<p>I know people on CC are very passionate about prestige/rankings of college. so i think it’d be interesting to see your imput.</p>
<li>Top 10 most presitigious undergrad (both research universities and LACs) institutions in US </li>
<li>where you live</li>
</ol>
<p>input*</p>
<p>Prestige/rankings are pointless.</p>
<ol>
<li>Harvard (academic wise, U of Chicago)</li>
<li>Stanford</li>
<li>Princeton</li>
<li>Yale</li>
<li>MIT</li>
<li>Brown</li>
<li>Columbia</li>
<li>Darthmouth</li>
<li>Duke</li>
<li><p>UPenn</p></li>
<li><p>Wellesley
2.Amherst</p></li>
<li><p>Swarthmore</p></li>
<li><p>Williams</p></li>
<li><p>Pomona</p></li>
<li><p>Middlebury</p></li>
<li><p>Carleton</p></li>
<li><p>Haverford</p></li>
<li><p>Bowdoin</p></li>
<li><p>Claremont McKenna</p></li>
</ol>
<p>Just my opinion, don't freak out</p>
<p>PART I</p>
<ol>
<li>Harvard</li>
<li>Yale</li>
<li>MIT</li>
<li>Stanford</li>
<li>Princeton</li>
<li>Brown</li>
<li>Columbia</li>
<li>Dartmouth</li>
<li>UPenn</li>
<li>Cornell</li>
</ol>
<p>PART II</p>
<p>LACs? What are those?</p>
<p>PART III</p>
<p>That's Montgomery County for you..</p>
<p>The above posts are from people who pay attention to inane rankings based on erroneous facts and proxy-oriented methods of statistics.</p>
<p>Eyebrow Raising Quotient:
1. Harvard
2. Yale
3. Princeton
4. MIT
5. Columbia
6. Chicago
7. Stanford
8. Williams
9. Amherst
10. Notre Dame</p>
<p>You have to respect schools that are "best in breed," ergo Chicago, Williams/Amherst and Notre Dame above the likes of Penn, Dartmouth, Brown, Cornell, Northwestern, and Hopkins. I can see why the very top students interested in hard-core academics (Chicago), great LACs (Williams/Amherst), or a School with a definite moral compass (Notre Dame) would choose those schools over HYP. Dartmouth, Brown, Cornell, Northwestern, and Hopkins are not best in any "breed." They are great, but...</p>
<p>^^^ Nice try pal... I should have figured you'd try and slip a Catholic school in there... but I'd a thought you'd have gotten more mileage out of G-town vs. the Fighting Irish. Besides, if you it's "best of breed" where's Caltech?</p>
<p>If you are really talking "best of breed", shouldn't your list look something like:</p>
<p>1) Harvard/Princeton/Williams (liberal arts)
2) MIT/Caltech (sciences/math)
3) Stanford (sun, smarts and sports)
4) Penn / Chicago (business / economics)
5) Julliard (music) / RISD (fine arts) / USC/NYU (film)
6) Colorado School of Mines (best mining school) / College of the Ozarks (best dungeons and dragons training program - dice not included)
7) Cal/UVA/Mich (public)
8) Texas/UCLA (sports)
9) ASU/Florida (partying, drinking and girls gone wild)
10) Tufts (best safety - heh, that one's for you gellino)</p>
<p>at any rate:</p>
<p>HRH the_presgige sayeth: "thought you'd have gotten more mileage out of G-town vs. the Fighting Irish. Besides, if you it's "best of breed" where's Caltech?"</p>
<p>It's fairly common knowledge among Papists that Georgetown is going Uncle Tom Aquinas on us and tries to pass for secular. Gotta respect the boys in South Bend for holding the line.</p>
<p>Best of breed for science geeks is MIT, not CalTech.</p>
<p>I lost all respect for Penn when a close friend of mine who is a Penn alum started sending me Christmas cards with a lot of grammatical errors (though he did spell "capital" correctly).</p>
<p>Academicwise UChicago is the best undergrad in the country - are you kidding? What evidence is there that the kids learn more there than at any other school? The reports of not having fun are numerous, but I don't see why people assume that a lack of social life corresponds with top notch undergrad academics. When I think of undergrad, I think of how highly recruited the students are and grad school placement.</p>
<p>Here you go:
1) HYPSM
2) Dartmouth, Duke, Brown, Columbia, Penn, Chicago
3) Cornell, NU, Georgetown, JHU</p>
<p>Best state U's: Mich, UVA, Berkeley
Best LAC's: Williams, Swarthmore, Amherst
I'm not gonna bother putting them in with the regular Uni undergrads because they are so different (state U's are too big in size, LACs too small)</p>
<p>The worst thing with Chicago is that their students are not stronger than any non HYP Ivy/Duke but for some reason people mention that its intellectual environment or whatever makes it a very strong school. Thats simply not true. Its students are about equal or slightly different (higher than Penn/Brown, lower than Duke/Dartmouth) to the other schools placed in the second tier of my rankings. Its feeding rate into top grad schools is slightly lower than Duke, Dartmouth, or Columbia. It attracts many less national merit scholars. Etc. Etc. When talking about undergrad, don't overrate Chicago's undergrad academics because its students study all the time - that doesn't lead to learning more or becoming a better all-around individual for the real world. </p>
<p>Probably missed some. If you disagree with the above tiers, you obviously lack a great deal of knowledge about undergraduate schools, what their goals are, and are probably unfamiliar with many top schools.</p>
<p>
[quote]
It's fairly common knowledge among Papists that Georgetown is going Uncle Tom Aquinas on us and tries to pass for secular. Gotta respect the boys in South Bend for holding the line.
