<p>I don’t know why everyone is getting so worked up about this. </p>
<p>1.) Yes, Colgate is prestigious. Sure, Colgate students get a lot of isnt that a toothpaste school?, but that happens with a lot of prestigious schools.
For instance, when I got accepted to University of Pennsylvania, a lot of people asked me, University of Pennsylvania? Isnt that Penn State?.
The same thing happened when I got into Pomona Collegealmost everyone I spoke to (including teachers!!!) said Wow, Cal State Pomona is such a nice place!.
Despite the fact that UPenn, Pomona, and Colgate are all top schools, many people havent heard of any of them. However, most of the top execs have heard of all three of those schoolsand they are the ones doing the hiring! =-)</p>
<p>2.) No one should ever base their college decision primarily on prestige. I got into many Ivy league schools as well as places like Pomona, Claremont McKenna, UCLA, UC Berkeley, etc; but I ultimately chose Colgate over all of them. Why? Because I felt that Colgate would be the best fit for ME. Prestige doesnt mean anything if you dont like the school that youre going to. If you go to the top school in the country, but hate being there, your transcript will probably reflect it. Then, when you apply to grad school, you might get beat out by students who did well at lesser schools.</p>
<p>Never pick a school because its ranked a few spots higher than the other schools that you got into. Pick the school that is a better fit-- if it’s the higher ranked school, so be it.</p>
<p>But honestly, is there really a significant difference between the #4 school (Stanford) and the #1 school (Princeton)?</p>
<p>I would definitely agree with you, TennisGirl, especially since due to their capricious nature, the rankings will change each year to some degree anyway. Also, there is a lot more to college and how the experience will be suited to you than how one’s transcript looks at the end of it.</p>
<p>If you’re from PA, and are down to Colgate and Penn St (with money not coming into the equation), are you going to go to Penn St over Colgate because of a less strong student body at PSU gives you a better chance at a high GPA? I think most people would not and would rather get a 3.4 GPA at Colgate rather than a 3.8 GPA at Penn St. Except maybe for people legitamitely aspiring to med school, I don’t think you can be thinking about the potential of your transcript before you’re even enrolled. So many unknown factors are going to come into play.</p>
<p>If that was to me since I am from PA and did get into Colgate and Penn State, I’ll say this. The only reason I considered Penn state is because of the honors college which is 1200 students over all four years and has access to tremendous opportunities of a huge research school and the advantages that a LAC offers in the form of small classes and intimate academic relationships with professors. I talked to a few profs and all of them made it clear that they’d love to work with me (a neuroscience/bio major wannabe) as long as i had the framework for the research they would have me do. Since i’ve done CTY genetics and stuff, I have the background to run tests that they’d want me to do as a freshman as long as I was brushed up a little bit. That was pretty good. PSU Schreyer honors college does really well with grad school and job placement too, and all students are required to complete a graduate thesis to graduate with honors. This thesis again involves working with professors to find something to do and getting their guidance to do it so the opportunities are present.
Colgate is an awesome school and I respect it very much, but I didn’t feel right there.
