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<p>This is untrue. If you compare acceptance and yield rates, both Duke and Chicago are less selective than the ivies.</p>
<p>That being said, Chicago offers an education as good as one you could get at, say, Columbia. In fact, the two are very similar in terms of academics (e.g. core curriculum).</p>
<p>As for Duke, it’s a poor man’s Penn.</p>
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<p>This is a historical falsehood. </p>
<p>Let’s not bring up Rutgers in a discussion about ivy league schools. It is not even a “public ivy.”</p>
<p>“That’s changed, and now schools like Duke, Chicago, and others have caught up, and in some cases, passed some of the Ivies in selectivity.” By some of the Ivies, you mean just Cornell, and they have just caught up with Cornell, not surpassed it.</p>
<p>Ever since Duke, UChicago, Johns Hopkins, etc. made the commitment to become undergrad powerhouses, they have been pushing their undergrads into inhumane territories. Duke has largely left that stage while UChicago, Johns Hopkins, etc. are still in it. That’s UChicago, Johns Hopkins, etc. have hardest working undergrads and unhappiest undergrads. Undergrads at those schools eventually get similar opportunities as Ivy undergrads get, but they have harder time getting them (due to shorter history of prestige, fewer influential alumni, etc).</p>
<p>I agree with interestingguy that UChicago, Johns Hopkins, etc. offer educations as good as Columbia, Dartmouth, Brown, & Penn offer. 3.8’s from UChicago, Johns Hopkins, etc. are as good as 3.8’s from Penn, Dartmouth, Columbia, & Brown, but it’s harder to get 3.8 at UChicago, Johns Hopkins, etc.</p>
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<p>Exactly. Brown, Dartmouth and Columbia are a lot harder to get into than Duke. Duke is not much harder to get into than, say, Vanderbilt.</p>
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<p>Here is a list of notable, influential people (including alumni) affiliated with the University of Chicago:
[List</a> of University of Chicago people - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia](<a href=“http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_University_of_Chicago_people]List”>List of University of Chicago people - Wikipedia)</p>
<p>It’s a pretty long and distinguished list covering a wide variety of fields. I’d say the publisher of the Wall Street Journal, the youngest Goldman Sachs partner in company history, the first African-American billionaire, the co-founder and CEO of Oracle, 2 current Supreme Court Justices, the President of Walt Disney, the senior adviser to the President of the United States, etc., probably could open a few doors, if they were so inclined.</p>
<p>Every undergrad school has a list of influential alumni, Duke, UChicago, Johns Hopkins have fewer because their undergraduate programs have enjoyed prestige for a much shorter period of time compared to the Ivies. Besides, many of the people you listed attended grad school at UChicago, which has many top notch grad programs and professional schools that have enjoyed prestige for a much longer period of time compared to the undergrad program. A the undergrad level, Duke, UChicago, Johns Hopkins are a lot easier to get into compared to the Ivies (maybe with the exception of Cornell).</p>
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<p>Nonsense. The medical school is full part of Harvard University, and its site in Boston is part of the Harvard campus. A lot of parts of the Harvard campus are not in Cambridge - including even the football stadium.</p>
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<p>Show me an “LAC” that awards graduate degrees, has an Engineering School, a Law School, a Medical School, a separate Divinity School, A Dental School, and calls itself a University, and I’ll show you, well…a university.</p>
<p>^^ (@IvyPBear) I don’t know what your time frame is, but the University of Chicago was founded by the richest human being in history in 1890. The College has always occupied an important place in the university (although in recent years, the undergraduate enrollment has been increased relative to the total).</p>
<p>All the notable people I singled out after the link (other than 1 of the 2 Supreme Court justices) attended the College. The achievements or influence of its undergraduate alumni should not be obscured by the fact that its graduate schools also have turned out many notable alumni. I very much doubt that every undergraduate school in America could produce as long a list, relative to size, of graduates equally prominent on the national scene in so many different endeavors.</p>
<p>It’s true that Chicago has a higher admit rate than the Ivies do, but by median test scores it would rank about the same as Brown, Penn, Cornell, or Columbia. I don’t think it particularly courts (nor would it likely be especially attractive to) athletes, celebrities, “story kids”, and development cases. In other words, it has a more “self-selecting” applicant pool. Is it a lot easier to get into compared to the Ivies? On balance, yes, but not so much with respect to academic qualifications.</p>
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<p>Are you sure about that? These schools are just as hard to get into as the ivies, save for HYP, of course.</p>
<p>And is “hard to get in” any more than a measure of applicant numbers vs class spaces? And aren’t applicant numbers largely a reflection of prestige/reputation/history (not denigrating these factors–they are incredibly important)? If only 100 people applied to HYP, they might just have an admit rate of 100%.</p>
<p>coureur, sticking to his guns, wrote:
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<p>then, I guess, according to you, Colgate, Swarthmore, Middlebury, Wesleyan, Washington and Lee. Williams, and Sewanee are all universities.</p>
<p>^ Yes, most people seem to consider Wesleyan (for example) a LAC. With nearly 3,000 undergraduates, it’s about 10X as large as Harvard was during much of the early 19th century. You’d want to ask whether the Medical School, Divinity School, etc., ca. 1850 resembled anything close to what we’d identify with the divisions of a modern university. </p>
<p>I suspect what happened at Harvard before the Civil War is that persons of influence (perhaps inspired by European models) occassionaly would convince decision makers to establish a faculty of this or that, or a small “school”, without fundamentally changing the institutional scope or mission. It does not look to me like a grand (if slow) march to recreate Oxford on the Charles.</p>
