<p>Maybe a good question to ask is - why do so many kids want to go to Harvard, Yale, or Princeton in the first place? Why are so many students convinced that these schools are the best fits for them as opposed to Stanford, Brown, Amherst, Penn, G'town, Tufts, wherever? </p>
<p>lolabelle's post is one a lot of CC'ers should pay attention to...it sounds like she did her homework and seriously considered what school would be the best place for her...not just the place with the most prestige or best name to put on the back of her parents' car. </p>
<p>I turned down Harvard years ago and after going there for grad school and being a teaching fellow, I was definitely reminded of why I didn't want to go there. All my peers thought I was nuts - they still talk about it today. I made the right decision for me...that's what you guys should be concerned about, not prestige (which is what I think this thread is about). What is the best school for you? Do your homework and don't pay attention to what other people think...if you go to Harvard and hate it, what's the point? These schools are not right for everyone.</p>
<p>um...LOL...when are they peer schools for tufts, um..maybe other than northwestern...peer schools to tufts when it comes to mind are u michigan, USC, carnegie mellon, vanderbilt,emory and so.... </p>
<p>last time i checked, my college counsellor classfied gtown, uchicago and duke as reaches while tufts as match :p<br>
and if you are about to tell me that my college counsellor's wrong, you can look through the admit statistics for these schools from my school..tufts definitely take kids with much lower gpa than the others lollabelle mentioned (again, other than northwestern), then you know she's not wrong</p>
<p>"yeah, tufts is the place. Not to badmouth tufts, but it doesn't have a lot of personality outside of "we didn't get into harvard so now we're here" I now fully expect the Tufts people to tell me why I'm wrong."</p>
<p>and yes, tufts is always the safety school for the ivy-bound kids (top 30% of class, well we have about 25% to ivies every year) from my school, and they are always the people who get burned by the tufts syndrome :p</p>
<p>"last time i checked, my college counsellor classfied gtown, uchicago and duke as reaches while tufts as match
and if you are about to tell me that my college counsellor's wrong, you can look through the admit statistics for these schools from my school..tufts definitely take kids with much lower gpa than the others lollabelle mentioned (again, other than northwestern), then you know she's not wrong"</p>
<p>Being a peer school doesn't equate to two schools having identical SAT and acceptance statistics - indeed 2 schools can have identically qualified student bodies and not be peer schools. Just the same way schools with somewhat different SAT scores and acceptance rates can be peer schools.</p>
<p>Some examples, please, jags?
Not trying to be argumentative, but I would curious. When, for example, I look at the scattergrams for our high school, places like BU and BC may have some highly qualified students with score ranges equal to Ivy admits, but these 2 schools will also admit students with slightly lower GPAs & scores.</p>
<p>I guess my feeling is that identically qualified students choose equally fine (peer) schools. OTOH, many would question whether stats are the best determinant of "quality" or "peer." My understanding (& again, reading scattergrams also) is that the highly rated LAC's (including, but not limited to Tufts) are as excellent as the Ivy colleges & Ivy U's. (Quality of professors, of students, rigor of program, etc.) Also, and for that reason, the students applying to those LAC's, & getting accepted, as as qualified as many who are accepted to Ivies including HYP. Where it gets more ambiguous is for a place like UChicago, which, based on facilities, profs, & program rigor, many in the academic community rate as a peer school with HYP. Yet the numerical qualifications for Chicago are not as stiff, generally.</p>
<p>Stanford is at least as hard to get in as Princeton. This year, their EA admit rate is lower than HYP's. It usually splits 50/50 in cross admit battle with Yale.</p>
<p>I would hardly consider Tufts a peer school with Duke. The student bodies are very different. In fact of all my friends here, I have not met one who applied to Tufts. </p>
<p>I think your peer school classification is pretty far off actually. I consider Duke/Penn peer schools. Northwestern/Georgetown are also peer schools. Tufts/Emory are peer schools. Duke, Tufts, and Chicago are three very different schools.</p>
<p>Sam Lee,
