<p>Is it </p>
<ol>
<li><p>The high quality of the student body?</p></li>
<li><p>The world-class, state-of-the-art, top-of-the-line, one-of-a-kind school facilities?</p></li>
<li><p>The leading faculty?</p></li>
<li><p>The curriculum?</p></li>
<li><p>The sought-after-ness of their graduates? </p></li>
</ol>
<p>or</p>
<ol>
<li>The good mix of all of the above?</li>
</ol>
<p>The student body. Period. The other things determine who the student body is.</p>
<p>^^^</p>
<p>I don’t think you can claim that with any type of certainty. </p>
<p>There is a correlational relationship between all of the above-mentioned items. However, there’s no way to prove that the study body is causative in making a university “elite”. </p>
<p>I could have an excellent student body without any of the rest of the above-mentioned items, my university wouldn’t be “elite”, namely because I lack the resources to provide said student body with the tools/faculty/etc. to reach their potentials.</p>
<p>Thus,
It must be some sort of combination of all of the above factors that contribute to a university being categorized as “elite”.</p>
<p>Thanks for the response. </p>
<p>But what do you think will happen to those “elite” students if their school’s facilities are inadequate and their faculty are somewhat so-so?</p>
<p>It would make sense that those universities that are elite, supposing they were to lose those other factors such as faculty and facilities, they would no longer be “elite”. </p>
<p>For example, suppose one of the T20s somehow lost their faculty/facilities/resources. It would logical to think that a sub-T20 school would then seize the opportunity to take the T20s place by acquiring better faculty/facilities. </p>
<p>It mostly seems to come down to how much money a university has or is willing to spend on attracting top students. Somewhere that has the top facilities/resources/faculty would, or at least should, attract top students. Thus, they would become (or remain) a top university.</p>
<p>Witness the top UCs, which become less elite each year. My top students stopped applying to them 3 years ago.</p>
<p>^^^</p>
<p>Why do you think they stopped applying there? Did they stop applying there just suddenly because for no reason? Or were there other factors, e.g. were there other places with better faculty/facilities/resources, etc. that attracted them to said other places?</p>
<p>^^^Probably stopped applying because their teacher told them that ONLY the students make a school elite.</p>
<p>Yes, they stopped appylying because of dwindling resources. Resources get depleted, top students stop applying and student bodies become less impressive, school loses elite status.</p>
<p>It’s elite when it has “Harvard” in its name.</p>
<p>On a more serious note, money (both absolute size and per capita amount) dictates how elite a school is. What do university presidents do? They try to get alumni and other people connected to the university to donate. With a large endowment and high endowment per capita, an university can attract the smartest and most talented students, build the best facilities, provide research grants to students, offer travel scholarships for students, and hire the top academics. It’s all about the money.</p>
<p>When you think about which universities are at the top of the elite group of universities. HYPSM come to mind. Each of these universities has a large endowment and high endowment per capita. Columbia, Penn, Duke, and UChicago aren’t among that group because they don’t have high endowment per capita. Dartmouth, Caltech, and top LACs aren’t among them because they don’t have large endowments (in absolute terms).</p>
<p>1, 2, and 3 are determined by sufficient resources (i.e. money) 4, and 5 usually go hand in hand as well i’d say.</p>
<p>of all the traditional ‘elite’ schools, the only one that really stands out is Stanford. The others are several hundred years old. You can say MIT isn’t several hundred years old, but it seems like it was, at least originally, an offshoot of harvard. and schools that are generally offshoots of one another tend to do very well (e.g. Cambridge and Oxford; UCSF and Berkeley, etc.) Stanford on the other hand is just slightly over 100 years and in 40 or 50 of those years has been drastically influential in shaping the world. It’s very impressive imo.</p>
<p>Overall i’d say it falls into money. Even a strong curriculum for strong students are determined by strong professors which are usually bought with large (strong) amounts of money.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>and how does Stanford “really” stand out over schools such as Harvard?</p>
<p>It’s really a matter of personal opinion. I think Cal Tech is a great case study. It is not a very rich school in terms of absolute endowment, but it has arguably the best student body some of the best faculty of any school in the country.</p>
<p>So is it as elite as Harvard? Harvard is much larger, much wealthier, more famous, and more powerful. But I think there’s a good argument to be made that Cal Tech, perhaps by virtue of being smaller, is actually more elite.</p>
<p>One factor working against smaller schools is that they don’t produce as many alumni, which makes them less visible on places like CC. But I don’t think that makes them less elite.</p>
<p>I think people also tend to read a bit too much into endowment sizes. The endowment is only one piece of a university’s resources. Things like the size, quality, and condition of the facilities are important as well.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>sorry for not being more detailed in my original post.</p>
<p>i meant that stanford hasn’t had nearly as much time to develop as any of ‘elites’ but it’s still included among them. The only exception i listed was MIT, but i already said that it’s an offshoot of harvard.</p>
<p>beyphy, Cal, Caltech, Cornell, Johns Hopkins and the University of Chicago are all elite and were all founded after 1860.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>Funny and appropriate that “quality of teaching” or “classroom experience” is missing from these criteria, since those are not that great at the “elite” schools.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>What makes you think MIT is an offshoot of Harvard? Just because they’re in the same city? As far as I know, MIT is not in any sense an offshoot of Harvard. Harvard has tried several times to merge with MIT, and it has been turned down every time.</p>
<p>Money is very important in the elite-ness of the school as it defines facilities and the quality of faculty the school can absorbed. But take note that it isn’t one of the given.</p>
<p>Waverly, how different do you think was Berkeley’s student body before to now?</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>i meant in regard to the typical ‘HYSPM’ of which, none of the schools you listed fall into. (not to mention that of all the schools you listed i’d only consider Chicago and Caltech to be [super] elite)</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>perhaps you’re right. I don’t think it’s just a coincidence, though, that one of the elite schools on the list is like 2 miles away from the most prestigious university in the world. But i couldn’t find any evidence of it, so i’ll retract my claim.</p>