<p>@prezbucky: Tell me about it…</p>
<p>It actually is not a horrible analogy because Stanford and MIT (these two are quite “techy”) are markedly different from HYP in terms of the academic environment kind of like Rice and Emory (these two lean more to the “quirky” and “work hard” feel) are a bit different from Vandy and Duke (okay, this one is on a different level, but if we were for simplicity’s sake say that the 4 top southern private research institutions are indeed similar, I would pair these two in terms of social environment and overall “feel” I guess. When you take a closer look at the academic programs you find a bit of a different story, but let’s just roll with it for now) with Emory being the most different (because of the D-3 sports, the huge behind business school, and no engineering entity). So honestly, while I get while people would compare caliber of the institutions, I don’t know why bother compare the environments. Seems more naive people act as if they are essentially the same schools with different scores or prestige. They really aren’t. I would say that 3/4 of them are similar caliber, but are markedly different in feel and people should be aware of that when applying. Some students would have been better off at a place like USC or UCLA if they could get into them and did not get into Vandy or something than they would be if they went to Rice, Emory, JHU, or WashU or something. And some Vandy students may be better off at schools like those (like if they were really into an academic department or some departments that were generally stronger at the others or something. In some cases, the social experience won’t compensate enough for those folks just as academics may not compensate enough for those at the others). </p>