<p>Your use of the word "elite" is certainly relative. If we're talking public opinion, it certainly changes according to the region of the country. Most people in the south would think UChicago is a public school and Michigan is just an average state school. If we're talking about the professional world, Vanderbilt is very highly respected especially in the south--and its reputation is growing. mackinaw, I'm not sure how taking a couple of specific departments really reflects the whole university. Anyone can see that Vanderbilt's undergraduate, medical, law, and education schools are all in the top twenty. Your logic is flawed, but everyone is entitled to their own opinion.</p>
<p>In regard to the schools Alexandre compared Vanderbilt to, it is at least on par with these. If you look at grad school rankings, you can see how Vanderbilt's overall rankings are much higher than schools like Emory, Notre Dame, and Georgetown. Also, it is higher in several categories than schools like Brown, Northwestern, Cornell, Rice, Dartmouth....I could go on...but I won't.</p>
<p>Early this year, or late last year, SCIENCE (or PNAS, I can not recall exactly) had an article from one of top rank Vandy academic officials talking about Vandy's science programs. He said this (rephrase, but the same meaning):</p>
<pre><code>"We take pride in having very few international student labors"
</code></pre>
<p>It was laughed by almost everyone I know from academics. Two things to note:
1. His intention may just be to promote the program's success in alluring a lot of american kids. But the lack of diplomacy is so glaring.
2. Difference may exist in dealing with foreigners and minorities at vandy.</p>
<p>Mackinaw, you always seemed to smart to be sucked into this kind of discussion. What is considered "elite" is certainly subjective. Is it top 10 rankings by US News, top 20, top of peer assessments etc? Secondly, Vandy is a very good school by any measure. They have a beautiful campus, strong academic programs, and they certainly are sucessful in getting their kids into top graduate school.</p>
<p>This argument is as pointless as two kids arguing " who is brighter."</p>
<p>Taxguy, I didn't get into that particular debate. It's just that any "elite" university that I know about has several highly ranked schools/departments. And it's pretty much a consensus in the fields that I work in that this would be either top 10 or top 20. Beyond that, I am not debating whether Vandy is "elite" just that it doesn't have the strength of programs that schools that are consensus elite schools (such as the type that the OP was presumably referring to) have.</p>
<p>My first post noted that Vandy aspires to be thought of with the top schools, but that in terms of strength of programs it doesn't match up with them at this time. It's taking a WashU approach which (according to articles in newspapers in last couple of years) seems to be to find a way of attracting applicants from the highly populated eastern urban areas.</p>
<p>Some other schools for which general aspirations and perhaps even general reputation may have outrun the quality of programs have been investing heavily lately in fundamental remaking and upgrading of their faculty in core departments. These include USC and NYU. At this point, Vandy seems more intent on doing the WashU thing than on investing in programs. As I mentioned at the outset, it does have some strong professional programs but across the academic disciplines it has a ways to go. Partly this has to do with some bad deaning (poor academi leadership) in the past -- I am particularly aware of the virtual decimation of a couple of social science departments, though one (polisci) seems to be in process of being rebuilt.</p>
<p>Thus, I think Vandy is a "work in progress."</p>
<p>Northstarmom: I can give you two examples. One of my collegue (white ~ age 50) went to Vandy. When I told him my S was applying there, he was luke warm. One of friend's son (Indian), graduated recently and I asked him the same question that Vanderbilt has very few minorities, it is a southern school so how is the life for 'non-whites'. He said he had very pleasant experience and he didn't 'feel' the effects of small minority population.</p>
<p>And to other posters, yes Vandy may to be up there but in the next 10 years they will be up there. They are following the same marketing strategy UPenn followed in 80's. I did read an article about how UPenn overcame the least desireable ivy status and its location. They leveraged Wharton and relied very heavily on ED. WashU and many others followed similar strategy in recent past.</p>
<p>"Besides, I never said Vanderbilt was an elite university. I already pointed out that Vanderbilt is not on par with the Ivies, or with other top national universities like Chicago, MIT, Stanford, Cal, Michigan, Duke, Johns Hopkins, Northwestern or CalTech. </p>
<p>But it is up there with the likes of Rice, Wash U, BC, NYU, Georgetown etc... look at the rankings and you will see that Vanderbilt is ranked no worse than those fine universities."</p>
