<p>1) Stanford
2) MIT/Caltech
3) Williams/Duke
4) UChicago/Amherst
5) Northwestern/JHU/Georgetown</p>
<p>A total of 10 in the top-5. :)</p>
<p>^I would stick Swat and Pomona in the (3) category or (4) at worst but I generally agree with that list.</p>
<p>
You seem to like 29 of the top 30 national universities in USNW, roughly in the same order. So what made you exclude one of them?</p>
<p>I would rank the top non-Ivies as…</p>
<ul>
<li>Caltech</li>
<li>Stanford</li>
<li>MIT</li>
</ul>
<p>There’s a huge gap from there. The top non-Ivies may not be as “prestigious” in the eyes of the public as the Ivies but are frequently more selective and their academic excellence exceeds that of HYP. </p>
<p>The top LACs are also markedly superior to the Ivies but I have excluded them from my ranking since they tend to be smaller institutions and there is a number of them that are better than HYP. Some of the top LACs include Reed, Harvey Mudd, Grinell, etc.</p>
<p>The Ivies all have from average to mediocre Engineering programs, you see, and all the top non-Ivies happen to excel in engineering. Stanford is basically Harvard with a rank #2 Engineering program. Also, CalTech and MIT beats HYP in terms of PhDs attained by their undergrad students per capita by a wide margin.
<a href=“http://www.nsf.gov/statistics/infbrief/nsf08311/nsf08311.pdf[/url]”>http://www.nsf.gov/statistics/infbrief/nsf08311/nsf08311.pdf</a></p>
<p>The Ivy League really isn’t that renowned for their academic excellence relative to the quality of students they admit. They’re good schools but not good schools relative to a number of alternatives for students with similar stats.</p>
<p>CC’s subforums (Top Univerisities and Top LACs) pretty much hit the nail on the head for me.</p>
<p>To be honest, I’d rather go for Northwestern than Chicago. Northwestern offers a far more balance college experience (top academics, great facilities, top-notched faculty, amazing campus scene, bright students with amazing personalities, etc, etc.) </p>
<p>As to the OP’s question: 5 is not enough. It’s impossible to list down 5 schools when you’re actually asking for more. And, even when I tried to squeeze the criteria to come up with a narrow list, there still are far more than 5 that would come out:</p>
<h2>MIT/Stanford/Caltech</h2>
<p>Berkeley/Northwestern/Johns Hopkins/Chicago/Duke
Michigan/UVa/UCLA/CMU/Rice</p>
<p>Maybe we should call it “General League” – and the Ivy League is just non-GL.</p>
<p>8 schools:</p>
<p>Stanford
MIT
Caltech
Chicago
Duke
Northwestern
Cal
+
one LAC</p>
<p>
</p>
<p><em>confusion</em></p>
<p>^ I’m sorry; it was not meant to insult UofC students. It’s just that the impression I got from Chicago students wasn’t that good. Many of the students there were nerdy and less sociable. It was the same feeling I got when I went to Harvey Mudd College and Caltech. Discussions amongst the students were often too serious and academic focused it makes it monotonous to listen. When I spoke with the students there, they complained how hard the lectures and exams were. So, I got the impression that many students at Chicago weren’t enjoying their stay there. Of course, I could be wrong as I never attended classes there myself. </p>
<p>My visit to NU was a complete opposite, though I’ve been to NU 3 times in the past only. And, NU students have got more school spirit / pride.</p>
<p>
Good list, but I’d rather not include an LAC and it is, for me, a different category. </p>
<p>I’d rather that the slot you reserved for an LAC would be given to either JHU or Michigan, if not UCLA or UVa.</p>
<p>Thank you guys for your inputs. I’m really interested in prestigious universities and I’m still figuring out which ones I want to apply to. </p>
<p>I’m actually interested in ewho’s approach. How about construct a new “General League” that consists of schools that parallel the actual Ivy League in terms of reputation, academics, renown, etc.</p>
<p>For instance,
Ivy League / General League</p>
<p>Harvard - Stanford : Aren’t Harvard and Stanford very similar?
Yale - MIT
Princeton - Caltech : Small and lack of professional schools
Columbia - Duke : I read an article about Columbia being the Duke of the North…
Penn - Chicago / Northwestern?
Dartmouth - Williams?
Brown - ?
