<p>@JHU518: Don’t lump the Ivies together, they aren’t all the same and I hate to be blunt about that. The other top 20s(and even top 25) are basically like the lower Ivies with exception of some that I think are better than those and kind of like in between. I’m not going by selectivity (so thus I wouldn’t be judging by the number of international awards students win upon graduation. This is often just a function of how bright and outgoing the students are and they would likely have been able to repeat the feat at another selective or “non-selective” university), I’m going by quality and rigor of educational experience (based on some “exploring” I’ve done mainly in the science curriculum. Generally, humanities and social sciences at these schools, with the exception of economics, are pretty standard and the quality is more of a function of who students get to work with and how much money the depts can throw to its undergrads for scholarship and research. Science education varies wildly however). I believe these “middle” places are Berkeley, JHU, Northwestern, Washington University, and Duke (though I do believe the former 3 are at least more rigorous than Duke’s programs, Duke is indeed very good). I only speak of undergraduate education here. I think Vanderbilt, Emory, Notre Dame, Rice, and Georgetown are great schools, but the rigor of the academics is probably more like the" lower" Ivies at these institutions. That doesn’t mean they aren’t very good, just that they lack a lot of the intensity that a lot of the other programs have (though a person going to these schools will indeed deny it, I’ve looked at course websites from basically all of these schools out of curiousity, and for the large part, there is a pecking order, though sometimes it’s on a dept by dept. basis. All top 20s will challenge a huge chunk of the student body, but some will to a much larger extent and at higher levels. Lots of the other schools are just less laid back.).</p>
<p>*note: when I talk about rigor, I don’t mean grading practices because in such a case, Vanderbilt, JHU, and Emory would be considered harder than normal. I’m talking about the actual level of content taught in the course and the level of assignments and exams and that sort of thing. For example, while Vanderbilt and Emory generally curve science courses to a B- (or sometimes C+) and Harvard curves them to a B, I can go look and see that Harvard’s counterpart is normally significantly harder. And likewise, you would not know that organic chemistry is actually harder at Emory than Vanderbilt or that gen. biology is actually harder at Vanderbilt than Emory if you just look at the grading curve (the chemistry distribution at Emory is the result of exams with a F to C- average being curved up and Vanderbilt’s is often the average already being C+/B-. The situation is reversed for biology apparently). But the point is, a lot of the stress at some “lower” ivies like Cornell, comes from the grading and lesser so the content. </p>
<p>If I was just speaking on Universities as a whole, then Duke is now basically with those in terms of caliber (it’s graduate programs and professional programs have improved much more than UG I think, and thus the whole uni resembles those schools better and lesser so the UG units, though, like most top 20s, it is as selective as those).</p>