<p>after all is said and done, of the above 9 schools I would probably choose to attend in the following order. Please remember that this is just my personal preference, which includes location and excludes Wharton:</p>
<p>Okay, Hawkette, you addressed my question in post #45</p>
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<p>Just a little lesson in geography, though…all states below the Mason Dixon Line are considered “The South”; hence, Missouri definitely falls into this category:</p>
<p>@pbr:
Washington University is in St. Louis, not in Branson. St. Louis is not southern by any means… almost everyone considers it part of the midwest.</p>
<p>@ jc40 and pbr:</p>
<p>As defined by the U.S. Census Bureau, Missouri is part of the Midwestern United States, but it is also considered a Border State (I don’t remember much of my 8th grade Civil War history, but it was not considered part of the Confederate States of America but it was a Border State). While I agree the “Mason-Dixon” definition is valid, it is also antiquated.</p>
<p>St. Louis is famously a city of Northern charm and Southern efficiency. So take your pick. I’d lump WUSTL not with REVD but with Chicago, Northwestern, and maybe a couple other Midwestern schools. Notre Dame? </p>
<p>What shall we call these? How about the NUNCHuk schools? Unfortunately it misses WUSTL but it does sound terrifying.</p>
<p>The WUNDerduNCe schools? Uh, still not working …</p>
<p>I’m from the South, and no one I know has EVER referred to WashU as being a Southern school; everyone lumps it with Northwestern in the Midwest. People are even wary of calling UVA Southern.</p>
<p>Okay, I suppose this simply has to do with regional perceptions. When I think of MO, I think of Tom Sawyer, barbeque, etc. Yes, MO entered as a slave state (south) while ME came in as a free state to maintain the balance prior to the Civil War (MO Compromise); however, I would concede that now days people tend to classify MO as a Midwestern state with elements of southern charm and hospitality.</p>
<p>This thread is silly. You all know that, if you had a choice of Emory v. Vanderbilt v. WUSTL v. Columbia, 90% of you would pick Columbia, and the other 10% would not choose Columbia and “justify” your decision by saying it was too expensive or not a good “fit.”</p>
<p>The other people who try to say that they wouldn’t pick an IVY are the bitter ones who didn’t get in, or didn’t apply. </p>
<p>Everyone obviously cares about the “status” of a school. Everyone is a prestige chaser. If this were not the case, there wouldn’t be threads like these.</p>
<p>“Ivy-league” is a household name when colleges are brought up. Most people have no idea which colleges are in the ivy league, but they’d understand if you went to an ivy league school.</p>
<p>I agree with iCalc: The REVD may be equally as good if not better in many individual ways than the “lower ivies,” but in truth, an IVY is an IVY .</p>
<p>Having an IVY school on your resume often opens doors. And when you’re just coming out of school and don’t have a lot of work experience behind you, it matters most. I’d still rather have Cornell Arts and Sciences on my resume than Rice any day of the week.</p>
<p>iCalculus: you’re overestimating the allure of Ivy status.</p>
<p>I know a ton of kids from Tennessee and Kentucky who could’ve gotten into Columbia but chose to go to Vandy because they wanted to stay close to home. Geographic convenience/compatibility is just one of the many reasons people chose schools. For me, I chose not to apply to Cornell because, even though I like the school and Ithaca, I just don’t think I could bear the brutal winters. Plus, the school is too far from home.</p>
<p>Yup, an ivy is an ivy…just like a bigten is a bigten and a pac 10 is a pac 10. That’s all. No one will hire a Cornell graduate over a Rice graduate just because Cornell is an ivy and Rice is lower ranked than Cornell.</p>
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