be attending the accepted students day and maybe an overnight stay for Tufts, Harvard, and Vandy and hopefully I’ll get a firmer view of where I’ll be by August.

For now, what are your thoughts guys?

2

Honestly, you cant go wrong with any of your choices. I’m a current sophomore at Tufts and one of my favorite things about it is that everyone is so nice and friendly and Tufts truly fosters a community of collaboration and not competition (even for us premeds). Academics wise, I think they are all pretty equal regardless that Tufts isn’t an ivy we still have world class facilities and the professors are mostly all graduate of ivy league institutions, so we are definitely on par with them. Also a lot of my friends go to Harvard and they love it there too and have told me that Harvard isn’t cutthroat at all and is actually fairly lax due to grade inflation. I dont really know much about Vandy though. But all in all you have amazing options and let me know if you have any questions because I’d be more than happy to help!

3

It sounds like Tufts is the right place for you. It’s a top IR school as well. You’re going to school, not everyone else with an opinion. With those options, there’s no bad choice, but there may be one that’ll make you happier.

4

I totally understand the situation you’re in. I was picking between Tufts, Yale, and Wash U St. Louis, but I really loved Tufts. I loved the campus environment, I loved the people, and I loved the academics. (Also I’m from Florida, so Boston seems great!). I know that Wash U and Yale are great schools, but my heart was honestly with Tufts. I’m majoring in IR, and Tufts has a great program for IR so that was also really convenient. It’s not about the college name, and it took me a long time to figure that out. It’s about where YOU are going to be happy and where YOU feel that you’ll be able to succeed. To me, it’s pretty obvious. You love Tufts. Harvard, Upenn, and Vandy are all wonderful colleges, but don’t go because you feel that you have too. Go to a college you love. (Also-- Tuft’s had an acceptance rate of 14% this year. I just wanted to point this out because if your parents/peers/family are bothering you about going somewhere prestigious, then that statistic alone shows that Tufts is pretty damn competitive. The average SAT score is around 2170. In general, the kids that attend are incredibly smart but also genuinely cool people). I know that the decision is going to be hard for you, but I think it’s clear where your heart lies. I went through the same process and it tore me apart for the last week, but I finally was able to prioritize my own happiness and come to the conclusion that choosing a university based on “prestige” is silly. I want to be happy! I really hope you follow your heart, and I would love to see you at Tufts. Good luck.

5

Thanks for all your responses so far! I’ll visit each school again to get a better view of the whole situation. I’ll attend Jumbo day on the 15th and if I still feel the same way about Tufts, barring a miraculous connection with Harvard when I visit on the 17th, I’ll definitely commit to Tufts.

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Hey guys change of plans- I’ll be going to Jumbo day on the 21st and not on the 15th

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@just123098- Yipes! If you are going to visit Harvard, then you need to warn your parents not to touch the statue of John Harvard!

http://www.thecrimson.com/article/2006/12/18/the-truth-about-john-harvard-p/

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You should go where you are comfortable, but if you plan to major in CS, Harvard and Penn will open doors easily that will be much harder to open from Tufts. I suggest looking at average salaries, placements and internships at Tufts, Penn, and Harvard so you know what you are giving up.

You shouldn’t care about prestige, but Penn and Harvard grads get the highest salaries in the Ivy League for a reason.

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@much2learn -

Since prestige is not a logical construct, in the world of engineering/computer science it is considered non-computable and therefore it is not particularly interesting.

Engineers/computer scientists have a saying (popularized by Google) that tends to guide our decisions:

“In God we trust, but all others must supply data”.

One might find it interesting that Google and Microsoft are among the largest employers of Tufts undergrads.

My family has multiple alums from Tufts, MIT and Harvard. All good schools, but quite different cultures. Family members tend to self-select schools based on culture, not “prestige” (whatever that means).

My kids tend toward the “artsy”, “creative”, “sensitive to their surroundings” side, so given the high cost of an education these days, I looked quite carefully at the salary data to see if the potential benefits of a high stress environment outweighed the potential costs.

The results might surprise you, I will post them as I can gather them.

