<p>Sam Lee: I would never say that I really knew the specifics of a school unless I was actually attending there. I didn’t mean to claim complete ignorance. If you are attending NU, congratuations. Do you really know enough about Notre Dame to make definite comparsions, and how do you compare two schools at that level anyway? I really think that the OP is from outside the US and was just asking whether Notre Dame is well known to the general public. I am just saying that NU and Notre Dame are both extremely strong academically and more people have probably heard of Notre Dame than Northwestern. I’m not trying to talk anyone into going to Notre Dame.</p>
<p>Roger: I did realize my mistake about Duke after it was too late. Go Blue Devils. Actually, I think Duke’s academic reputation suffers a little because of its sports status. It is certainly as good as the ivies, but some people think of it primarily in terms of its basketball team. It is a little like people thinking that a beautiful blonde can’t be smart because she is so pretty. :)</p>
<p>To the general public, ND is more well-known than NU. But then again, the general public has little influence over your career, so I wouldn’t go to college based on what the general public thinks.</p>
<p>In terms of academic reputation, both are great, but I think NU has the edge here.</p>
<p>I don’t have to attend Notre Dame to know they don’t have as many renowned and ranked programs. It’s like you don’t have to attend Duke to “know” they have great BME. Duke has highly ranked BME program and that’s not my opinion, it’s a fact. Also, the BME grads from Duke are more highly sought by biomedical industry. I think it’s pretty safe to conclude they have great BME based on these two things. Same thing for some of Northwestern’s programs such as econ. Not only it’s highly ranked but also the school is one of the only dozen schools that are consistently considered “core schools” for recruiting by top consulting firms. <a href=“http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/showthread.php?t=108904&highlight=consulting+center[/url]”>http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/showthread.php?t=108904&highlight=consulting+center</a> It should be fairly safe to say their econ program is likely better than ND, at least in the eyes of those that did the rankings and recruiters. </p>
<p>Besides, I was not talking about the actual quality of undergrad education, I was talking about published rankings and data (like the list above or placement to top law schools…etc). They are available on the web. You flip through those rankings and Notre Dame don’t come up often in those. That’s the “definite comparison” I can make. That doesn’t mean they don’t have great academic programs but they just don’t place as high on existing rankings. People don’t live thousand years to attend many colleges to find out the actual quality and so they have to resort to some other ways to judge. It’s not perfect but that’s the best people can do. I was just explaining why Northwestern comes up more often on CC since you implied you didn’t know the reason. I didn’t say those rankings were absolutely flawless.</p>
<p>What would happen if we moved the discussion away from NU to the other schools that the OP mentioned, Hopkins and Georgetown. I just think that colleges like Hopkins, Georgetown, Wash U, Emory, and Northwestern do not the have the presence in the public mind that other schools such as the ivies, MIT, sports schools, and the UC’s have. I still feel that the OP is just trying to make sure that Notre Dame is not a highly ranked American college that the general public hasn’t heard of, like Hopkins or Emory. (Of course, Georgetown has basketball and Hopkins only has lacrosse.)</p>
<p>Whether this should matter a lot is debatable, but the OP hasn’t said that it does matter a lot. I would like to make the point that the rankings are about as useful as the opinions of the general public based on sports. A person should pick a college based on personal fit. Minor nuances (that would depend on a person’s major) between the academics at NU and Notre Dame are totally insane when you compare the two schools. The BIG comparison between NU and Notre Dame is that NU is that it is a suburban/urban campus while Notre Dame is a football powerhouse in an extremely rural area.</p>
<p>I’d beg to differ. Like Flavian said, I think the general public has less influence over your career than those in the knows. For example, students who study in one of those core schools for recruiting by top consulting firms have a definite edge in getting employed by one of those firms. I am very confident Hopkins has much better med school/grad school placement than Nebraska even more people in the general public may have heard of Nebraska (football). However, the difference in career/grad school placement between ND, Emory, Georgetown, Hopkins is probably not significant (exception would probably be political career and Georgetown has a clear edge in that).</p>
<p>I would argue that there is no such thing as a lower ivy. I suppose that it doesn’t hurt to say that Bill Gates is one of the richest billionaires, but do you really have to call some other guy one of the poorer billionaires.</p>
<p>It is human to categorize and rank objects.</p>
<p>Sam Lee: What? Job interviewers can’t be football fans? Also, being in the top 10% of the pre-med majors at Nebraska would be so much better than the bottom 50% at JHU.</p>
<p>Any ranking whether by USNWR or by the general public has severe problems. I find it interesting that we are ranking the rankings. USNWR is a much better way to rank colleges than just prestige? (Actually, that is what USNWR said when they came out in the 80’s.) You seem to have no problem in drawing a huge divide between NU (USNWR=12) and Notre Dame (USNWR=18).</p>
