<p>Lake Washington, what is your point re Columbia? I don't get it. Thanks.</p>
<p>Columbia has had many incarnations. If you go back to the 1950s, yes, it was right up there with HYP. But, everybody knows what happened in 1968, right? I think things have fairly gradually returned to base level since then, however.</p>
<p>willow--where exactly do you get these ideas?? First of all, 1970 was the year that Hampshire started, I hardly think you can say that it has slipped since then. By pretty much every measure, reputation, endowment, quality of the student body, etc. I would have to say that it has grown. Bennington is definitely in better shape now than it was during the '70's when it first went coed (1969) grew too fast, and built too many ambitious buildings, borrowing money to do it. Bennington spent almost the next 20 years trying to recover (having trouble mostly because of faculty that did not want to see any changes made to the school and who bullied a couple of presidents in a row, until the current one came along and cleaned house) Bennington is in better shape now than it was in either the 1970's or 1992. I think to make a general statement that alternative schools have slipped, and to single out these two in particular, you should have some facts to back it. If you do, I would be interested in hearing them.</p>
<p>-Florida State.
I have heard Florida State used to be a much more respected school than UF in the past. Now its no longer the second best school in Florida but has gone down to be the 3rd best in terms of rankings. I</p>
<ul>
<li>University of South Carolina. It used to be way better in terms of rankings but has gone down dramatically.</li>
</ul>
<p>though some people feel that the 1980's was the pinnacle for Bennington as it was the Donna Tartt/Bret Easton Ellis years :-)</p>
<p>MarathonMan:</p>
<p>Thank you, profusely for the link to the historic US News data. I've tried to come up with that for years.</p>
<p>Looking at some of the wild year to year swings, you can really see that the US News rankings are really driven by changes in their weighting formula every so often. There are some year to year swings in the LAC chart that are just preposterous. Colleges don't change that quickly; arbitrary ranking formulas do.</p>
<p>As I was importing the data into a spreadsheet, I produced this for XXXXX and giggles. It's the average ranking of the LACs over the last 23 years. There are still some issues, but at least it smooths out some of the yearly fluctuations. Ties are listed in actual numeric order; I didn't want to show the extra decimal places because that suggests an unreasonable degree of precision for an imprecise, arbitrary ranking system:</p>
<p>
**Average US NEWS Ranking: 1983 - 2007**</p>
<p>2 Amherst College
2 Swarthmore College
2 Williams College
5 Wellesley College
6 Pomona College
7 Bowdoin College
8 Carleton College
8 Haverford College
9 Middlebury College
10 Wesleyan University
12 Davidson College
12 Smith College
13 Grinnell College
14 Claremont McKenna College
14 Bryn Mawr College
15 Vassar College
16 Harvey Mudd College
16 Washington and Lee University
18 Colgate University
18 Oberlin College
19 Colby College
19 St. John's College (Md.)
20 Mount Holyoke College
21 Bates College
21 Hamilton College (N.Y.)
23 Trinity College (Conn.)
26 Macalester College
27 Barnard College
27 Colorado College
28 College of the Holy Cross
28 Bucknell University
29 Sewanee: the University of the South
29 Connecticut College
31 Kenyon College
32 Lafayette College
33 Scripps College
34 University of Richmond
35 Franklin & Marshall College
36 Union College (N.Y.)
36 Whitman College
37 Occidental College
37 Bard College
38 Reed College
40 Centre College
41 Furman University
42 Sarah Lawrence College
42 DePauw University
42 Dickinson College
43 Rhodes College (Tenn.)
44 Skidmore College
46 Gettysburg College
47 Wabash College
48 Lawrence University
48 Denison University
50 St. Olaf College
52 Wheaton College (Ill.)
54 Beloit College
55 Agnes Scott College
55 Illinois Wesleyan University
56 Willamette University
57 Earlham College
</p>
<p>new college of florida?</p>
<p>Willow55 wrote:</p>
<p>"If you really want to get catty, you might note that Swarthmore was probably undisputed as the #1 LAC in the country 30 years ago and that isn't the case anymore."</p>
<p>No, it is not the case anymore, but it's also important to note that one cannot point to Williams or Amherst and declare a clear winner. As the averages point out, those three schools have been duking it out for years.</p>
<p>Swarthmore wasn't the undisputed #1 LAC forty years ago. It couldn't be; it had always allowed women to enroll. Its brand image was very much as it is is today, the LAC known for hard-core academics.</p>
<p>When I was at Williams, Williams, Amherst, and Swarthmore were the three that folk oooh'd and aaaaaah'd over.</p>
<p>Not sure I understood that I.D. Why "couldn't" it be the undisputed #1 LAC forty years ago? And, what does that encumbrance have to do with its enrolling women?</p>
<p>Columbia University</p>
<p>HYP ----> somewhere between HYP/ Columbia / next tier of Ivies. </p>
<p>ANd if you include non-Ivies--></p>
<p>HYPMitStanford ----> Columbia/Wharton ----> rest of the ivies</p>
<p>It is not my impression that Wisconsin has slipped in the last 15 years--at least not in the academic world.</p>
<p>Someone mentioned Rochester, and I fully agree.</p>
<p>
[quote]
Why "couldn't" it be the undisputed #1 LAC forty years ago?