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@mastadon

Here is the data for Penn graduates last year. The average salary for Engineering CS is $98,000, and the high is $135,000, and the low is $70,000. Does Tufts publish similar data? I did look for it, but did not find it.

http://www.vpul.upenn.edu/careerservices/files/SEAS_2015SeniorCPSurvey.pdf

I would love to see your data.

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The average salary for all Tufts CS (both liberal arts and engineering) from about 3 years ago was $90,000 with a high of $130,000 and a max bonus of $25,000.

From your source, if one calculates the weighted average between the two CS groups one comes up with a $95,000 average salary, the high stays the same at $135,000. From your source.

Penn’s average salary for all fields has risen nearly 20% in the last three years. That would suggest that there is a good chance that Tufts’ average salary has risen as well.

http://www.cs.tufts.edu/About-CS/cool-facts-about-cs-at-tufts.html

Tufts does publish a report of graduation outcomes by major and comparing that to Penn we have:

…Tufts…Penn
Google…8…9
Microsoft…8…8
Apple…2…0
Facebook…2…10
IBM…2…2
Cymbol* …2…0 *Founders

Remember that Penn is about twice the size of Tufts…

https://students.tufts.edu/career-center/explore-careers-and-majors/outcomes-major

https://students.tufts.edu/career-center/explore-careers-and-majors/outcomes-major

If we want to look at salary data from the same year, the latest PayScale salary rank for Engineering is:

12 Tufts...................................$67,600............$128,000

13 MIT, CalTec

.
.
.
.

28 UPenn, JHop, Stevens....$69,700..............$121,000

Two years ago, Tufts also ranked ahead of both MIT and Harvard for Engineering

Last year, neither Tufts or Harvard had large enough sample sizes for engineering to meet the
statistical validity test that Payscale uses.

This year, Harvard did not have big enough sample size for engineering (Harvard undergrad engineering is smaller than Tufts, but it has a bigger graduate program).

To be continued…

12

@mastadon
I think there is something inconsistent in the data here.

College factual shows Penn CS grads earning more. In CS earnings they rank Penn at #2 and Tufts at #21.

http://www.collegefactual.com/majors/computer-information-sciences/computer-science/rankings/highest-paid-grads/

When I look at the Economist rankings, it looks like the average Tufts grad is also not making as much as a Penn grad. Penn median earnings as $78,200 compared to $67,800 for Tufts.

http://www.economist.com/blogs/graphicdetail/2015/10/value-university

I am not sure why the data seem to be telling a different story from what you show. To understand the discrepancy I tried to find a detailed Tufts data to compare it to the comprehensive Penn salary information disclosure below. I was not able to find one. Can you tell me where I can find it?

http://www.vpul.upenn.edu/careerservices/files/SEAS_2015SeniorCPSurvey.pdf

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@Mastadon The data you got for Penn does not seem correct at all. Were dd you get it from?

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I got into Tufts also. I went to the admitted students day and was very impressed. I want to major in computer science with a minor in finance. Tufts is building a new engineering structure that will be available in spring 2017 which is neat. I also wonder about cs bc Mit and Harvard are right next to tufts. I hope I can get a job at a Google or Facebook with such high competition.

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@penn95 I used much2learns link and compared it to the Tufts link, then the Payscale link.

Please feel free to double check - I could have made a mistake copying

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You may be the only one at Tufts to turn down Harvard. I’m sure there are many Harvard students that turned down Tufts. I hire a lot of young people and when I see Harvard on a resume, it gets extra attention.

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@Penn95 - my apologies, I just realized that I did not provide the Payscale link
@much2learn- The maze of data available is a problem, I will try to explain.

There are only 2 integrated “national” salary databases that I know of -the Payscale’s database and the College Scorecard database (which is compiled by the US Government). All the rankings that I am aware of use one of these two databases.

There are also some state level databases (Texas comes to mind) and some college level databases (like the one you provided for Penn). More and more colleges seem to be providing their own databases.

They all have pros and cons, and cross-checking them against each other can provide insights.

