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<p>Apparently 20% of Berkeley students are transfers from community college, what a bunch of snobs that admissions office is!</p>
<p>[Community</a> College Transfer Programs – Another Path to the UC System (and beyond) OneDublin.org](<a href=“http://onedublin.org/education-resources/community-college-transfer-programs-another-path-to-the-uc-system-and-beyond/]Community”>Community College Transfer Programs – Another Path to the UC System (and beyond) | OneDublin.org)</p>
<p>Vanderbilt Chancellor - Dr. E. Gordon Gee</p>
<p>Former President of Brown —> Vanderbilt —> THE Ohio State University!! :p</p>
<p>The 10 Best College Presidents</p>
<p>Ohio State’s Gee and nine other dynamos
The Big Man on Campus</p>
<p><a href=“http://www.time.com/time/specials/packages/article/0,28804,1937938_1937934_1937914,00.html[/url]”>http://www.time.com/time/specials/packages/article/0,28804,1937938_1937934_1937914,00.html</a></p>
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<p>Lol, yes, Vanderbilt’s student body is from ‘all over’ (all over the South maybe.)</p>
<p>Let’s get real. The UCs are extremely diverse, both socio-economically and geographically. As far the latter point is concerned, here’s some relevant information</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>with regard to further diversity:</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>Vanderbilt could never dream of having a student body as diverse as UCLA or Cal, nor, imo, should it. It isn’t a public university with an interest in promoting the public good, unlike LA and Cal.</p>
<p>but let’s get back to the OP, since apparently many seem to have forgotten it:</p>
<p>
</p>
<ol>
<li>No, the student bodies have similar SAT scores.)</li>
<li>Yes. The weather is different, as is recruiting, and as some have argued the interests of the students.)</li>
<li>Yes and no. It’s endowment’s per student is higher than Browns, and about equal to Dartmouth and Cornell but lower than every other Ivy.)</li>
<li>Yes and no. Guidance counselors seem to rank Vanderbilt as a peer to Duke and 1 Ivy (Penn) but it’s international reputation is abysmal. In the NYTs 2011 business leaders ranking, Vanderbilt ranks 89 out of 150 universities; in the 2012 ranking, it is not ranked. It ranks 104 in the Times Higher Education ranking of World Universities, and does not appear in their top 100 universities in terms of reputation.</li>
<li>The Ivies are more connected to banking and such, but if that’s of no interest to you then not really.</li>
</ol>
<p>In total, there are three types of universities. Universities that are famous nationally, universities that are famous internationally, and universities that are famous at both, i.e. world universities. Extremely prestigious universities are world universities. These include HYPSM, Oxbridge, the Ivies, UCLA, Cal, Michigan, etc. Vanderbilt’s low international reputation prevents it from joining this list. Does that matter to you? It depends on what your professional goals and aspirations are. If you’re from another country, and want to study at an American university, or an American wanting to work abroad, international reputation might be valuable. If you’re just a typical 18-year-old college kid, it might not matter at all.</p>
<p>So yes, the ivies have a (slight) edge on Vanderbilt. But it largely won’t lead to any large differences professionally.</p>
<p>
If you’re referring to graduate programs, it doesn’t matter since the best undergraduates from a wide range of universities will enroll at the nation’s most elite doctoral programs, which includes Berkeley of course. You are out of your mind if you think that getting into a Berkeley PhD or a JD or an MBA is equivalent to getting an undergraduate degree from UCB. Berkeley’s graduate programs are filled with plenty of HYPSM grads but UCB’s undergraduate program is filled with 20% community college transfers as timetodecide12 pointed out. There’s a huge difference here.</p>
<p>In terms of undergraduate education, which is where prestige is derived for an institution since all undergraduates take a similar core rather than specializing, Duke is far superior to Berkeley.</p>
<p>Based on their most recent CDS pdfs…</p>
<p>Six Year Graduation Rates
Duke: 94%
UC Berkeley: 90%</p>
<p>Percentage of Students with Critical Reading SAT Scores>700
Duke: 57%
UC Berkeley: 36%</p>
<p>Percentage of Students with Math SAT Scores>700
Duke: 71%
UC Berkeley: 58%</p>
<p>Percentage of Students with Writing SAT Scores>700
Duke: 65%
UC Berkeley: 46%</p>
<p>Percentage of Students with ACT Composite of 30 or Higher
Duke: 79%
UC Berkeley: 62%</p>
<p>Percent of Students who are Out of State
Duke: 86%
UC Berkeley: 10% (WOW!!!)</p>
<p>Student to Faculty Ratio
Duke: 7/1
UC Berkeley: 17/1</p>
