<p>Any input ?</p>
<p>University of Penn has Wharton.</p>
<p>Right, I know that Wharton is a really good business school. </p>
<p>Any other comments /?</p>
<p>Thanks. How are the economics, sociology, and history departments at Brown ? I have always been imagining Brown having good political science departments of political sciences or journalism or international relationship…</p>
<p>How about among those Ivies like Yale, Dartmouth, Princeton, UPenn ?? What are distinguished about those 4 ? I just want to give a shot at one or two Ivies. I know my chance is slim but who knows.</p>
<p>At first I only looked at Dartmouth.But now Brown and UPenn come in the picture with the reconsideration of Yale and Princeton (I crossed them out a while ago but now I want to reconsider my Ivy League choice). I become so confuse. Can you guys give me some suggestions about those Ivy League schools ?</p>
<p>most of these schools do not have a single defining characteristic. I think you should do some research as to the size of the school you want and the type of classes required for each major you’re interested in. different schools have different requirements for a common major. liberal arts colleges such as Vassar and Hamilton will be different than research/ivy league universities. most schools you’re interested in will have good social lives associated with them. do you want to be in a city? small town?</p>
<p>the “academics” pages of each school’s website would be useful in this regard. I caution against applying to schools simply because they are in the ivy league. yes, the ivies are all great schools, but they arent the “best” for everyone and arent even the “best” in many departments. if you’re applying for the name alone, then I offer you no further assistance…</p>
<p>Well, actually, they do have single defining characteristics. The thing is, the rankings deal with things all schools have and therefore leave out of consideration what sets schools apart from one another. The main thing that Brown and Wesleyan have in common is that they manage to avoid getting anything major wrong. They are not too big or too dominated by Greek life. They are also not applied to as a matter of course by those shooting for HYP. Only half the people Dartmouth accepts actually decide to go there. It is pretty hard to craft a freshman class the way Princeton does with those yield stats. As great as HYP are, they are probably too competitive; not to get in, but once you are there. You had better be Daniel Craig and/or the Buddha not to burn out. Another school off the HYP radar sceeen, but offering the classic college experience (no cast of thousands) is the University of Richmond.</p>
<p>Thanks guys.</p>
<p>Yeah, definitely I am not gonna apply to Ivies because of their names. That’s why I am trying to get to know them better to decide which one to apply to.</p>
<p>At the moment, the location of the school does not matter that much but I still prefer schools that are close to cities or in cities. I don’t really like school that are in remote areas. For example, Williams and Amherst are good schools but I don’t like their locations that much.</p>
<p>Richmond is definitely a good school but being an international students kinda restricts me from a lot of options. I know that FA offers limited Financial aid to international students.</p>
<p>Can you expand more on the difference in atmosphere between a small liberal arts and an Ivy League ??</p>
<p>The LACs that proliferate the New England area are basically snapshots of what today’s members of the Ivy League looked like around the 1920s: small town institutions of higher education whose liberal arts colleges were their whole reason for being. Harvard, Yale, and Princeton were barely a thousand students a piece. You had to climb a hill to get to Yale’s science classrooms, so suspect were they in the eyes of purists. </p>
<p>Medical schools and law schools began popping up on Ivy League campuses in the mid to late 19th century But it wasn’t until the post-World War II economic boom that a majority of them were dragged into the twentieth century. The emerging American economy created a demand for a highly educated management class and for Big Science. Together, that pushed the Ivies closer to the flagship state universities in terms of mission, leaving the LACs as historical bookmarks to the green and leafy, intimate residential life that first gave rise to the “ivy” appellation in the first place.</p>
<p>Today, you can still walk through tree-shaded campus greens located in New Haven, Cambridge and Hanover. But, among the NESCAC (the New England Small College Athletic Conference) colleges, there’s a greater sense of familiarity between the students. Jocks are more likely to know non-jocks; musicians are more likely to know pre-med students and vice versa.</p>
