<p>Ivy, slang for IV, is nothing but a label. Are they better schools? I don’t think so. you’re paying for their name, their prestige. I’d rather have a BA in geology from CU/Boulder than the same degree from Dartmouth or Yale.</p>
<p>^ For geology? Maybe so. The Boulder/Rocky Mt environment is another big draw for some people.</p>
<p>I like Midwestern schools (ACM colleges, Chicago) as alternatives to the Ivies and NESCAC colleges, primarily for three reasons. First, as IBClass mentions, the Ivies (and NESCACs) generally don’t give scholarships; the top Midwestern schools do. Second, I don’t like the crap-shoot aspect of the Ivy/NESCAC admissions policies. Not just that they’re so selective (which is a reflection of their appeal), but also the use of mysterious “hooks” and practice of “crafting a class”. Other schools do this too, but the Ivies/NESCACs set the standard. Third, for as selective as these schools are, I think there are others that are at least as good in intellectual atmosphere.</p>
<p>All that aside, I don’t think it’s true that you’re paying for the name and prestige alone. By quite a few objective standards and measures, these are top schools. Compared to most other schools, their students are higher scoring going in, higher paid going out. The libraries have more books. The average classes are smaller. The professors are better paid, better published, and better recognized with significant awards. They are better endowed and spend more on research. Etc.</p>
<p>
Keep on repeating this. Eventually, people may believe it.
Seriously, the Ivies have a long-standing reputation for excellence, mostly well-earned. Some of those other schools mentioned also have a strong reputation for excellence, although not as long-standing, and as time goes on, more and more people mention them along with the Ivies in terms of prestige as well. Furthermore, both the schools and the people who want to attend them have become more national in scope, so people are less likely to think of places like Duke and Stanford as regional schools.</p>
<p>"What makes this different then other prestigious schools ? Like Stanford, Duke, MIT, Vanderbilt, and University of Chicago ? "</p>
<p>People are attracted to those other schools you listed too, none of them are starving for applicants.</p>
<p>The main difference I see is that the Ivy league schools are all located in the densely populated Northeast, within 5 hrs, of NYC, only one of your listed schools is similarly located. Most people attend college within 5 hours of their home, regional preferences figure in to application decisions. </p>
<p>Three of the schools you listed play sports in major conferences and give athletic scholarships, the schools in the Ivy League don’t do this, your other two listed schools don’t either.</p>
<p>There are some differences in programs of study available at a number of the schools, including those within the Ivy League. Not many Englsh majors at MIT, or engineering majors at U Chicago.</p>
<p>Other than this, I don’t think they are, as a broad matter, materially different. I think there is substantial overlap, actually, in applicants to those schools you named and applicants to individual schools in the Ivy League, despite the variations in geography and majors. This overlap occurs because they are evaluated as not, actually, so very different. In many ways schools within the Ivy League may be as different from each other as they are from some of the schools you listed, geography aside.</p>
<p>I would also note that many of the true prestige hounds would opt for Stanford or MIT over several of the Ivies. Maybe this is progress?</p>
<p>^ Stanford and MIT are as good as any Ivies. The others…not so much.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>Stanford = MIT = HYP
University of Chicago = Brown = Columbia = Dartmouth = Penn
Duke = Vanderbilt = Cornell</p>
<p>Hunt said: “the Ivies have a long-standing reputation for excellence, mostly well-earned . . . other schools mentioned also have a strong reputation for excellence, although not as long-standing, and as time goes on, more and more people mention them along with the Ivies in terms of prestige as well . . .”</p>
<p>Seems to me that two contradictory arcs are occurring. First, a small number of other fine schools are becoming better known nationally, so the people drawn to schools with national reputations are considering schools that formerly had sterling regional reputations (e.g., Duke, Stanford, U Chicago, Wash U.)</p>
<p>Second, there is a national flight to the Big Brand schools, with the Ivies having the Biggest Brand of All. Aside from the small handful of formerly regional schools that people tout as being Ivy equivalents, the national prestige gap between the Ivies and the rest of the pack seems to have widened, not diminished. That would explain in large part why applications have risen so much at the Ivies: people flock to that Brand like kids to Hollister shirts. The fact that people outside California recognize Stanford as Ivy-like is an incremental change in how that formerly regional school is viewed: but the increased “Ivy or Bust” mentality of parents and students, that college is a commodity to be consumed and valued as a Brand, is a significant and accelerating change in how we view education in this country.</p>
<p>The cynical view is that there are so many consumers who want the nationally-reputable Best colleges that the Ivies cannot accommodate that demand, so the market for Brand Name Best Schools had to expand incrementally to elevate the Dukes and Stanford of the world to (almost) Best College status. </p>
<p>But that is the exception. It seems much less likely now than 20 years ago that truly excellent schools can rise to Ivy-equivalent status in the eyes of consumers. After all, luxury Brands like DG, Cartier and Harvard must maintain their exclusivity to retain cachet, and the sense that almost every school that is not HYP is “lesser than” seems to be growing, not diminishing.</p>
<p>Kei</p>
<p>membership to the Ivy Plus Society. ;-)</p>
