<p>It's frustrating personally having to say "Bryn Mawr College... The women's college that's 20 minutes from Philadelphia" everytime someone asks me where I'm going next year.</p>
<p>Does anyone feel that way?</p>
<p>Emory?</p>
<p>Wash University in St. Louis?</p>
<p>Miami University in Ohio?</p>
<p>Case Western?</p>
<p>Rutgers?</p>
<p>university of rochester</p>
<p>countless people confuse it with RIT.</p>
<p>Rice is the most underrated school in this country</p>
<p>connecticut college
washington and lee
davidson</p>
<p>^^^ Davidson is for sure!</p>
<p>I'll add Temple U, Richmond, Olin (too many people havent heard of it), Reed, UDenver, UMinnesota, F&M, Centre, Hendrix.</p>
<p>I once asked a hotel about 20 minutes from Olin for directions to Olin. They asked if I meant the turkey farm. </p>
<p>It's frustrating having to explain your school to people, but what really matters is that you're happy there and have a good experience there.</p>
<p>how is rice underrated? everyone i know considers it the place to go other than ivies</p>
<p>camper89 - I see you are from Texas...as am I. Everyone in Texas knows how great Rice is. But the sentiments are not nationwide, i.e. in the South the alternates to the Ivies are Duke, Emory, or Vandy.</p>
<p>how is rice underrated? everyone i know considers it the place to go other than ivies</p>
<p>The average person in PA hasnt heard of Rice.</p>
<p>I don't really mind having to explain. It sort of reinforces my belief that a person is much more than where they go to school. That being said, any elite LAC...</p>
<p>Bryn Mawr has a long and storied reputation. I suspect the same people who didn't recognize its name would also have trouble recognizing most cultural references outside the framework of network television and AM talk radio. Ignore them.</p>
<p>My gripe is Reed's recognition -- the #1 LAC in the country for overall academic excellence according to Princeton Review, but pretty much invisible here in California.</p>
<p>university of tulsa is very underrated.</p>
<p>Rice isn't the most underrated school. Most people that have been through college in my area have heard of it.</p>
<p>Doesn't Texas-Austin have better programs almost across the board relative to Rice? Just because you're much smaller and are able to require higher SAT's, does that necessarily make you a better school? IMO, Austin is still the best school in Texas. It's a good thing that Rice has the owl as its mascot. People around the world are still asking, "Rice Whoooo?!". </p>
<p>Rice is a top notch school, but it's yet another one of those pseudo-Ivies that fails to impress on an international scale. The same can be said about Duke & Vandy. Look where they're ranked in the international academic polls. Another "unknown" pseudo-Ivy is University of the South-Sewanee in Tenn. All of the top LAC's fall under this category as well. Even some of the Ivies themselves aren't very highly regarded internationally such as Brown and Dartmouth.</p>
<p>Most LAC's, College of New Jersey, Emory...</p>
<p>Colgate U.</p>
<p>Most people will think you are going to a state school when you mention UChicago, even though it is practically Ivy Level.</p>
<p>And Olin is at the level of MIT, but no one has ever heard of it.</p>
<p>And most people haven't heard of most of the LACs.</p>
<p>Illinois Institute of Technology = IIT, a top 100 university that should be in the top 50 as far as academics go...but its facilities suck and it's really bad at self-marketing. People are always confusing it with ITT Tech. We proudly say "I go to IIT...in Chicago" (adding the Chicago part, just in case, since we're so used to people not hearing of it) and they're still like "Oh, you go to ITT? My daughter goes there, she's learning to be a dental assistant." And we just get really annoyed and give up, remembering all the late nights and realizing we won't get any respect, regardless. IIT would be really big name were it anywhere else, but in Chicago it gets really outshined by University of Chicago (two miles further south into the ghettos) and by Northwestern.</p>
<p>I'm an archie (architecture major) here, and so it's a little different, because people have heard of it as the place Mies van der Rohe designed. But, I feel sorry for other majors and programs. For example, the soccer team ordered new jerseys. They're a new team, so they didn't have anything to fall back on. Yeah, that's right, the jerseys came emblazoned with "ITT Scarlet Hawks"</p>
<p>It's such a big problem that they've thought of officially making it "Illinois Tech" instead of IIT. Some students have even suggested returning it to the name it had before 1940, Armour Institute of Technology. I'm personally in favor of that. Definitely has that whole stockyards feel to it :-)...but it would be unique.</p>
<p>I think all the top LACs are underrated. I got into Williams, Wellesley, Swarthmore and Pomona and it was rare to find someone who recognized one of the four. Usually I have to give lengthy explanations of where I am going and I am always asked why I am not going to a "better"(meaning more recognized) school.</p>