Where else should I look?

College Search & Selection
1

I want to expand my list. I really like Villanova, UPenn, and Creighton. I’m interested in Business. I want to be a Product Manager so there isn’t really a set degree for that, so I’m thinking entrepreneurship but there are schools on my list that don’t offer that which isn’t a big deal to me. I also like Bentley and Wake Forest, but I’m having a hard time getting a feel for them. I don’t want a huge party school, but somewhere where there is a good social scene and things to do. I want challenging academics where students care about school. School pride is pretty important to me too. Size must be at least 4,000 undergrads and can be up to 20,000. Where else should I look?

2

Start with your state flagship.then figure out your budget before anything else. How much can you spend, what is your cost at each school? Schools have net price calculators on their websites to help.

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3

Your budget is usually important. If you and your parents find $320,000 over four years to be pocket change and no problem at all, then you might be able to ignore your budget. Otherwise you need to think about it.

Your stats are also important. There is no point in applying to Harvard and the University of Pennsylvania if you have an unweighted 2.5 GPA.

So, this leads to four questions. What is your budget? What can you afford to pay without taking on any debt at all? What is your home state? What are your stats? Different high schools compute GPA very differently, so to give you useful information we would either need to know your unweighted GPA (on an A=4, B=3, C=2 basis), or know how many A’s, A+'s, B’s, and other grades you have received.

Also, if you told us all of this on a different thread, it is still useful to repeat it for this thread so that we do not need to search for it.

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4

Most universities have what they consider a “peer university” list that is comprised of schools they consider their peers or comparable to them in a number of ways. I’ve looked and can’t find the one from Villanova, but if you email its Office of Strategic Planning and Institutional Effectiveness, they can probably provide you with a copy (or perhaps you’ll have better luck finding it on their website). Nor could I find Creighton’s, so I’d recommend reaching out to them, too.

SHORT LIST
To save the eyes of those who don’t feel like reading the various lists, colleges mentioned at least 2x across the various lists include:

• Lehigh
• Loyola Maryland
• Santa Clara (3x)
• Loyola Marymount
• Saint Louis
• U. of Denver
• U. of San Diego
• U. of San Francisco
• Xavier

I also saw Bucknell listed multiple times as a peer school for others who had Villanova on their list, too.

Elon, Loyola Chicago, and Seattle U. all listed both Creighton and Villanova on their peer lists.

LONGER LISTS BELOW

Elon is one institution that lists both Creighton and Villanova on its list of peer schools. For those who don’t want to view the link, here’s the list of schools:

Loyola University Chicago is another one that that listed both Creighton and Villanova as peer schools. Universities it included were:

  • American
  • Catholic U.
  • Creighton
  • DePaul
  • Duquesne
  • Fordham
  • Illinois Inst. Of Technology
  • John Carroll
  • Loyola Marymount
  • Marquette
  • Saint Louis
  • Santa Clara
  • St. Johns
  • Tulane
  • U. of Denver
  • U. of San Diego
  • U. of San Francisco
  • Villanova
  • Xavier

Seattle University is yet another university with both Creighton and Villanova on its list of peer schools. Its peer list includes:

Peer Institutions

Other peer institutions

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5

What kind of product manager do you want to be? A lot of fields require you to have domain knowledge. For example, if you want to be a product manager in tech, they sort of need at least a CS minor. I know kids that are interning in Thermo Fisher Scientific, for example – they have a science undergrad. And so on. CMU IS is an interesting choice for tech for instance. A lot of the top LACs do well, but won’t meet your 4000 student criteria. Naturally the ivys do well. Some state flagships like UCB do well. These jobs are hard to get, and some school prestige is useful to have. Then your choice narrows dramatically. You sort of need to stay inside T30.

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6

Just got access to a database that let me look up the peer institutions from IPEDS. I will indicate MP if it is a Mutual Peer (each college considers the other a peer).

Here are Villanova’s

  • Fordham (MP)
  • Boston College (MP)
  • U. of San Diego (MP)
  • Texas Christian
  • Lehigh
  • Saint Louis
  • U. of Notre Dame
  • Northeastern
  • Southern Methodist
  • Georgetown
  • Wake Forest
  • American
  • Marquette

Here are Creighton’s

  • Loyola Marymount (MP)
  • Saint’s Joseph’s (MP)
  • Loyola U. Chicago (MP)
  • Seattle (MP)
  • Drake (MP)
  • Xavier (MP)
  • Rockhurst
  • Texas Christian
  • U. of San Diego
  • U. of San Francisco
  • Gonzaga
  • Saint Louis
  • Santa Clara
  • Marquette
  • DePaul
  • Butler
  • Fordham
  • U. of Portland

U. Penn’s peers are:

  • Yale (MP)
  • Stanford (MP)
  • Cornell (MP)
  • Harvard (MP)
  • Dartmouth (MP)
  • Brown (MP)
  • U. of Chicago (MP)
  • Columbia
  • MIT
  • Princeton

Bentley’s are:

  • Babson (MP)
  • U. of New Hampshire (MP)
  • Bryant (MP)
  • Marist (MP)
  • Syracuse
  • George Washington
  • Penn State
  • U. of Connecticut
  • Northeastern
  • Providence
  • Fordham
  • Boston College
  • Indiana U.
  • U. of Massachusetts
  • NYU
  • Binghamton
  • U. of Southern California
  • Villanova
  • Boston U.
  • Rutgers – New Brunswick