K9Leader

Collegehelp, how toolish of you . . .

I think we're done here.

CayugaRed2005

It's an athletic league, no more. And it is in a division by itself. No other league features such high quality athletic competition with such little sacrifice in academic standards for athletes.

Pizzagirl

"Speaking out truthfully about the desireability of an Ivy education is labeled elitist by those who can't discern the difference. It isn't elitist, it is a matter of appreciating the nuances of a superior education.

Yes, I's say the aura stems from history, tradition, excellence, culture, attitude...a host of things. But, it stems from things that are substantial as well as intangible. And, the aura at a school has an effect on its students over time. Students absorb the "personality" of a school."

So what makes the personalities of the Ivies uniformly better than the schools that Hawkette has referenced - essentially the other schools with similarly high academics? And why do you think those 8 schools have more similar personalities than the others? Like I said, if you took off the athletic division labels and just threw the top 20 or so schools into a pile and asked people to cluster them based on which ones were most similar / offered more similar experiences to one another, I *don't think you'd wind up with the current Ivy League. I wouldn't classify Brown and Dartmouth as offering similar experiences, for one, any more than I'd classify NU and MIT as offering similar experiences. However, none of these are *inferior experiences, just qualitatively different.

In fact, let's do that. If you were taking the top 20 or so universities, removing athletic labels ... the academics are all top-notch, so it's just not a differentiator. How would you group them on the basis of similar campus feels / personality / experience? We know how you'd do it, Hawkette :-). Would be interested to hear how others would. Not RANK them, but GROUP them.

tokenadult

As regular participants on CC know, I tend to group colleges by their desirability to learners who may pursue mathematics or computer science as fields of study. I know a lot of young people in my town through my math-coaching activities, and several of them aspire to enroll at one college or another of the set

{Harvard, MIT, Princeton, Stanford, Caltech, U of Chicago, Berkeley, Carnegie Mellon}

Many of those same students would also apply to less reachy colleges (or colleges with fewer graduate programs on campus) such as

{Harvey Mudd, Duke, Rice, Cornell, Brown, Michigan, UCLA, other state flagship universities}

Even showing just two "tiers," as here, is highly debatable. I don't claim these lists are exhaustive. I know of a math champion from my state who applied to and was admitted to Yale SCEA (eventually choosing to enroll at Williams), but that pattern of preference is not typical. There are a lot of good colleges with strong mathematics or computer science programs, and many of the students who have such study desires differ in other characteristics such that they don't all prefer the same colleges.

As I wrote above, all eight of the differing colleges that happen to be in the Ivy League athletic conference are fine colleges, and it's hard to go wrong by enrolling at any of them. On the other hand, their commonality consists mostly of being in the same athletic conference (and thus in the same region of the country) and several other colleges not in that athletic conference offer as much OR MORE than some of the Ivy League colleges do to particular students with particular interests.

collegehelp

The Ivies are more than an athletic conference. They share a common academic and social identity. I think you all know this.

The Ivies still have much more appeal today than the next 8 or 10 universities. It isn't merely an historical fact. I think they collectively attract about 30% more applications per opening than the next 8 or 10 schools. There is a reason for this.

I am not trying to make anybody feel bad about their school. But, it isn't right to mislead prospective students into thinking that the Ivies are less than what they really are.

So, I encourage you all to feel good about your school but give the Ivies the credit they deserve.

Pizzagirl

"The Ivies are more than an athletic conference. They share a common academic and social identity. I think you all know this."

That doesn't answer the question. What commonality -- ASIDE from being in the same athletic conference, ASIDE from both being in the Northeast -- makes (say) the Penn experience more similar to the Dartmouth experience than to the NU experience? Personally, if I were looking at those three schools, Penn and NU seem a heck of a lot more similar to one another in terms of student body and general campus experience and feel than do Penn and Dartmouth. Which is not dissing any of these schools whatsoever -- but it's silly then to claim that Penn and Dartmouth have some magical commonality of experience.

Pizzagirl

"The Ivies still have much more appeal today than the next 8 or 10 universities. It isn't merely an historical fact. I think they collectively attract about 30% more applications per opening than the next 8 or 10 schools."

That may be (I don't know the stats, so I'll trust you on this one). However, that doesn't support your thesis that the 8 individual Ivies have a unique Ivy culture that is a) shared by all of them and b) dissimilar to all other elite schools.

ilovebagels

It's the Northeast location, and the growing sense of Ivy group consciousness.

The Ivies have a special bond with each other, as peers and competitors...perhaps as frenemaies.

Witness Ivy CrossCampus, IvyGateBlog, Ivy Council, etc.

It's definitely not a shared culture (except for self-absorption). But it is a shared identity

Pizzagirl

Thanks - that's a helpful delineation (shared identity vs shared culture).
Why do you think there is growing "Ivy group consciousness"?

tokenadult

The revealed preferences working paper explicitly says otherwise, as you well know. What data set are you appealing to as a basis for your claim?