<p>Harvard is well known for complaints about undergrad classes being taught by TA’s instead of full professors. Still, the prestige of Harvard among the dumb public would make it hard for somebody to turn Harvard down for a college that is a better personal fit. The percent of students at JHU saying the behavior of classmates is cutthroat is 45.9% compared to 2.3% at Stanford and 0.3% at Brown. An individual might be better off at Nebraska than JHU. (The other high scorers were UChicago:20.5%, UPenn:20.4%, Cornell:20.1%, MIT:11.9% and Harvard:11.7%…NU was 5.9%.)</p>
<p>You seem to keep confusing what I said. Where did I say there’s “huge divide” between NU and ND? In fact, I wrote this:
Yes, job interviewers can be football fans. Where did I say they can’t be? But so what? The scandal of Colorado football program few years ago was a big news. That’s big time opportunity for name recognition! If you think that really helps how recruiters think of Colorado, power to you! Regarding JHU vs Nebraska, I was talking about the overall performance of the student body. </p>
<p>That NU has many more ranked programs is a fact and NOT my personal opinion. I didn’t author the ranking. I merely stated what’s out. It explains why Northwestern comes up more often on CC. Whether you think the rankings are just or not is another issue. </p>
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<p>USNWR ranks one kind of “prestige”–academic reputation or “peer assessment”. There are several kinds of “prestige”. Two of them are “name recognition” and “academic reputation”. The former can be obtained by some good football/basketball program whereas the latter cannot. Most recruiters are most likely in the knows and care more the academic reputation. You can’t deny that there are more major firms recruiting at Penn than Oklohoma. Look up the list of core schools for top consulting firms. Do you see any school on that list simply because of its football program? There are even couple LACs that most general public have never heard of but in the eyes of recruiters, they are stars.</p>
<p>Regarding the fit, I didn’t comment on it and I never said anything to suggest they aren’t imporant. It’s just not related to the discussion until you brought it up just now.</p>
<p>Sam Lee: you’ve said:
“However, for those that are at least semi-well-educated and care somewhat about schools, I’d definitely put Hopkins and Northwestern above ND. … On the other hand, ND seems not to have any star academic program though it does have the football.” I’m glad you like NU so much. I would still be interested if you would say the same about Hopkins, WashU, Georgetown or Emory in a comparison with Notre Dame.</p>
<p>To the OP: Really, in comparing NU, Hopkins, Notre Dame and Georgetown, the academic reputations are so similar that you can say that going any one of the schools would guarantee a superb education provided you show up for class. The environments, though, are very dissimilar and I would advise you to make your choice based more on those factors. Hopkins is in a suburban-like part of North Baltimore on a beautiful campus. The academic atmosphere is somewhat cutthroat. Georgetown is urban but the campus is cohesive in Washington DC. The students tend to well-to-do and Catholic, but as in all colleges, there are all segments of the population. Notre Dame is a rural campus with football and extreme school spirit. Notre Dame has the highest Catholic influence. In terms of man on the street, Notre Dame could very well be the only college he has heard of.</p>
<p>Hopkins is similar to Northwestern in the sense that it has quite a few renowned/ranked programs. That’s why it has better academic reputation (not name recognition by some average person on the street or fast food manager). I do agree ND probably has more name recognition than all other four among general public. Georgetown has a very skewed reputation in the sense that it’s very known in political circle and got great programs in poli sci/international relation but I don’t hear much about its science/engineering (does it have an engineering school?). WashU and Emory are similar to ND; they are all solid but most people, even those that know something about colleges, probably have a hard time to to point out what exactly they are known for, other than them being in the top-20 or so.</p>
<p>Emory has a med school equal to Hopkins. Emory covers Atlanta in the same way that Hopkins covers Baltimore. Also, Georgetown has a major med school and hospital. Emory also has a business school in the league of Harvard and Wharton. However, I guess with 3400 colleges in the country, I tend to put the top 20 pretty much all in the same category without distinguishing between them too much. This would put NU, ND, Hopkins, WashU, and Emory all in the same category. I do NOT think there is a significant and obvious difference between NU (USNWR=12) and WashU (11), JHU (13), Notre Dame (18) and Emory (20). I would say that JHU is especially known for medicine, Northwestern is especially known for theatre, and Georgetown is especially known for political science. That doesn’t mean that nobody else has those programs. Actually, Emory is also very good for political science and has the Carter Center.</p>
<p>You know, it is not really right to think that a school that is ranked 10th in something is twice as good as a school that is ranked 20th when hundreds if not thousands of schools are being ranked. </p>
<p>Also, I forgot to say that NU is a school you think of when Journalism is mentioned.</p>
<p>I see your point and I am not disagreeing with you.</p>
<p>Again, I am merely pointing out and descibing the perception out there. I am not justifiying it or anything. When I say “star” programs, I mean they are what people who know something about colleges (but not experts) think of instantly when certain schools are mentioned. Usually a school needs to have the programs ranked in the top-5 to get that kind of recongition. A program ranked the 20th is not going to cut it (probably too many for people’s brains to keep track of. :)). Emory may very well have a med school in the same league as Hopkins like you said but that’s not how many people see it. Like you said, people do tend to overplay the difference.</p>