<p>...when you can get great academics and great sports at a public flagship university? </p>
<p>Does it ever make sense to go to an elite private school for sports and academics when you can get an excellent education and Division I sports for one-tenth the cost at your state flagship? Why would a sports-lover ever go to a private school?</p>
<p>The following private schools have D-I sports and excellent academics. Their peer-assessment scores range from 3.5-4.4, 25th percentile SATs 1240-1350.</p>
<p>Duke
Vanderbilt
USC
Notre Dame
Rice
Northwestern
Boston College
Georgetown
Wake Forest</p>
<p>The following states have excellent public flagships with peer assessment scores ranging from 3.6-4.8. Prestige is actually higher. Plus, they have honors colleges. The average SATs at some of them is below the elite privates but the publics are huge and have a higher NUMBER of top students than the smaller privates. </p>
<p>California
Michigan
Virginia
North Carolina
Wisconsin
Indiana
Ohio
New Jersey
Maryland
Pennsylvania
Minnesota
Georgia
Florida
Washington
Illinois
Iowa
Texas
Colorado</p>
<p>For sports lovers, it makes a lot more sense to go to a public flagship than a private university (from a costs-benefits perspective).</p>
<p>Absolutely correct. You did however forget Stanford in your list of elite privates. They’ve won the Director’s Cup, kind of an overall #1 Athletic Department award for Division I, for each of the last 14 years. I have no idea if the school spirit rivals say…a Duke, but they’ve had a lot of athletic success. </p>
<p>Further, many other D1 state publics aren’t awful schools - many are still in the top 100 of the USNWR. </p>
<p>The other thing is that many of these schools have greater name recognition (because of athletics) than the non-athletic elite privates or LAC’s, particularly when you get into parts of the country away from the institution in question. Swarthmore is a great school, but I’m willing to bet that the University of Oklahoma has a lot more weight in someplace like Phoenix or Minneapolis.</p>
<p>Lastly, there’s that whole issue of scholarships. Money for top students is out there for sure.</p>
<p>Right, if you actually want to PARTICIPATE in intercollegiate sports, then go wherever you can make the team.</p>
<p>I was thinking mainly of schools for sports fans.</p>
<p>I probably should mention other states with fine public flagships with successful D-I sports like
Connecticut
Alabama
Kansas
Missouri
Nebraska
Oregon
South Carolina
Oklahoma
Arizona
Kentucky
Arkansas</p>
<p>I didn’t mean to leave anybody out.</p>
<p>Most of the schools above are actually in the US News top 70.</p>
<p>University of Pennsylvania is not a public school. That mistake alone leads me to discredit the original post.</p>
<p>The whole argument doesn’t make sense though. A sports-lover by definition would love sports no matter the circumstances, whether the team is winning national championships or just happy to win its home games.</p>
<p>As for the question of why go to a private university with Division I athletics over a public university with Division I athletics, it’s quite simple. The private schools you listed have overwhelmingly smaller classes than the public schools you listed. </p>
<p>Also, you do realize the peer assessment score U.S. News puts out is hodge-podge, right? It’s pretty obvious from the way the deans respond to the survey that they’re just basing their score on the school’s success with graduate programs, despite the fact that U.S. News’s colleges rankings are supposed to rank colleges. I think it’s pretty safe to say that employers know the kids coming out of Georgetown are (as a group) more competent than the kids coming out of Illinois even though both schools received the same peer assessment.</p>
<p>Hmm - in my neck of the woods, strong students that love sports and are good athletes choose top DIII schools like Williams, Bowdoin, Bates, Davidson etc. The academics are top notch and skilled athletes have the opportunity to play sports all 3 seasons. My S. plays two seasons and his roommate plays all three.</p>
<p>@ lgellar: Ummm, when did the OP say that UPenn was a public school? They merely said that the state of Pennsylvania has a flagship U with good academics and a big athletics program, which it does, Penn State. Perhaps it’s time you looked beyond the Ivy League.
Although I do agree that the peer assessment score is bogus.</p>
<p>At the privates I named above, the percent of classes with over 50 students is about 10%. At the flagship publics, the percent is about 15%. Not a big difference. Larger schools also have more faculty.</p>
<p>Because sometimes the private school can actually be cheaper than the public. It was in my case. Also, for me fit was a factor. I felt I fit better at the smaller private school, USC than at a school that had more undergraduates than my hometown had people, like Cal and UCLA. </p>
<p>Also, I decided to do marching band and I preferred the TMB to Cal or UCLA’s bands.</p>
A school with 16,500(UG) and 17,000(Grad+Prof) is small? It’s not that much smaller than UCLA(25,432) and Cal(23,863) … especially since USC has a smaller campus.</p>
<p>It’s still 9000 less undergrads. That’s not a small number. Also, keep in mind a good number of grads are on the Health Sciences Campus.
Lastly, at least for me, the smaller campus makes it seem more intimate. At UCLA you need to take a tram or a bike from the dorms to class. At SC it’s a 10 minute walk max, mostly less than that.</p>
<p>I know my criteria were a bit arbitrary, but I was 17. I still know I made the right decision for me.</p>
<p>TheJoker, some public universities provide incredible liberal arts educations. Cal, UCLA, UNC, UVa, William & Mary, Wisconsin and a few others certainly come to mind. </p>
<p>From my own experience, Michigan did an incredible job of providing undergrads with an exceptional curriculum, world class faculty and facilities and hard-to-match resources. Given my experience as a graduate student at Cornell, I am confident when I say that Cornell is Michigan’s kid brother. Then again, similarities between those two elites are bound to exist. Andrew Dickson White, Cornell’s co-founder and first president, was a Michigan professor for a decade before he was approached by Ezra Cornell to help him found Cornell. And White’s successor was another Michigan professor called Charles Adams. In recent years, two of Cornell’s last four presidents (Frank Rhodes, 1977-1995) and Jeffrey Lehman (2003-2005) have come from Michigan. Between Adams and Rhodes, two other Michigan men have led Cornell.</p>
<p>In short, at times, the line that separates the top publics and the top privates can be very blurry.</p>
<p>Cornell is actually half public. Try comparing umich w/ somewhere like Duke, Rice, or ND. A certain barrier exists between the top publics and the top privates. Though U.S. new rankings are often very easy to criticize, there’s no denying that in the past few years (an probably in the future too), no public school has broken into the top 20. We can talk about how great a school umich is: it is a great school. But at the ugrad level, the personal attention one receives at an ND, a Rice, a Northwestern, or a Princeton, is really incomparable w/ a state school. I’m sorry. In addition, the alumni network of public, even for a strong one like umich, is really incomparable with a top private. Finally, the class sizes, though I guess this falls under personal attention. But check out the % of classes under 20 at top privates vs. top publics. Only 1 public, Berkley, beats out 1 private, ND, in this number. Now, a valid response would be that as long as the % is under 50 its good, which is valid b/c for certain classes, less than 20 students isn’t necessary. However, my response to that response is simply that in addition to class size, at top privates, you’re professors are less likely to be TA’s and more likely to be focusing on ug. more than their research, which is, after all, the hallmark of a school like umich.</p>
<p>btw, alexandre, telling me about the association between professors of umich, a state school, and cornell, a half-state school, does not aid your argument. In addition the state status of each school, what you stated does not disprove the intangibles of a private that I was talking of: more personal attention and a stronger alumni network. If anything, you told me about how profs were leaving umich, which is not exactly the best thing. A more well-reasoned arguement would be as follows: Notre Dame has a strong liberal arts program evident by the fact that their new Arts and Letters head was formerly a top professor at Harvard.</p>