Southern Ivy League

College Search & Lists
201

<p>Mg,
Sorry, you don’t know what I’ve experienced. </p>

<p>Some undergrad colleges are more excellent than others and I have seen enough to know the difference between which truly are and which truly are not. You be surprised if you actually took the time to understand what’s out there. There is hype and there is reality. I have seen both. </p>

<p>You being my boss? Wow, aren’t you impressive. And humble. And such a good stereotype of what one too often finds at HYP. I’ll be looking for you next time I’m on campus interviewing. I’d never hire you, though I guess someone ultimately will or your parents will hit on one of their friends to do ‘em a favor. But given your style, I expect you to get fragged by other employees.</p>

202

<p>meangirl- Your name is well-chosen. I can assure you that you will only get into those law schools with your 174 and your good GPA if they don’t get to MEET you first!</p>

<p>You obviously have no clue how things work in the real world. Perhaps if you had gone to Rice, you would. Rice students don’t give a moment’s thought to whether Rice is “better” than Duke or what the yield might be. They simply aren’t as insecure as you obviously are. They know they attend a wonderful, well-respected university. I know a number of Rice grads and current students who chose it over the very schools you are claiming are so superior- and NOT just for financial reasons. </p>

<p>If, by some unfortunate accident, you ARE admitted to one of the la-di-da law schools, good luck getting a job upon graduation and paying off your loans. Personality DOES matter in the law.</p>

<p>(cross posted with hawkette- So, now that there are two adults telling you the same thing, perhaps you have something to consider…)</p>

203

<p>what always struck me about people on CC are that they are never willing to concede that there is an alternate opinion to a topic… not everything is black and white… since so many think that they are absolutely correct, these pointless arguments start. </p>

<p>“Elite to you is not elite to me.”</p>

<p>I do NOT know how anyone can disagree with this statement… if you disagree, you are simply proving the statement is correct. Everything is a matter of opinion.</p>

204

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<p>Too late. I have already graduated.</p>

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<p>You cannot afford me.</p>

205

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<p>Personal interviews are not required. Nor do they play any evaluative role in admissions.</p>

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<p>For the record, I have nothing against Rice or its students. Rice is fine for what it is. I just do not think that, objectively speaking, the school is as great as hawkette claims it to be.</p>

<p>And you could’ve fooled me:</p>

<p><a href=“http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/rice-university/136350-rice-respected-duke.html[/url]”>http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/rice-university/136350-rice-respected-duke.html&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

<p><a href=“http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/rice-university/781811-opportunities-afforded-rice-degree-vs-duke-degree.html[/url]”>http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/rice-university/781811-opportunities-afforded-rice-degree-vs-duke-degree.html&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

<p><a href=“http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/duke-university/783224-duke-degree-vs-rice-degree.html[/url]”>http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/duke-university/783224-duke-degree-vs-rice-degree.html&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

<p><a href=“http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/college-search-selection/781809-duke-degree-vs-rice-degree.html?highlight=duke+degree+rice+opportunities[/url]”>http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/college-search-selection/781809-duke-degree-vs-rice-degree.html?highlight=duke+degree+rice+opportunities&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

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<p>I currently work for a hedge fund. In two years when I apply to law school, I should be able to pay for the full tuition (plus living expenses) entirely out-of-pocket. No need for me to take out any loans. But thanks for your concern.</p>

206

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<p>Are you RML in disguise? “Cal is better in everything that matters”. What an absurd statement. First of all, last time I checked this was COLLEGE Confidential, not grad school confidential, and for purposes of discussing an undergraduate education, reputation of that degree, quality of student body, alumni giving, alumni salary levels, graduation rate, etc., etc., Dartmouth absolutely wipes the floor with Cal – its not even close. Elite grad school matriculation? Dartmouth absolutely wipes the floor with Cal – its note even close. I mean are you kidding me? This is a joke right?</p>

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<p>um, I never stated that sports are antiquated or irrelevant. Kindly point to the specific post where I ever made such a claim – perhaps others have, but I haven’t, so I challenge you to find such a post. Good luck.</p>