College Factual uses the Payscale database, so I don’t see it adding any value for salary data and it has some issues.

The Payscale website has gotten much better over the years, and the database has been growing. Now it allows one to filter the database by type of school or by major just by clicking on the pull-down tabs and selecting an entry.

They also do a statistical check on the sample size and if it is not large enough, the school is not listed.

When sorting by type, some small schools (for example Amherst) may not appear in a given year because the size of the pool of reported salaries is not big enough. The bigger the school, the more likely it is that the data base will be large enough to to pass the test.

When sorting by major, you are subdividing the school’s pool of data into smaller sub-groups, so typically it has to be a pretty big school or a very popular major at a mid-size school to generate a big enough sample to pass the sample size test. So schools like Tufts and Harvard will not appear in the engineering subject listing every year. I have never seen either Tufts or Harvard appear in the Computer Science list. In the past, I have not tracked Penn, do I do not know its history, but it is not in this years list.

The fact the College Factual is providing salary data from the Payscale database by subject for a school that does not appear on Payscale’s subject list, suggests that they are using the data without performing a validity test for sample size. That is why I tend not to trust the College Factual salary data or the resulting ranking that uses the data. I do sometimes use the ranking as a way to identify potential schools of interest, but I do not take the ranking literally and always cross check the salary against the report from Payscale.

Payscale claims an accuracy of:
plus or minus 5% for “large” schools
plus or minus 10% for “Ivy league” schools (due to the wide salary variation)
plus or minus 10% for small schools (i.e. LACs)
plus or minus 5% for salary by major (due to smaller salary variation)

If possible, I like to look at two years of data to cross check, but the data for some years is not available.

Engineering - Tufts, Penn - Harvard sample too small
School…Early Career…Mid Career 2015-2016

12 Tufts.................$67,600..............$128,000

28 UPenn..............$69,700..............$121,000

http://www.payscale.com/college-salary-report/best-schools-by-majors/engineering
Computer Science - everybody too small
http://www.payscale.com/college-salary-report/best-schools-by-majors/computer-science?page=13
Humanities - Tufts, Penn, Harvard sample too small 2015-2016
School…Early Career…Mid Career

1 Tufts..................$56,200................$132,000

3 UPenn..............$49,200................$105,000

http://www.payscale.com/college-salary-report/best-schools-by-majors/humanities
Business - only Penn has undergrad Business 2015-2016
School…Early Career…Mid Career

5 UPenn...............$69,400................$122,000

7 Babson..............$59,800................$121,000

http://www.payscale.com/college-salary-report/best-schools-by-majors/business
Social Sciences - Penn, Harvard - Tufts sample too small 2015-2016
School…Early Career…Mid Career

1 UPenn.................$58,400...............$140,000

4 Harvard...............$62,400...............$129,000

http://www.payscale.com/college-salary-report/best-schools-by-majors/social-sciences
All Majors, filtered to only include research universities 2015-2016
School…Early Career…Mid Career

1 Harvard...............$61,400...............$126,000

6 UPenn.................$60,300...............$120,000

9 Tufts....................$54,200...............$115,000

http://www.payscale.com/college-salary-report/best-schools-by-type/bachelors/research-universities
All Majors, filtered to only include research universities 2013-2014 (2015 not available)

4 Harvard...............$55,300...............$119,000

10 Tufts..................$48,800...............$115,000

14UPenn................$57,200...............$109,000

http://www.payscale.com/college-salary-report-2014/best-schools-by-type/research-universities

College Scorecard data is new this year and reports salaries for all majors 10 years after enrollment (not graduation) and averages in the 9th year. There is other data available in the database for anybody to extract, so be wary as to what data and methodology is being used by the ranking. In the link I provided below, I filtered out all schools with a graduation rate below 88% and included all costs over $1000 and all salaries over $1000 and sorted on Salary After Attending.