<p>You can’t use the law school, medical school, investment banking, and consulting placement to harass Duke like you’re doing with poor Vanderbilt since even in absolute numbers, Duke undergrads are better represented than UCB undergrads at all these places you talk about.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>beyphy, Vanderbilt has really good geographic diversity –</p>
<p><a href=“http://admissions.vanderbilt.edu/images/Undergrad_Enrollment_Map_2012.JPG[/url]”>http://admissions.vanderbilt.edu/images/Undergrad_Enrollment_Map_2012.JPG</a></p>
<p>God Bephy you are such a ■■■■■. Stop trying to prop up your cal state schools in my thread about Vanderbilt and the Ivy League. </p>
<p>Vanderbilt has a significant amount of students from northeastern boarding schools and the midwest, it’s geographical diversity is the equivalent of Duke’s except is draws a bit less from California. Comparing the geographical diversity of state schools in california to a private school like Vanderbilt is a joke. </p>
<p><a href=“http://admissions.vanderbilt.edu/images/Undergrad_Enrollment_Map_2012.JPG[/url]”>http://admissions.vanderbilt.edu/images/Undergrad_Enrollment_Map_2012.JPG</a></p>
<p>10% of cal berkeley is just outside of CALIFORNIA.</p>
<p>LMAO. strong diversity.</p>
<p>Bephy,</p>
<p>Not bad of an analysis on vandy vs ivies. vandy still does lack somewhat of an international reputation compared to its peer schools, but it will improve no doubt.</p>
<p>But please dont embarass yourself by comparinng geographical diversity of the uc’s to vandy. vandy in recent years does extremely well in terms of gepgraphical diversity, it’s laughable for you to even compare. uc’s are still state schools, VERY VERY few out of state while vanderbilt (im a student here) draws kids from all over. most of my econ classes are about 90% northerners. just check the data yourself.
in regards to diversity racially, you might be right. vanderbilt along with notre dame lacks many asian students. but ucla and ucb has an overwhelming. just having a lot of asians (im asian myself) doesnt automatically equal diversity. and why does that even matter unless you are a racist yourself?</p>
<p>A key concept in this brouhaha is “prestige”. What do we really mean by it? What’s the right way to measure it?</p>
<p>Here’s what one researcher has to say about it:</p>
<p>“Selectivity is the best single predictor of the reputation or prestige of a college or university and is highly associated with such resource criteria as faculty salaries, endowment per student, and educational and general expenditures per student. Thus, undergraduate admissions selectivity appears to be an adequate indicator of the perceived academic quality of a college or university.”</p>
<p><a href=“Selectivity and Rigor in Research Universities on JSTOR”>Selectivity and Rigor in Research Universities on JSTOR;
<p>tk,</p>
<p>
At least, you’ve got the comprehension skills that the others here don’t have. That’s actually what I was saying all this time. Vanderbilt is unquestionably a good school. I didn’t say it is not. It’s also very selective. Its common data set would even rival that of Stanford’s – the school I honestly believe is Harvard’s nearest rival!! Unfortunately, Vanderbilt lacks in prestige factor. It just does not have the prestige that the Ivies have.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>Yet despite those figures above, Berkeley’s academic departments are stronger than most of Duke’s. Berkeley’s Language programs are superior to Duke’s. Berkeley’s social sciences programs are superior to Duke’s. Berkeley’s humanities programs are superior to Duke’s. Berkeley’s physical sciences programs are superior to Duke’s. Berkeley’s engineering programs are superior to Duke’s. Even Berkeley’s professional schools (Business and Law) are slightly superior to Duke’s. The Berkeley brand name is still more prestigious globally. Like I said, schools with higher SATs do not automatically mean they’re academically superior schools. A lot of LACs have SATs higher than Berkeley’s, yet many of them aren’t as prestigious than Berkeley’s. In short, SAT’s do not determine school prestige. The data above have clearly showed that. </p>
<p>Take Stanford and HMC, for example. The common data set of HMC would rival that of Stanford’s. Yet in reality, HMC cannot match Stanford’s prestige, both locally and internationally. Even Vanderbilt has a slight edge on common data set vs Stanford. But is Vanderbilt as prestigious as Stanford? The clear answer to that is, NO. </p>
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</p>
<p>US News has ranked only 3 undergrad programs, namely: business, engineering and computer science. </p>
<p>For MBA, Haas was ranked number 7. It’s undergrad business program was ranked number 3, equal to MIT’s Sloan. Berkeley’s grad engineering was ranked number 3. But its undergrad engineering program was also ranked number 3. Both grad and undergrad computer science programs were ranked number one, along with Stanford, MIT and CMU. I don’t know about you, Goldenboy, but looking at the rankings, I do not see any major discrepancy there.</p>
