<p>The “little” or “potted ivies” are Williams, Amherst and Wesleyan (aka “Little 3”). I’ve never heard this term applied to the other NESCAC schools. The Little 3 is sort of its own athletic conference. The athletes at these schools often care more about winning the unofficial Little 3 title than beating the other NESCAC schools.</p>
<p>BTW, autmaine, wikipedia is not the best authority; it’ll print anything anyone wants to submit to it. If you wanted to, Florida State could be a “Little Ivy” – just add that information to the “free encyclopedia” where sometimes “fact” is “fiction” – Anyway, caveat emptor, autmaine, at least as far as wikipedia is concerned.</p>
<p>As for Colgate not making the “Little Ivies,” it does one better: it’s “the 9th Ivy” simply because it lost out when the League was formed in 1954 and has always played each Ivy school in practically every sport every season ever since. Colgate has always held its own and in many instances surpassed its “Ivy” rivals.</p>
<p>Also, to the Ivy & Patriot League teams, NESCAC is like being in the minors. Of course to the Pac-12, Big 10 and ACC, the Ivy & Patriot Leagues are the minors. So as Einstein said, all is relative. And we’re talking here about athletic leagues, not academic ones.</p>
<p>Perhaps what’ll be an end to this arguement is that the NCAA change its first A to Academic from Athletic – and then see a real brouhaha break out. The competition among academics can almost equal than of operatic sopranos to see who commands the stage or lectern.</p>
<p>All of this is, of course, IMHO.</p>
<p>What happened in 1954 is probably only of minor consequence to the academic environment that goes on at these schools currently. From what I’ve read and other anecdotal info, Colgate was considered a stronger academic school than Brown in the mid '50’s and it wasn’t until the early '70’s with its more entrenched association with the Ivy schools, open curriculum & no grades that Brown became a hot school and more academically respected. It is interesting to think that if Colgate did have a more formal association with the Ivy League starting in the 1950’s that it would not be the same school with the same students that it has been for the last two generations up to today. Today’s Colgate could instead be occurring at Bucknell and Brown could be more similar to today’s Conn Coll.</p>
<p>collegeparent, as far as I know, its Pac-10, the only conference with a number discrepancy is Big 10 with 11 and don’t understand what your point is at all in your last paragraph.</p>
<p>I have never heard of a “9th Ivy,” (isn’t that sort of insulting anyway?)that can’t even be cited on Wikipedia. Also, in New England, no one would ever think that Colgate was an Ivy-- like people were saying happens in the west. And, collegeparent, you know that the Ivy League implies much more than the athletic conference. The term is very well known, most people don’t even know that it is only an athletic conference, and is directly associated with the oldest, private, and academically renowned, colleges and universities in the northeastern US.
And, the NESCACs are New England’s top LACs (for some reason Hamilton was included, who knows why). The Bates-Bowdoin-Colby rivalry is similar to that of Amherst-Williams-Wesleyan.</p>
<p>Wikipedia isn’t exactly an authority on everything. One of these threads had a link to a Dartmouth newspaper article a few years ago discussing Colgate’s potential inclusion in the Ivy League.</p>
<p>A liberal arts college doesn’t have to be in New England to be considered strong academically. I would say most in New England have never heard the term NESCAC and Hamilton is regarded on a par with Colby and Bates and a little stronger than Trinity and Conn Coll from everything I have seen. Growing up in PA, I would never have gone to Tufts, Colby, Bates, Hamilton, Trinity over Colgate because they were in the NESCAC.</p>
<p>The NCAA comment was meant to reinforce the fact that the Ivy League is an athletic league, not an academic one. If in fact you want to get into rankings, ratings and other p***ing contests about which school is better, then perhaps creating such a group where these things can be debated ad nauseum would solve the issue once and for all. In the meantime, while some people may think that “Ivy” denotes academic excellence, others who are far more knowledgeable know that such “non-Ivy” schools can surpass the “Ivy” schools academically if not athletically. Such schools include Stanford, MIT, CalTech, Georgetown, Amherst, Williams, Swarthmore, Duke, Pomona, Boston College, Carleton, Chicago, Johns Hopkins, Middlebury, Northwestern, Rice, Tufts, Wesleyan – and yes even Colgate.</p>
<p>well put collegeparent…but do you really think boston college is almost academically on par with the ivies??</p>
<p>Alright so the Ivy League is an athletic league, granted.
Yet, it holds a status symbol in higher education which extends beyond prestige. However, in society today, prestige by itself means nothing. No one would buy a beamer or mercedes if the cars were good status symbols yet broke down when used. The ivy schools have had a rich history of results (granted a few of them were the only colleges around during certain time periods), and continue to do so.
