<p>
Except that statistically, the non-HYP Ivies generally have been maintaining or increasing their "leads" over most of the schools you mentioned in terms of numbers of applicants, admit rates, yields, and geographic diversity (both nationally and internationally) of applicant pools and student bodies.</p>
<p>northstarmom,
Re the geographic origin of matriculating freshmen, we did a thread on this last year and got a lot of good data and feedback. Data was not available on all schools, but here is some information supplied by collegehelp:</p>
<p>Selected top schools - % of Freshmen from their own region ("region" consists of states within roughly 500 miles of college)</p>
<p>% from region College, total freshmen, freshmen from region
67% Cornell, 3075, 2054
57% U Penn, 2541, 1444
55% Dartmouth, 1075, 595
55% Georgetown, 1551, 856
53% Brown, 1438, 755
53% Stanford, 1596, 849
51% Emory, 1637, 834
50% Rice, 711, 358
49% Princeton, 1221, 594
49% Vanderbilt, 1620, 791
44% Yale, 1321, 579
44% Northwestern, 1952, 866
41% Notre Dame, 1966, 803
40% MIT, 996, 400
39% Duke, 1494, 479
37% Cal Tech, 234, 86
345 U Chicago, 1203, 415 </p>
<p>It was noted that, for these 17 top colleges/universities, 50% of all new freshman come from within 500 miles of campus.</p>
<p>The genesis of this thread was the frequent marketing by colleges of a "national student body" and "students from all 50 states and X number of countries around the world." I wanted to learn more about how valid these claims are and just how national/international these schools are. We gathered data on over 3/4 of the USNWR Top 20 and using that as a proxy for the entire group, it looks to me like the schools are more regional than they would like us to know. I think places like Rice, Emory, Vanderbilt get labeled as Southern schools and they do have large numbers of Southern students, but there are examples at premier colleges (Stanford, Caltech, Columbia, Cornell, etc) that likewise have high regional numbers and yet somehow don't get that same regional tag.</p>
<p>pizzagirl,
My comments above about social life were intended to include all aspects of undergraduate social life, not just athletic-related events.</p>
<p>I'm not making a claim that one group of schools (non-HYP Ivies vs Duke, NU, Rice, Vandy, ND) is ahead or behind and I don't think it matters. The good news is that the group of top academic schools has expanded and the non-Ivy colleges are more on the radar screens of prospective students than ever before. Given that this gives more viable and acceptable college choices to high-achieving students, I see this as a good thing, but I don't think of it in terms of which is ahead or behind. Each school will stand on its own as the non-HYP Ivies themselves are all different as are Duke, NU, Rice, Vandy, ND. Several different flavors-all great colleges and great options for top students.</p>
<p>45 percenter,
For applications, admit rates, and diversity, I think that the answer to these trends are pretty obvious. More top students from more diverse ethnicities are applying to more top schools than ever before. As the concentration of top high school students of diverse ethnic backgrounds is highest in the northeast and issues of prestige are strongest in that region, it is only natural that these colleges would the beneficiaries of these demographic trends. But does any of that really matter? A student can only attend one college and with the great numbers today of top students, more of them are finding their way to previously less heralded places and finding great undergraduate experiences when they get there. </p>
<p>This is really the good news part of what is happening. Top students from locales like New England or the West Coast who previously focused only on colleges in their region are increasingly applying to and matriculating to colleges like Duke or Rice or Vanderbilt or Notre Dame and discovering that the undergraduate experience there is pretty darn good and, in some respects, perhaps better than XYZ Ivy. </p>
<p>Will the increased matriculation change the prestige rankings in America's top college? I don't know and I really don't care (and I'm certainly not going to wait for the academics to recognize the great changes that are taking place-hell is more likely to freeze over before the academics accord similar respect to places like Duke, Rice, Emory, Vandy, ND as they do to the non-HYP Ivy colleges). But I think that when aspiring students think more about their entire undergraduate experience (academic, social, athletic), really evaluate what they will encounter inside and out of the classroom, they will learn that there are plenty of options…and perhaps better undergraduate choices… beyond the Ivy colleges.</p>
