<p>Their mascot is the violet, of course they’re a joke. “I go to NYU.” might get a few more ‘oooohs’ and ‘ahhhhs’ from college admissions plebians, but “Yes, I’m a Colgate graduate.” is going to count way more in the grad school/job recruitment areas.</p>
<p>Ahem…as a Colgate parent, but an NYU alum: violet is the school’s color, not its mascot. The mascot,to the extent it has one is a bobcat, though most people associate the torch as the visual symbol of NYU.</p>
<p>Being in NYC, it can get a lot of doors and opportunities open, as well as internships. And being in NYC, that means in many, many industries. Proximity, exposure and availability will get you many surprising opportunites, headstarts and paths in life. </p>
<p>(Actually any major school in any state or area will have a lot of pull. Some inexplicably more than others. UT in Texas for example and I’ll bet there are more Fordham Law grduate judges in NY than NYU Law or Columbia Law combined.)</p>
<p>Besides Stern, don’t forget Tisch, one of the best film/drama schools there is.</p>
<p>Don’t get me wrong, for a number of reasons I actively discouraged and then when she was accepted at both, campaigned against my daughter going to Colgate rather than NYU.</p>
<p>After her first year at the 'Gate, we are both very happy.</p>
<p>Allow me to remind you mhc that we NYU students were known as The Violets. I am a 1969 graduate of UC (The Heights). It was always a bit embarassing that as a male student I was an NYU Violet. For that reason somewhere down the years the school changed its mascot to a more traditional animal from a flower. I agree that I always associate the torch as our symbol.</p>
<p>My D is applying to Colgate this Fall and loves the school as do my wife and I. I would much rather D go to Colgate where she will be taught by professors and not TA’s her first two years as she would be at NYU. Also ave class size much lower at Colgate. Finally there is a more traditional college experience at Colgate with a sense of community. Keep in mind that I refer to the Arts college of NYU and not some of the tremendous specialty schools at NYU that are one of a kind.</p>
<p>Don’t get me wrong I loved my NYU experience and got a good education. All boils down to that “right fit” issue. </p>
<p>Dana’s Dad</p>
<p>Dear Dana’s dad,</p>
<p>I hope your D will be as happy as ours. She just completed sophomore year at Colgate and is heading abroad in the fall. She loves her small classes, her personal relationship with professors who have you over to dinner, her ability to ask for help and always receive it. We are so happy to know that she is treated as a very important part of her classes and her absence as well as her contributions do not go unnoticed. There are many other elements of Colgate that she loves and if you have any parental questions please feel free to ask me.</p>
<p>Hey…Cornell is “Big Red”. That doesn’t make 'em Commies!</p>
<p>You and I started NYU the same year, though I was downtown in Washington Square College. I made it uptown to the Heights I think three times. Once to try out for the Glee Club, once for Cross Country and once to visit two friends who I had graduated high school with. The subway ride made me lose interest in all three.</p>
<p>Heights and Downtown were very different places back then. While you may have gone out for ZBT or Tri Delt, I joined the SDS. Ialways thought the Heights was a more traditional and nurturing campus, more like a LAC which was unfortunately what I needed at the time. An alma mater rather than a dura mater.</p>
<p>I am always perplexed when I see people who apply to both Colgate and NYU, since the schools are so completely different. I guess there are special cases such as parents who attended NYU and kids showing respect by applying too. However, in general, would think anyone who would like Colgate would hate NYU and vice versa. To the ones who know people who have applied to both, were the rest of their college applications the Dartmouth, Williams, Middlebury type or the Columbia, Penn, BU type or an unfocused scattering across the board?</p>
<p>mhc I thought we were contemporaries. I used to take the Woodlawn Ave #4 train if I remember correctly every weekend to go into Manhattan. I loved to explore Manhattan from one end to the other. It was alot different from Syracuse where I came from.</p>
<p>However you are wrong about one thing. I was there from 1965 to 1969 and starting in 67 as you no doubt remember everything changed politically. The black students organized and black power was their call. SDS was very strong on campus on the Heights and actually closed the campus down and police had to come to reclaim it. As a newsman for WNYU I was at many a rally where the SDS tried to keep me out thinking I was an informer. Luckily since campus was like an lac everyone knew me and my lefty politics.</p>
<p>Fraternities and sororities were going out of vogue and ROTC became a thing of the past.</p>
<p>I do agree with you that the subway ride into the City sucked but it was our route to the splendor of Manhattan. It was sad when NYU sold the Heights and moved the lac and engineering downtown. Those were great and exciting years 1965 to 1969. Gee I sound like such an old man .</p>
<p>Dana’s Dad</p>
<p>old hat: thank you for the lovely shout out. My D is applying in the Fall and is not a newly accepted student. I would be thrilled if she is accepted as Colgate is a great school on many levels. If she is accepted and does decide to go there I will take you up on your kind offer.</p>
<p>Dana’s Dad</p>
<p>Gellino, I applied to both Colgate and Wesleyan (I’m going to wes). That’s pretty different too.</p>
<p>Some people realize that they’ll be fine just about anywhere and they go by a school’s reputation for placement after undergrad and for the reputation of the school’s programs. I’m a first gen immigrant, so my parents’ and my thinking is rather similar on this, but I believe a lot more in ‘fit’ than they do. My parents thought I was nuts when I wanted to visit colleges at first, but my mom liked looking around so she obliged haha.</p>
<p>gellino, some people go into a store to buy their first suit or formal dress knowing exactly what they want; others like to browse, or find out that what they thought they were going to get just doesn’t look as good on them or the way they thought it would once they actually try it on.</p>
<p>The Spring before senior year my daughter and I went on a grand tour of schools and somewhere up around Albany, she decided to pass on visiting Hamilton and Colgate so we shot down to Wes. I laughed when I heard that an old codger of a math teacher at her school told her she should go to Colgate and then I was surprised when she put in the application. </p>
<p>I thought she’d pick Oberlin, but I guess something about the April admitted students day visit she took with her mom looked and felt right.</p>
<p>yeah, i’m with ridethecliche, im planning on applying to a wide range schools, including research U’s (NU), to more medium sized Us (rice), and LACs, colgate, midd, etc…</p>
<p>Lol Wes looks like crap on those rankings.
