I have my ideas on academic seriousness that may differ from others.
But what do you mean by it? Students who take academics seriously?
I attended an Ivy League school and have a student at USC. While USC aspires to that educational status it is nothing like an Ivy. USC seems conflicted between becoming a serious educational institution and and its readily apparent prior aspirations focused on competing with the big Cal system and other state schools like UCLA, UT, etc. Its student body size and overarching focus on fielding semi-professional level sports teams reflects a continuing lack of focus on achieving an Ivy type experience. USC feels like âUSC - the Corporationâ with all its trademarked merchandise, runs the school with making money the prime focus of its existence. USC may have dressed up its campus and pulled in better faculty, but other than bringing in cultural events, it neglects its student body - especially freshmen. Its really not clear what role USC thinks the residential college system is intended to play for incoming or existing students, since the school appears to prefer to cede student social life to a rampant Greek system that it allows to grab incoming students before the first day of classes, in the process fracturing newly forming friendships.
Here are my tiers based off of alumni achievements:
http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/college-search-selection/1893105-ivy-equivalents-ranking-based-on-alumni-outcomes-take-2-1-p1.html
All of the Ivies/equivalents have very low acceptance rates except for Reed (and Bryn Mawr/Smith/Wellesley for girls and Vassar for guys).
Some of these schools have much higher ED acceptance rates.
Hate to break it to you @collegecurious49 but there is no such thing as an âIvy Feel.â
These are things Ivy League schools have in common:
All are in the Northeast (so, if you mean a geographic âIvy Feelâ stay north of Philly, East of Pittsburgh.)
All take students who, for the most part, have 1400 +/- or higher SAT, 30-31 or higher ACT, so look for schools with those stats.
5 of 8 Ivies have more students from the top 1% of wealthy families than from the bottom 60%, so if you want an âIvy Feelâ go to one of the 38 schools that also have more top1% than bottom 60% (https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2017/01/18/upshot/some-colleges-have-more-students-from-the-top-1-percent-than-the-bottom-60.html?mcubz=3&_r=0)
But really, many of the Ivies are very different and each will have unique âsimilarâ peers.
Dartmouth is not too different (but still different) from top NE LACs like Williams, Middlebury, Amherst etc.
Columbia, Brown, Penn, Harvard, while different in many ways, will âfeelâ similar to other competitive midsized âoldâ urban schools. There arenât that many in the North East actually: Carnegie Melon, maybe. And outside NE, Vanderbilt, UofChicago somewhat. Hopkins.
Cornell will feel more like a big rural/small town research U. Almost more like Michigan, or maybe (but not really) Duke, in some ways.
Yale and Princeton feel like small-city or small-town near big city schools.
And yes, in some respected USC âfeelsâ like Penn or Columbia in LA. Campus is vaguely similar. Students (while more SoCal) are socio-economically from a similar pool. Size is similar. Profs are similarâŠ
Iâd suggest (though you didnât ask) concentrating on what you like about specific Ivies and targeting schools that have similar atributes to what you like about a given school.
If you like Dartmouth cause its bucolic and in easy access to mountain hikes and cowtipping, you arenât really gonna love Columbia or Penn. If you like Princeton 'cause it small-town but only an hour train from Times Square, you might not love Cornell. If you like Penn because you want to be 2 hrs to NY and a few hrs to DC 'cause youâre not sure if you want to go to Wall Street or K Street, Brown might not be the best choice⊠you get the point. âIviesâ is a sports league. Unless itâs the Pac 12 and youâre a QB with pro aspirations, donât pick a school by itâs sportâs league.
@moscott No. Itâs not. The Ivy League is a sports league. It is a huge disservice to kids looking at schools to suggest that Penn and Dartmouth are similar simply because they play in the same sports league. Itâs just not true.
Many schools: MIT, Stanford, UofChicago, Cal, Duke etc. have as good or better reps than some of the âAncient 8â in some fields, so itâs not âjustâ rep. Prospective students are much better served knowing why they want to go to a specific school than picking off some arbitrary grouping of colleges from years ago.
Itâs really not fair to kids to perpetuate the myth that the Ivies âfeelâ any more alike than any other academically competitive university.
@CaliDad2020 Sorry but the term âIvy leagueâ encompasses much much more to parents/students on CC than âjustâ a sports conference. It means a top education with any of those schools where no other conference embodies those same qualities. Hence it is a way of using a term(Ivy league) to represent top academics with every school instead of trying to name off every single school. Of course MIT, Stanford, Chicago are as good and sometimes better but you canât say that for every school in their conference. Sports on CC especially is the least of factors when the term Ivy league is used. To summarily say that âthey are simply a sports conferenceâ is simply disingenuous.