<p>Having said that, so what if they’ve got DI sports programs? All the Ivies have DI sports programs, they also all have student newspapers, a myriad of student clubs and extracurricular choices. Choice. It’s about having it. Do you want to watch a football game? Great go catch Harvard vs. Yale. Do you want to work on the paper or join a singing group? Great, do that to. Do you want to just roll up your sleeves and get lost in your studies? Fine. Sports should be an option it shouldn’t be the be all and end all – and it certainly shouldn’t be the defining characteristic of your school. People shouldn’t meet you and say, “You went to XYZ? How’s the football team looking this year???” That would be depressing, not exhilarating.</p>

207

<p>@ meangirl:
First of all, three out of those 4 “rice vs. duke” threads you pulled out were started by me. I had a pretty rough first semester here, not because of Rice but because of transition issues (i.e. homesickness, didn’t have many friends, bad luck situations, etc.), so I was naturally wondering what life would have been if I attended Duke. I was an anomaly and all my classmates who turned down Duke have not any second thoughts about it.</p>

<p>Now, this semester, I love Rice and it is quite clear I made the right choice. I visited both schools, and I realize Rice is the better atmosphere for me anyways. I have no other second thoughts about Duke and I’m proud and happy that I am attending Rice.</p>

<p>Secondly, you seem to contradict yourself by saying Duke > Rice. In a post you made on the “Schools on the Rise” thread a few days ago, even you stated verbatim: "My point that the differences in educational quality between Duke and Rice are negligible still stands.</p>

<p>I will concur that Duke is more prestigious nationally than Rice. Why is it more prestigious? 1) It has a nationally good basketball team 2) it has excellent professional and graduate schools 3) It has twice the alumni base as Rice (we only have 45,000 alumni because our class size is about 3,000 students). You do agree with me on the basketball contribution to Duke’s prestige: “When Coach K retires and he will soon if not eventually, watch Duke start losing more cross-admits to its southern rivals such as Rice, Emory, Vanderbilt, etc. The main thing that separates Duke right now from these schools is not its academics but its sports.” </p>

<p>Does that mean Duke is better than Rice? No it doesn’t not. Unless you sat in on classes at both Duke and Rice (and I did when I was making my decision), you cannot say the quality of undergraduate education is better at one university over the other. Based on my observations at both Duke and Rice, I believe the quality of undergraduate education is the same at both. Or, to put in your words, “the differences in educational quality between Duke and Rice are negligible.” Based on my impressions when I visited, Duke and Rice students are equally intelligent and hardworking, but Duke students seem to be slightly more social whereas Rice students slightly more humble and down-to-earth (again, these are just my observations when I visited both campuses last April… so no need to argue with them). So, as I stated earlier, Rice and Duke are both excellent schools, but have different atmospheres. You cannot say one is all out better than another, especially if you are relying only on stats and have not had a taste of life at both campuses.</p>

<p>By the way, although this study is somewhat outdated, Rice actually beats Duke in cross-admits… here’s the link: [SSRN-A</a> Revealed Preference Ranking of U.S. Colleges and Universities by Christopher Avery, Mark Glickman, Caroline Hoxby, Andrew Metrick](<a href=“http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=601105##]SSRN-A”>http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=601105##). Rice’s overenrolled this year; our yield was 37%, whereas Duke’s was around 42%. 5% difference is not that much.</p>

208

<p>@ The_Prestige</p>

<p>The forum in which an institution is discussed has no bearing on its actual quality. Don’t try to twist the argument to suit your position. Answer two questions for me: What is more important in determining the academic quality of a university, undergraduate or doctoral degrees (I believe you answered this previously)? Which is better in said programs, Dartmouth or Cal? There you go. </p>

<p>I’ll take you word that you never said sports were irrelevant. That was directed at Corbett and meangirl. Apologies.</p>

<p>All universities have various student activities and groups. You don’t think Florida has a student newspaper, choir groups, etc? Does the University force one to attend sporting events…? How does Dartmouth’s frat-dominated social scene offer more than UCLA? </p>