<p>
hawkette, again, you're ignoring the actual data. The significant increases in applications to the non-HYP Ivies in recent years have been accompanied by significant increases in the geographic diversity of those applications. For example, as I've pointed out before, Penn now receives more applications from CALIFORNIA than from any other state. Additionally, Penn now has the highest percentage of international students in its undergraduate student body of any national university, and the other non-HYP Ivies have achieved similar geographic diversity in recent years. This is a MAJOR change from 2 or 3 decades ago, when the application pools and student bodies of these schools were, indeed, less geographically diverse.</p>
<p>The point is that while other schools among the top 20-30 certainly have been making significant strides in attracting larger, more diverse, and more qualified applicant pools, the non-HYP Ivies have not exactly been standing still, and they have made even more dramatic gains that have helped them maintain a healthy competitive admissions advantage over many of the other top-30 schools. And, as I've said before, their application numbers, admit rates, yield rates, geographic diversity, and average SATs and GPAs reflect that.</p>
<p>Further, regarding your 500-mile radius analysis, as I believe I pointed out in your original thread, you have to take into account the number of states and amount of population included within those radii. Obviously, the numbers of states and amount of population within a 500-mile radius of most Ivies will be significantly greater than those found within a 500-mile radius of such schools as Duke, Vanderbilt, Rice, Notre Dame, and even the University of Chicago and Northwestern. Accordingly, you can't just compare percentage of student populations within 500-mile radii without also evaluating the percentage of the US population included within those 500-mile radii.</p>
<p>Additionally, a meaningful analysis of geographic diversity of student bodies would also evaluate the geographic distribution of students from outside the 500-mile radii. For example, while a particular Ivy may have 50+% of its students from within a 500-mile radius, the remaining students may be significantly more diverse geographically than another school that also has 50+% of its students from within a 500-mile radius, but has a significant portion of its remaining students coming from within an additional 200 or so miles.</p>
<p>
If you're referring to PA, not all non-HYP Ivies are evaluated the same, and their respective PAs seem to correlate fairly well with the rankings/reputations of their specific academic departments and programs. If one looks at individual graduate program rankings such as the NRC and US News graduate rankings (which, while they are not specifically rankings of undergraduate programs, are good proxies for evaluating the general academic reputations of schools in those particular fields), one finds that the non-HYP Ivies with the highest PAs (Columbia, Cornell, and Penn) also have the highest numbers of specific graduate programs ranked in the top 10 or so, and have significantly higher numbers of such programs ranked in the top 10 than do the other schools you mentioned (Duke, Rice, Emory, Vandy, ND).</p>
<p>As I've stated before, it's not simply Ivy League hype that causes the superior reputations the non-HYP Ivies enjoy among academics--it's the significant and substantive contributions they make to advancing a wide variety of academic fields of knowledge.</p>
<p>45 percenter,
I think your point about population concentration is well made and supports your view and mine as well about the demographics of the areas closest to the Ivy colleges. Their matriculation data may be more dispersed, but the populations of their home region states are significantly higher and this drives a lot at the front end of the pipe, namely the applicant pool. Re California, this is the country's most populous state. I believe that it produces a large number of applicants to a lot of these colleges, Ivy and non-Ivy alike. Also, the data that I presented was assembled by collegehelp so he should get the credit.</p>
<p>Re the quality of the matriculates, we'll see where this year's numbers end up. I think you would agree that it is a pretty muddled (and pretty scary) picture right now. My expectation is that the differences in student quality across the USNWR Top 20 will continue to be increasingly blurred. There are just a lot of statistically highly qualified students applying to college right now.</p>
