UNderatted schools

Applying to College
21

<p>no. i'm not. but it seems as if everyone outside of California regards Berkeley as a the God of all colleges (haha, this could be due to the fact that in 10th grade in my functions/statistics class we watched a documentary on the hell this group of 9 high school kids went through to get into berkeley...like, a kid moving from china to CA to live in some dumpy apartment all on his own just so he could have a halfway decent shot at getting into UCB), and most of the kids I know would chose UCLA over Berkeley any day. </p>

<p>anybody on here who goes to berkeley who can set the record straight?</p>

22

<p>University of South Carolina - Aiken is overrated</p>

23

<p>
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all ivies are overrated for that matter

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<p>I can understand how you can say that some Ivies are overrated, but how can you say that Harvard and Princeton are overrated? I didn't apply to any Ivies because I don't like the Ivies, but I have to give it to Harvard and Princeton (Yale as well, in many instances) for being the best colleges in the nation. I really haven't seen any evidence to the contrary.</p>

24

<p>phuriku- may I ask what you have seen that makes you think that they are? I think that this thread is rather silly for the simple fact that there is very little much of you know about a specific school other than the one you are attending (if you are in college)- so any commentary on the subject itself only recognizes societal prejudices and your specific prejudices due to the things you have heard/seen/experienced. All rankings should be taken with two gulps of salt as everything is always subjective in some way. Ivy League schools are thought of as the best- merely because the public perceives them to be the best—whether or not they are is largely unknown.</p>

25

<p>
[quote]
may I ask what you have seen that makes you think that they are?

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<p>I've seen a lot of the curriculum of the top schools, and from what I've seen, the curriculum of Harvard and Princeton are often the most advanced in comparison with other top schools, although often not by far. (Note: this is primarily in the physical sciences and mathematics, but also sometimes in the humanities.)</p>

<p>My judgments on what constitutes a good school is often based on how advanced the curriculum is, and from what I've seen, Harvard and Princeton usually have the most advanced curriculum, putting them at the top 2 schools in the nation. (If you want an example, compare Math 55 to any other mathematics course in the nation that deals with similar material (usually an Analysis course) <a href="http://www.math.harvard.edu/%7Eelkies/M55a.02/index.html%5B/url%5D"&gt;http://www.math.harvard.edu/~elkies/M55a.02/index.html&lt;/a&gt;)&lt;/p>

<p>Admittedly, the top 10 schools in the nation are very close together in quality. I do, however, have a problem when someone says that Harvard and Princeton are overrated, as the curriculum of these two colleges is usually the most difficult in the nation.</p>

<p>(Like you pointed out, though, I really have no idea how good Harvard and Princeton are in other subjects, and you cannot judge how good a program is in say, the social sciences, just by looking at the curriculum as you can often do with the physical sciences.)</p>