School..............Salary............Carnegie Classification

MCPHS…$116,400…(Mass College of Pharmacy)
MIT…$91,600…Balanced Arts and Sciences Plus Professions
St Paul’s…$88,700…(School of Nursing-Queens)
Harvard…$87,200… Arts and Sciences Focus
Babson…$85,500…Specialty- Business
Stevens Inst…$82,800…Professions Focused (Mostly Engineering/CS)
UPenn…$78,200…Balanced Arts and Sciences & Professions
Princeton…$75,100…Arts and Sciences Plus Professions
Columbia…$72,900…Arts and Sciences Plus Professions
Cornell…$70,900…Balanced Arts and Sciences & Professions
Tufts…$67,800…Arts and Sciences Focus
Dartmouth…$67,000…Arts and Sciences Focus
Yale…$66,000…Arts and Sciences Focus
Brown…$59,700…Arts and Sciences Focus

https://collegescorecard.ed.gov/search/?avg_net_price=1000…&completion_rate=0.88…&median_earnings=1000…&sort=salary:desc&page=0

I hope this helps, I will provide some explanation in next post - feel free to ask questions and I will try to answer them

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Doesn’t sound like the OP is that concerned about competing salaries, otherwise Harvard would already be chosen. I would guess that with the exception of Stanford, no other US school will provide the overall entree to jobs and opportunities that Harvard does. I have a daughter who is in her first year at Tufts. She is not a CS major, but has friends in Engineering and other Sciences, as well as in the liberal arts. She also fell in love with the place when we first visited and applied ED1. She still loves it and is happy. She visits a friend at Harvard on occasion, enjoys Cambridge a great deal, & the atmosphere at Harvard has, at times, struck her as a little self-important and competitive. But the friend (a legacy) is happy there. At Tufts she has found smart, interesting and NICE kids. It’s an eclectic group, not everyone is either a perfect 2400, a champion pole vaulter, or the son of a Senator. Partying is pretty much limited to the weekends, and not everyone parties every weekend. Frats and frat parties form the core of on campus social life in the freshman year, but she’s found them open (she’s not Greek). She has found school challenging, stressful at times, but not overwhelming, and she easily got involved in different groups (radio station, club volleyball) and is able to get into leadership positions in her freshman year. Tufts will always live in the shadow of both Harvard and MIT. But its star is ascending, and students seem content and happy. I thought the food was very good. One thing you don’t want to do, is go to Tufts, or Vanderbilt, and spend time telling people you turned down Harvard. If that is going to happen, go to Harvard. But Tufts is not like a junior college in comparison. You are obviously a very bright and accomplished person, as well as being pretty mature and grounded (I infer that from the fact that you aren’t immediately picking Harvard because it’s Harvard, and are giving a great deal of thought to the matter). And honestly, with your abilities, you will soar wherever you go. You should visit each place again, possibly more than once. You will be living there for 4 years and it’s your life, not mom and dad’s.

19

Honestly, Tufts is a great school, and if the OP feels comfortable there I think it is a great choice. I am just pointing out that, in my opinion, you are forgoing some opportunities. Harvard simply provides better opportunities than any other school, and Penn is not very far behind.

DD1 is a sophomore at Penn and gets invited to certain events where there are only students from a small handful of schools: Harvard, MIT, Penn, Columbia, Carnegie Mellon, Stanford, Cal and a few more. Certainly, you can get anywhere from Tufts, but it may be a little bit harder. There is a reason that few students admitted to both choose Tufts over Harvard, or Tufts over Penn.

As far as salaries go, I am sure Mastadon is showing what the website says. I just think that the engineering salaries they are showing for Penn are simply incorrect. You just can’t hire a CS grad from Penn for an average of $49,200. Penn is showing that the lowest salary for CS was $70,000, the average is about $95,000, and the top end is $135,000. That is completely consistent with what DD1 is telling me is being offered to students she knows.

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@much2learn - I don’t mean to disrespect or dismiss your opinions, but we agreed that we were going to follow the engineer’s/scientists credo:

“In God we trust, all others must supply data.”

Also, please remember that this is a Tufts message board, so we are motivated by the quest for “truth and enlightenment”, not “prestige”…

Lastly, we pride ourselves in being independent, “out of the box” thinkers, so doing something just because everybody else is doing it makes no sense.

On with the quest!