<p>Finally, you're right that I was referring to PA. One key point that I want to make is that I DON"T see the high Ivy PAs as hype. They're great academic institutions and deserve great respect. My frustration is that there is also great academic strength at these other institutions with lower PAs. IMO, these colleges provide an equally good undergraduate education and are greatly underrated by the pernicious PA scoring.</p>
<p>
However, I think that a major component of PA is, in reality, the academic reputation of the schools, that is, how their academic research and output is regarded by other academics. Although US News specifically mentions "faculty dedication to teaching" as one possible element of PA, I'm not sure it's really possible for college presidents, provosts, and admissions deans to properly evaluate relative levels of faculty dedication to teaching at other schools. As a result, I think that as a practical matter, PA defaults more to general academic reputation (again, in terms of academic research and output).</p>
<p>As I said before, by that measure, schools like Vanderbilt, Emory, Notre Dame, etc. haven't reached the same level of academic esteem as Columbia, Cornell, and Penn in highly regarded academic rankings such as the NRC ranking of Ph.D. programs, in which those three Ivies ranked in the top 10 overall, well above Vanderbilt, Emory, Notre Dame, etc. Of course, that could change in the future, but to date there has been a clear distinction between the general academic reputations of those three Ivies, as determined by the aggregation of rankings of individual component departments, and the other schools you mentioned. That is further reinforced by rankings such as the one from the Center for Measuring University Performance which, based on 9 objective measures (e.g., research budgets, number of faculty awards, endowments, etc.), continues to place Columbia and Penn in the very highest tier with Harvard, MIT, and Stanford, and well above schools like Emory, Vanderbilt, and Notre Dame:</p>
<p><a href="http://mup.asu.edu/research2007.pdf%5B/url%5D">http://mup.asu.edu/research2007.pdf</a> (see page 8)</p>
<p>"My frustration is that there is also great academic strength at these other institutions with lower PAs. IMO, these colleges provide an equally good undergraduate education and are greatly underrated by the pernicious PA scoring."</p>
<p>That may very well be, but I don't think it's any great secret. It seems that the only people who really think the Ivies are the only colleges worth attending are either recent immigrants trading on their home country stereotypes, or unsophisticated hs seniors on CC who don't know anything about the real world. I find the real world is much more nuanced and while certainly there is a cachet about HYP that is unmatched, the "stamp of smartness" applies equally to any of the other institutions we've been talking about. </p>
<p>It also seems inconsistent to me ...
On one hand you're saying you're frustrated that other people don't recognize the academic goodness of these top non-Ivies (which suggests that students who should be considering them aren't, because they're all starry-eyed over the Ivies) ...
But then on the other hand you're suggesting that the Ivies need to up their spectator sports in order to be more appealing / competitive with those non-Ivies, because the non-Ivies are nipping at Ivy heels.
Am I the only one perplexed by this contradiction?</p>
<p>"Also, the data that I presented was assembled by collegehelp so he should get the credit."</p>
<p>Hawkette, I'd be careful of data assembled by collegehelp. He tried to conduct a draw index for, say, Harvard vs Stanford by comparing the % of Harvard students from California compared to the % of Stanford students from Massachusetts, and among a base of only private-college-attending schools at that. It was pointed out to him REPEATEDLY that the base needed to be either all college students or those college students who were top academically, not private college attending students only, because of the great public school options that top Californian students have that serve as part of the competitive set. It was also pointed out to him REPEATEDLY that comparing the % of students from CA vs MA was a meaningless measure as CA is a far more populous state (and therefore the algorithm always was biased towards schools in small states). He didn't seem to get these criticisms, which weren't meant as criticisms of him, but were meant to help get a better set of data.</p>
<p>Hawkette: "IMO, these colleges provide an equally good undergraduate education and are greatly underrated by the pernicious PA scoring."</p>
<p>I want to get into the concept of underrated for a moment.<br>
Using the 2008 USN&WR for the sake of argument, the 8 Ivies occupy these slots: 1, 2, 3, 5, 9, 11, 12, 14.</p>