âIvy Leagueâ is a sports league. Full stop. Not to hijack the OPâs thread, but I have seen the silliness that this insistence on âbrandingâ the Ivy League has created in some applying students.
Yes, no other sports conference embodies the same qualities of insisting on being D1 while not scholarshipping and supposedly adhering to more strict recruiting rules. But beyond that, it is simply wrong to mislead kids that the âexperienceâ at Dartmouth, Cornell and Penn will be significantly more âsimilarâ than the experience at Penn, UChicago and Hopkins say. Or that the Experience at Princeton and Columbia would be more similar than at NYU and Columbia. It is very, very hard to make that case, and I have seen first-hand too many well-intentioned students, parents and CC posters inadvertently mislead kids on their application path because they are chasing âIvy Leagueâ schools when they really want LAC educations. Or West Coast educations. Or affordable-for-the-middle-class education.
If everyone started being honest and called out the Ivy League for what it is: A sports league of very old, respected, storied US Universities of very different vibe, mission, characteristics and location, kids might do a better job of shopping for schools.
Back to @collegecurious49
Many, many schools from Bates to CIT, from Reed to GATech and tons in between, will have loads of serious students, (in fact, in some ways LACs have more âseriousâ students if by that you mean "not already looking for a job/career) highly qualified teachers and professors, amazing resources (and lots of fluff and distractions.) And programs inside various colleges/Universities will vary greatly in âseriouness.â Few would suggest, everything else being equal, that anyone pick Dartmouth over MIT, CIT, Stanford, Chicago (or about a dozen + other schools) to study Physics. Few would pick an Ivy for Cinema Arts over USC or NYU. Yale would not be more interesting than CMU for many engineering and design options⊠etc. etc.
Of course you may not yet know what you will be interested in, and certainly Ivies are often if not always âreally goodâ at almost everything (although some specialties are very lacking at different Ivies) so as far as a fail-safe they can be a great choice. But so can many other major research Uâs. Iâd identify financial, geographic, size, âvibeâ etc. characteristics you think may be important, then look for schools with good reputations that fit those criteria. Some might be in the Ivy League, some might not.
@CaliDad2020 Nice try. If you read other CC posters you would know exactly what they mean. Youâre just trying to use the âitâs just a sports leagueâ nonsense to demean for some reason. At worst itâs ALSO a sports league not âjustâ. All 8 schools offer what most high end kids on CC are striving for and without labeling each one by one the term Ivy league covers it. Of course they are different but they are also very much alike in academic excellence. Agree to disagree but you are just being argumentative when you know exactly what they mean when using the term. They are smart enough to know they arenât all the same imo.
Nice try at what? Accuracy? I have no reason to âdemeanâ the Ivies and if you actualy read my posts Iâve made it clear they are all great schools in their own ways. But Ivy adcoms will tell you the same thing. Columbia led off their admission presentation with that precise statement a few years ago when I was there. The Ivy League is a sports league.
I speak to a lot of kids about Ivy League schools, esp. here in CA, and there is a too-widely-held idea that the âAncent 8â are more âsimilarâ than they are, due to the easy (but imprecise) short-hand (and very aggressive branding) of the Ivies. There is a problem with many students, esp those not from the northeast, who donât understand the significant difference between the Ivies nor how âsimilarâ different individual Ivies are to other schools. At best it leads to spending money on applications to someplace they wonât every actually attend, at worst it means overlooking much better fits for those âreachâ schools kids love to apply to.
What I donât understand is why some folks insist on trying to perpetuate that inaccuracy. It does not at all help students with their college search to suggest that Dartmouth or Penn are inherently more âstudiousâ or âacademically excellentâ than Duke or Williams because of their sports league. Itâs just hype over HYPSMC.
post #14 captures some of the similarities.
Beyond those features, and maybe a few others, I probably mostly agree with @CaliDad2020.
I donât presume that anything I experienced would have been oh-so-different at, say, Northwestern.
We do get the secret handshake though, so thereâs thatâŠ
@CaliDad2020 The actual definition of Ivy league in the dictionary is: a group of long-established colleges and universities in the eastern US having high academic and social prestige. It includes Harvard, Yale, Princeton, Columbia, Dartmouth, Cornell, Brown, and the University of Pennsylvania.
