Which range of schools do YOU consider "elite"? HYPSM? Top 20?

College Search & Selection
261

<p>Hawkette, good work, you saved me a lot of time. The stats don’t lie, and the Ivy elitists can try to spin it any way they want, but ND belongs right up there with most of the Ivies academically. No one is claiming ND is the exact equal of HYP, but its very competitive with the rest of the Ivies. Throw in the major college sports, the faith based community and service oriented ethos, the family feel, the alumni connection and loyalty, the gorgeous campus, and the special atmosphere that pervades from the ND spirit, and you not only have an elite institution, you have a dream school and a clear first choice school, which is not the case with all Ivies.</p>

<p>Its hilarious that anyone would call ND only a “regional powerhouse” since ND is truly one of the few national universities, with strong alumni clubs all over the country. Schools like Penn, Columbia, Cornell and Brown are much more regional----I bet ND has better geographic diversity than any of those schools, not to mention name recognition and prestige.</p>

<p>The myth of Ivy superiority is becoming a thing of the past. People are recognizing the wealthy blue blood elitism that pervades many of the Ivies as being overblown and overrated, and schools like Duke, Northwestern, Wash U, Notre Dame and Vanderbilt are replacing the old guard as much more appealing alternatives as a truly national elite university choices. This becomes more so as we find it is Ivy league grads that by and large have f’d our country up royally in the financial crisis and in the political world. </p>

<p>Like I said in another post, this idea that the Ivies are so good is largely based on graduate research reputation and not necessarily undergrad teaching quality. ND takes a back seat to few schools in quality of the undergraduate experience. The Ivy myth is force fed to easterners via fancy prep schools and magazines like US News, who will never rank a faith based school like ND as highly as it should because of religion. By any objective measurement, ND is elite and its laughable that anyone would even try to argue otherwise.</p>

262

<p>I hate agreeing with Hawkette on anything, but I for one believe Notre Dame is definitely elite. Schools like CMU, Emory, Georgetown, Notre Dame, Rice, Vanderbilt and WUSTL are deserving of such recognition, as are non top 5 LACs, such as Bowdoin, Carleton, CMC, Davidson, HMC, Haverford, Middlebury and Wesleyan. And let us not forget the Academies. Obviously, none of those schools are on par with HYPSM, but they are all elite if you ask me.</p>

263

<p>Umm…I think JohnAdams is absolutely right in that ND will not (and will never be) on equal footing with HYPS. However, I do not agree that the “ultraelite” title should be reserved for HYPS. Don’t get me wrong, I do not believe all top 20 schools are extremely elite nor do I think that the 10 top schools are all equal. However, I do think the following schools or programs should be deemed equal to HYPS:</p>

<ol>
<li>Wharton (especially dual degrees)…I turned down Yale for Penn…I hope I made the right call = D</li>
<li>Brown PLME…absolutely above and beyond much else</li>
<li>Rice/Baylor</li>
<li>NU medical program</li>
<li>Dartmouth…at least for undergrad…the school is just too darn amazing in that regard</li>
</ol>

264

<p>Omega, unfortunately, universities report SAT/ACT scores, class sizes, faculty:student ratios and alumni donations differently. Generally, Private universities take liberties that Public universities do not (cannot). For example, most private universities superscore SAT scores, most publics do not. Most private universities provide faculty to student ratios including only undergraduate students whereas public universities usually include graduate students in their ratios.</p>

265

<p>hawkette, so right from the start you lied about inlcuding the non-HYP ivies and ND</p>

<p>that says it all</p>

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266

<p>PAbank, excellent point</p>

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267

<p>Hawkette, lets take Michigan out and put some of the stats in the correct order…your lowly attempt to “fool” the bright people that read this message board by the way you peresented your stats did not work.</p>

<p>first, as opposed to shanka’s comments that ND is a better school than all the ivies, it is not even close with HYP…not even close…</p>

<p>we will include the HYP stats in order to put ND into perspective with the Ivies</p>