<p>tk, if selectivity were the primary determinent of prestige, Caltech would be the most prestigious university in the US. IIT and several other Asian universities would be even more prestigious than Caltech. </p>
<p>I am sure the “researcher” meant that selectivity is one of the factors that determines prestige. But the main reason why Harvard is so prestigious is because:</p>
<ol>
<li>It is highly regarded academically (this is entirely derived from the strength of graduate and professional programs)</li>
<li>It is the wealthiest university in the World</li>
<li>It has one of the wealthiest and most powerful alumni networks on Earth</li>
</ol>
<p>
</p>
<p>Alexandre, you grant that Vanderbilt is very selective.<br>
I cited research that claims, “Selectivity is the best single predictor of the reputation or prestige of a college or university …” Nevertheless, you state that “Vanderbilt lacks in prestige factor”.</p>
<p>Granted, saying that selectivity is the single best predictor of reputation or prestige is not the same as saying it is a perfect predictor, or that no other factors are relevant to the prediction. You seem to be suggesting several other factors. What is your evidence that these are better indicators than selectivity? </p>
<p>Saying that Harvard “is highly regarded academically” seems to be tantamount to saying it is … prestigious. Since it sounds like you are constructing a tautology here, let’s set this aside as a factor. That leaves us with two others you suggest, university wealth (endowment per student?) and alumni wealth + power.</p>
<p>In terms of endowment per student, Vanderbilt is one of the country’s wealthiest universities (one of the top 20, approximately equal in wealth to Penn,Columbia, Brown, and Cornell). [Leiter</a> Reports: A Philosophy Blog: Per Student Value of University Endowments…or the rich are even richer than you thought!](<a href=“http://leiterreports.typepad.com/blog/2012/07/per-student-value-of-university-endowmentsor-the-rich-are-even-richer-than-you-thought.html]Leiter”>http://leiterreports.typepad.com/blog/2012/07/per-student-value-of-university-endowmentsor-the-rich-are-even-richer-than-you-thought.html)</p>
<p>I don’t have a good metric at hand for alumni wealth & power. Do you? Since we’ve established that on the basis of two proposed prestige factors (selectivity and institutional wealth) Vanderbilt scores very high, then either you must have evidence that V ranks low in alumni wealth & power, or there is some other factor(s) we haven’t considered, or else there is good reason to discount selectivity and wealth as important factors.</p>
<p>tk, you quoted RML, not me. And I do not think that Harvard’s academic reputation has anything to do with selectivity. It has to do with the fact that is has top 5 departments in ever field of study. I cannot think of a single department at Harvard, other than Engineering, that is not ranked among the top 5 nationally. </p>
<p>And no, I do not have a good metric for alumni wealth and power. And since it has come to light that private universities cheat and lie about statistics, we do not have a reliable metric for strength of student body. Until all universities subject themselves to thorough auditing of all their “metrics”, I would not believe selectivity rankings.</p>
<p>This said, I stand firm by my statement. Selectivity rankings do not equal prestige rankings. There are corelations, but there are many other equally important factors that go into determining prestige. And there are many different types of prestige. Suffice it to say that Vanderbilt and Cal are both very prestigious, each in its own ways. They are too different to compare.</p>
<p>“The issue is if Vandy has the prestige that the Ivy has. So, whether its students are smarter than Stanford’s is not the issue here. The issue is, is Vandy as prestigious as Stanford? Answer that.”</p>
<p>They’re both prestigious enough for anybody’s purposes. If my kid got into Vandy or Stanford and had to choose, I’d say make the decision on personal preference and be totally fine with either choice. In the long run, there just aren’t appreciable differences at this level.</p>
<p>Thinking that “how they see things in CA” translates to the rest of the country is laughable. Really, the rest of the country doesn’t care about UCLA or Berkeley the way you guys do. And I see nothing “diverse” about schools in which everyone comes from California. Don’t even try to pretend that’s a bonus. It’s not. </p>
<p>As for international prestige - I don’t spend my time worrying about impressing people who make judgments without knowing the facts, which is precisely what describes the “what do people in Asia think” mentality.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>Whoops. Sorry!