<p>The colleges that you're holding up as the "appealing blend of big time athletics and academics" occupy slots 4,8,14, 17, 19 and 19 (Stanford, Duke, NU, Rice, Vandy and ND respectively).</p>
<p>That leaves 6 other slots in the top 20 - those include 3 schools that pride themselves on a very specific culture / focus in which sports doesn't play a part (Caltech, MIT and U of Chicago) and then 3 others (WUSTL, JHU, Emory).</p>
<p>You talked about the "blend" schools as being greatly underrated. How is that underrated? There are only so many slots at the top! Two are already in the top 10! If they were hanging around substantially below the Ivies, then you'd have a point. But good grief, we're talking about 14 schools (8 Ivies plus your 6 "blends", and they're all in the top 20, so I just can't see where you're getting this "greatly underrating" of these schools.</p>
<p>45 percenter,
I don't place a lot of faith in the PA rankings or the research & spending rankings as so often their results reflect work done in and reputations fashioned by the graduate departments of these colleges. My interest is in the undergraduate experience that a prospective student will experience and I would be far more interested in a classroom comparison. Sadly, such comparisons were discontinued in 1995 by USNWR and perhaps for the difficulty in measurement reasons that you cite. I would also point to the same difficulties in evaluating undergraduate faculty as there is very limited understanding of what is happening at individual colleges all over the country and in their great variety of departments. I'd be much happier to see USNWR dump the PA aspect of its rankings altogether and/or publish ii separately.</p>
<p>pizzagirl,
As you state, for whatever reason, many on CC don't appreciate the academic quality of many non-Ivy colleges. I wholeheartedly agree with your statement that the world is much more nuanced and much receptive to these colleges than one gets from reading what goes on here. Employers, by and large, know the score, but this somehow gets lost on CC and I look forward to any help you can provide in helping prospective students and families realize that the academic differences in these top schools is negligible and that going to a great college like Northwestern or Rice is every bit as good as going to another great college like Columbia or Dartmouth. </p>
<p>I see the academic and non-academic issues in separate buckets. I think that the differences in the social life and the athletic life of Duke, Northwestern, Rice, Vanderbilt, and Notre Dame vs the non-HYP Ivies are greater than the academic differences for the average undergraduate. </p>
<p>Re collegehelp, I have had my share of debates with him, but I think his data on student migration was drawn from IPEDs and he just reported it. In this instance, I'm inclined to agree with what he reported. </p>
<p>Finally, re reputations and the issue of who's underrated, my beef is more with the educational establishment who have a highly vested interest in protecting and perpetuating the status quo. The changes in PA over highly extended periods of time don't reflect the greater distribution of faculty talent around the country and create impressions of faculty difference where there is likely not one. And I would say that this is especially so as applied to undergraduate education. Also, many of these underrated colleges excelled in the one "classroom teaching" survey that was done and I don't think that these colleges get enough credit for what is, for some folks, arguably the single most important element of an undergraduate education.</p>
<p>Thanks, I think I found a post I can agree with :-). My only point of disagreement is that I wouldn't bucket S/D/NU/R/V/ND as having a certain social life because of having big-name spectator athletics and the Ivies as having *another type of social life because they don't. In other words, I don't see it as ...</p>
<p>S/D/NU/R/V/ND .................. B/C/C/D/P .... HYP
on a continuum of "active social life" to "less active or less well rounded social life."</p>
<p>I just think that all 14 of these schools have reasonably similar students (ND potentially being an exception bc of religious affiliation) and the social life differences are nuances related to that particular college's culture, history and location (NE vs S vs Midwest, big city vs small town, other unique facets about each) -- IOW, I don't think that the presence of the athletics brings the commonality you think it does.</p>
<p>In other words, I wouldn't say Stanford and NU are "more similar" than are Stanford and Harvard, or NU and Harvard, just because Stanford and NU have large spectator sports. </p>
<p>But the rest of your post, I agree with :-).