I’m not going to Penn state, URochester, or any of those places. I’m going to Wesleyan, and I do want to go to med school.</p>
<p>good choice and congratulations on Wesleyan! You’ll probably have the best research opportunities there, just the overall better school, in my opinion.</p>
<p>As far as prestige goes, Colgate is with the best of the liberal arts bunch. True, not many have heard about them (It was a bit disheartening letting my AP teachers know that I had gotten into Davidson and Colgate to only receive blank stares, but it happens). I live in California, and I am going to a great school that not many on the west coast have heard about. I still love William and Mary (where I start this fall); the final choice should be about personal fit not reputation. Colgate is great though, also physically stunning.</p>
<p>You seem to think Northwestern is overrated in just about every ranking you saw. Can you elaborate why it’s overrated? NU has MANY top-20 departments across variety of fields (chemistry, economics, english, history, psychology, art history, ALL of the 9 engineering fields, music, journalism, education, film, theater…etc); not to mention the world famous b-school and top-20 law and med schools. The latest average SAT are 1423 for the enrolled and 1463 for the admitted students. It’s one of the top-5 in the latest number of fulbright awards. It’s well-ranked in the WSJ feeder ranking despite its east-coast bias. What more do you want? Which schools should be ahead of it if it’s overrated?</p>
<p>This is an old thread, so don’t specifically what the context was. I have historically thought of Northwestern as the best of the Big 10 schools with some pretty good grad schools, but really not as good for UG. Rankings for UG depts are meaningless and baseless to me anyway and not really what I would focus on. When I was applying to schools, the SAT avg at Colgate, Middlebury, Wesleyan, Bowdoin, Haverford, Cornell, Johns Hopkins, Carnegie Mellon all were higher than Northwestern. Apparently, this is no longer the case. However, with the exception of CMU, the acceptance rate at Northwestern is still higher than all these other schools. Maybe, it’s a midwestern cultural thing where a higher % want to go to the public schools.</p>
<p>gellino,
No, in the midwest we do not have a cultural thing about wanting to attend public schools. Some of the midwest schools such as Northwestern and WashU in St. Louis, have a significant number of students from all over the world, actually making it more difficult for midwestern kids to get in because of the schools wanting geographic diversity.</p>
<p>"No, in the midwest we do not have a cultural thing about wanting to attend public schools. "</p>
<p>I guess maybe it’s fair to say that nobody speaks for the entire midwest.</p>
<p>Not me either.</p>
<p>But in the part of the midwest I recently left, there certainly was a cultural thing about wanting to attend public schools. Or at least doing it, whether one secretly wanted to or not. The proportion of private schools that even existed there was far lower than where I now live in the Northeast.</p>
<p>Probably 80% of my daughter’s high school there attended one of three local public universities.</p>
<p>There were also far fewer private high schools, both in number and proporion.</p>
<p>One thing that easterners don’t understand is that many west coast public schools (nearly every UC) and midwest schools (UMich, Wisconsin, UICC) are all ranked higher than a ‘comparable’ NE public flagship. As a result, attending an in-state school makes smart ecnonomic sense. Moreover, some folks like big time Saturday afternoon football…</p>
<p>Bluebayou, I think we EastCoasters do understand both the rankings and excitement of cheering for your school’s football (and basketball) team. And that’s why so many of our sons and daughters attend those schools, despite not benefitting from the tuition break.</p>
<p>My son has no interest in any of the NE LACs his sister looked into before going to Colgate. He might prefer Duke, Georgetown or Vanderbilt, but since there’s a good chance he won’t get in, he’s applied to UMich & Wisc. and would be very happy at either. A number of his friends are applying to UICC or OSU.</p>
<p>Not as good for undergrad? Can you elaborate? You seem to think this applies to Northwestern more than other research Us like JHU or Cornell. What’s your basis for that? I am willing to listen to your theory. So bring it on!! </p>
<p>Some of those schools haven’t had higher SAT than Northwestern for OVER A DECADE. Where have you been?</p>
<p>I also find it interesting you brought up acceptance rate (to justify how Northwestern is “overrated”?) while saying graduating ranking is meaningless. Acceptance rate is a function of number of applicants and school size, not necessarily a good measure of the caliber of student body. Chicago has higher acceptance rate than even Northwestern; yet its student body is of higher caliber than many schools’ with lower acceptace rates. It’s the caliber of your peers that mattes to you, not whether they are 10 out of 50 or 10 out of 70 that got in, even though the two correlate well often (but not always). </p>
