<p>^ Then why not make Berekely, Michigan, and Stanford the “Ivies” rather than the weaker ones?</p>
<p>There are many ways to measure universities. Some prefer to have great research carried out across the spectrum (Berkeley, Michigan). Some prefer to give great financial aid…</p>
<p>" ^ Then why not make Berekely, Michigan, and Stanford the “Ivies” rather than the weaker ones? "</p>
<p>Because the Ivies are members of an athletic conference called the Ivy League. That’s the only real difference between them and anyone else.</p>
<p>ah. i see. lol so it doesn’t really have to do with academic prestige… save for HYP i guess</p>
<p>The Ivies are more focused on a “liberal arts” education, while state schools aren’t.</p>
<p>^ which was what i’m asking: why??</p>
<p>Michigan has more students enrolled at the undergraduate level in their college of Literature, Science and the Arts than most schools have students. Care to explain that one? Trust me, they are just as focused in their liberal arts offerings as any school in the country. That is just not their only focus.</p>
<p>No one really knows why a certain school decided to focus on something. We can only deduce that Ivies focus more on liberal arts because universities used to focus more heavily on liberal arts in the past, and the Ivies are some of the oldest universities in the country.</p>
<p>I think some Ivies distance themselves from engineering because it’s more of a trade/skill than a pure academic discipline, though it draws heavily from math/science. maybe Harvard doesn’t think investing in engineering will mesh with its image, though Princeton/Cornell/Penn/Columbia apparently have no problems with it.</p>
<p>Historically the ivies, like LACs, did not focus on ‘trade’ careers. Most don’t have journalism, nursing, accounting…</p>
<p>^^^Not enough money in those to generate alumni dollars.</p>
<p>
It goes beyond athletics. They’re all</p>
<ul>
<li>Small to medium-sized private universities</li>
<li>In the Northeast</li>
<li>Need-blind and do not offer merit aid</li>
<li>Founded in the 1600s/1700s (except Cornell)</li>
</ul>
<p>
4.9 Harvard, MIT, Stanford
4.8 Princeton, Yale
4.7 Berkeley
4.6 Caltech, Chicago
4.5 Columbia, Cornell, Penn, Johns Hopkins
4.4 Duke, Michigan
4.3 Brown, Dartmouth, Northwestern, Virginia</p>
<p>Only 8 schools are “stronger” than any of the Ivies. 2 (Berkeley, Michigan) are publics. 5 are not in the Northeast (Caltech, Chicago, Johns Hopkins, Duke, Stanford). MIT is the only university that really fits the above characteristics, and I doubt it would want to be an Ivy even if it were offered a spot.</p>
<p>It’s not a deduce thing it’s actually quite clear-- the Ivy League institutions were founded with different missions and philosophies than most flagship publics. The publics, and particularly, the land grants, were founded specifically to support industry and more trade like jobs. The privates were not founded with anything like that kind of mission until MIT.</p>
<p>Brown has the third oldest engineering program in the country, behind RPI and Union, but it’s never been considered prominent because it has remained a small part of the university and purposely does not have many of the direct job training features that other programs now have in engineering that suits the majority of future engineers well.</p>
<p>Cornell, unsurprisingly, has the strongest across the board engineering just like it’s the only Ivy with Ag and a lot of other trades-- why? It has been taking advantage of land grant and public money for years and expanded to that purpose for a reason.</p>
<p>Different schools have different focuses and are better for different people. Considering the Ivies include 6 of the 7 pre-Revolutionary War colleges, is there any surprise they focus on more traditional subject areas and have a more traditional philosophy toward education?</p>
<p>
Nothing to do with that-- there is a lot of resistance and a lack of desire to become pre-professional at some of these campuses. Note that Penn has nursing, unsurprisingly since it’s one of the more pre-professional schools in the Ivy League.</p>
<p>So my point is, why would any of these so called stellar institutions want to keep a mediocre program amongst it’s top ones? Why don’t they just drop it or fund it better so it is stellar? And how can a top school remain at the top if they have areas where they are relatively weak?</p>
<p>The top publics tend to have better faculty, resources, and academic breadth and depth than some of the “lower” Ivy’s that tend to be less research oriented.</p>
<p>Note: it’s important to not confuse universities with strong undergrad selectivity and undergrad reputations but weaker faculty and resources such as UVA, UNC, and W&M with larger, less selective publics that have many more ranked programs and resources like Wisconsin, Texas, and Illinois. It’s these latter universities that have resources and faculty on par, if not better, than the Ivies in many areas.</p>
<p>
</li>
</ul>
<p>Kind of right. Yes, they all also have those things in common. But the reason THEY are called Ivy League and other, just as good, similar in every other way schools aren’t is because they are in an athletic league. That’s why when I hear “public ivy” I can’t help but chuckle at the alternate meanings of a public school with crappy athletics.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>Like I’ve said, for the exact same reason that other stellar institutions like MIT or Cal Tech have weak departments. Vocational fields just are not most of the ivy league schools’ focus.</p>
<p>How does a school have a stronger undergraduate reputation with a weaker faculty? This is where I feel USNWR fails. They put too much emphasis on SAT/ACT scores and not enough on resources and faculty. I don’t care how strong the students are at any university, they are not teaching themselves. I’d rather go to a school with better faculty and resources than one which relies too heavily on the caliber of it’s students.</p>
<p>“Like I’ve said, for the exact same reason that other stellar institutions like MIT or Cal Tech have weak departments. Vocational fields just are not most of the ivy league schools’ focus.”</p>
<p>So schools like Harvard and Yale should just drop engineering, for example, right? Why teach it if you’re not going to be at that top? Why shouldn’t they be penalized for having mediocre departments? That’s my point.</p>
<p>They don’t teach much engineering is the thing. All Harvard has is “engineering sciences” and computer science.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>They may well do so. Harvard actually tried to merge with MIT several times during the late 1800’s and early 1900’s back when MIT was experiencing the financial difficulties common to a recently born school - all of these attempts were rebuffed at the behest of the MIT alumni base. A couple of years ago, Harvard broke off the engineering and applied sciences departments into its own separate ‘School’ (SEAS) for administrative purposes, whereas previously it had just been a division of the Faculty of Arts & Sciences. Harvard has also devoted extensive resources towards revamping the Allston campus in preparation of the expansion of SEAS, although that expansion is temporarily on hold due to Harvard’s endowment troubles. </p>
<p>[Alumni</a> Petition Opposing MIT-Harvard Merger, 1904-05: Exhibits: Institute Archives & Special Collections: MIT](<a href=“http://libraries.mit.edu/archives/exhibits/harvard-mit/index.html]Alumni”>http://libraries.mit.edu/archives/exhibits/harvard-mit/index.html)</p>
<p>Furthermore, one of Harvard’s most successful initiatives in recent times is the cross-registration program with MIT where Harvard students can take any coursework at MIT, and vice versa, subject to certain volume restrictions and admittedly annoying paperwork. What that means is that every Harvard student enjoy effective access to the entire sweep of MIT’s academic resources, including engineering resources, which means that a Harvard engineering student can obtain an engineering education that is unsurpassed by virtually any other school in the country by judiciously cross-registering at MIT. After all, a Berkeley engineering student doesn’t have access to the MIT course catalog, but a Harvard student does. </p>
<p>{Of course that begs the question of why a Harvard engineering student wouldn’t have just gone to MIT in the first place, and one simple answer is that maybe he didn’t get in. In fact, I happen to know several Harvard engineering students who spent much of their time at MIT - to the point that I mistook them for MIT students - and who later freely admitted that they would have preferred to have gone to MIT straight away, but didn’t get in.}</p>