Anyway, I personally am about to tell my 2 high schoolers that unless they REALLY REALLY REALLY want it, to forget about this group of elites (with the possible exception of NU only because of a legacy hook and ability to easily demonstrate interest) -- is it worth all the angst, when there are other great colleges that don't require moving mountains to get into.</p>
<p>I work for a USC grad myself :-).</p>
<p>"Hunt, Given that Stanford, Duke et al can compete effectively at the highest levels athletically, do you believe that they have compromised their academic standards?"</p>
<p>I have to assume that they have, absent some data to the contrary. My assumption would be that they admit athletes with substantially lower academic qualifications than typical admits--even lower than athletes at the Ivies--and that they provide some kind of remedial/easier academic ghetto for them so they can stay eligible. I would assume that they are able to retain their reputation for fine academics because everybody knows the difference between the "real" students and the athletes.</p>
<p>They absolutely admit athletes with much lower academic qualifications. They HAVE to, and I don't disagree with it. It's silly to pretend otherwise. I know Rice recruits even in non-revenue sports who had significantly weaker academic stats. Some struggled, others got extensive tutoring, and one very exceptional runner dropped out after soph year. There are MANY exceptions, of course, and some of the Rice baseball players are just as academically qualified as anyone else- but many are not. And when you move onto football and basketball- well, don't even go there.<br>
Duke- OMG. If you think most of those those basketball players even make it on the grid, think again. Interestingly, I think Vanderbilt gets a little higher academically qualified athlete. This is in large part because Vandy isn't quite the athletic powerhouse that Duke or Stanford is, and a kid picking Vandy cares about his sport but also about his academics. Again- not true with every recruit, but I have seen a little more intellect on the Vandy playing fields than I would have expected.</p>
<p>
[quote]
But I am trying to compare the quality of the student-athletes at the Ivies with those at other highly regarded academic colleges, eg, Stanford, Duke, Northwestern, Rice, Vanderbilt, Notre Dame. Is it really that different?
[/quote]
</p>
<p>For varsity athletes? Absolutely. The top Div I schools you mention, like football and basketball, will all take money-sport recruits with SAT scores at the lowest cut-off allowed by NCAA rules (800 to 900 on the old 1600 point scale). The average SAT score for football players at a place like Notre Dame is under 900 (on the old 1600 point scale).</p>
<p>The Ivies won't go that low. They have a league rule specificing how many recruited athletes can be 3 standard deviations below, 2 standard deviations, etc. As a practical matter, the Ivies admit few recruited athletes below 1200 SATs (on the old 1600 SAT scale).</p>
<p>hunt,
I'm sorry you feel that way. It really paints all athletes with a big, black brush that says you're not qualified to be here. I know you don' t mean it this way, but it reminds of how some folks feel about URMs getting into top schools and assume that there is no way that they are academically qualified to be there. </p>
<p>I can understand where you are coming from, but as you might have guessed, I am much more inclined to give these students the benefit of the doubt and come to the opposite conclusion. Why? Well, the best data point that I have seen is probably graduation rates and those show that students from these elite private institutions are graduating at levels not greatly different from the overall student population. I will concede, however, that there are exceptions to this pattern (Duke men's basketball, Stanford men's basketball) and I would also concede that this measurement is much less flattering to some, other highly ranked colleges, eg, some of the highly ranked publics (UCB, UVA, UCLA, UM) and USC. </p>
<p>Graduation Rate for Football, Men's Basketball, Women's Basketball</p>
<p>93%, 91%, 100% Notre Dame (All students: 96%; All Student-Athletes: 90%) </p>
<p>93%, 67%, 92% Stanford (All students:95%; All Student-Athletes: 95%)</p>
<p>94%, 89%, 100% Northwestern (All students: 93%; All Student-Athletes: 85%)</p>
<p>91%, 83%, 100% Vanderbilt (All students: 89%; All Student-Athletes: 86%)</p>
<p>90%, 100%, 100% Wake Forest (All students: 88%; All Student-Athletes: 77%)</p>