Says absolutely nothing about being a sports conference. When kids use the term Ivy league they are speaking in regards to academicsâŠyou are reducing it to merely a sports league. They have in common such things as high academics, being in the Northeast, prestige, ivy covered, no academic scholarships(generally), no sports scholarships, great financial aid, large endowments, tradition and on and on. I understand to a degree your point about âsomeâ kids(not CC) maybe having a misconception about the Ivy schools but making a general statement reducing them to âsimply a sports leagueâ isnât doing them any favors either.
Ok. Weâll agree to disagree. But âthe Ivy Leagueâ is, explicitly, a sportâs league. And I think youâre overestimating how much a random HS junior, even one posting on CC knows about the âivy league.â I talk to about 50-100 kids a year from SoCal applying to schools and trust me, their understanding (or lack of understanding) of what each individual school is and offers is often surprising to shocking. And the number who are unaware of the Ivieâs academic peers, outside of Standford, MIT and CIT, is also often surprising.
But Iâll stop the thread jack here. Just make sure your kids donât go to Dartmouth if they want to wear tweed thrift store trenchcoats down Broadway, or to Penn if they want to stroll through autumnal cowpastures reading WhitmanâŠ
@calidad2020 ââŠvery aggressive branding) of the Ivies.â
I have heard this before, but in my experience, the Ivies have done almost nothing to brand. Most people here in the midwest have no idea which schools are Ivies. With over $100 billion in endowments, they certainly could market their brand aggressively, but seem to choose not to. Why do you think they brand themselves aggressively?
I think you nailed calidad2020âs point when you said âMost people here in the midwest have no idea which schools are Ivies.â You are correct. Many people have never heard of Brown or Dartmouth, think Penn is a state school and perhaps think Harvard, Yale and Princeton are the âIvy Leagueâ. Cornell and Columbia are toss-ups. But Brown could drop out and be replaced by Johns Hopkins without anyone outside of a small percentage of America noticing or caring.
I think the larger point is that if you ask âwhat are colleges with an Ivy feel?â there are dozens of different answers because the Ivies do not necessarily âfeelâ like one another. You might say that an Ivy League college is intellectual and has no frats, but then what about Princetonâs Eating Clubs which encompass a much larger % of students than any supposedly âfratâ school. Sports may not be as important as at Stanford, but what about a school like Dartmouth which, despite its much smaller size, has to recruit athletes to compete against much larger schools and thus they comprise a much higher % of their school? Some Ivies are much more pre-professional (Penn) and some are not. Not all of them are particularly intellectual â many students who are real intellectuals prefer the small class sizes of a small LAC and not a much larger Columbia. Does an intellectual seek out Dartmouth, which is more like a small LAC but the student body may not be particularly intellectual? There are, of course, students who are intellectual at every Ivy League college but there are at every college including Stanford, UCLA, Berkeley, USC (despite those being in supposedly unintellectual California).
If the question was âwhat are colleges with an Ivy feel?â then any college among the top 35 or so can be compared to the âfeelâ of some Ivy or another.
@moscott The members of the âIvy Leagueâ include some of the oldest universities in the US (Cornell is the relative newcomer, dating from 1865), and most of them have enjoyed a reputation for academic excellenceâand for educating the scions of the Northeastern eliteâthroughout most of their existence.
However, these eight schools were influential and highly regarded long before they joined together in the âIvy League,â which isâas @CaliDad2020 has rightly insistedâan athletics conference. Period.
The highly successful branding of the âIvy Leagueâ as a synonym for âthe bestâ reflects the sustained operation of a positive feedback mechanism: the more that branding takes hold, the more bright young students (especially relative newcomers, as in the thousands of Asian immigrants who speak the phrase âIvy Leagueâ in reverential tones) commit themselves to âgoing Ivyâ come hell or high water, the lower the acceptance rates are, the more âeliteâ and desirable the Ivies are seen to be, and the more the branding cycle repeats itself.
And I donât think that they are all actually covered in âivy.â
@MrSamford2014 Gee thanks for the tutorialâŠI had no idea :-S Not periodâŠalso an athletic conference as well as the other qualities noted previously. Not to mention all highly selective and low admission rates. Well that âbrandingâ has led to all 8 being ranked in the top 15 for academics so it must be working.
When you get some free time you can google the pictures of every Ivy school with the actual Ivy on the buildings and or stadiums.
