<p>Ha, that's funny, Bagels. I thought the fake acid gothic touch at Yale was kinda cool ;) You have to admit, it is lovely there....to the campus edge that is.
Penn is my favorite of course, but given all the comparisons here, I think that Harvard perhaps has an edge in some ways: Cambridge is incredible, Boston is great, ocean sea breezes, campus historic and lovely...
but then, we didn't even tour Harvard [though did 5 of the Ivies, plus MIT]. Perhaps having it in your backyard makes it seem less special. Plus Philly has bountiful plusses as well, much like Boston.</p>
<p>One aspect that Penn I think takes hands down is friendliness. I continue to be blown away by the polite and friendly, not to mention helpfulness of folks at Penn. Definitely not shared by some of the other Ivies. Perhaps prestige is not all its cracked up to be.</p>
<p>Penn is extremely prestigious for those who are into these things. I can tell you that if you want well known, go to those schools with great football teams. They get the most name recognition. There are folks not on the East coast that are college grads who don't know Brown or Dartmouth, and have trouble with Columbia as well.</p>
<p>At the end of the day the top schools ranked after HYPSM, ie Penn, Dartmouth, Columbia, Brown, Duke, Amherst, etc tend to be known by people that matter and will actually affect your life.</p>
<p>All the rankings do is create the perception that if you don't get into a top tier school a student has failed in life. That is ridiculous. The effort that it takes to prepare to attend a top tier school is the reward itself because if a student is that competitive then they are on the road to sucess in life. Think about it...the top 1% of people taking the SAT, I believe amount to something like 15,000 students. At each of the top 10 schools admissions are around 1500-2000 per class. Intuitively that means that all brite kids get into a top ten school. Wrong- It does not work that way- legacies who may not have as high of a GPA or SAT make up failry large percentages of the HYPS etc. classes. Not to mention cost factors that effect parents decisions. I suspect legacies are at least 15-20% or more of th eavera HYPS class. Other factors - ethic background, race, fame, donations honorariums etc. are in play too. Are those kids who are at the top of a State School or lesser known private any less prepared for life? Think about college as a choice of the best fit or program you want to attend. Like buying a franchise-you have to research and decide which is best for you not just which is rated highest. Oh and as for all the Harvard business majors and Wharton grads ....how many are switching to medicine or soem other carrer now that Wall Street investment banking is in meltdown mode?</p>
<p>Penn is known by the leaders of commerce, government, medicine and academia, which is all that really matters. In fact, its reputation has been IMPROVING. How many other elite schools can say that? I can't think of any off the top of my head.</p>
<p>i don't mean to inflame anyone, but when i read this topic i was floored. sometimes the World According to CC is a very distorted one indeed. there are 3-4,000 ,4-year colleges in the US. only a handful make any ranking book/system at all. and these are excellent 1 and 2 Tiers. now we are talking about an IVY and wondering if it's any good????? shouldn't we be grounded in the real world? i think that can go a long way to having applications be based on what's good for the individual student; also lowers stress based on unrealistic views.</p>
<p>On the west coast, when I say I'm applying ED to Penn, half the people immediately think I mean Penn State, due to athletics. When I say it's an Ivy, they usually incredulously ask me to clarify. It's not that it isn't prestigious. Once I mention the name Wharton, everyone is immediately impressed, but, at least here, Penn is hardly every named when you think of Ivies, or even top 10 schools. But that is obviously just ignorance from the general public. However, I don't know why it is so ignored. Even Dartmouth and Cornell, which are statistically easier to get into, receive the "name prestige."</p>
<p>In fact, I'm the only person at my school that I know of(Graduating class of 775) applying to Penn. </p>
<p>What he was trying to say is "Why doesn't Penn have the name that Harvard, Princeton, Yale, Columbia, and Duke have?"</p>
<p>Even if I were to say I'm a applying to Duke, more people would automatically say, "Oh, that's fantastic, it's a great school." Not that they actually know it's a great school, but they assume for some reason.</p>
<p>^^^Wow that is so what I meant. I am also applying to Duke, which is far more known in Texas than Penn.
The funny thing is that I have wanted to go to Duke since middle school, and I actually thought it was easy to get into. But that is ignorance for you.</p>
<p>Someday, when I am an eccentric billionaire, I will found a school called Wharton State and pump up its football team until it dominates NCAA headlines. Also, Princeton State.</p>
<p>Do I have confidence that people are dumb enough for this to work? Absolutely.</p>
<p>Ummm...Dartmouth is statistically harder to get into than Penn. </p>
<p>Penn acceptance rate 16.4%, Dartmouth 13.2%. Dartmouth has a lower acceptance rate than any school outside of HYPSM and Columbia. Penn has never had a lower acceptance rate than Dartmouth.</p>
<p>First of all, Slipper1234, in 2002 Dartmouth had a 22% acceptance rate, compared to Penn 20%. So, you're wrong!!!
Anyway, you have to take into account more than just acceptance rate.</p>
<p>% of class from top HS decile:
Penn: 96%
Dartmouth: 94%</p>
<p>Yield (indicative of how accepted students view the school):
Penn: 63%
Dartmouth: 51%</p>
<p>Basically, no one in their right mind would think that Dartmouth is harder to get into than Penn. Perhaps equal, but I still think Penn wins. I'm biased, of course, but go ahead and argue with that info.</p>
<p>I think it depends regionally? You say Penn at my school and everyone knows your talking about Upenn. However I went to Texas once and mentioned UPenn to a family friend and they blanked... I guess it jsut depends on which part of the US you live in. Our school knows **** about Claremont Mckenna, people think the college is a movie star......no joke.</p>
<p>All those statistics are garbage, muerta. Dartmouth has a higher avg SAT score by 40 points, Penn has 48% ED vs. 32% for Dartmouth which accounts for the yield difference, has a higher revealed preference, and USNEWS has washU over stanford (overweights top 10% bigtime). I think they are about the same, but in no way is Dartmouth less selective than Penn, like no way at all.</p>
<p>So no one in their right mind would think a school with a lower acceptance rate (13.2% vs. 16.4%) and a 40pt higer SAT average is more selective, yet the reverse ("penn wins") holds true based purely on ED manipulated yield and some rankings that think Washu si more selective than Stanford...um...yeah...sure.</p>
<p>They are pretty much the same. Get over your Penn bias.</p>
<p>And yet you're the one willfully obscuring data:
"Penn has never had a lower acceptance rate than Dartmouth."</p>
<p>That was false, as I've said.</p>
<p>And in terms of revealed preference (and this is the kicker, my dear):
Dartmouth:54%
Penn: 46%</p>
<p>That was the revealed preference study done in 2004, when Penn's success was even fresher than it is today. My point being, of course, that if they did a new revealed preference study, Penn would likely have pulled closer to a majority. So, as you say, they are roughly the same.</p>