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I doubt very much that “Chicago”, whoever that is, gives any thought at all about whether it is considered better than NU, ND, WashU, etc. Those who are, know. Those who aspire, talk incessantly about it.</p>
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I doubt very much that “Chicago”, whoever that is, gives any thought at all about whether it is considered better than NU, ND, WashU, etc. Those who are, know. Those who aspire, talk incessantly about it.</p>
<p>P.S. Capnjack, yours is truly an infantile question. It’s not unlike lining up all the mothers at a PTA meeting and asking the person next to you to pick the Best blond mother, and best brunette mother from the group.</p>
<p>Isn’t ‘fit’ more important than ‘prestige’, in finding the right college?</p>
<p>^ Yes. Yes it is.</p>
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<p>Or asking each mother to pick the most special child.</p>
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<p>But isn’t that what you do when you use the term HYPSM which insinuates these 5 universities are the best of the 2,000 or so universities in America? And college rankings? You’re example of blonde mothers is misleading because the qualities of a mother can’t be measured (love, beauty, etc). But qualities of colleges (endowment, graduation rate, admit rate) CAN be measured.</p>
<p>@PizzaGirl: I really don’t know what to say to a person who believes I have mental issues because I asked a simple question to fulfill my personal knowledge which I can use to make my own private conclusions. I thought this website analyzes questions, not the users. What do you possibly know about me to judge that I have mental issues?</p>
<p>@CaptnJack, you take PizzaGirl and DunninLA too seriously. Several years ago, I misspelled Stanford accidentally, and you should see how DunninLA jumped on me. Sometimes, nice to a stranger is a good thing to do, especially when you don’t know anything about that person.</p>
<p>There’s a case for CalTech in the west and in the south, there’s a case for JHU. There might even be a case for UVA and Emory being peers of Duke. In some areas Georgia Tech is a peer.</p>
<p>don’t forget about Vanderbilt in the south. Does Rice count as in the south or west? haha</p>
<p>“But qualities of colleges (endowment, graduation rate, admit rate) CAN be measured.”</p>
<p>Yes, those are the best measurements to judge the education provided by a college and therefore we know for sure that Berkeley is superior for UG than say, Emory or ND because it has a lower admit rate. Emory and Duke’s endowment are close to each other right now, but they are completely different schools (oh wait, doesn’t matter. The criteria are the criteria). Chicago has a higher admit rate than Duke (I think it still does), thus it should not be tied. Vandy should now be tied w/Duke simply because its admit rate is similar to Duke’s. However, maybe it shouldn’t because its endowment is lower than Emory and Duke’s. What wonderful measures of educational quality!</p>
<p>Anyway, I find the differences in quality between top 20-25 schools embellished to some extent. Many of these schools are organized and even educate a bit differently from each other so I don’t know why would choose those particular criteria to measure “quality”. Once SAT averages(or medians) are very near or higher than 1400 for all of these schools, which they are, I wouldn’t bother looking at “exclusivity”, endowment, and graduation rate (which among top schools perhaps tells how much handholding a school does or how easy it is). Let’s look at rigor, classroom size, purported teaching quality, and differences in curriculum instead. These are things that determine fit when one is choosing a top 20. For example, Chicago and Brown have different approaches to things. Emory does not resemble Duke, Vanderbilt, and Rice b/c of the lack of an engineering school and having like 85-90% of students in the college of arts and sciences even after accounting for nursing and business. We simply don’t have as many auxillary/prof. schools for UGs like those peers. If it weren’t for b-school and nursing scene, we would resemble Chicago in structure (I would perhaps count Duke, Rice, and Vandy as peers. Emory is similar in prestige to 2 of them, but in reality, it’s doing its own weird thing and I don’t get how students act and apply to us and the 3 others as if they are similar to us. Other than strong student body, research/financial impact, and perhaps endowment, not much to compare). Choosing based upon perceptions of “prestige” and “exclusivity” and endowment isn’t very useful once you are looking at the top 20 unless you plan to go into a profession right after undergrad (as opposed to prof. or grad. school) that kind of depends on it. Like certain fields of engineering and technology and finance and investment banking. </p>
<p>I mean at that point assume that they all put significant/sufficient funds into undergraduate education. Much of endowment at very wealthy schools like Stanford, HPY probably go into grad./prof. programs and “country club features”. However, if one only cares so much about such “country club” aspects, then we do indeed have a different conversation.</p>
<p>admit rate is a ridiculous measurement of colleges. Colleges in cities like NYU, Northeastern can attract so many applicants that their admission rates are going to be really low.</p>
<p>While the statement for Duke is true, I disagree with that statement regarding Stanford.</p>