Cornell - Berkeley : Both are huge with great science and engineering programs, right?</p>
<p>What do you guys think of that?</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>Frankly, I think it’s a silly exercise. Each school is unique and doesn’t have a counterpart in the Ivy League. Harvard and Stanford are not very similar except for the fact that they are both outstanding institutions that attract some of the best professors and students in the world. Stanford has some of the finest engineering departments in the world, while Harvard is barely on the map in engineering. Stanford has one of the best athletic traditions and athletes of any school in the country, while Harvard is nowhere to be found (I realize this is due to lack of scholarships; Princeton is the best overall sports program in the Ivy League). Stanford is located in a suburban setting in California sun, while Harvard is in an urban center that gets quite cold in the winter. They’re not similar schools. Yale has particular strengths in the humanities and drama programs (among others), while MIT is obviously known for its more technical fields. I could go on with each comparison. So, while they’re all great schools, they’re all unique and we shouldn’t be looking for a counterpart.</p>
<p>^Oh alright. I guess that makes sense. But how about just considering “reputation”? Like a counterpart in terms of reputation only? Surely Harvard is more reputed than Penn and Stanford more than Chicago.</p>
<p>again, who cares? People at Stanford don’t nitpick about any of this stuff.</p>
<p>OP: No, no, no … You don’t make assumptions like that. The comparisons look awkward. For example,</p>
<p>Princeton is not in anyway similar to Caltech. Princeton kids are highly sociable, trendy, preppy, and often come from the wealthy class. Caltech kids are nerdy. Smart, but nerdy.</p>
<p>Also,</p>
<p>There’s no similarities I can see for Columbia and Duke. Maybe Duke and Stanford or Northwestern. But Columbia can’t be in anyway similar to Duke. Even the academic strengths of their departments vary. Maybe Columbia can be liken to Chicago. But even them aren’t similarly close. </p>
<p>Berkeley can be liken to Brown – highly liberal and hippie. But Berkeley isn’t “hippie” these days anymore, and is swamped by rich students from OOS and nearby SF Bay Area. It is now known to cater students who are career driven, not necessarily socially informed and involved, though there’s still a small portion of the student body that tries to portray that they are socially and politically active. But while Brown and Berkeley are liberals and “hippies”, Berkeley is huge and it excels in engineering and natural sciences. Brown is particularly strong on areas where Berkeley is relatively weak. </p>
<p>and,</p>
<p>Yale and MIT can’t be similar in any stretch of my imagination. MIT is a strong science and engineering school. That is Yale’s, so-called, “waterloo”. Students don’t go to Yale for those programs. In fact, according to the data I’ve seen, Yale loses cross admits to other schools because of those majors where Yale is relatively weak.</p>
<p>CaptnJack, the grouping of universities according to reputation are pretty flat. You have 5 universities at the very top, but then you have 15 or so colleges and universities that make up the second group. Harvard, MIT, Princeton, Stanford and Yale are the most highly regarded, closely followed by a dozen or so research universities and a handful of LACs.</p>
<p>Attempting to differentiate between Penn and Northwestern or between Columbia and Cal or between Dartmouth and Cornell or between Johns Hopkins and Chicago or between Amherst and Caltech etc…is pointless. They are all equally well regarded in their own unique way.</p>
<p>Ah I see…that makes much more sense now.
Also RML, just for kicks about Columbia and Duke, I read this link [Is</a> Columbia the Duke of the North? – Daily Intel](<a href=“http://nymag.com/daily/intel/2008/08/is_columbia_the_duke_of_the_no.html]Is”>Is Columbia the Duke of the North?)</p>
<p>@Alexandre: Why is Harvard, Yale, Stanford, MIT, and Princeton the best? What makes them above the couple of universities (Dartmouth, Brown, Columbia, Duke, Chicago, and Berkeley)? The US News ranked Penn and Columbia above some of the 5…</p>
<p>The USNWR does not measure academic excellence or academic reputation. Its formula is too vague, making consistant reporting of data virtually impossible. In many instantces, their criteria are not connected to academic excellence whatsoever. </p>
<p>There are several important factors that make Harvard, MIT, Princeton, Stanford and Yale stand out. For one, they have virtually unlimited resources. MIT is the poorest of the five, but still has an endowment of $9 billion, which, given its smallish student body (10,000 including graduate students) and the fact that it has no medical school, is pretty impressive. Those five universities are also extremely strong across the academic disciplines and have virtually unbeatable faculties. They also have very powerful connections with industry and academe, opening doors for their graduates that other universities have greater difficulty opening. Reputationally, those five universities receive the highest scores among respected scholars.</p>
<p>Actually I was thinking to kick out Caltech due to its size. The list is probably good for those who don’t go to ivies.</p>
<p>Stanford
MIT
Chicago
Duke
Northwestern
Cal
Georgetown
+
Amherst</p>
<p>The five best non-ivies are the five non-ivy schools you would most want to attend.</p>