| I would hardly call LACs the JV and Nat. Univs the varsity considering that Williams and Amherst have higher SAT avgs than 5/8 Ivys. Plus, it depends what you mean by prestige. More people overall have heard of the Ivys, but of people who have heard of both, Williams & Amherst are just as respected and do as well in grad school and job placement as Dartmouth, Columbia, Brown, Cornell, UPenn and that is really the important thing. After that, it's just a matter of personal preference of the type of environment one likes best.
IMO, the concept of rubbing elbows with Nobel Laureats is way overrated on the board and from what I can tell UGs aren't really coming into contact with them anyway. Objectively measuring faculty quality is always going to be an even more nebulous debate than ranking colleges, but I don't see how the faculty at Dartmouth or Brown is any better than at Williams or Amherst. |