@roethlisburger, got it—for some reason, that feature wasn’t working on my usual browser—tried it on a different one, and it worked.
But still: So? Meaningless data for purposes of comparison unless the colleges have the same distribution of majors (among other potentially important factors).
The two points of view in this thread:
One of those is provable. The other means that further adventures in mathematics are still in one’s future.
That’s interesing @Chembiodad . Here’s a ranking list. http://www.4icu.org/top-universities-north-america/ Poor old Swarthmore comes in at 178, well below Temple and U of Oklahoma. I doubt you will find a single person on CC who will agree that kids at U of Oklahoma are overall smarter than kids at Swat. All this list proves is that rankings don’t matter.
Let’s look at Ohio State. It’s in the top fifty of biggest endowments in the world. The students at Ohio State are smarter and more prestigious than students at Brown, Williams and Amherst if you are judging by endowments. Then you have people like my husband who likes to hire non-Americans because he believes they are far better educated, due to the emphasis many foreign universities place on studying only within one’s major. Of course he hires Americans too, but is it safe to assume foreigners are smarter than Americans? Is it safe to assume prestige equals intelligence? Is it safe to assume money equals a better outcome? No. I don’t see reverse snobbery on this thread. I see people who are primarily saying that it’s the person who dictates his or her personal outcomes.
I won’t express an opinion on the relative prestige of the colleges mentioned in the self-examination below, but Harvard has maintained a perennially top or near-top USNWR position, a common component of prestige estimates. Nonetheless, its choice has not proven to be uniformly propitious.
When then candidate, now Massachusetts governor, Charlie Baker was asked by the Boston Globe to take the Proust Questionnaire, he responded as follows:
Q: What is your greatest regret?
A: Not going to Hamilton College. I never really felt comfortable at Harvard.
I will disagree with a lot of what you said. I do agree it is VERY hard to pay $250,000 for college. Look for somewhere with better financial aid!
I have been on the hiring end of well-sought after companies for many years. Honestly it depends a lot more on the applicants experience, personality, ECs and ambition than it does what school they went to. (Engineers are what I mainly hire, although some math majors). We have found 4.0s from the prestigious schools don’t necessarily make the best employees. Some of the best people we have were 3.0s from state schools! They do very well in their careers and financially.
My S will be attending an OOS state school because of the opportunities he was given there. He will be a pre-vet and already has made some great (and successful) alumni that are helping him before he even attends the school!
Don’t paint everything with a broad brush. The college is what you make it. Yes you want to make sure that the school you go to has a reputable department in what you would like to major in. You don’t want the bottom of the barrel or programs about to be cancelled but you don’t have to have a top 20 school to succeed! My S will have plenty of opportunities from the state school he will be attending. My opinion is to find somewhere that the student will be happy because there they will work harder to succeed.
@DadTwoGirls; agree that non-US graduates can be stars as well. That said, I didn’t think we were including those that could only go to the school in their country of origin - if we are, I agree that those schools will never be included in USNWR, so yes great students come from all around the world.
@Lindagaf, I agree that subjective rankings are meaningless. I have no idea what prestige means, which is the reason I focused on smartest as determined by a standardized test - in this case I used the ACT, and then I factored in student fit as one has to not only study, but live amongst the student population. We can all come up with students who went to lower ranked or no-name schools that were stars - my point was that you have to start somewhere in reviewing job candidates so unless I was able to interview every entry level candidate I will miss those who’s schools I’ve never heard of.