<p>[The</a> Ivy Plus Society](<a href=“http://www.ivyplussociety.org/362dir/about.html]The”>http://www.ivyplussociety.org/362dir/about.html)</p>
<p>If you aren’t from one of the following colleges, you can’t join. No WashU, no UCLA, no Michigan, no Swarthmore. Thank god I’m eligible. I’m so relieved. </p>
<p>COLLEGES/ UNIVERSITIES
Air Force Academy
Amherst College
Berkeley (University of California)
Brown University
Caltech
Columbia University
Cornell University
Dartmouth College
Duke University
Georgetown University
Harvard University
Johns Hopkins University
MIT
Naval Academy
Northwestern University
Williams College
Princeton University
Stanford University
University of Chicago
University of Pennsylvania
University of Virginia
West Point
Yale University</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>Basically, I tend to agree with Kei-o-lei’s analysis.
Though I don’t think Chicago ever had a “sterling regional reputation”. What it has had for years is a sterling niche reputation among academics and other segments of the population who highly value education. The “brand” has had better recognition in places like Bethesda, MD, or the NJ and Connecticut suburbs of NYC, than it did in greater Chicagoland. </p>
<p>More recently, the opportunity to attend college has expanded to minorities and income groups previously excluded. Participation in the national and global economy has broadened. Scientific and technical knowlege has become increasingly important to that economy. But not everyone can go to HYP; there’s just not enough room. Applications are up not only to the Ivies but to schools that in much of the country still have relatively little name recognition. Wesleyan University, for example, received over 10,000 applications last year (for what, 600 places?)</p>
<p>As the country produces fewer and fewer tangible products, opportunities diminish to make a good living by making and selling things in the local or regional economy. Ambitious students look for keys to enter the national and global “knowledge worker” economy. They expect big brand colleges to address this need.</p>
<p>When I first applied to Cornell, I did so only because I knew it was a “really good school.” Since graduating, I’ve come to better understand what it is that makes Cornell (and other “really good schools”) a cut above the rest.</p>
<p>It all really comes down to the fact that the people are incredible. Everybody brings a different story. It is definitely a self-feeding cycle (the more amazing people that attend a school, the more amazing people apply to that school), but what will you have the school do? Discriminate against outstanding applicants? I know that some of you may accredit this back into the prestige argument, but I think it’s about having a hunger to learn and meet other people with that same appetite. When it comes down to it, those who care to be in that environment will make it happen.</p>
<p>And I agree that Stanford, Duke, etc. are equally as good as the Ivies. Go wherever you want, so long as you are comfortable there. The best thing to do in deciding whether or not you’d like to apply to a school is speaking to somebody there and evaluating the richness of their college experience. What has kept you enjoying your college years? For me, it was going to the library with friends and commiserating over our workloads, celebrating the beginning of each school year during Orientation Week, sledding down the streets when we had our first snow day in a decade, learning about the different sacrifices that my friends had made to be able to attend Cornell, never not having any events to go to on campus, taking trips to explore the local area (Ithaca, Cayuga Lake) and the list goes on.</p>
<p>Best of luck in your search,
Dana</p>
<p>Good post, Dana! (And welcome to CC.)</p>
<p>I think what drives many the applicants towards the ivy league is the assumption that he/she will be better off after graduation than if he/she had gone to a state school (I don’t believe this is true). It’s the preconception that an Ivy league education will open doors for you, but really, it’s your own involvement, passions, and effort that will open doors to grad schools or jobs. </p>
<p>if you’ve found an ivy league that you “fit” into, I’m willing to bet that there is a very similar, if not identical, non-ivy college that is half the price. Just remember that you will go as far as you want to… whether you got the went to the ivy or to a lower tier school.</p>
<p>Here’s a parent perspective on the unique appeal of Harvard, and it may apply as well to the other Ivies. Harvard, occupying the top of the applicant food chain, gets something close to right of first refusal on the most talented, motivated, and interesting applicants from around the globe. They handpick a class that is multinational, ethnically diverse, brilliant, breathtakingly talented, engaging, etc. Then they set resources in front of them (world-famous speakers, faculty who are leaders in their fields, well-connected advisors, live-in faculty House masters and tutors), turn them loose, and offer stipends and subsidies to help make things like travel, programmatic ideas, and outside lessons easily affordable. As a result, you have the most spectacular extracurricular culture imaginable, all run by students. Students pull together professional touring-quality performing arts, run the only student-sponsored homeless shelter in the country, get funds to put on summer high school enrichment programs in China, operate a Model Congress program that draws high school teams from around the U.S. and the world etc. It’s a campus-wide culture of accomplishment that goes far beyond degrees offered or the quality of instruction.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>** What separates the IVY league schools from other elite schools?<br>
As a group there is nothing about the IVY league that is significantly different that other elite schools. Each of the schools has unique attirbutes that make them great places to go to school as do the other elite schools.</p>
<p>** the cut throat competative edge these schools have?