<p>so lets look at the SAT’s (not the ACT’s because this is not an area of concentration for the “elite” schools)</p>

<p>as you can see ND is at the bottom of the SAT rankings out of 9 schools- completely last in the SAT Math and 8th, only ahead of Cornell in the SAT CR.</p>

<p>Since the lower scoring students tend to avoid turning in the SAT’s, in reality, because more than half of ND’s students don’t turn in the SAT’s (compared to the other Ivy’s average of greater than 90%) one can assume that if over 90% of ND’s student reported the SAT’s like the Ivie, the ND 25-75% ranges would be significant lower than what is reported, probably 30-50 percentage points lower in each of the Math and CR SAT’s.</p>

<p>CR 25 - CR 75 , College
700 - 800 , Yale
690 - 790 , Princeton
690 - 780 , Harvard
680 - 770 , Columbia
660 - 770 , Dartmouth
650 - 760 , Brown
650 - 740 , U Penn
650 - 740 , Notre Dame
630 - 730 , Cornell
600 - 690 , Notre Dame (if 90% of students reported SAT’s)</p>

<p>Math 25 - Math 75 , College
700 - 790 , Princeton
690 - 790 , Harvard
700 - 780 , Yale
680 - 780 , Columbia
680 - 780 , U Penn
670 - 780 , Brown
670 - 780 , Dartmouth
670 - 770 , Cornell
670 - 760 , Notre Dame
620 - 710 , Notre Dame (if 90% of students reported SAT’s)</p>

<p>Percent of Students reporting SAT’s
96% - Princeton
96% - Harvard
96% - Columbia
94% - Cornell
92% - Brown
91% - Yale
89% - U Penn
75% - Dartmouth
48% - Notre Dame</p>

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268

<p>Now lets take a look at those acceptance rates, which measure selectivity. Surely this Indiana university would be very very selective to be considered better and more elite than the Ivies as stated by shanka, don’t you think?</p>

<p>Again, Notre Dame is dead last, 9th out of 9 schools. In this case, it is not even close. ND’s middle of the road 28% acceptance rate is 4 times greater than the better Ivies and 50% greater than the 8th Ivy, Cornell.</p>

<p>In fact, there are so many other colleges out there that had much more selective acceptance rates than ND, that any thought of even being compared to the UofChicagos and MITs or Pomonas or Williams or Amhersts of the world is just plain silly.</p>

<p>Acceptance Rates
6.9% - Harvard
7.5% - Yale
8.2% - Princeton
9.2% - Columbia
9.3% - Brown
11.5% - Dartmouth
14.2% - Penn
18.4% - Cornell
27.6% - Notre Dame</p>

269

<p>Now lets turn to class sizes and ratios of students to teacher, because, certainly as shanka claims Notre Dame is better than all the ivies in the attention that the school and faculty pay to undergraduates. In fact shanka claims that Notre Dame is as good as the better LAC’s for undergraduate attention.</p>

<p>With a 12:1 student:teacher ratio and only 56% of the classes having less than 20 students, Notre Dame has more of the characteristics of the big public universities than the ivies that have single digit percentages for student/teacher ratios andinto the 70’s for the percent of classes under 20 students.</p>

<p>so again Notre Dame is shown to be no where near the quality of attention to undergraduates as the ivies.</p>

<p>Student Teacher Ratios
5:1 - Princeton
6:1 - Yale
6:1 - Columbia
6:1 - Penn
7:1 - Harvard
8:1 - Brown
8:1 - Dartmouth
10:1 - Cornell
12:1 - Notre Dame</p>

<p>% of Classes with less than 20 students
76% , Columbia
75% , Harvard
75% , Yale
74% , U Penn
73% , Princeton
70% , Brown
64% , Dartmouth
60% , Cornell
56% , Notre Dame</p>

270

<p>ha!, shanka is getting more and more ridiculous with his statements about Notre Dame:</p>

<p><a href=“http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/1064867938-post23.html[/url]”>http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/1064867938-post23.html&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