There are always trends with this kind of situation, and more and more students are picking less ‘prestigious’ schools due to financial concerns. I know people who turned down many of the ivy’s to attend Penn State’s Honors college. Why? Because the honors college is well known for getting kids into good grad programs and because it’s more affordable (without finaid into account). The trend also extends to the fortune 500 companies where less and less are being represented by the Ivy schools.
The trend is already fixing itself, changes in variables tends to do that. Don’t put down a set of schools because they were started as something, since the Ivy’s have become so much more than that. </p>
<p>Batman, you’ll get the same/similar education at just about any first tier college, but as profs will say the student body is what is different. While BC is a great school, I wouldn’t have put it in that group. I do believe that the other schools on there deserve to be there.</p>
<p>Yeah, there are a bunch of schools that are just as good and many that are better than the ivies. But, we are talking about prestige, not “academic excellence.” None of those schools are as prestigious as all of the ives (except maybe Stanford, MIT, Chicago, and Duke). And Colgate is just not up to par with the level of prestige Harvard, Yale, and Princeton have. The academic quality may be similar (not really though), but Colgate is not that prestigious. Similar to the way the ivies are prestigious (just out of money, age, campus, and location) the New Englands top LACs (all are NESCACs, though all not as prestigious as one another) are also in those same ways prestigious. Colgate is not included in that group from my prospective. Colgate may have just as good or even better academics, but it’s prestige is better known outside of the New England college ring. Even great colleges like Swarthmore and Pomona are not viewed in New England to have that prestigious edge that Williams, Amherst, Bowdoin, and Middlebury have. This all just from my prospective. Where do you guys live?</p>
<p>These days “prestige” is associated with “brand management” – it’s all “surface and image” – and it is all relative to the individual. One man’s Porsche is another man’s Prism. It depends on what you want to drive and why. In the end, they’ll both get you where you want to go; it’s how you feel most comfortable getting there and what you can afford. However, there are those who lack a personal identity and need labels and brands to tell them who they are.</p>
<p>As for BC, as with any school, it depends on the particular program; BC’s got some great ones & some are better than others, but it deserves to be included, IMHO. As for the Ivies & job placement later, there are more than a few HR people who will not even interview Ivy grads, especially ones from Harvard, because of their sense of entitlement and “you owe me. I went to an Ivy” attitudes. What needs to be remembered in all of this is that there are just as many insurance agents who went to Yale as who went to UConn.</p>
<p>Aloutak, since you’re so preoccupied with schools’ reputations in New England, I trust you’ll be happy living in New England (am guessing you’re in the Boston area) and not drifting further west. There’s an old joke that Bostonians still think that the Wild West is anywhere west of West Newton, hostile natives included. Not to belabor the point, but New England is a vestige of the past and whether you like or not, the reality is that the center of today’s economic and cultural world is New York City, where Colgate enjoys a much greater reputation and more “prestige” than almost all NESCAC schools. </p>
<p>In addition, speaking about the west, Stanford will soon surpass any New England Ivy in world-wide “prestige” due to its new SEQ-II quad which will be up and running in a few years while Harvard and Yale continue to battle local zoning ordinances and reluctant landowners balking at their claims of “eminent domain” to seize their lands. With all the protests, stalls and delays, new construction on these two campuses will take another 20 years, if they’re lucky.</p>
<p>One other thing to consider in all of this is the definition of “prestige” – it is the outgrowth of demand for something that makes it “elite” which is what gives it “prestige”. That’s not to say that people are conscious of brands and labels that connote “prestige” but they are hardly so closed-minded as to base a sole identity on such criteria. After all, it is not the clothes one wears, but how one wears those clothes.</p>
<p>With that in mind, consider the following schools which are awaiting inclusion among the Top Tier schools, which will mean not limiting the number of “prestige” schools but expanding the category – the demand for these schools has increased markedly in only the past few years: Bucknell, CMU, Dickinson, Franklin & Marshall, Gettysburg, Skidmore, USC, Wake Forest, Villanova, Franklin & Marshall, Hamilton, Kenyon, NYU, Richmond, Vanderbilt and St. Lawrence.</p>
<p>you need to remember that there are only a handful of schools that are known nationwide. the rest are mostly known only regionally.</p>
<p>And most of the schools that are known nationwide are huge big 10 schools and large state schools with tons of alumni all over the place. I have family and friends who go to good high schools in california and they can’t name the ivy’s beyond princeton harvard and yale.</p>
<p>See, a large number of kids going to liberal arts colleges, especially the best ones like williams, pomona, amherst, swatty, wesleyan, colgate, carleton, wellesley, etc etc, will go on to grad school. LAC’s, I feel, give a student a different, perhaps better (i think so), foothold for grad school. Many students, myself included, pick a LAC because we liked the smaller classes we had in high school and want that kind of intimacy, if you will, in college. Working hand in hand with professors straight from the get go is awesome, I already have a research position at Wesleyan when I go there this fall, which is pretty sweet esp for a science major.</p>
<p>Collegeparent, I know of many of the schools that you listed and they are good schools. There is a reason that all of these schools are becoming more and more prominent, and that is this. There used to be a huge intellectual divide between students who attended the Ivy’s+ other top schools, and those who attended ‘lesser’ schools. With admissions getting as competitive as it is now, this line is becoming very blurred, much to the liking of the ‘lesser’ schools. The calibre of students at ‘lesser’ schools is much akin to those at the ivy’s et associated, thusly the ‘smartest’ kids coming out of college are no longer limited to just the top ranked schools. Yes, the ivy’s still give preference to their undergrads at grad schools, but that seems to be more of an act of preservation.</p>
<p>LAC’s prepare their students for grad school and the workplace, and grad schools know they’re awesome at what they do. The rankings only do so much, as does the subjective term prestige.