<p>93%, 67%, 90% Duke (All students: 94%; All Student-Athletes: 90%)</p>
<p>85%, 85%, 100% Rice (All students: 93%; All Student-Athletes: 81%)
The big sport at Rice is baseball. The graduation rate was 93%. </p>
<p>Maybe you think that there are "basket-weaving" courses for the athletes at Stanford, Duke, Northwestern, Rice, Vanderbilt, and Notre Dame, but I'm inclined to think that the vast majority of them are academically similar to the Ivy athletes. As MOWC indicates above, there likely are more marginal admits for sports like football and basketball, but I doubt that there is a wholesale disregard for the academic quality of the student-athletes at these colleges.</p>
<p>interesteddad,
A student can get admitted to the Ivies with an AI of 171, which doesn't exactly require academic excellence. The standard IS higher than that of the NCAA, but it is NOT high. </p>
<p>As for your charges and claims about these colleges, can you provide any data to support your statements? Everything I've ever heard, on CC and elsewhere, about Ivy athletics is based on word-of-mouth. I'd like to see some hard statistics and a good starting place would be with their graduation rates. Do you or anybody else have them??</p>
<p>don't know where they get their facts, but maybe you can inquire here:</p>
<p>speaking of the league as a whole:</p>
<p>" with rigorous academic standards, the nation's highest four-year graduation rates (the same as those for non-athletes), and without athletics scholarships.|"</p>
<p>This article too speaks to the rate - and is an interesting read.<br>
<a href="http://209.85.165.104/search?q=cache:XnUbZ-EpYN8J:www.ncaachampionmagazine.org/Championship%2520Magazine/ChampionMagazineStory/test/tabid/61/articleType/ArticleView/articleId/2/An-Ivycovered-perspective.aspx+graduation+rates+ivy+atheletes&hl=en&ct=clnk&cd=9&gl=us%5B/url%5D">http://209.85.165.104/search?q=cache:XnUbZ-EpYN8J:www.ncaachampionmagazine.org/Championship%2520Magazine/ChampionMagazineStory/test/tabid/61/articleType/ArticleView/articleId/2/An-Ivycovered-perspective.aspx+graduation+rates+ivy+atheletes&hl=en&ct=clnk&cd=9&gl=us</a></p>
<p>Thanks for the link. It references the graduation rates again as if they are publicly available and yet I have never been able to find it. The cynic in me thinks that this is part of the Ivy marketing plan where you leverage off of the institutional brand name and get everyone to agree that the grad rates are "perfect." As the USNWR data shows us, no student body of any Ivy college has perfect graduation rates, so I guess it depends on how one interprets the word "almost" and how much we want to take on faith. I'd like to see the numbers and compare to Stanford, Duke, et al. Anybody know why the Ivy colleges don't report their grad numbers for student-athletes via the NCAA website?</p>
<p>"Maybe you think that there are "basket-weaving" courses for the athletes at Stanford, Duke, Northwestern, Rice, Vanderbilt, and Notre Dame, but I'm inclined to think that the vast majority of them are academically similar to the Ivy athletes."</p>
<p>Why would you think that? There is nothing to prevent those schools from recruiting athletes with substantially lower academic qualifications than athletes at the Ivies. Are you saying they don't? Or that those students, despite their low stats, nevertheless succeed in the same kinds of majors as typical students in those schools? I'm not all that impressed by graduation figures, for just the reason you suggest--if they're getting Cs in some athlete-heavy Communications major or something like that, the statistic is meaningless.</p>
<p>hunt,
Why do I think that? Why not? I can see you challenging the big publics or colleges with a dubious history, but I don't remember reading too much about athletic atrocities committed at Stanford, Duke, Northwestern, Rice, Vanderbilt, and Notre Dame. I would say that more corners are likely cut for the major sports, but outside of that, are the differences really that stark? Do you really think that it is that different when you factor in Ivy athletes like hockey players at Cornell?? I don't. </p>
<p>So far, I have not seen anything other than a perception to support your negative stereotyping (would you say the same thing about URMs?). Nor is there any evidence yet that can prove the positive stereotype that favors the Ivy colleges. At least, Stanford, Duke et al give us some graduation data which is more than I can say about the Ivies. Until we see some hard data, this strikes me as classic student-athlete bias that cuts both ways in favor of the Ivies.</p>