<p>I personally think many LACs don’t get the recognition they deserve. I would have had said nothing if you wrote research Us were generally overrated. But you’ve been picking on Northwestern more than others as if it’s more overrated than other research Us. So please elaborate how Cornell, CMU, or JHU…are less overrated and more undergrad oriented than NU despite the fact NU has lower faculty/student ratio than all of them (7/1 vs 10/1)?</p>
<p>By the way, I don’t know how one measures undergrad education anyway; so I am often puzzled when someone like you make various claims about it without any data to back them up. On the contrary, I can find quite a few lists or rankings that seem to indicate NU ug is up there. Here’s one example: [Undergraduate</a> Recruiting at Vault’s Top Six Consulting Firms: Vault Management and Strategy Consulting Career Information](<a href=“http://www.vault.com/nr/newsmain.jsp?nr_page=3&ch_id=252&article_id=14364421&cat_id=1223]Undergraduate”>http://www.vault.com/nr/newsmain.jsp?nr_page=3&ch_id=252&article_id=14364421&cat_id=1223) It’s not necessarily a good indication of ug education but it certainly beats opinions seemingly coming out of vaccum like yours.</p>
<p>One, I applied to schools in the last decade so that what was relevant to me and my outlook on schools. Apparently, Northwestern has improved a lot since, although would think that still doesn’t make it in the consciousness of east coast grads before this decade to the same extent that Cornell, JHU, Georgetown do. At least, I wouldn’t think it’s worth driving ten more hours to go to school or having to subject yourself to flights vs going to Cornell, Tufts, JHU, Georgetown if you’re already from the East coast and plan on returning there. In my IB analyst class, MBA class, subsequent Wall St positions, there have been very few from Northwestern at least in comparison to Cornell, Tufts, Georegtown.</p>
<p>Last decade? It looks to me more like 2 decades. NU was ranked #9 couple times in the 90s and their current rank, 14th, is actually one of their worst since the first US News ranking. NU has ALWAYS been ranked higher than Tufts and Georgetown. No, NU hasn’t improved a lot; if anything, it’s Tufts that has improved a lot in the last 5 years. A look at campus schedule for JP Morgan shows NU is more a target than most of the schools you mentioned: [JPMorgan</a> - Campus Schedule](<a href=“Careers Home | JPMorgan Chase & Co.”>Careers Home | JPMorgan Chase & Co.) </p>
<p>Please look at the top MC recruiting list I just posted, NU is matched by very few schools. </p>
<p>Your MBA class? Please look at this one: <a href=“http://www.wsjclassroomedition.com/pdfs/wsj_college_092503.pdf[/url]”>http://www.wsjclassroomedition.com/pdfs/wsj_college_092503.pdf</a> WSJ feeder ranking shows NU is ahead of Cornell and way ahead of Tufts. As for Wall St positions, even if there have been very few, how do you know many Northwestern grads actually applied for those positions? Many stay in Chicago and I personally think Chicago provides better quality of life (cleaner, more spacious, less expensive, and probably slightly less competitive).</p>
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<p>lol! I don’t know travelling on a 2-hr flight few times a years is such a big deal to you. So you think I was crazy when I came from Hong Kong to attend NU?</p>
<p>I suggest you not to judge things based on your own little world.</p>
<p>By the way, the rating shouldn’t be based on where <em>you</em> live? That’s your own preference ranking but not helpful for many others on CC. I think you have a pretty self-centric view. The US (and the world) is much more than just the East coast.</p>
<p>Using USNWR as your justification of how ‘good’ your college is relatively mindless and was not really at all adhered to before this decade. Northwestern is not better than Tufts because USNWR says the former is #14 and the latter is #19 (this year) or whatever it is. </p>
<p>Since you were from HK, you were getting on a flight no matter what college you attended once you decided you were coming to the U.S., so that was a constant for you. The vast majority of Americans are not getting on a flight to go to school. </p>
<p>You lose sight of there is no absolute rating. You are trying to jam round pegs in a square hole. Bowdoin and Hamilton are known as strong schools, but are not nearly as well known outside the northeast, so would not be nearly as useful or effective places to go if you’re looking to relocate to the midwest or west coast. Not being from this country and not having this appreciation is the only way I can see that you could dispute this.</p>