<p>PR’s Top Ten Dream Schools does separate surveys of parents & students. While six schools are common “Dream Schools” of both surveyed groups, there are four different in each group’s Top Ten. While the parent survey reveals that Princeton is the top dream school, for students it is NYU. The four different schools of the students’ top ten are all in major cities (e.g. NYU & UCLA);whereas the four different schools comprising the parents’ top ten are Notre Dame, Northwestern & Boston College (I can’t recall the fourth school).</p>
<p>Thank you Cold Wind. As I said earlier Princeton is the “Dream School” of Adults as indicated by the thousands of parents taking part in the survey. Interestingly, as it relates to the original post and the question of prestige, the schools parents most named were: </p>
<ol>
<li><p>Princeton </p></li>
<li><p>Stanford</p></li>
</ol>
<p>PS. Hippo, schools do not trade such data. The data in that article was accumulated by Harvard Professors Avery and Hoxby 15 years ago. The PR DREAM SCHOOL ranking was this year.</p>
<p>Valentinocuevas - The military academies are so prestigious because of the quality of their graduates. Leadership training is a concept that is an integral component of the curriculum at all the service academies - something that is constantly being graded and evaluated at these schools. This is a component that is simply not found at any civilian school.</p>
<p>All these academies have acceptance rates on par with the lesser Ivies, and a scholastic curriculum that rivals any ivy league school - ( 4 semesters each of math, physics, chemistry, English, history, foreign language, military tactics, and physical education) before your chosen major courses kick in. All this combined with rising at 5:30 a.m., formations, inspections, parades, and mandatory sports makes a day unlike any found in a traditional college setting. Plus, they undergo further training during the summers.</p>
<p>Upon graduation, these men and women (who are themselves barely 21 years of age) are given command of a platoon, and are fully responsible for the safety and welfare of
41 men/women and their families as well as hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of arms and equipment. Their commitment is 5 years of active duty service, and often a promotion to captain that entails command of a company ( 100 men/women). It is no wonder then that employers snap up these young men and women. They have demonstrated leadership experience, dedication, toughness, and perseverance.</p>
<p>Therefore, it is no surprise that all three service academies are listed so prominently in these rankings. They deserve such an honor.</p>
<p>deter1: Your credibility on this issue is minimal, since your post history contains:</p>
<p>1) You posting rankings that show Princeton at #1 and constantly (and excessively) praising Princeton (and I say this as a very happy student at Princeton).
2) You disparaging any rankings that show Princeton anywhere than number 1.</p>
<p>Do you even attend the school?</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>Yes, it’s a great military education. But that does not a prestigious school make, necessarily.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>A “scholastic curriculum that rivals any ivy league school”? Please. The students at the academies undergo an extremely rigorous form of military schooling, and it is very difficult to survive without extreme discipline, but to say that the scholastic program rivals that at any Ivy is pure hyperbole. The academic quality difference between Ivy league schools and the academies, both in quality of teaching and quality of student, is significant.</p>
<p>Acceptance rates, by the way, may or may not reflect academic difficulty. For example, Caltech has acceptance rates routinely twice as high as the Ivies, despite being a muc more academically rigorous school.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>No, they don’t. Prestige is a measure of how successful and influential a school is; it’s a measure that more or less is in the eye of the beholder - and thus, in my opinion, is best measured through polling. And I would put a very large amount of money on the fact that if you polled widely, the academies wouldn’t even make the top 10 on the list. Sorry - I’m sure you like the academies a lot (and rightly so, they are impressive schools), but that does not require hyperbole.</p>
<p>This survey surely is among the least scientific and most impressionistic of those available. I don’t think it’s particularly helpful to applicants and I’m not even certain that the authors meant it to be an ordinal ranking. All of the schools listed are certainly fine schools and not much more can be learned from it than that.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>The relative selectivity of the academies has actually been dropping in recent years. Even in the early '90s, USMA and USNA had acceptance rates that were lower than all the Ivies.</p>
<p>Honestly, any prestige ranking that does not have Harvard first is flawed. I’m not saying Harvard is necessarily better, but it is indisputable that it has the widest name recognition and is the most highly regarded academic institution in America.</p>
<p>I hate seeing long dead ridiculous threads revived, and I’m sorry for continuing it. Whoever wrote this “ranking” is fairly clueless.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>Four of the schools on the list, the service academies and Cooper Union, are free. The other six, HYPS, Brown, and Columbia, are commited to meeting full demonstrated need for all applicants.</p>
<p>Annoying.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>Even though I turned down Harvard for Princeton, I have to agree with this. Harvard is the most prestigious university in the world in my opinion. Everyone I know from abroad says Harvard is generally more prestigious than even Cambridge (and Oxford) for undergraduate.</p>
<p>Some admin please lock down this thread. It was inane in 2008. Insipid now in 2012.</p>
<p>Please use old threads only for information, do not revive them. If you want to discuss the topic, use the New Thread button and start your own discussion.</p>
<p>Closing old thread.</p>