<p>After the Civil War, what happened at Hopkins (or later on a larger scale at Chicago) was different. Huge sums of money were invested to build something new in scope, mission, and structure. New approaches focused on discovering and disseminating knowledge (for knowledge’s sake) across many fields of inquiry not limited to the ancient trivium and quadrivium. Departments were established in entirely new subjects, such as Psychology (late 1880s at Hopkins, Penn, and Indiana), Sociology (1892, Chicago) and Anthropology (1901, Berkeley) (1). Dozens of psychology laboratories were established by 1900 (2). Cornell, Penn, Hopkins, Chicago, the University of California, and Columbia all established university presses between 1869 and 1893 (3). The first university business schools were established (1881, Penn; 1898, Chicago and Berkeley; 1900, Dartmouth) (4). Standardized admissions testing also began to emerge; the College Entrance Examination board was formed in 1900 (5). </p>
<p>So this period appears to be a sharp, punctuating break in the evolutionary stasis. The university as an industrial-age “knowledge factory” was emerging to serve national markets. The objective apparently was drifting from character-building and service, with religious overtones, on a regional and denominational scale.</p>
<p>Sources:
(1) [History</a> of psychology at Penn](<a href=“http://www.psych.upenn.edu/history/history.htm]History”>History of psychology at Penn) ; [History</a> of sociology - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia](<a href=“http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_sociology]History”>History of sociology - Wikipedia) ; [Department</a> History - Anthropology Department, UC Berkeley<a href=“2”>/url</a> [url=<a href="http://www.artsci.uc.edu/psychology/about/history.cfm]UC’s">http://www.artsci.uc.edu/psychology/about/history.cfm]UC’s</a> Department of Psychology<a href=“3”>/url</a> <a href=“http://www.aft.org/pubs-reports/american_academic/issues/june04/Regier.qxp.pdf[/url]”>www.aft.org/pubs-reports/american_academic/issues/june04/Regier.qxp.pdf](<a href=“http://anthropology.berkeley.edu/history.php]Department”>http://anthropology.berkeley.edu/history.php)</a>
(4) [Business</a> school - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia<a href=“5”>/url</a> <a href=“http://www.universityofcalifornia.edu/senate/committees/.../admissionstests.pdf[/url]”>www.universityofcalifornia.edu/senate/committees/…/admissionstests.pdf](<a href=“http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Business_school]Business”>Business school - Wikipedia)</a></p>
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<p>If each of them awards advanced degrees, has an Engineering School, a Law School, a Medical School, a separate Divinity School, A Dental School, and calls itself a University, then yeah, I’d call them all universities.</p>
<p>Let me know when any of them achieves all that, and I’ll be happy to declare that school a university. I’ll even forgo the Dental School and Divinity School; any college that has a grad school, an engineering school, a law school, and a medical school is definitely a university.</p>
<p>^^And, Princeton would be what? A humongous LAC?</p>
<p>^^Interesting question. If Princeton wants to consider itself an LAC it would be fine with me - provided the LAC folks would take them. But there are those who say that offering the PhD degree is by itself sufficient to define a college as a university.</p>
<p>So, you’re serious about this. It’s all about the organizational chart, without any reference to size or proportion. As I said, before, there is a certain perverse logic to what you’re saying. Just seems an extreme way to go in order to prove Harvard was never an LAC. :/</p>
<p>Of course I’m serious. And it’s not about the org chart or even size so much as what sort of education is offered. If a school offers primarily undergraduate education (with few or no graduate degrees) and a curriculum consisting of, well…the liberal arts, as opposed to a skill and career oriented curriculum such as engineering, education, agriculture, business, medicine, law, etc., then that’s an LAC. If it offers the liberal arts AND a bunch of these career/skill majors and/or graduate and professional degrees to boot, then that’s a university. </p>
<p>Of course LACs tend to be small, but there is certainly no reason a university can’t be small too (e.g. Caltech). And I hadn’t really thought about it, but I suppose that an LAC could be as big as Princeton too. Although, as I said, offering PhDs maybe disqualifies Princeton. No matter what is taught I don’t think an LAC could be huge, like a mondo state U, because that would violate the LAC’s focus on the individual.</p>
<p>And I didn’t object to the idea that Harvard was ever an LAC, because it clearly was the functional equivalent of one for the first 170 or so years of its existence. What I object to is the statement that Harvard was “modeled” on the LAC. Because that suggests that in the early 17th century there was this concept of an “LAC” floating around out there, and the Pilgrim founders of Harvard sat down and said let’s make one of those. When in fact the concept they actually had in mind was that of an Oxford-style university. That it took Harvard a long time to actually pull together enough of the elements of a university to legitimately be called one does not alter what the original model was - a British university. And it is obvious that Harvard became a real university by any definition in the first half of the 19th century - long before Johns Hopkins came along. </p>
<p>LAC and University - like any two concepts that share many elements in common there will always be some uncertainty and blurring around the borders. Princeton as you mentioned. William and Mary is another. My own daughter’s school of Dartmouth is clearly a university in my book, but some consider it a big LAC. And I certainly value its LAC-like focus on undergraduate education.</p>
<p>I agree with JohnWesley. Just because the Harvard of olde gave out an occasional master’s degree here and a law degree every once in a while, it doesn’t mean was fundamentally different from an LAC. Lots of LACs (even Williams) have had small graduate programs for a long time, without that making them any less of an LAC.</p>
<p>Nobody is saying Harvard is an LAC NOW.</p>