With regard to your comment, "Stanford being as hard as Princeton to get into", experts might disagree. Don't confuse quantity of apps with quality of apps. See recent MSN article below:</p>
<p>Well clearly the question is not so "simple," because opinions differ as to the definition of "peer school." The responses are an effort to make such distinctions. (And there is still not agreement apparently)</p>
<p>off the top of my head here are some examples of schools with similar student bodies and admission standards which arn't really what are considered peer schools.</p>
<p>MIT - Amherst
University of Michigan - Wake Forest University
College of New Jersey - University of Maryland</p>
<p>Now here are a few which are peer universities which have relative variation of student bodies and admissions standards.</p>
<p>Virginia - Duke
Virginia - University of Maryland
Berkeley - Stanford</p>
<p>University of Chicago seems to be a common choice for people who were deferred from Yale or flat-out rejected. The kid from the class of '05 at my school who was deferred ED from Yale, then accepted RD, planned to go to U of C in between the deferral and the acceptance. Ditto with the kid this year...though she hasn't heard back yet about her RD status. </p>
<p>One of my best friends (a National Merit Scholar from Vermont with a 1600, class of '04), was rejected from Harvard (1st choice) and Yale, waitlisted at Columbia and Brown, and accepted to Wellesley, Wesleyan, Vassar, and Sarah Lawrence. She chose Wellesley for linguistics and is quite pleased there, though I think she easily could've handled Harvard. My other friend was either WL'd or rejected at Princeton and Stanford (rejected from one, WL'd at the other) and chose Williams over UPenn for English and computer programming. Another kid from the class of '04 at my school was deferred from Yale and ended up at McGill for physics. Since I consider MIT, Stanford etc. in the same category of exclusivity, I'll put those kids down too. A kid from the class of '06 rejected from Stanford chose Emory over Northwestern, and a girl waitlisted at MIT ended up happily at UNC-Chapel Hill, also from the class of '06. Interestingly enough, NONE ended up at other Ivies of the aforementioned kids.</p>
<p>As for Brown rejects...one from the class of '03 at my school ended up at Macalester, one from the class of '06 at Haverford.</p>
<p>However much Tufts denies it, from all I know, it at least has a grain of truth that it tends to be people's second or third choice after a one or two Ivys. A girl from the class of '07 I know has it as her third choice, after Brown and Columbia. Somebody I know from the class of '06 who was rejected from Tufts went to Macalester.</p>
<p>Apparently the "experts" you so revere put Princeton ahead of Yale and Harvard. I thought that should already raise a red flag. Don't blindly believe in what "experts" (or even call them "experts") say. By the way, I am very well aware of quantity vs quality (which I have already assumed to be roughly the same for non-athletes). Stanford's class rank of entering freshmen is somewhat dragged down by the athletes.</p>
<p>I'm guessing that, on the whole, it's harder for one to get into Harvard or Yale than Princeton. (Although I might not be qualified to say this, as I applied ED to Princeton)</p>
<p>Sam Lee,
There is no need to get angry or defensive. I did not publish the ranking. But I am certain those that did (at PR) are more knowledgeable of these matters than both of us. Afterall, it is the business they are in. Further, their findings are supported by others as well.<br>
Are you also saying that US News has no credibility because it put Princeton ahead of Harvard, Yale and Stanford? Are you saying the Atlantic Monthly has no credibility because in its last national college ranking (2003) it placed Princeton ahead of Harvard, Yale and Stanford?
The US News selectivity ranking is based on application quantity, not quality. Schools like MIT, Cal Tech and Chicago have always had a self-selecting applicant pool (meaning a higher degree of "qualified" apps). Selectivity rankings based on raw numbers are useless if those raw numbers are loaded with unqualified apps. I believe the MSN article contains a ranking which attempts to disregard those unqualified apps. in order to look at those applications which would receive real consideration. You would do well to go to the source of the ranking and look at the criteria.
Also, please note, because of Princeton's much smaller class size, its overall scores are impacted much moreso than Stanford. at Stanford you have more dilution. Remember, Princeton fields a full range of athletic teams that recruit as well.</p>