<p>By the way, I don’t know if this has been mentioned elsewhere, but that WSJ ranking explicitly excludes Penn Med from its top-5 med schools, while at the same time acknowledging that a record high number of Penn undergrad alums were at Penn Med at the time (see the commentary on Penn in the actual ranking). Sort of outrageous to exclude a med school that is clearly top-3, let alone top-5. Obviously, this artificially lowered Penn–and perhaps some other schools–in the ranking, as may have some other debatable choices of the top-5 professional schools.</p>
<p>Med:Columbia, Harvard, UC SF, Yale, JHU
MBA: Chicago, Dartmouth, Harvard, MIT, Penn
Law: Chicago, Columbia, Harvard, Michigan, Yale</p>
<p>9/15 are Ivy League. Chicago is one school that shouldn’t complain, with two of its own programs in it. Dartmouth has one. </p>
<p>Out of Med: Schools with right to complain include Stanford, Penn, Duke, Wash U, and Columbia.
Out of Law: Schools with right to complain are several, especially Stanford.
Out of Biz: Northwestern and Stanford have good reason to complain.</p>
<p>Note that out of the schools with a legitimate reason to complain, aside from Wash U ALL are highly ranked - Stanford Duke Penn and Columbia are all in the top 15.</p>
<p>“Or they didn’t get in.”</p>
<p>A possible scenario, but it’s unlikely that a Swattie would not have been able to get admitted U Penn.</p>
<p>Surely you know the quality of Swarthmore students.</p>
<p>thethoughtprocess,
So the moral is: don’t put too much stock in the specific placement of any school within the WSJ ranking.</p>
<p>
However, although Swathmore’s stats are comparable to Penn’s in general, Wharton’s are significantly more competitive (lower admit rate, higher yield rate, higher SAT-M scores, etc.).</p>
<p>DT, </p>
<p>If they wanted to major in business, they probably applied to Wharton which is harder to get in than the rest of Penn though. I think Swarthmore students are really smart, btw. But regular Penn CAS admissions are slightly easier than Wharton’s.</p>
<p>45 percenter,</p>
<p>Yeah, I agree specific placements aren’t that important…but being in the top 15 means the school is excellent. I don’t think the top group of schools would change even other schools were added or some removed (Stanford might go from 4th to 2nd…Dartmouth might drop 1-2…Northwestern might move up 1-2)</p>
<p>Let’s go back to the idea of fit. Looking at all of these feeder/RP rates are silly. If you choose JHU because of its 85 percent med school acceptance rate [making that up], you could still end up in the 15 percent that don’t get in.</p>
<p>If you’re interested in pre-med, I think what’s most important is that you are surrounded by students, professors, and opportunities that make you feel at home and happy and encourage you to do your best. If you feel like you’d shine at WashU and be unhappy at Dartmouth, there’s no reason to choose D because you’d think it would “bump” you into med school.</p>
<p>I would have a few reasons for choosing WashU:</p>
<p>1) I need a city. Sorry, slipper, but your explanations of what Dartmouth kids do for fun is not appealing to me. I have no doubt that Dartmouth kids have fun and love being in Hanover, but I need to see people and cars and buildings that have nothing to do with the college. I hate feeling stuck in a bubble.</p>
<p>2) Despite WashU’s wacky waitlisting, I think it’s an excellent school that offers excellent programs, especially in med. Getting in ED is no cakewalk. The WashU kids I know like to describe the school as similar to an ivy, but minus a lot of east coast competition and pretension.</p>
<p>“The WashU kids I know like to describe the school as similar to an ivy, but minus a lot of east coast competition and pretension.”</p>
<p>Impossible. Duke already reserved that tag line years ago. Stanford has the same thing going for it but better.</p>
<p>Does Wash U have news articles that specifically address Duke’s disdain for being second fiddle to Harvard like below?</p>
<p><a href=“http://media.www.dukechronicle.com/media/storage/paper884/news/2006/09/04/News/Duke-Still.Step.Below.Top.Schools-2255803.shtml[/url]”>http://media.www.dukechronicle.com/media/storage/paper884/news/2006/09/04/News/Duke-Still.Step.Below.Top.Schools-2255803.shtml</a></p>
<p>Dartmouth (and Brown) likely has less competition and pretension than WashU.</p>
<p>Likely because why?</p>
<p>At least the one thing you won’t run into during a visit to WU is a tour guide or adcom speaker who feels compelled to drop the reminder “Ivy League” into every other sentence. </p>
<p>What keeps most WU students humble is that when they go home, anywhere outside the Midwest at least, they have to include a short geography lesson to anyone who asks where they’re going to college. (…No, it’s not in Washington state…No, not in Wash D.C. either… It’s in St. Louis. St. Louis, Missouri.) </p>
<p>Pretentious? Hardly. As for competitive, I think it’s fairer to say that pre-med students at D, B, or WU are likely to be equally driven and competitive. But that the students outside that major are similarly fun-loving, laid-back, cooperative, and friendly.</p>
<p>I’m a big fan of Dartmouth and Hanover, NH, but I think that the Dartmouth supporters need to take off their rally caps for a minute and give a little more regard to the folks at Wash U.</p>