P.S. I'm not trying to make anyone feel bad about their alma mater either. But the OP expresses an interest, which perhaps need a bit more defining, in a certain category of colleges, and I'm trying to find out if the interest is truly in one athletic conference, or in colleges that are highly selective by high school grades or test scores, or in colleges that offer certain hard-to-find major subjects, or what.

applejack

Oh my Collegehelp.

As a fellow graduate of Cornell, I will offer you the same advice I would offer Ann Coulter:

Please, please stop. You're not helping.

collegehelp

tokenadult-
My data comes from IPEDS. Applicants per opening is about 30% higher in the Ivy League collectively than the next 10 schools and it was about 30% higher 5 years ago...no recent change to speak of.

I also like the revealed preference rankings very much. But, they beg the question "Why are some schools preferred?" Cornell is the lowest ranked Ivy, surpassed only by other Ivies, Stanford, and some special interest schools. Special interest schools include the top tech schools MIT and Caltech, 3 "little Ivies" Amherst, Swarthmore, and Wellesley (all women), and Notre Dame (Catholic). I think special interest factors account for some of the schools ranked above Cornell. Stanford, Amherst, and Swarthmore are simply Ivy peer institutions. Mind you, they are all great schools.

Students may prefer a school for many reasons, including financial aid. Cornell offeres to smallest average scholarship amount in the Ivy League, and lower average scholarships than the next 10 schools. Cornell also offeres scholarships to a slighly smaller percent of freshmen. Cornell is probably losing some of these head-to-head "competitions" because of financial aid, not because of appeal. How many, I don't know.

The OP asked about life at an Ivy League and so far I think I am the only poster who has given the OP a truthful answer. Aside from my reply, the thread has been dominated by drama queens and by the almost-Ivy locusts who devoured the thread.

BerkeleySenior

There's nothing wrong with wanting to attend an Ivy league school purely for the name; I'd say that's why most people pick prestigious schools anyway. But yes, there are 3 tiers within the Ivy League itself, with HYP being at the pinnacle. The other 2 "tiers" don't offer as much name-recognition as the first, obviously...and some non-Ivy schools may surpass those in prestige.

ilovebagels

Pizzagirl: It's just a feeling I get, on a certain level.

On the other hand, I can point to concrete things like the foundation and growth of the Ivy Council (ivycouncil.org) and the IvyGate Blog. As I recall from my babblings-on-nationalism class, the existence of media establishing an imagined community serves to reinforce and perpetuate that community identity. Also whenever any Ivy college paper has graphs or articles comparing something (acceptance rate, endowment, etc) to "peer schools" they are almost invariably the other 7 Ivy schools. Northwestern may have more in common with Penn in terms of the kind of institution it is, but that's just not part of the "imagined community".

That and the eternal worldwide over-use of the "Ivy League" name.

K9Leader

When the OP asked about life at an Ivy league school, she specified "How much work, freetime etc." All CollegeHindrance did was proclaim all Ivies to be the land of milk and honey, where magic pixies sprinkle knowledge dust over you as you sleep, and law schools and Wall Street bond trading firms come to worship at your feet and shower you with gold, frankincense, myrhh, and BMWs. That is a "truthful answer" only in the bizarro world this troll inhabits.

SweetGirl1991 - many of the posters (the ones who do not suffer from delusions of grandeur) have pointed out that these are eight different schools and there is no one single Ivy League life.

I go back to my original question: Why do you "really want to go to an Ivy League school" when you don't yet know much about them? Really wanting to go to a school should come after you have learned something about it. Generally, it's a good idea to ask questions, gather information, analyze and evaluate the data, and then draw conclusions. At least, that is what I learned in my inferior, non-Ivy League education.

From your username, I'd guess you are 17 years old, a high school junior, and somewhere in the college search process. Have you visited any colleges yet? Try visiting some near you -- different kinds -- urban, small town, rural, large, small, big-time athletics, big-time academics, public and private. At first, it's not even important that they be schools you are seriously considering attending. It's just important that you start learning. At every one you will find out something that you want or need in a college or something that you don't want or need. Pretty soon you will be ready to start targeting schools based on what you have learned. You need to visit and tour, walk around, talk to some students and professors, observe the culture and personality of the school, kick the tires and take a test drive. I've known many who "fell in love" with a school and "just knew" it was the place for them after they had visited. The ones who say they love a school before they ever visit are just in love with the idea of the school. If one of the Ivy League schools is the one for you, then that is great. Just don't make the mistake of confusing being in love with the idea of a school with being in love with the school.

BerkeleySenior: Well, yes, there is something wrong with wanting something purely for the name. Aside from the intellectual, moral, and ethical problems it can cause you, there is the problem that you are an easy mark for every scam, con man, and marketing scheme. You'll do anything and pay anything if they can get you to want it purely for the name. Not even out of college yet and you're already owned.

--K9Leader