<p>"Besides, top students who attend top universities generally end up taking several graduate-level classes in their Junior and Senior years."</p>
<p>Not if you're going to medical school or business school. The "rankings" of this thread bear little weight on most of these schools' undergraduate programs (especially pre-professional; just because harvard has a great law school doesn't mean you have any better of a shot at getting in there simply because you attended harvard for undergrad). In fact, the more research-driven a school is, the more likely it is that undergrads get shat upon by the profs and the grad students, whose main priorities are research, not teaching Gen Chem to pesky undergrads.</p>
<p>Alumni giving rate reveals a lot about how people felt about the quality of their overall undergraduate experience, in my opinion.</p>
<p>Oh, and Cincinattistudent's post was brilliant. Yes, brilliant.</p>
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1) The secular U.S. population trends southward and westward. Ironically, it was Cornellians who invented the modern air conditioning machine for industrial purposes which helped make this development possible.
2) The secular U.S. trend towards large cities over the last 25 years. In terms of gaining access to research money, venture capital dollars, and political power connections, it has become increasingly valuable to locate oneself in a large metropolitan area. Maybe not for undergraduate education, but certainly for graduate education.
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<p>Yet, isn't it interesting that these factors didn't seem to hurt Yale or Princeton. </p>
<p>Furthermore, I think we need to keep in mind that universities are not mere witnesses to their own geographic destinies - they can actually create their destinies also. Stanford is living proof. It wasn't that long ago when Silicon Valley was little more than just a bunch of fruit orchards and San Jose was basically just a cowtown. Silicon Valley wasn't just born spontaneously; Stanford was a crucial player in the fostering of the development of the Valley. This despite having relatively few resources at the time; I think it's fairly clear that Stanford had far fewer resources than Cornell did in those days. </p>
<p>Hence, history begs the question of why Cornell couldn't do what Stanford did? After all, Cornell was (and is) a top engineering/technology school - in fact, probably better than Stanford was in those days. And - you said it yourself - upstate New York was dotted with numerous engineering and technology companies, far more so than did the Bay Area at the time. Hence, Silicon Valley should have been "born" around Ithaca. But it wasn't. It was born around Palo Alto.</p>