<p>by the way, I find this comment on Notre Dame to be very realistic by this other poster:</p>

<p><a href=“http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/1064868046-post24.html[/url]”>http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/1064868046-post24.html&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

271

<p>JA,
I would argue that Notre Dame is an elite university and belongs in any grouping of schools that includes the non-HYP Ivies. IMO, the HYPSM group belongs at the top of the pyramid and, in the same way that the other Ivies fall short in comparison, so too would Notre Dame. Again, most folks who know the school/students/alumni and don’t have a dog in this fight and would reach the same conclusion. </p>

<p>As for the numbers, I stated earlier that Notre Dame compares least well to the non-HYP Ivies on the class size and S/F ratio numbers. That’s a difference and not inconsequential as I think that class sizes and proximity/access to professors is a vital element of the undergraduate environment. Are the differences large enough to merit a significant distinction? I’ll leave that up to the reader to decide for him/herself.</p>

<p>As for the other data points, Notre Dame acquits itself quite well: 1st in 4-year graduation rates, 1st in 6-year graduation rates, 1st in ACT scores (absolute levels and breadth measurement), same level as all Ivies in meeting need for financial aid, 2nd highest per capita endowment, 2nd highest alumni giving rate, 2nd lowest cost (marginally). Pretty good stuff for Notre Dame.</p>

<p>Finally, I would enjoy reading your arguments on why you feel that Notre Dame doesn’t belong. Hopefully, you have something more consequential than the silly data manipulations that you did with the SAT/ACT scores. I can understand how shank’s bravado might irritate you, but that shouldn’t erase the reality that Notre Dame is actually one heckuva undergraduate college and certainly one of the nation’s elite. </p>

<p>potamus,
I’m glad to see you supporting Notre Dame. It needs more visibility on CC and should be on the radar of more top high school students. </p>

<p>But I’d suggest that you can build the school (and close peers such as Duke, Northwestern, Wash U, Rice, Vanderbilt, Emory, etc.) up without needing to take down the Ivies. Yes, the trend you cite of this group rising is happening, but IMO the effect is not one of replacement of the Ivies. The effect is the enlargement of the overall pie. Now more than ever, there are many great undergraduate options available to top high schools students, including all of the USNWR Top 20 as well as other high quality destinations such as Carnegie Mellon, Georgetown, Tufts, Honors programs of several publics, selected schools at top publics, etc. and, of course, the many fine LAC options that abound.</p>

272

<p>The Ivies low acceptance rates are WAY overblown as an important statistic for this simple reason----now more than ever with the common app, people who think they need the “name recognition” or prestige of an Ivy tend to fire off apps to virtually every Ivy league school just to see if they can get in. I bet there are a whole lot of marginal applicants who fire off applications to Ivies just to see if they can get in and say “I got into (insert Ivy league school here)”. Plus, as I stated before, the continual perpetuation of the Ivy prestige myth by the eastern media, publications like US News, and eastern prep schools for blue bloods, makes the Ivy application process self fulfilling----they get a lot of attention and exposure, people hear of the Ivy League schools, parents want to brag that their son/daughter got into an Ivy, so the Ivies get more applications and thus have to reject a higher percentage. Its all much ado about nothing.</p>

<p>Notre Dame on the other hand is much more of a first choice destination, and also a self selecting student body. First, its a Catholic school, which automatically limits the applicant pool. You don’t have every Jewish and Asian kid on the east coast applying “just to see if they can get in”. Second, as a first choice school for many, students who are also qualified to get into Ivies apply to ND but don’t apply to any Ivies—unlike a lot of Ivy applicants, who I bet don’t apply to ND but apply to several if not ALL the Ivies, thus artificially inflating their app numbers and forcing them to reject more.</p>

<p>I would be willing to be if you took a poll, a far higher number of ND students would say ND was their first choice, whereas a far lower number of Ivy students at Brown, Penn, Columbia, Cornell would say that school was their first choice. In other words, Notre Dame accepts more students because they have already self selected and really want to be there—thus they have to reject far fewer “I just applied because ND was my 4th backup choice” apps.</p>

