What separates the top 5 (HYPSM) from the next 5?

College Search & Selection
1

<p>What exactly makes these 5 schools the "elite"? Why are they consistantly viewed as better than Columbia, Penn, Chicago, Caltech, ect.?</p>

2

<p>Not much if anything on academic level. A lot in terms of name recognition among people who don't matter.</p>

3

<p>Actually I'm pretty sure that Caltech has the highest average SAT scores or something.. or maybe I'm fooling myself.</p>

<p>By the way, the 'S' and 'M' stand for Stanford and M.I.T., right?</p>

4

<p>0.00000000000001% of "it."</p>

5

<p>name brands</p>

6

<p>are Calvin Klein jeans the best ? Starbucks the BEST coffee? Rolex the only decent watch? NOT!!!!!!!!</p>

7

<p>Is the public reputation the reason why many people choose Harvard, Yale, Princeton, Stanford and MIT, over comparative schools of Duke, Penn, Dartmouth, Caltech, Chicago and Columbia, or are there other factors?</p>

8

<p>There's no difference between the top five and the top 5-10. Or the top 10-15. Or 15-20. Which is why universities should be put into tiers, not a number ranking. (Come on, is Princeton really better than Harvard? I think not.) They aren't better in any way. By the way, I believe Caltech is in the top five in the new US News ranking.</p>

<p>People choose different schools for different reasons. Many choose Chicago over, say, Stanford. It really does vary.</p>

9

<p>
[quote]
are Calvin Klein jeans the best ? Starbucks the BEST coffee? Rolex the only decent watch? NOT!!!!!!!!

[/quote]
</p>

<p>right... lets liken 4 years of a unique social and academic climate to a cup of coffee and an article of clothing...</p>

10

<p>Hello noob!</p>

<p>It's called an analogy:</p>

<p><a href="http://dictionary.reference.com/search?q=analogy%5B/url%5D"&gt;http://dictionary.reference.com/search?q=analogy&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p>

<p>You don't have to take all the attributes of one case and apply them to the other. We're taking the sheer principle of "this kind is not the only good kind," not undermining the complexity of our system of higher education.</p>

11

<p>thats true stinger, except i think i'm reading it the opposite of what you intended: I wouldn't go to MIT or CalTech (and a few other highly ranked schools) even if you gave me a full scholarship. So for me, definitely not top schools. (although obviously they are phenomenal schools for certain people and for academia that i'm not interested in)</p>