<p>Wash U is the school that the Ivies love to hate because they have broken the mold for college admissions through their mass mailing approach and their aggressive use of merit aid to steal top students from Ivies and other top schools. While their mailings may have turned off, rather than turned on, more people, clearly their use of merit aid has been very successful in attracting very high quality students. For example, today Wash U ties for 4th nationally for SAT Math scores (Dartmouth-9th) and 9th for Critical Reading (Dartmouth-6th). There is plenty of data to compare and, as jazzymom’s earlier post demonstrates, no matter what the Dartmouth partisans might state, these schools are statistically very, very close. </p>
<p>I will second the views of others that different folks will like either school. Both are terrific schools, both have extremely loyal and supportive alumni, both have very happy and successful students and both can and do regularly place their students into top graduate schools and have strong recruiting appeal, particularly in their home regions. But these are very different college environments that will likely appeal to different types of students. However, combining this fit uncertainty with the equal academic environments makes recommending one automatically over the other a very slanted conclusion.</p>
<p>Hawkette, comparing statistics is fine. You, however, are missing a very critical point. People in the general public could care less about them. To illustrate my point, when I got accepted to Rice and was considering going, most of my peers (students who were admitted to Duke, harvard, yale, stanford, penn, columbia, etc.) looked at me with almost contempt. The reaction was like why on earth would you consider that school? Didn’t you get into anything else? These intelligent people are kids that will be leading our country one day. None of them care that Rice’s SAT range is on par with Stanford’s or exceeds Columbia’s. I went to a doctor before I made a decision and the doctor I spoke with was like where is Rice? The same applies to Wash U. St. Louis. People are only familiar with schools that have long maintained a tradition of academic excellence. Smaller schools in other parts of the country still do not have this aura. I know you will probably throw a few statistics at my post to claim how ludicrous this post is. However, should you look at target schools for big companies, you will see Wash U and Rice are absent from many of them. Maybe it is because of their locations or perhaps it is because corporate America doesn’t view them the way that statistics portray them…</p>
<p>Columbiahopeful:</p>
<p>You don’t really think that the “general public” is comprised only of people in your NE neighborhood or your privileged, highly competitive h.s., do you? </p>
<p>Do you really believe that the leaders of our country “someday” are going to come only from your region of the country, from your immediate peers? Because none of your peers care about something, that’s it for you…no other opinions throughout the country could possibly mean anything? </p>
<p>“A” doctor you spoke to wasn’t familiar with Rice? This is evidence to you? </p>
<p>Your narrowness of view is truly breathtaking. It’s almost worthy of parody. Too bad you didn’t choose to go to Rice, your horizons would have been broadened beyond your imagination.</p>
<p>“These intelligent people are kids that will be leading our country one day.”</p>
<p>Glad to know that YOUR friends will be leading the country one day! :rolleyes:</p>
<p>I meant that kids like these will be influential one day, if history predicts the future. Many politicians in this country graduated from the aformentioned schools.</p>
<p>
debatable at best</p>
<p>
do you really want my answer to that question?</p>
<p>elsijfdl,
I think we will just reach different conclusions about the relative worth and the need for prestige when you compare Wash U and Dartmouth and even if you want to add in Northwestern and Rice. All are superb schools and IMO if anyone chooses any of these for anything other than personal fit, then that is a different choice than I would have made. I think you are too concerned with “how the general public thinks.” I think (hope!) that students who attend Wash U (or Rice) don’t need the approval of the general public to convince them that they are attending an extremely high quality university and probably (both) among the nation’s Top 10-15 universities.</p>
<p>Even I don’t like some of the practices utilized by WashU admission, I’d say WashU is probably better for bio and premed. It has a highly ranked bio (is Dartmouth’s bio ranked?) and a top-ranked med school (is Dartmouth’s med school ranked?). That Dartmouth is better in the eyes of corporate America is irrelevant when the OP already narrowed it down to BIO/PREMED. Just because a school is any Ivy doesn’t mean it’s better in everything and NE isn’t the center of universe either. Last I checked, there are way more millionaires in Los Angeles/OC than NYC.</p>
<p>Bio grad department and med school rank have nothing to do with undergrad. Overall reputation is what gets you into med school. Med school admissions officers know the difference between good undergrad schools and good grad schools.</p>
<p>That’s not necessarily true. Med school admission cares about the research you do. I have a hard time believing a good recommedation from one of the leading experts in the bio/biomed field or EC at one of the leading hospitals/med schools carries absolutely no weight.</p>