<p>In NESCAC, professors are evaluated for their teaching ability as well as published research, and tend to be brought up through the ranks within the same school instead of traded like baseball cards from one research university to another. This gives multiple generations of students a chance to know the same professors and IMHO is one reason NESCAC alumni participation tends to be higher than in the Ivy League.</p>
<p>It’s funny, because people write things like what John Wesley wrote but it’s not even true across the Ivy League.</p>
<p>Brown’s Med School only reopened in 1975 and until last year, only took Brown undergrads who were accepted before coming to Brown. Official rules for determining tenure at Brown says you’re to be evaluated 40% on teaching, 40% on research, and 20% on service to the university. Our focus is still quite clearly on the liberal arts college (same can be said for other Ivies, though not all). Students are more likely to mix at LACs? Have you been on the campus of all these schools to even make a statement like that with authority?</p>
<p>Don’t confuse Harvard and Yale as standing for what the Ivy League looks like. The reason not to apply to Ivy League schools because they’re in the Ivy League is because other than sharing a sports conference and being similar in age, there’s very little in common across all the schools.</p>
<p>Historically, I would place Brown and Dartmouth in that group of Ivies that took their time evolving into full-fledged research universities. Dartmouth, to this day, still refers to itself unambiguously as a “college”. However, if you’re going to argue that Brown differs as much from HYP as it does much from Dartmouth, Williams, and, Wesleyan, you may have your hands full. :)</p>
<p>I think if you made a continuum with LAC->>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>Research 1/Harvard Model, you’d find Dartmouth and Brown towards the middle with Dartmouth just slightly more toward LAC and Brown just slightly more toward Harvard. I’d argue we have just as much structurally in common with Wesleyan as we do Harvard, probably more with Wesleyan even. We certainly have a more similar student body to Wesleyan than Harvard.</p>
<p>How different the study body between schools like Brown and schools like Yale ?</p>
<p>Hard for me to say. While I spent a summer at Yale working, I only know three Yale students and none of them applied to Brown. And of all the people I know at Brown, only one I know applied to Yale (got waitlisted, said he wouldn’t have gone and only applied to make his parents happy).</p>
<p>I can say that Dartmouth and Brown is similar if for no other reason than my own observation that there are many cross-admits at the two schools. Dartmouth is pretty different than Brown socially, but not in ways that are always obvious or meaningful or clear to incoming freshman, IMO.</p>
<p>Wesleyan is another school that shares a lot of its applicants and admits with Brown. I get the impression there are less people looking at both Yale and Brown from my own anecdotal experience, so my assumption is it’s attracting different people for different reasons. I’ll let a Yalie come in and fill in a bit more-- I was never interested in Yale, personally.</p>
<p>Interesting. I have never known that. So do you think it comes from the difference between 2 schools like the atmosphere of a traditional research university versus a more liberal arts one ??</p>
<p>So I think I am down to 2 pairs now: Penn and Yale versus Dartmouth and Brown. It’s so hard to pick out which pair. Any suggestion on this one ?</p>
<p>< you can see where I went and what I valued, personally. I don’t know that Yale is totally down the pre-professional path that’s generally attributed to Penn (more so than research university), but I don’t know too much about Yale. Brown and DMouth are definitely more LAC-like than Penn or Yale.</p>
<p>So from your opinion, Penn is more pre-professional path than Yale ?</p>
<p>I don’t have a huge opinion about Yale – I know a lot about the location and the facilities, but little about the student body. It is my impression as a total outsider that Penn is considered one of the most if not the most pre-professional Ivy, no doubt in large part due to the reputation of Wharton. How much that translate is hard to say, it’s my outsider’s view.</p>
<p>I try not to talk much about schools I don’t have extensive experience with personally so you’re going to have to wait for someone else to respond to get any more about this. I go to Brown, I can tell you everything there is to know about Brown.</p>
<p>So how do you think about the open curriculum at Brown ?</p>
<p>Post 19 in this thread.
<a href=“http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/1061952812-post19.html[/url]”>http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/1061952812-post19.html</a></p>
<p>Oh yeah. I have read that one. How about sports there at Brown and the social life, the dorm,… ?</p>