Rank College ACT
1 California Institute of Technology 34-35
2 Harvey Mudd College 33-35
3 Massachusetts Institute of Technology 33-35
4 Columbia University 32-35
5 Harvard University 32-35
6 Princeton University 32-35
7 Rice University 32-35
8 University of Chicago 32-35
9 Vanderbilt University 32-35
10 Johns Hopkins University 32-34
11 University of Notre Dame 32-34
12 Washington University in St. Louis 32-34
13 Stanford University 31-35
14 Yale University 31-35
15 Amherst College 31-34
16 Brown University 31-34
17 Carnegie Mellon University 31-34
18 Duke University 31-34
19 Haverford College 31-34
20 Northeastern University 31-34
21 Northwestern University 31-34
22 University of Pennsylvania 31-34
23 Williams College 31-34
24 Bowdoin College 31-34
25 Hamilton College 31-33
26 Cooper Union 30-34
27 Cornell University 30-34
28 Dartmouth College 30-34
29 Georgetown University 30-34
30 Pomona College 30-34
31 Boston College 30-33
32 Case Western Reserve University 30-33
33 Colgate University 30-33
34 Georgia Institute of Technology 30-33
35 Grinnell College 30-33
36 Tufts University 30-33
37 University of Southern California 30-33
38 Vassar College 30-33
39 Washington and Lee University 30-33
40 Swarthmore College 29-34
41 University of California—Berkeley 29-34
42 Carleton College 29-33
43 Claremont McKenna College 29-33
44 Emory University 29-33
45 Reed College 29-33
46 University of Michigan—Ann Arbor 29-33
47 University of Virginia 29-33
48 Wellesley College 29-33
49 Middlebury College 29-33
50 University of Rochester 29-33
51 Wesleyan University 29-33
52 Barnard College 29-32
53 Davidson College 29-32
54 Lehigh University 29-32
55 Macalester College 29-32
56 Scripps College 29-32
57 Stevens Institute of Technology 29-32
58 Tulane University 29-32
59 Union College (Schenectady, NY) 29-32
60 University of Richmond 29-32
61 Villanova University 29-32
62 Colby College 29-32
63 Brandeis University 29-32
64 Mount Holyoke College 29-32
65 Pitzer College 29-32
66 United States Air Force Academy 28-33
67 Bucknell University 28-32
68 College of William and Mary 28-32
69 Colorado School of Mines 28-32
70 Kenyon College 28-32
71 Oberlin College 28-32
72 Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute 28-32
73 Southern Methodist University 28-32
74 University of Miami 28-32
75 Colorado College 28-32
76 New York University 28-32
77 Bates College 28-32
78 Bryn Mawr College 28-32
79 Smith College 28-32
80 Worcester Polytechnic Institute 28-32
81 Occidental College 28-31
82 College of the Holy Cross 28-31
83 Connecticut College 28-31
84 Franklin and Marshall College 28-31
85 Wake Forest University 27-33
86 Santa Clara University 27-32
87 Trinity University 27-32
88 United States Military Academy 27-32
89 University of California—San Diego 27-32
90 University of North Carolina—Chapel Hill 27-32
91 Wheaton College (IL) 27-32
92 Whitman College 27-32
93 Binghamton University—SUNY 27-31
94 Boston University 27-31
95 Brigham Young University—Provo 27-31
96 Clemson University 27-31
97 Fordham University 27-31
98 Hillsdale College 27-31
99 Lafayette College 27-31
100 New College of Florida 27-31
101 Ohio State University—Columbus 27-31
Re: #21…that is laughable. From a full pay parent of kids who aren’t “smart” enough to a) get into a prestige school b) earn any appreciable merit and are, or will, be attending a USNWR #50-#125ish school, seriously, get a grip. Maybe, just maybe, we are sick and tired of continuously being smacked over the head about how “stupid” we are, we will never measure up and we will never amount to anything. If you think your post didn’t come off as anything other than typical prestige snobbery you are fooling yourself. And here you go =D> ^:)^ kudos to you for being “smart” enough to choose Harvard. You have just demonstrated reason #1 why many kids don’t want to choose a prestige school.
@Chembiodad: Note, however, that any ranking based on inputs can be gamed. NEU is notorious for this. For example, that ranking you have is of test scores of freshmen starting on campus in the fall. However, NEU doesn’t count the test scores of international admits and they take in a bunch of international transfers who barely know any English (and who’s test scores are not reflected in the school’s stated 75-25 percentile test scores).
NEU and USC (and other schools, including some LACs) also do stuff like send some kids abroad for the first semester/year, take in a ton of transfers (including guaranteed transfers), or delay matriculation of some kids until the spring. The test scores of none of those kids are reflected in the 75-25 percentile test scores of the school, so you can probably guess what test scores those kids have.
Meanwhile, other schools do not play those games.
I don’t see what your list proves @Chembiodad . Why not use a list based on the SAT? Why not a list ranking test-optional schools by some other criteria than test scores from those who do submit?
My D attends a well-known LAC with a girl who is gifted. She studies classics, speaks several languages fluently, has won international and national debate tournaments, has top grades, works, writes for the college newspaper, and won a coveted internship this summer as a sophomore. She does everything well, except for standardized tests. She applied only to test-optional colleges because she simply could not get a score high enough to get her consideration at more prestigous colleges. She is easily one of the most intelligent people I have ever met, and there are plenty more like her all over the country. Furthermore, there are plenty of highly intelligent people at very ordinary colleges who simply can’t afford to attend expensive colleges.
I have a step-niece in CA. She comes from a single parent family with no mother in the picture, until five years ago. This girl is very bright and has had no advantages at all. Her family can’t afford tutors. She has no aspirations outside of CA, except maybe Arizona for a bit of “adventure.” Her school is underserved by counselors. I tried to explain to her that she could aim high if she was interested, as not only is she from a low SES background, but is also URM. She is not interested. She is applying to CA colleges, and maybe ASU. That’s it. This girl could probably get into an Ivy League school if she wanted to, but it’s too far from what she knows. She isn’t comfortable with the idea. She probably has a lot of company too.