What? I’ve been to three elite schools … one of which was an IVY … and there was not any substantive difference in the level of cut-throatedness at the schools … there was very little at any of them. Persoanlly I think the descritpion of elite schools as cut throat is crap.</p>
<p>** so why go
Do go to a school with the greatest concentration of top students … which is an attribute all non-IVY elite schools also share</p>
<p>YMMV</p>
<p>…of course there’s the secret handshake…</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>Please read gadad’s post, then name the half-priced equivalent.
I don’t think it exists. Nowhere else with the hothouse environment he describes, certainly not in a less selective public university at half the price.</p>
<p>Now, is that high-rolling hothouse “culture of accomplishment” really the ideal college learning environment? I think it is one very interesting, exciting model that has turned out top leaders in many fields. Suppose, though, that instead of offering the kind of environment where you can invite the Dalai Lama in for lunch at school expense, or pull strings through your adviser to land an internship at Goldman Sachs, you instead keep it simple and focus on the academic mission essentials of a liberal education: big ideas, great teachers, small classes, challenging questions. That’s another effective way to run a good college. I suspect quite a few non-Ivies do that at least as well as Harvard.</p>
<p>My oldest chose an Ivy because he knew he wanted to go to law school and so picked a school that would best position him as a future lawyer. If he had chosen a college based on the best college experience, and not what it would do for his future career, he might have chosen differently. My youngest is free from the constraints of worrying about grad school and so is focusing on where she’ll get the college experience she’s dreamed of – and not where the school is ranked or who has heard of it. Both are fair choices, but we’ll see in a decade or so who looks back most fondly on those years.</p>
<p>
Hurray for grade inflation!</p>
<p>cairo10- It’s very true that your own passion and involvement will help you open doors for yourself, but it’s also true that many companies will actively recruit at only a handful of schools and Cornell is oftentimes one of those schools. </p>
<p>Here is my super-cheesy metaphor: you walk into an Armani store looking to buy a suit. You’ve gotten a suit there before and you know that they have a wide selection of the best suits. Meanwhile, you receive some mailings about X brand suits- they very well may be as good as an Armani suit, but it’s just easier and less risky for you to stick to the Armani store than to find this new brand’s store.</p>
<p>I hope nobody takes offense to this analogy. I’m not saying that graduating from an Ivy League (or comparable) school guarantees better, if any, jobs. Friends of mine from high school who went through SUNY Binghamton’s undergrad business program had job offers long before I (a Cornellian) did. What I am saying is that there are many opportunities that are offered more to Ivies. Essentially, you are getting what you paid for.</p>
<p>gadad is also correct in that a lot is made available to students on campus when you attend one of these institutions. Cornell has 250+ registered student organizations (anybody who’s interested can check them out here: [Welcome</a> to SAO - Cornell University](<a href=“http://sao.cornell.edu/SO/search.php]Welcome”>http://sao.cornell.edu/SO/search.php)), which enhances the college experience either through your own involvement in those groups or through those organizations’ events that you attend. Like I said before, visiting the campuses and speaking with current students are the best way to get a better picture of what it is that the school really has to offer.</p>