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Again, you missed the point. When did I say my HS is better? You are being ridiculous to bring up HS and ACT score. No one cares, I don’t care. I didn’t say I have higher score than you.
I did say “stupidest ivy” hence in the context of ivy league. When did this ■■■■■/d-bag call you stupid? Are you that deluded? Not everything is about you.</p>
<p>^ zzz so much for my attempts at defusing the tension…all we need now is for someone to bludgeon in and unleash an unscathing attack on me, and we have a WWE free-for-all</p>
<p>middsmith, there is no “stupidest” Ivy. Statistically speaking, when comparing apples to apples, Brown, Columbia, Cornell, Dartmouth and Penn have roughly equal student bodies. I stress “apples to apples” because Cornell has many departments that do not exist at other Ivies, such as Agriculture, Architecture, Hotel Management, Human Ecology and Industrial and Labor Relations. Those programs are all ranked around #1 in the nation and have very talented students, but they do not accept students using the same criteria as colleges of Arts and Sciences, Engineering or Business. For this reason, one must be careful when comparing Cornell to other Ivies. But that does not mean that Cornell is the “stupidest” Ivy. </p>
<p>I am not sure what you mean when you say Caltech isn’t an Engineering school? what is an Engineering school? Who mentioned Engineering schools? I was referring to Engineering programs. Caltech definitely has an engineering program and it is on par with the likes of Cal, MIT and Stanford. </p>
<p>Finally, you must have misunderstood the Cal professors who said all Engineering programs save Cal, MIT and Stanford are “blah”. I have not spoken to Cal professors, but I have spoken to several MIT professors and their high regard for Engineering programs at Carnegie Mellon, Cornell, GT, Michigan and UIUC is clear. Two of MIT’s last 4 presidents were Enginners from the University of Michigan. I am certain professors at Cal would hold those elite Engineering programs in high esteem too. You won’t get any argument from me if you say that Cal, Caltech, MIT and Stanford are the best Engineering programs, because I believe they are. But to say that all other Engineering programs are “blah” is preposterous. There are several amazing programs and Cornell is one of them.</p>
<p>You can argue all day on CC, but once you hit the real world you tend to figure out that college rankings just aren’t that important. The stronger applicant to a job is picked, not the person with a degree from a higher ranked college. You can rest assured the 3.9 from Cornell is a stronger applicant than the 3.5 from Stanford or UCB.</p>
<p>The Evil Asian Dictator spent all that time explaining how basketball is more popular than hockey when I freely conceded the very fact a while ago…</p>
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<p>Best to all. Even the Dookies.</p>
<p>Although I wish D1 hockey got more attention, I’ve been a hockey fan all my life, but its pretty obvious its dominated by football and basketball (come on can we be bigger wimps?)</p>
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<p>It gets enough attention where there is a following – the Midwest and the Northeast. Part of the problem with collegiate hockey is that a lot of the professional talent is developed elsewhere – the Canadian junior leagues and Europe. </p>
<p>The other problem with hockey is that it is a pretty expensive sport to play. In basketball you just need a ball and a hoop. In hockey, well you need a Zamboni truck.</p>
<p>I went to Michigan for my undergrad. It can be argued that Michigan has top 10 programs in both Football and Hockey. Although Wolverine Football attracts more national attention than Wolverine Hockey, and more fans attend games (110,000 vs 7,000 per game), I would be so bold as to say that the atmosphere at, and support for, the Hockey team at Michigan is no less impresive than at Football games.</p>
<p>Yeah, that’s very true… and what’s the point in watching Juniors when you can just watch the pros? It is just hard to understand how people can be more excited to watch basketball than hockey lol. Have you ever seen a basketball fight? lol, I saw a guy sucker-punch someone and friggen run away, lets not forget fighting the fans… d wade literally CRYING after breaking a collar-bone and having to get carried off the court in a stretcher lol</p>
<p>I grew up in michigan, and yes UMich has a great hockey team and a great football team and great academics, their basketball team are NIT pickers but who cares :D</p>
<p>EAD may have used language a bit differently than I would have, but I do want to support his strongly stated thought that there is NOT equivalence in the athletic life at Duke and at any of the Ivies. In fact, I would extend his comment to also include other peer institutions such as Stanford, Northwestern, Vanderbilt, Notre Dame, and possibly Rice and Georgetown as also having a superior athletic life. </p>
<p>Look, everyone knows that academic considerations will and should rule the day when college selections are made. There are great academic colleges in the Ivies (including Cornell) and elsewhere. The universe of colleges with consistently strong, highly accomplished student bodies has expanded over the last decade. Now students are considering a larger circle of colleges and discovering that there are differences in the undergraduate experiences that the colleges offer. Some will care about the athletic life and some will not. </p>
