<p>Harvard University = ** Leland Stanford Junior University **
Yale University = ** University of California, Berkeley **
Princeton University = ** University of California, Los Angeles **
Columbia University in the City of New York = ** Pomona College **
University of Pennsylvania = ** University of Southern California**
Dartmouth College = ** Reed College **
Brown University = ** Claremont McKenna College **
Cornell University = ** Colorado College **</p>
<p>Massachusetts Institute of Technology = ** California Institute of Technology **</p>
<p>I compared UCLA with Princeton, because both are known for their beautiful campuses, great academics, and college towns. Also, Princeton has a fierce rivalry with U Penn, which is undoubtedly very similar to USC. </p>
<p>But, I do agree with you that Pomona and Columbia are a mismatch.</p>
<p>Cornell and Colorado College are a mismatch - one is a large research university comprised of professional (and also public) schools – the other is a small LAC. Fact is, they’re not even in the same league.</p>
<p>Also Reed and Dartmouth are a major mismatch… politically/ideologically on the opposite side of the spectrum</p>
<p>The only west coast schools that even remotely come close to competing with the prestige and strength of the Ivies is Caltech and Stanford anyways. UCB and UCLA maybe, they have their individual strong points.</p>
<p>Berkeley easily beats most Ivies when looking at academic program offerings…only two universities in the world offer the breadth and depth Berkeley has.</p>
<p>Many of the Ivies are well, well below Berkeley and UCLA in prestige and international renown. For example few people west of the Hudson ever heard of an Ivy League school called Penn (and if they have, they think it’s Penn State) or Dartmouth. Brown is a color, not a school, for much of the country & English speaking world. </p>
<p>Fact is, of the Ivies, the only really well known outside of the east coast are Harvard, Yale, Princeton and maybe Columbia.</p>
<p>For undergraduates, breadth and depth of academic program offerings is not really the most distinctive feature of the 8 Ivy League schools. If you want a major research university that offers a very similar undergraduate experience on the west coast (or even west of the Mississippi), Stanford is about it. There are many other fine schools, arguably even better than some of the Ivies depending on what you want (e.g. archaeology, business, CS, engineering, Zulu), but for undergraduates, they are not quite the same institutional species.</p>
<p>Breadth and depth of academic programs is distinctive for universities as a whole, however, because very few universities in the world have breadth and depth across the entire academic spectrum. And it’s something some universities aspire to have.</p>
<p>Shouldn’t Berkeley be compared to Cornell instead – large, highly departmental, great engineering and CS/IT and business programs, and have similar admit stats? But then again, if Stanford was compared to Harvard, then it’s just rightful that Berkeley should be Yale, if not Princeton, at least.</p>
<p>For undergraduates, quality aside, Berkeley (or UCLA) is simply not the same kind of school as any of the 8 Ivies (with the possible exception of Cornell). </p>
<p>All 8 of the Ivies draw students of diverse races, talents and income levels from all over the USA and the world. If Harvard College were similar to Berkeley in undergraduate student geographic distribution, it would draw ~40% of its students from Irish Catholic families in a few jurisdictions surrounding Boston-Cambridge. Almost all of the rest would come from elsewhere in Massachusetts or neighboring states. But they don’t.</p>
<p>The 8 Ivies bring top students together with top faculty in small classes that focus primarily on the traditional liberal arts and sciences. If Dartmouth or Brown were similar to Berkeley in the distribution of undergraduate degrees conferred, about 20% of their students would major in engineering, business/marketing, architecture, and communications. But they don’t.</p>
<p>The undergraduate mission and market space is a little different.</p>
<p>One of them is definitely Stanford.
The second is Harvard??? MIT???</p>
<p>I think Stanford is sitting pretty in a league of it’s own, actually, in terms of breadth and depth.</p>
<p>I’d like to note at this point that Berkeley doesn’t have a medical school. (UCSF is often unofficially attributed to Berkeley but every official ranking has recognized UCSF as a separate institution.)</p>
<p>Every university bounds the curriculum box, somehow. To make the “only two universities in the world offer X” claim stick, first you’ve gotta define what X is. </p>
<p>If you just count majors and courses (for breadth), or NRC top N graduate departments (for quality), then I think Berkeley does win.</p>