<p>I couldn't help but point out that you use the USNews Rankings to justify Vanderbilt's being on par with Rice, Georgetown, Wash U, etc but say it is not on the level with the likes of Cal, which is actually ranked lower than Rice and Georegtown. So you're saying we should use an objective means of measure (rankings) tofor one part of the arguement but ignore it for another? You're telling us that we shouldn't let bias and reputation convince us that Rice, Georgetwon, Wash U are better than Vandy because they are ranked the same, but we shouldn't let the rankings sway our judgment of Cal based on its reputation?</p>
<p>I do not use USNWR rankings. If I did, I would say that Washington University is better than Cornell and that Penn is better than Stanford and MIT. I use a combination of ratings (not rankings) based on the opinions of those in the know (corporate recruiters, adcoms and academics).</p>
<p>Well forgive my confusion then, since you did use the word "Rankings" in a thread where everyone else was reffering to the USNews ones. Maybe you could post your unique rankings for us, cuz that does seem a lot more useful than USNews (i don't completely trust USNews either).</p>
<p>My ratings are just as flawed as any other ranking/rating. I guess we each have our own criteria. Anyway, I have often posted my ratings. But, if you wish to see them once more, here you go (I do not mix research universities with LACs as I find them completely different):</p>
<p>Group I:
Harvard University
Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Princeton University
Stanford University
Yale University</p>
<p>Group II:
Brown University
California Institute of Technology
Columbia University
Cornell University
Dartmouth College
Duke University
Johns Hopkins University
Northwestern University
University of California-Berkeley
University of Chicago
University of Michigan-Ann Arbor
University of Pennsylvania</p>
<p>Group III:
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 Wisconsin-Madison
University of Virginia
Vanderbilt University
Washington University</p>
<p>Group IV:
Boston College
College of William and Mary
Georgia Institute of Technology
New York University
Tufts University
University of California-San Diego
University of Illinois-Urbana Champaign
University of Southern California
University of Washington</p>
<p>I always stress the fact that there is virtually no difference between one group and the one over it or under it and that the ratings above do not measure quality of education but rather the the quality of the institution.</p>
<p>LACs are harder to gauge because they do not have as many differentiating factors or characteristics. I would say that in terms of reputation and academic excellence, the following LACs would be comparable to research universities belonging to:</p>
<p>Group I:
None</p>
<p>Group II:
Amherst College
Swarthmore College
Williams College</p>
<p>Group III:
Bowdoin College
Carleton College
Davidson Collehe
Grinnell College
Haverford College
Middlebury College
Pomona College
Smith College
Wellesley College
Wesleyan University</p>
<p>Group IV:
Barnard College
Bates College
Bryn Mawr College
Claremont McKenna College
Colby College
Colgate University
Harvey Mudd College
Macalester College
Mount Holyoke College
Oberlin College
Reed College
Vassar College
Washington and Lee University</p>
<p>It's clear that Group II is the "almost ivy" group and like just about every attempt at ranking I've ever seen, it gets increasingly difficult the further away from the top you go, to state exactly why a particular school isn't "almost ivy". I mean, you could place all of the names from groups II and III into a hat, shake it up and the results would make just as much sense; Georgetown, Rice, Northwestern, Hopkins and WUSTL are on virtually the same plane.</p>
<p>Measuring "eliteness" in terms of "objective" rankings of departmental quality is simply silly. In mid 20th century, Vanderbilt's English department included Robert Penn Warren, Donald Davidson, John Crowe Ransom, and Walter Sullivan; it produced Allan Tate, Ransom, Warren, and George Core, among many other highly eminent scholars and writers. At the same time, its acceptance rate was around 60-70 percent, and it was a highly homogeneous community.
Now, though the agrarian past is honored, Vanderbilt has a fine contemporary English department, including Mark Jarman and Tony Earley, who maintain the tradition of creative writing there. The prestige and unity of the department are not comparable to what existed 40 years ago. But the department is perhaps even stronger because it is more diverse; it is also less conservative. But is the university more or less "elite" now? Well, who are you asking? How much does the past matter? How much does it matter that Vanderbilt's acceptance rate has been cut almost in half in less than a decade? Does that make it more or less "elite?" Moreover, what about Vanderbilt's regional status, which was long unchallenged?</p>
<p>Another irony of this "eliteness" business and the rankings is brought out by Mackinaw's posting of the education school being ranked 4th nationally. Peabody is a big part of the Vanderbilt rep. However, it accepts a considerably higher percentage of students than the A+S and music schools, thus inflating overall selectivity.</p>
<p>johnwesley, none of the schools in group II are merely "alomost ivies". They each have their unique character that equals that of the Ivies in every way. Some of those schools have been shaping education for a longer time than most Ivies. But I agree that there is very little that separates group I from group II and group II from group III.</p>