Alexandre, please consider everything from the quote and first paragraph in my last post as directed to you. It looks like you’ve responded accordingly.</p>
<p>Harvard aside - maybe it’s special for various reasons - I don’t think the researcher I cited is alone in drawing a connection between undergraduate admission selectivity and prestige (or perhaps “reputation”, which at least one researcher does distinguish from prestige).<br>
And although he might acknowledge other factors, what he actually wrote was that selectivty * is the best single predictor*. It appears he has some research basis for that conclusion.</p>
<p>But o.k., now you’ve introduced another possible indicator of prestige, namely the number of top 5 departments in various fields of study. Maybe you’re referring to the NRC or some similar assessment of graduate level department strength based partly on bibliometric analysis (publications per faculty member, citations per publication, etc.)</p>
<p>You might also want to consider the reports of the Center for Measuring University Performance ([Research-</a> The Center for Measuring University Performance](<a href=“http://mup.asu.edu/research.html]Research-”>http://mup.asu.edu/research.html)). Check out the table on page 20 ("Top Private Research Universities (1-25). By the “Number of Measures in Top 25 Control” (9) and the “Number of Measures in Top 26-50 Control” (0), Vanderbilt is indistinguishable from Columbia, Duke, Harvard, MIT, Northwestern, Stanford, Chicago, Penn, WUSTL, and Yale.</p>
<p>For a high school student who values prestige, which would be a more important indicator: the number of top 5 graduate departments in various fields, or the number of graduate & undergraduate performance measures in the top 25? (I really wouldn’t know, but maybe some other poster has a principled basis for sorting this out.)</p>
<p>Looks like people are moving away from California.</p>
<p>[California’s</a> Population is Moving Out, Census Report Shows | NBC Southern California](<a href=“California’s Population Is Moving Out, Census Report Shows – NBC Los Angeles”>California’s Population Is Moving Out, Census Report Shows – NBC Los Angeles)</p>
<p>"You might also want to consider the reports of the Center for Measuring University Performance (Research- The Center for Measuring University Performance). Check out the table on page 20 (“Top Private Research Universities (1-25). By the “Number of Measures in Top 25 Control” (9) and the “Number of Measures in Top 26-50 Control” (0), Vanderbilt is indistinguishable from Columbia, Duke, Harvard, MIT, Northwestern, Stanford, Chicago, Penn, WUSTL, and Yale.”</p>
<p>Although I find the Center for Measuring University Performance report useful, it is hard to use on its own. Are Chicago, Columbia, Duke, Northwestern, Vanderbilt and WUSTL better than Brown, Caltech, Cornell, Dartmouth, JHU, Rice or Princeton? </p>
<p>And although I agree with separating public from private in some instances, I am not sure how this works in this case.</p>
<p>You should be proud of yourself, diaosi. You started one of the most farcical threads in recent CC history. Honestly. Are you interested in applying to Vandy? It’s a great school. Full stop. Plenty good enough unless maybe you want to work at a big bulge firm or whatever RML called the firms that, of course, top EVERYONE’S list of dream employers. There’s no need whatsoever to compare it to the Ivies or any other schools. </p>
<p>P.S. I know what a “bulge bracket” firm is but I like my term better.</p>
<p>tk, I’m inclined to believe that high selectivity would easily gain recognition amongst the students. But I do not believe it is a single determinant factor for school prestige. As what Alexander has pointed out, having a strong alumni network helps propel school prestige too, and I completely agree with him. His Harvard example was a perfect example. But for me, the biggest contributor to school prestige is the school’s connection to top employers. It is the result of the school’s high selectivity level, excellent training and having excellent and well-regarded faculty, amongst others. </p>
<p>If you’re into US News ranking, you can see that Vanderbilt ranks just above Berkeley, so that’s not something that Vanderbilt should gloat about. Both schools are top 25 according to that ranking table, both schools are good for undergraduate (using US News’ metrics) and both are quite selective schools – amngst the most selective in the nation. An applicant coming from, say, NY would find both schools almost equally difficult.</p>
![http://admissions.vanderbilt.edu/images/Undergrad_Enrollment_Map_2012.JPG[/url]](http://admissions.vanderbilt.edu/images/Undergrad_Enrollment_Map_2012.JPG%5B/url%5D){kind=link}