<p>CalTech is a very prestigious university considered by many on the top of the college ladder next to HYPSM. Also, unlike Yale and Princeton, which are not that distinguishable from Harvard; CalTech is very distinguishable from Stanford. </p>
<p>CalTech has a number of qualities that could title it top university in the nation. I think to compare CalTech with Rice or JHU is an understatement when it is clearly more prestigious than Duke.</p>
<p>(And there really are no tiers between between Duke and HYPSM. Yale and Princeton probably don’t deserve to be a part of the acronym, though.)</p>
<p>Why wouldn’t Yale and Princeton deserve it? My understanding is that they are more friendly to undergrads’ education than Harvard. As prestigious as Harvard is, one can argue that the undergrad. experience (if you care about learning or smaller class sizes) may be better at Yale and Princeton. I think Duke attracts a similar student body to those 5 in the acronym, but it is culturally different both academically and socially (the success of its D-1 basketball team and athletics in general makes it “interesting”. Same could be said for Stanford). It doesn’t give the intellectual vibe that HPYM give (people at Duke have great intellect and do awesome things, but it wouldn’t be considered a particularly intellectual campus at least compared to those). I would actually say it and Stanford are extremely comparable (though Stanford is also more prestigious than Duke, they may be of similar quality).</p>
<p>Also, despite Caltech being absolutely amazing (awesome place for math and science especially if you are really into it and are non-pre-preprofessional. Very rigorous, something most schools in top 20 can’t really claim. They can claim to be “challenging” but not like MIT or Caltech), it is rather low profile compared to Stanford and of course Stanford is more “country clubbish” (which explains the popularity, just as most top 20s). Also, Caltech would be top school in nation for some areas, but it just doesn’t have the “well-roundedness” of most of its peers. It’s a very niche school. I personally respect how they do things (UG education) moreso than most other top 25-30 research universities. I also like LACs, many of which also have a much lower profile. </p>
<p>Most top schools may be over-rated in terms of providing quality education. It’s really good, but not as great as one would expect from the way people describe these schools. I love my education and know it’s much better than most places, but I have to wonder if it would be that much better at say Duke. For my majors, my research indicates otherwise (some of the classes are too large for my taste. Seems as if it would have been harder to connect w/key faculty members and profs. in frosh science courses. Also, strange enough, many courses are harder here). However Duke would=more research opps. but that of course doesn’t matter b/c I do research here. It’s kind of like the difference between having 1 million opps. and 1 million and one. Also Duke has more school pride which is nice but completely irrelevant to me. The fact that the name/degree will count more irregardless of whether I’m educated better is nice too (wish I could do work here and receive a Duke degree lol). And these are the perks of prestige (less or same experience, bigger reward!).</p>
<p>However, ones like Duke, Stanford, etc. are indeed great places to be educated (whether the actual education is over-rated or not) simply because of the experience (country-club features plus sports) and leverage the names provide. I’m guessing this is what USNews is good at ranking, which school is the best place to be (for example, I suppose they assume that paying the profs/faculty even slightly higher than another school, results in better education). There are only some measurements that may indicate actual educational quality like class sizes and student-faculty ratio, but not many. They certainly don’t calculate or estimate the rigor by taking surveys on how much students study/standard workload or anything like that.</p>
<p>Cal Tech is harder to get into than Duke. My brother got rejected by Cal Tech but got accepted to Duke and Harvey Mudd. However, I do think Duke does stand by itself in the South.</p>
<p>Of course caltech is harder to get into, they really only want specific types of students. Agree w/comment on Duke. No one in the south truly competes in the prestige dept, though I would say that Vandy is catching up in popularity (app. numbers. This doesn’t equate to true prestige, but I suppose it’s a start. At least the gap isn’t getting wider. Chicago, for example, has less apps than either, but I would say it’s better off than Vandy and much different from Duke)</p>
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<p>What country-club features do Duke and Stanford have that HYP (among others) don’t?</p>
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<p>AKA a trollolol!!!</p>
<p>[Trololo</a> Sing Along! - YouTube](<a href=“http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2Z4m4lnjxkY]Trololo”>http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2Z4m4lnjxkY)</p>
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Great reasoning skills there!</p>
<p>So, if I get admitted to Caltech but denied at Duke, then that must mean that Duke is harder to get into? Maybe in my particular case…</p>
<p>Northeast - Harvard
West - Stanford
Midwest - Chicago
South - Duke</p>
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<p>Nice weather and nice people? ;)</p>