My son is intelligent. He is dyslexic and dysgraphic, but managed to get a high score on his pre-ACT. He finds really smart people annoying and says he doesn’t want to go to college with really smart people. He says he wants to go somewhere ordianry (of course, teenagers change their minds all the time.) He is unlikely to aspire to any pretigious colleges because he doesn’t want to be around the kind of people who attend those colleges. My point is that plenty of highly intelligent people don’t attend the most prestigious colleges with the highest test scores for all kinds of reasons. It’s very short-sighted to assume that the most intelligent people go to the most prestigous universities.
As an aside, IMO as a test prep tutor, the SAT is a better measure of “intelligence” than the ACT, but I am sure plenty will disagree with me. The ACT is a better measure of accuracy under time constraints.
If test scores correlate to IQ, it’s worth remembering that 2-3 standard deviations above the middle often correlates with some socialization difficulties. At least according to a psychologist friend of the family.
If those things are true, quite possibly a prestigious U is a mixed blessing.
Maybe , just maybe, our children and our society are both better served by a more balanced system than what we have.
I’ve no input on how to make it happen, however.
The research I’ve encountered indicates that scholastic testing types of intelligence (basically linguistic and mathematical/logical) positively correlate with interpersonal intelligence, as well as all other types of intelligence categories. Nonetheless, I’ve heard informed perspectives similar to that of your psychologist friend before.
@Lindagaf, my twin DD’s scored identically on both tests - 34 single sitting / 35 superscored ACT and 1560 -1580 single sitting SAT. We can all come up with a myriad of instances where correlations don’t occur, but as @merc81 noted the data is pretty clear.
I think this thread has gotten off track - I think everyone would agree that prestige is not a useful reason to pick a school for job placement as if one doesn’t have the chops they’ll get outed pretty quickly. My point was that there is no bad reason for going to the smartest school you can be accepted at, if you can afford it and it’s a fit both academically and socially.
I personally could care less about prestige - is Dartmouth considered more prestigious than Harvey Midd across the country - probably, but if my kid wanted to be a STEM major and felt comfortable at Harvey Mudd I would pick it all day long.
@iwannabe_Brown
People often need to take a job in a location they’re not happy with or requires a lot of travel or has some other undesirable characteristics for a few years to advance their career. They then need to excel even though the job may not be the best fit. To use academia as an example, I’ve known professors who adjusted to have a better work-life balance. However, they did that after finishing undergrad, a Phd, and then earning tenure. I agree that there’s a lot more to judging school quality than USNWR rankings. I do think telling an 18-year-old they deserve to be happy at their age is overrated or maybe even harmful. Perhaps, I’m splitting the difference between you and the OP, or not.
If @Chembiodad is only hiring from the top 100 schools, I’ll bet he lives in the NE. Companies in the west, south, southwest, midwest see many more applicants who have attended colleges in those areas. A company in Houston is going to get a lot of applicants from Texas schools.
Most people do not have anything near $250,000 for one kid’s college (especially if expensive professional school like for MD, JD, or MBA is aimed at).
Most college students’ choices will be tightly limited by cost, admissibility, and suitable academic offerings.
@twoinanddone, the geographic weighting is not surprising as the distribution map resembles same. That said, every region of the country is represented with arguably the Great Plains less so with only Grinnell.
Here’s one example of the distribution of top engineering schools - https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Higher_education_in_the_United_States#/media/File%3ATop_50_engineering_colleges.jpg
There are plenty of other examples to pick from.
That’s irreconcilable with examples of students who got accepted to all eight Ivies. The eight Ivies are different enough it’s difficult to believe all eight could be a great fit for the same student.
But that’s a choice that they made. If advancing their career was not as high a priority for them then they wouldn’t have done that. It’s all about weighing priorities. Just as, for example, OP for some reason doesn’t think prestige is worth a lot of money but is worth sacrificing everything else.
Agree to disagree here unless what you really mean is that it’s wrong to tell an 18 year old they deserve to be happy 100% of the time without a moment of struggle. That of course is a ridiculous stance. Telling an 18 year old they deserve to be able to put down the textbook and have something about their school to look forward to? I find the idea that that could be detrimental or overrated hard to believe. Otherwise, I don’t think we’re really that far from each other.
Out of curiosity - at what age does one deserve to be happy?
@HappyAlumnus
I would appreciate if you could point out where I misunderstood your argument. I was asking all those questions to better understand your stance because as far as I can tell, you are either arguing against an argument that nobody makes, ("under no circumstance should you ever let prestige factor in to your decision in any way shape or form) or you are strawmanning the people who say “don’t pick on prestige” when what they usually mean is “don’t pick columbia over dartmouth because even though you want to be at a small school in a small town, columbia is more prestigious than dartmouth” or “don’t pick columbia over oklahoma state because oklahoma state is offering you a full merit scholarship that will cover literally all COA + a stipend while columbia is giving you a 20k/year grant but expecting you to pay the rest with loans, and you’d rather stay closer to home but didn’t get into duke or vanderbilt.”