[/quote]
</p>
<p>In that case, I'm surprised you aren't a bigger cheerleader for your own alma mater, after all when the only Catholic ever to sit in the Oval Office calls your school the Jesuit Ivy, you figure you've got braggin' rights.</p>
<p>I also take rankings with a grain of salt, but, in any case, the top 30 universities in the United States according to the London Times Higher Education Supplement (THES, generally far more reliable than USN&WR) are : </p>
<p>1) Harvard University
2) Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Yale University
4) Stanford University
5) California Institute of Technology
6) University of California, Berkeley
7) Princeton University
8) University of Chicago
9) Columbia University
10) Duke University
11) Cornell University
12) Johns Hopkins University
13) University of Pennsylvania
14) University of Michigan
15) University of California, Los Angeles
16) University of Texas, Austin
17) Carnegie Mellon University
18) Northwestern University
19) New York University
20) University of California, San Diego
21) Washington University in St. Louis
22) University of Rochester
23) Vanderbilt University
24) Brown University
25) Emory University
26) Case Western Reserve University
27) Dartmouth College
28) Boston University
29) University of Illinois
30) University of Wisconsin</p>
<p>PS: Note that overall rankings like above generally have little value because they often compare schools that offer different majors and excel in different areas . Specialty rankings (in engineering, physical sciences, arts and humanities, biomedical sciences, etc.) are usually more informative.</p>
<p>"only Catholic ever to sit in the Oval Office"</p>
<p>Yeah, I'm familiar with the quote, but having finished high school and college in the Boston area, I learned that when you put an Irish politician behind a microphone, you'll be floating in a sea of B.S. within minutes (also see: Kerry, John...did I ever mention that Kerry and I were students at BC at the same time?).</p>
<p>Also, most of the time JFK was sitting in the Oval Office, he had Judith Campbell Exner on his lap. I try not to take college advice from guys who accept sloppy seconds from Sam Giancana--I hope that doesn't include you, prestige. Furthermore, at BC there was more than a bit of resentment towards the Kennedys, as they could have easily put BC on the map by sending a few of their accident-prone spawn there...but noooooo, they had to go to that school across the Charles.</p>
<p>Jack also had Marilyn Monroe sitting on his lap on occasion (and his wife was no slouch either) so i figure we can cut him a little slack. Besides, if there was ever a guy to make Slick Willy look like the Presidential version of K-Fed in all his white trash glory - it'd be Jack.</p>
<p>As for Kerry - well let's leave him to wallow in obscurity as the irrelevant political footnote that he is fast becoming (I loathe the guy personally).</p>
<p>I hear what you are saying re: the Harvard-Kennedy connection - that said, Jack Jr's graduating from Brown didn't exactly do that school any favors - esp. after he went on to flunk the NY bar exam twice (nicely documented at the time by the NY Daily News as only they can do it - the National Enquirer should take notes)... of course, when you are the "Sexiest Man Alive", you figure if we can cut his pops some slack, we can cut him a little as well. It's a total tragedy what has happened - I mean everything in totality with the Kennedy family.</p>
<p>I could not think of a president less deserving of his glory than JFK, but, I suppose it's inevitable when you're young, handsome, charismatic, and shot. May he rest in peace with his pal Sam Giancana (the man who Joseph P. Kennedy hired [with mayor Daley] to "secure" Chicago).</p>
<p>ANYWAY. Other posts have already reflected my opinions nationally. But, here are the top 10 publics and privates for the state of PA (in my humble opinion).</p>
<p>Public:</p>
<ol>
<li>Pennsylvania State University - University Park</li>
<li>University of Pittsburgh</li>
<li>Temple University</li>
<li>West Chester University of Pennsylvania</li>
<li>Millersville University of Pennsylvania</li>
<li>Shippensburg University of Pennsylvania</li>
<li>Bloomsburg University of Pennsylvania</li>
<li>Indiana University of Pennsylvania</li>
<li>Kutztown University of Pennsylvania</li>
<li>East Stroundsburg University of Pennsylvania</li>
</ol>
<p>Yeah, it kind of drops off significantly after Temple.</p>
<p>Private:</p>
<ol>
<li>University of Pennsylvania</li>
<li>Swarthmore College</li>
<li>Haverford College</li>
<li>Bryn Mawr College</li>
<li>Carnegie Mellon University</li>
<li>Lehigh University</li>
<li>Villanova University</li>
<li>Bucknell University</li>
<li>Lafayette College</li>
<li>Dickinson College</li>
</ol>
<p>Doesn't quite correlate to academic quality, but that's just me.</p>
<p>
[quote]
I also take rankings with a grain of salt, but, in any case, the top 30 universities in the United States according to the London Times Higher Education Supplement (THES, generally far more reliable than USN&WR) are
[/quote]
</p>
<p>Those rankings are for graduate school though.</p>