[/quote]
</p>
<p>Because is wasn't all male. There was an historic bias in prestige for the all-male New England prep school to all-male New England college/university track.</p>
<p>I do think Swarthmore was probably undisputed #1 in terms of academic intensity 40 years ago. I know that the prevailing sense at Williams in the early 70s was that Swarthmore was the one place with even more demanding academics.</p>
<p>As you discuss schools and their reputations from years past and comparer their past reputations to today do not forget to take into account what Regan and Proposition 13 did to the whole of the California higher education system.</p>
<p>Prop. 13 decimated the education system in California, it is true, but with a few important caveats: 1) Though Berkeley was being ranked as a number 1 university in the 60s - 80s overall, the fact is that a lot of qualities of the UCs have not deteriorated but improved since then, for example in terms of undergraduate overall quality. As with many schools, people who got into Berkeley earlier will tell you there is no way they would now; the quality of undergrads overall has gone up even though the universities in the system have grown. 2) California's K-12 system is the portion of the educational system that was decimated, not the UC system, nor I think the other state university system, Cal States. California's K-12 ranked first, or among the top, in the nation until into the 80s. Proposition 13 had been passed in 1978. The causal effect was clear. 3) Reagan was governor in the 60s, not the 70s and had nothing directly to do with Prop. 13. What he did do is levy fees against students at UC (it had been free to attend before), and the thinking supposedly went that students who had to pay would not be students who would protest.</p>
<p>The difference in reputation between then and now reflects the greater focus in the rankings on the demand side of the equation -- i.e., where do the best undergrads go (measured as averages, not totals, since a lot of great students end up in the totals in huge numbers at some of the higher-ranked large schools), as opposed to the question of where the most celebrated research professors are -- and what kinds of basic resources are there to support the students. These ""basic resource" items are made up of factors like student/faculty ratios, giving percentages of alumni, on and on. The difference also reflects a greater brand-nameism in my opinion: one can -- and indeed must in many cases -- argue that rankings have improved the service mentality of universities, but it's clear to me that they've also bred a more brand obsessed, hierarchical, prestige-focused mentality among would be students. Berkeley still comes out premier by many measures, but the "lens" has certainly shifted in a direction not favoring Berkeley. I wouldn't chalk up the difference entirely, or even primarily, to substantive factors, though I am sure others will disagree and can point out these factors readily.</p>
<p>From Time Magazine in the 80s:</p>
<p>Or quoting myself:</p>
<p>
[quote]
Without a doubt, Berkeley. For example, refer to this article from Time Magazine. Berkeley started receiving rankings from national magazines like this in the late 60s and early 70s.</p>
<p>But these kinds of rankings seemed to talked about universities as composites, grad and undergrad under a research banner, without specific regard for undergrad education. Berkeley would still be considered a top 3 university by any measure, if the focus were solely graduate school. But with undergrad in the mix as it is, Berkeley has gotten demoted in general rankings of national universities from the likes of UNWR which have really come to the fore in the last 15 years.</p>
<p>When one looks at particular departments in grad school according to the UNWR graduate school rankings -- and I haven't added these up so I am sure someone will prove me wrong -- Berkeley and Stanford seem to go head to head as the top graduate schools across the board from engineering to hard sciences to social sciences to humanities.</p>
<p>So, it's more a question of what looking glass one looks through than changes in the school itself. Certainly there is an argument that for undergrad experience the newer rankings are a lot closer to accurate. But by the same token, Berkeley's premier excellence on another level is overlooked because of greater reliance on those broad rankings alone.
[/quote]
</p>
<p>In the South, UVirginia and UNorth Carolina were considered Ivy League peers 20-30 yrs ago. As they have grown in size they have lost that small school feel that the elites have. Also, as more people have immigrated from Northeast/Midwest they have brought a broader, national vision of other schools which has diluted the mystique of said schools. No one would compare them to Princeton,Dartmouth, or Georgetown anymore.</p>
<p>The trade off is that their graduate programs have become more attractive nationally.</p>
<p>From what I've heard, Columbia? Since it was (supposedly) the place for the top students to enroll alongside HYP - currently HYP beat Columbia in that respect.</p>
<p>Of course, going from top 5 to top 10 really isn't that bad.</p>
<p>The state schools went down in the US News ranking - but mainly because the Peer Assessment score was weighted less heavily, meaning that the graduate school reputation of large state schools played less of a factor.</p>
<p>
[quote]
In the South, UVirginia and UNorth Carolina were considered Ivy League peers 20-30 yrs ago. As they have grown in size they have lost that small school feel that the elites have. Also, as more people have immigrated from Northeast/Midwest they have brought a broader, national vision of other schools which has diluted the mystique of said schools. No one would compare them to Princeton,Dartmouth, or Georgetown anymore.</p>
<p>The trade off is that their graduate programs have become more attractive nationally.
[/quote]
</p>
<p>Probably a similar trade-off as with what happened with Berkeley -- the sense of these schools changes as the ranking systems were applied nationally and focused on things that didn't favor larger, state institutions.</p>
<p>Virginia Tech.</p>