I suppose the list makers are playing politics :-)]]</p>
<p>Here’s another interesting list.</p>
<p>Strange b/c just a couple of years ago Wesleyan was touted as the hot college de jour. imo-still is</p>
<p>“Admissions mania focuses most intensely on what might be called the Gotta-Get-Ins, the colleges with maximum allure. The twenty-five Gotta-Get-Ins of the moment, according to admissions officers, are the Ivies (Brown, Columbia, Cornell, Dartmouth, Harvard, Penn, Princeton, and Yale), plus Amherst, Berkeley, Caltech, Chicago, Duke, Georgetown, Johns Hopkins, MIT, Northwestern, Pomona, Smith, Stanford, Swarthmore, Vassar, Washington University in St. Louis, Wellesley, and Williams”.</p>
<p><a href=“http://www.brookings.edu/views/articles/20040902easterbrook.htm[/url]”>http://www.brookings.edu/views/articles/20040902easterbrook.htm</a></p>
<p>It isn’t on the top 25 that you just posted above. It was listed in the slightly below top 25, along with colgate, lafayette, middlebury, vanderbilt, and others.</p>
<p>Yeah, I guess I was just very focused on small to medium sized rural schools in the northeast and am always interested to hear different approaches leading to the same place. </p>
<p>Colgate & Wesleyan are so much more similar than Colgate & NYU.</p>
<p>I think the similarities end after the large sized LAC comparison.
Wes is much more liberal and much less athletically focused than colgate.
Colgate tends to be regarded as jocky and conservative (more so than wes). As far as student body demographics go, wesleyan is much more diverse, still requires SAT 2’s, I think it has a higher number of students at wes are lower income etc.</p>
<p>As far as comparisons go, I’d compare colgate to dartmouth, and wesleyan to UChicago and Swatty.</p>
<p>Well, I haven’t bothered to read these many posts, so I might have missed some discussion. BUT, according to the “secret document” the LA times got from the Boalt Law School, Colgate does in fact have among the least grade inflation, and ranked higher than all the ivies in this respect. That doesn’t mean there will be more highly qualified applicants from Colgate, that just means that of those who manage to get a 3.6, it means more from Colgate. Only Swarthmore I think ranked higher than Colgate, and Wesleyan was slightly behind.</p>
<p>About that Brody ranking list, I think it could actually be more accurate than you guys are giving it credit for. It aims to look at things on a nationwide scale, not just the east coast and uppercrust west coast. And that’s a BIG DIFFERENCE, trust me. Northwestern amd UMich are considered very prestigious throughout most of the midwest, whereas even professionals haven’t heard of Wesleyan and often haven’t heard of Tufts. Bowdoin, on the other hand, might have a somewhat more national rep, possibly b/c it is so old. Pomona now, I have no idea how Pomona should compare to those other schools. It is so popular now for applicants that young people have heard of it, but my advisor at college had not associated it with being any more elite than Bowdoin, so since school reps change over the years, you should be careful not to bias your idea of prestige by how many applicants the schools receive these days.</p>
<p>i don’t like brody because there is absolutely no methodology.</p>
<p>I think that Boalt Law school study had Colgate at #4 behind Swat, Carleton & JHU, but still pretty high. </p>
<p>I like the Brody rankings because it, at least, to compare univs to LACs and while you could bicker on a couple of schools’ place, it does a relatively good job, probably does come close to including a consensus top 50 and doesn’t have anything way out of whack (i.e. Penn #4), although am surprised on their placement of Rice & Weselyan so low.</p>
<p>Me too, Rice and Wes are really good schools.
I don’t know if you can actually compare LAC’s and Univs though…
I mean, a lot of students apply to both, but in the end one is much more preprofessional than the other.</p>