<p>But now that the academic playing field has been leveled, then non-academic factors increasingly come into play as differentiators for students choosing among these top colleges. For those students who will have an active and diverse social life and an excellent and nationally relevant athletic program as part of their “wish list,” then colleges like Stanford, Duke, Northwestern, Rice, Vanderbilt, Notre Dame, Georgetown, etc, are probably superior choices.</p>
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Haha…glad you threw Cornell the bone there, Hawkette. Bravo!</p>
<p>Not trying to throw them a bone, but the charge was made earlier that I am trying to drag Cornell down and so I didn’t want there to be any doubt that I considered the school a strong academic institution. </p>
<p>Sorry if any offense was taken.</p>
<p>Holy Thread Drift Batman! How did pages 3-6 of this discussion center around athletics? How lame.</p>
<p>“Turns out, he was planning on going to a sports bar in Bangkok to watch the game and grab some drinks with a few buddies. Unfortunately, they were unable to enter the bar because it was PACKED TO CAPACITY that night and he said EVERY TV was showing the game that night. This is THAILAND we’re talking about here. I wasn’t even surprised. Why? Because Duke-UNC is that big of a rivalry and the game matters that much.”</p>
<p>I’ll remember this the next time I’m told I’m supposed to care passionately about what people in Asia think of the prestige of American schools, LOL.</p>
<p>DunninLA - some people actually think that because classmates of theirs are good at throwing / catching / hitting a ball, it “proves” something about their school’s excellence. Go figure!</p>
<p>pizzagirl,
There you go again….</p>
<p>No one is saying that a school’s excellence is determined by a classmate’s athletic ability. What a sleazy mischaracterization!</p>
<p>The reality is that the undergraduate academic and student quality differences for nearly all of the colleges that have been mentioned in this thread are microscopic. So, students will often look to non-academic factors to help them find a campus where they can learn a lot in the classroom and have a great time out of the classroom. It’s called looking for the right fit. For some students, finding the right fit includes considering the athletic life at the college and the positive social benefits that frequently come with this for both students and for alumni. </p>
<p>As an alternative to looking for the right fit, would you prefer that students choose based on the USNWR rankings and thus automatically select a college ranked # 8 over one ranked # 12?</p>
<p>Of course not. But what kind of numbskull does that anyway, other than overwrought high school seniors on CC who seriously think that there are “differences” (other than personal fit) between #8 and #12 and have no clue that the rest of the world doesn’t think that finitely about the differences? </p>
<p>Indeed, I happen to AGREE with you that if you take, say, the top 25 or 30 universities, they’re all great places, and the deciding factors (in the absence of other considerations, such as financial aid or very specific programs only offered by one school) all come down to personal fit. I remember once someone had a thread about Princeton being better than Vanderbilt and you said that in any long run, no, no one’s life was going to be measurably better by being at Princeton than Vandy and I happened to agree strongly. At the level we’re talking about, there are only minute differences academically and so it’s all about personal preferences and fit.</p>
<p>And yes, I agree that for some students the exposure to big-time athletics is part of that fit. Where I disagree with you is that you tend to consider it proof of a better fit for more people overall, and that in other threads you have suggested that people for whom it’s not important really just don’t know the fun they’re missing by not being able to cheer at a big game. I also disagree with you that school spirit is measured or defined by the size of the crowds who cheer at a big game.</p>
<p>WOOOOOOOOOO SPORTS!!!</p>
<p>That seems to be the gist of this argument.</p>
<p>Maybe not measured or defined by – but it certainly helps? It is somewhat indicative? </p>
<p>Sports are a measure of a school’s success in a certain area, and when we bring up atmosphere it is well justified to suggest that one school might be superior because of its sports. There is no harm done. Those who want to be influenced by said information will be, and those such as yourself who view it as bogus will discard it.</p>
<p>Anyways, I don’t think Cornell is overrated. Everytime someone says the word ivy, it conjures images of HYP, and Cornell is viewed as completely inferior in the face of those schools. If we were to just look at Cornell as a singular institution and its individual merits, its an easy decision to make. </p>
<p>Maybe if the comparisons linger in the back of our heads we think it’s overrated, but as an individual institution compared to other institutions without the “ivy” tag it is what it is…</p>
<p>And for the record, imagine if Berkeley was in a group consisting of Stanford and Caltech. It would most certainly diminish its prestige.</p>
<p>"Sports are a measure of a school’s success in a certain area, and when we bring up atmosphere it is well justified to suggest that one school might be superior because of its sports. "</p>
<p>Sports are a measure of a school’s success in a certain area that is completely irrelevant to why colleges / universities exist, though. That’s why they’re not as important as, say, the success of a school’s art program, or chemistry program, or international studies program, or whatever, in evaluating the school. </p>
<p>“Anyways, I don’t think Cornell is overrated. Everytime someone says the word ivy, it conjures images of HYP, and Cornell is viewed as completely inferior in the face of those schools.”</p>
<p>Says who? You?</p>