<p>Again, yet another example of how the Ivy elitists try to spin numbers to make themselves look special when really the opposite is true in many cases.</p>

273

<p>Inspired by JohnAdams,</p>

<p>Re shankapotamus’s statement in # 265, </p>

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<p>let’s parse this a bit. IMO potamus needs to choose different words next time if he want to convince the Ivy crowd of Notre Dame’s quality. Here’s what some Ivy folks are thinking about potamus’s word choices:</p>

<p>“faith-based” = Don’t you know that those who are religious must be stupid, that they’re all a bunch of sheep and Bible thumpers who want to tell you how to live you life and dictate to you what religion to follow? </p>

<p>“family feel” = That’s not a virtue, but rather reflects a contemptible, selfish approach to life. Thinking kindly about the Notre Dame family is discriminatory to those who are not in it. To achieve a proper community feel, you need to give all of your family’s wealth to the government (run mostly by folks from the Ivies) so that they can decide who really needs and deserves it according to their social ethos. </p>

<p>“alumni connection and loyalty” = You can’t possibly claim this as a legitimate factor for Notre Dame. The people there have been brainwashed by the Catholic Church and are coerced into giving money and have been programmed to act loyally toward the school. Strong institutional connection and loyal alumni can only be considered as positive factors for the Ivies (and a handful of pre-approved LACs) where they so willingly and generously give back to their alma maters.</p>

<p>“gorgeous campus” = Come on!!! You can’t be serious. Notre Dame is in Indiana for crying out loud. Who the heck wants to go there??? The only way to see Indiana is from an airplane at 30,000 feet. The place is full of bumpkins!</p>

<p>“special atmosphere” = Going to a church-affiliated college is not special. It’s like being in a gulag. Obviously the religious indoctrination that you received there has fooled you into mistaking hell for heaven. Yeah, it’s “special” as they probably even let conservatives attend. </p>

<p>“clear first choice school” = Notre Dame a first-choice school? Hahahahaha. Maybe after you’ve been rejected by all of the Ivies. Come on dude. Get a grip! Hahahahaha.</p>

274

<p>Hawkette, man, you don’t need to help the ND haters with their posts, they will come through and post their silliness regardless…</p>

275

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<p>Oh, really…</p>

<p>See <a href=“http://www.nytimes.com/2009/06/09/us/politics/09ivy.html[/url]”>http://www.nytimes.com/2009/06/09/us/politics/09ivy.html&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

<p>Or here [url=<a href=“http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/05/11/AR2010051104605.html]washingtonpost.com[/url”>http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/05/11/AR2010051104605.html]washingtonpost.com[/url</a>]</p>

<p>I guess you haven’t been reading the news lately…</p>

276

<p>■■■■■, forget Kegan. Just look at the winner of the last 6 presidential elections. All of them have Ivy League degrees.</p>

277

<p>and who here thinks its a GOOD thing that all the SC justices are from 2 Ivy league schools? Raise your hand?</p>

<p>and who thinks its a GOOD thing that the financial disaster in this country had Ivy league grad fingerprints all over it?.. Anyone?.. Bueller? Bueller?</p>

278

<p>trollnyc,
While I think that the Ivy myth claim is overstated, the reality is that there has been a fleshing out of applicant/student/graduate strength to more schools around the USA. I don’t expect the Washington Post or the New York Time to ever acknowledge and laud it, but read a few papers in the South/Midwest/West and you’ll get a very different perspective on the value of an Ivy degree vis-</p>

279

<p>alex,
Regardless of party affiliation, I think we can all agree that the results of the last 6 presidential elections haven’t exactly been the USA’s finest hour. This is not something that the Ivy League should be proud of. Don’t go looking for any of those guys to make it to Mount Rushmore.</p>

280

<p>I am not going to discuss the quality of the presidents Hawkette, but it is clear where leaders go to college.</p>