Huskem, you’re right. Which is why if a student wants to finally live in cali, it might be beneficial to go to stanford/berkeley over an ivy on the east coast for grad if not ugrad. Then again, it probably doesn’t matter that much…</p>
<p>Collegeparent, I wonder about your expanding list of “prestige” schools. Not which schools are included in the list, as much as why the the list has expanded in the first place and whether that will continue. </p>
<p>Hasn’t most of the expansion of the “Top Tier” been fueled by the second wave of the baby boom? More kids; more kids want to go; capacity limited, so other schools lower down on the list began to compete for higher quality students, who in the past would have gone to a school a level up. Then they get a better reputation, more tuition, get more funding and then climb the prestige scale? </p>
<p>When the boom begins to subside in just a few years, all of the schools who have moved up a notch or two in prestige will again be competing for fewer numbers of top students.</p>
<p>And even if demand for college education continues to grow from below and keeps the level of “high end” students near present levels (as has happened in the US housing market, and for similar reasons) won’t that just result in expanding sub groupings of prestige, with (mostly) the same schools still on top, but additional lower levels of the “Top Tier” being added? </p>
<p>Of course there will always be a few schools which move up or down in the list for other reasons, but these will be aberrations.</p>
<p>growing up, i really never heard of LACs in general, maybe except for wesleyan, amherst and colgate. dunno why. not even williams, and especially not swat.</p>
<p>mhc, I didn’t expand the Top Tier lists except to point out that there are some up-and-comers who may want entry into “the club” but space will be limited since the ones currently there won’t want to give up any room –</p>
<p>As for the demand for a Top Tier education waning in the coming years, it’s not going to happen – Some current data indicate that demand won’t peak for another 12-15 years. Why? Hispanics will want part of it and the Top Tier schools, for the sake of “inclusion”, will welcome them if affirmative action isn’t knocked down by the courts in the meantime. If that happens, BTW, see more Asians on the Top Tier campuses and less “non-Hispanic whites” –</p>
<p>CP - the scenario you posit of a continuing demand for college enrollment is the same scenario which has driven the US housing market. The American Dream is a home of your own and a corollary is a college education for your children. As poorer (whatever their racial, ethnic or country of origin) people buy homes in areas previously trending downward, others sell and move on to “better” neighborhoods, housing prices in general go up, more luxury housing is built, neighborhoods previously moderate become upscale.</p>
<p>But while new developements in previously empty land are built with fancy names and while lesser homes are ripped down and McMansions built in previously modest neighborhoods, the top places to live still remain the top places to live. Soho and Malibu become more pricey and more desirable than before, but Park Avenue and Beverly Hills remain the places for the top tier to go home. </p>
<p>There are many ways for both of these growth phenomena to backfire, but to the extent they work, everyone benefits.</p>
<p>Actually, to be honest I think that the rankings also depend on the success of the UGrads after they go to grad school or the job market. Yes some of the schools will see the surge go down, but others’ Ugrads will perform wonderfully in grad school and the job market ensuring that the school will get favoured feedback and stay in the loop.
I’m not placing any money on any schools for this since there is NO data at this time, and a hypothesis is just that :-)</p>
<p>Which rankings? I don’t really think that is possible to-- to keep track of all the graduates from every college in the US. Anyway, maybe you’ll find some “data.”
Yeah, I know what you mean about williams. I didn’t really hear of it, or realize how good it is, until I started looking more into colleges. Amherst is, however, very well known-- as are the Maine schools in the Boston area.</p>
<p>A part of US News and other rankings is based on peer reviews. This is what I was referring to.</p>