<p>Let’s assume that all of you on CC will get in to Yale. But for the sake of this question… if Yale did not exist as an option, then where?</p>
<p>My D’s current 2nd choice seems to be Brown. What is yours?</p>
<p>Or if you already went to school or are in it… what was your second choice?</p>
<p>as part of the SCEA acceptance number?</p>
<p>Second choice is Columbia</p>
<p>Dandelions: probably so, as they seem to only list two #s each year… Early admits and RD admits (which includes those taken off the wait list)</p>
<p>I ended up at Johns Hopkins because I was wait-listed and then not accepted at Yale. So my own answer was JHU.</p>
<p>YaleBlue told me that it came down to Yale and Princeton… so the back-up / 2nd Choice list so far includes:</p>
<p>Princeton
Brown
Columbia
Johns Hopkins</p>
<p>@WWWard My second choice is probably Princeton. This could be partly due to its prestige, because where I live (I’m an international student), everybody knows about Harvard and Princeton, but most can’t even pronounce ‘Yale’. Harvard is out of the question because I want a university that focuses on its undergrad students. My third choice is Cornell, followed by Pomona.</p>
<p>mybestshot: Interesting that this is known, even internationally… my D wasn’t even interested in Harvard for the very same reason. Her 3rd and 4th choices are Princeton and Columbia…</p>
<p>That’s also why yale is my top choice and not Harvard. Anyone know about Columbia’s focus on undergrads?</p>
<p>Also, I’m looking for people to give me feedback on essays for local scholarships. If anyone can help, please PM me!</p>
<p>Actually Harvard is all the rage here, I found out about its focus on grad students from posts written by current and past undergrads on different forums. I also seriously considered Columbia, but my family has a pretty tight financial situation and as far as I know, Pomona is much more generous when it comes to international financial aid.</p>
<p>It seems that very little has changed over the years. When I was a Freshman in college, we road-tripped up to visit friends at Yale, Brown and Harvard. All the undergrads we met or spoke to were super enthusiastic about life at both Yale and Brown… but there was not a single Harvard undergrad who seemed to truly like it there. They all seemed to portray it as Style over Substance or Rhetoric over Reality, etc. We spoke to between 10-15 of them, and they all had a variety of negative comments, with H’s grad school vs undergrad emphasis seeming to be one of the biggest complaints. Being taught by TA’s for example was a major complaint. That was before all of you current applicants were even born… and yet that complaint or viewpoint persists through until today.</p>
<p>I think Harvard is a great school, and I would have no issue sending my D there for a graduate school program, but I am thankful that she has already ruled it out in terms of its undergraduate program. It saved me from having to try and dissuade her.</p>
<p>While Yale, Brown and Princeton all seem to have good reviews in terms of the undergrad emphasis, I have not really heard that much either way about Columbia. A friend of mine went there for undergrad though, and his warning was that Columbia is not for the faint of heart or for any student who may not be a self-starter. He emphasizes that Columbia does not offer the sort of hand-holding, guidance, etc for undergrads that most people may expect. He said that well-centered and self-assured people flourish there but that some students with less direction just sort of meander through. He said that Columbia will let students fail in fact. He encouraged me to rank Columbia 4th in terms of my own daughter, saying that Yale, Brown and Princeton each likely offer more of the type of college lifestyle that better meshes with her pre-conceived notions about it. I am not sure if that has to do with NYC or its environment or not, But from all that I have heard, Columbia is an amazing school with tons to offer all of its students. And it remains in my D’s top 4.</p>
<p>@ Dandelions and WWWard: QBridge applicants are admitted in early December but are allocated to slots under RD, not SCEA.</p>
<p>T26E4: Interesting. Thanks. Of course, “Getting In” is the main thing 
I doubt that current students ever even talk about how they got in.</p>
<p>I suspected as much, YaleBlue.</p>
<p>My younger daughter found a college ranking online via BuzzFeed that purports to combine Academics with Hotness to create a list of the “Sexiest Smart Colleges”. BuzzFeed plotted Forbes’s academic rankings of colleges and universities against a dating site’s hotness index, which measures the attractiveness of students by how much interest their dating profiles get. I was very surprised to see the Ivies so well-represented on their Top Ten List. </p>
<p>Their Top Ten:
10. Carnegie Mellon
9. The University of Virginia
8. Harvard
7. Boston University
6. Boston College
5. Columbia University
4. University of Pennsylvania
3. Princeton
2. Dartmouth
<p>Yale did not make this strange Ranking list. But maybe some applicants will consider such extra info when determining their own Second Choice, if not Yale. I think my D is already content with her own 2nd Choice, Brown… and this ranking only helps to cement her opinion… lol. Ironically, she has applied to 1-5. After all, many people do end up meeting their future spouses in college… so it is something to think about.</p>
<p>Thoughts, YaleBlue? As a current student there, should Yale be there on the list in your opinion?</p>
<p>My secondary dream schools are Rice and Princeton. I liked Harvard well enough when I visited, but it was only afterwards that I discovered the fact that there’s not as much of a focus on undergraduates as other schools. I also really like Tufts, to be honest.</p>
<p>thelemonisinplay: Rice is an interesting choice. I do not think my D even considered it. </p>
<p>So the 2nd Choice, if not Yale, list stands as:</p>
<p>Princeton
Brown
Columbia
Johns Hopkins
Rice</p>
<p>My niece is a senior at Columbia College and she dissuaded our daughter from applying. She told her Barnard College has much better guidance, camaraderie and housing - in her opinion.</p>
<p>arwarw: are you referring to Columbia College, in Chicago, or Columbia University in NYC? If Columbia in NYC… that mirrors what we have heard…</p>
<p>T26E4, thank you for clarifying on how the QB is counted for Yale and all of your other insightful info.</p>
<p>WWWard, thank you also for your reply and your other helpful posts.</p>
<p>WWWard, I was referring to Columbia College at Columbia University in NYC.</p>
<p>WWWard: I think arwarw is talking about Columbia University in the City of New York since it makes most sense to compare that to Barnard. “Columbia College” is the name for the School within Columbia University for undergraduates that is not the School of Engineering and Applied Sciences.</p>
<p>Thanks. Isn’t Barnard College affiliated with Columbia University as well? </p>
<p>We will have an interesting trip later this month, as we try to see as many of the schools my D has applied to as possible, all in one week - driving up from Florida. She especially wants to see Yale, Brown and Columbia. I do think that it is critical for applicants to actually see the campus in-person to develop a real feel for where they want to attend.</p>
<p>We were not able to go visit Yale before she applied SCEA. Do you suspect that most SCEA applicants have actually already seen the campus? or did they apply based solely on reputation and credentials, etc.?</p>