(again OP, sorry to take this off topic, but maybe this discussion will be interesting for you in evaluating schools or, if you go to an Ivy, youâll be the resident Ivy League history expert!)
Iâll try not to hijack thread too much, but can you name another US college sports league that is associated primarily with academic strength? The âIvy Leagueâ brand might not be as ubiquitous in the midwest, but I think, compared to other âacademic college leaguesâ like the NESCAC, which is arguably as âacademic,â or the less elite but still well regarded Centennial Conference, the Ivy League is far and away more âbranded.â How and why, I am less aware of.
This Columbia Spectator article investigates it a bit:
"When the Ivy League was founded in 1954, athletic performance was importantâso important that it influenced prospective studentsâ decision to attend a school and alumniâs decision to donate. Because football was meaningful to the markets with the most control over a collegeâs finances and reputation, it became of vital significance to the school. http://features.columbiaspectator.com/eye/2016/02/17/how-to-build-a-brand/
I did a quick NYT archive search for fun and found constant references (almost weekly in football season) to the âIvyâ league (all give it âqoutesâ), starting in 1935 (league was officially formed in the 50âs. The Military Academies were part of the old informal league of the 30âs I think.) No other schools were associated with a âleague.â Whether by design or accident, the âIvyâ league was being branded long before it was officially formed.
https://timesmachine.nytimes.com/timesmachine/1935/11/05/88617253.html?pageNumber=35
https://timesmachine.nytimes.com/timesmachine/1936/12/01/88089714.html?pageNumber=33
On Dec. 3, 1936 seven (no Brown) Ivy school newspapers ran simultaneous editorial calling for formation of Ivy League for âenlightened cooperation.â (Didnât become official for almost 20 years.)
https://timesmachine.nytimes.com/timesmachine/1936/12/03/88091396.html?pageNumber=33
Recently the Ivy League signed a 10 year branding deal:
http://www.jmisports.com/the-ivy-league-names-jmi-sports-official-marketing-rights-agency/
If I had more time, Iâd search some of the Chicago and LA/ SF papers to see how it played out there as wellâŠ
@calidad2020 âIâll try not to hijack thread too much, but can you name another US college sports league that is associated primarily with academic strength?â
Come on Calidad2020, this is cc: we are academic nerds, of course I can. I can think of three that are very strong academically.
- Patriot league
- UAA (University Athletic Association)
- NESCAC
@moscott âThe members of the âIvy Leagueâ include some of the oldest universities in the US (Cornell is the relative newcomer, dating from 1865), and most of them have enjoyed a reputation for academic excellenceâand for educating the scions of the Northeastern eliteâthroughout most of their existence.â
Right. Except for Cornell, the Ivies are all older than the United States.
âHowever, these eight schools were influential and highly regarded long before they joined together in the âIvy League,â which isâas @CaliDad2020 has rightly insistedâan athletics conference. Period.â
While it is an athletic conference, it is not âan athletics conference. Period.â It is more than that. These 8 schools coordinate on more than just sports, and those relationships among the schools existed long before âThe Ivy Leagueâ was an athletic conference, which was a fairly recent development.
For example, in admissions, all announce on the same day, and none of them give merit scholarships, etc.
@mrsamford2014 âAnd I donât think that they are all actually covered in âivy.ââ
Well, I have visited 7 of them, and there is plenty of Ivy at all 7. I have not had a reason to visit Darthmouth, but maybe someday.
I categorize colleges that âfeelâ like Ivy Leagues in the following categories:
âItâs Not an Ivy??â - Stanford, Duke, etc. Many people confuse these schools with Ivy League and they offer close to the exact same opportunities. The biggest difference is that they werenât in the same athletic conference.
âFeels Like Ivy League Except Its Crappierâ - UVa, New York University, Boston College, etc. You probably wonât end up on Wall Street or have all the once in a life time opportunities but at least you can party it up as if you were in the Ivy League. Then graduate on to your completely average life.
âNot Like Ivy at All But in Like Ivy Lists to Bolster Bruised Egosâ - UC Berkeley, University of Michigan, etc. These are pretty good schools; but, are not like Ivy Leagues at all. You will be mired with school work and overworked your 4 years. Then you wonât even end up with a cushy Wall Street job.
I think the PAC 12 is pretty strong, with UCLA, Cal, Stanford and USC leading the way, but the rest are not exactly pikers either. B1G has Michigan, Wisconsin and Northwestern, and again the other schools are very strong in one way or another.
There are tons of schools that fit the OPâs question.