<p>Your closing hypothetical is just that; a groundless, generalized hypothetical: No university has sports as a defining characteristic: Alabama’s athletics budget probably hovers around 3% of its total budget. Your average person has never heard of Emory, and a marine biologist would probably not ask about Miami’s football team. My friend lives for Hopkins lacrosse. Personally, what I find depressing is that someone would view the value of their degree through the lens of lay prestige, but that’s just me…</p>

209

<p>I’m not going to get into a petty argument, but I did come across this and would like to correct one point. Slik nik, Duke’s class size is 1,600-1,700, half of Rice’s class size. Your third argument is invalid.</p>

<p>Lastly… Basketball doesn’t define us lol. I doubt losing Coach K would cause Duke to lose marticulants to less academic-powerhouse institutions. Not hating on Emory or Rice, but Duke Med, Law, and Business are prestigious and active social contributors.</p>

<p>And slik nik, I couldn’t access the data from that paper you linked. But by looking at the date, it’s too outdated to even consider for a contemporary argument.</p>

210

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<p>This is a loaded question. Your premise is illogical to begin with – specifically, that THE measuring stick of an academic institution could somehow be defined by comparing A) undergraduate quality vs. B) graduate quality is laughable. This flawed presumption automatically rules out LACs as a legitimate entity in the discussion of a higher eduation and also rules out those institutions that offer graduate degrees and don’t offer undergraduate degrees (world leading institutions such as med school UCSF or b-schools INSEAD / LBS come immediately to mind).</p>

<p>There are two separate issues here: </p>

<p>1) Where is the best place for an undergraduate education?
2) Where is the best place for a graduate education?</p>

<p>Undergraduate education. Let’s go back to our original example, Dartmouth vs. Cal. It’s absolutely clear (in USNWR rankings, quality of student body, graduation rates, alumni giving, cross admit yield in the Revealed Preferences survey which demonstrated that 8 out of 10 cross admits prefer Dartmouth over Cal, etc.) virtually every relevant statistic you can think of that Dartmouth is superior to Cal. Finally, when you factor in which programs focus on undergraduates (in terms of size, faculty ratio, resources, etc.) its not even a close discussion. Frankly, I have always stated that in terms of undergraduate focus schools like Dartmouth, Princeton, Brown and Stanford were among the best (and it shows as those particular schools always score near the top in areas like “Quality of Life” and “Happiest Students” by Princeton Review). So if I were looking at undergrad programs those 4 schools would be at the top of my list (which they were – and its exactly the reason I chose one of those schools).</p>

<p>As to no. 2, this is a much harder animal to rank. Some schools offer certain graduate degrees that others don’t. Some schools are strong in certain areas and weak in others. Of course there are schools which offer a wide range of graduate degrees including all three professional degrees (med, business, law) and are strong across the board –> e.g. Harvard, Stanford, Penn, Columbia and Yale come immediately to mind. For me personally, I wouldn’t want to go to Dartmouth or Cal for graduate study – I’d want to choose (if I could and I did) from among those 5 aforementioned schools that are strong across the board and at the top of my chosen field of study.</p>

<p>But again it depends. Depends on what you are going to study. You have to compare apples to apples. Going back to the original example, Cal has a law school but Dartmouth does not. So how do you compare the two? Dartmouth and Cal both have b-schools and Tuck is > Haas. So in that case, Dartmouth is the winner. Or for example, if graduate study in the hard sciences is your thing, I will absolutely acknowledge that Cal is > Dartmouth. But I wouldn’t necessarily call it an automatic win for Cal in every single scenario.</p>

<p>So in sum, for question no. 1) Any Ivy + Stanford / MIT / Caltech + Amherst / Williams + Naval Academy / West Point and for question no. 2) Harvard, Stanford, Yale, Penn and Columbia.</p>

211

<p>eatsalot, slik nik miswrote. He meant to say that Rice has 3,000 undergrads in total, not per class. Rice has under 800 students per class, which makes it half the size of Duke. </p>

<p>I agree that Basketball does not define Duke, no more than it defines UNC or than Football defines Michigan, but in all three cases, those universities benefit from their athletic traditions where their “common” reputation is concerned.</p>

212

<p>the_prestige, Tuck is not greater than Haas. Both are roughly equal (top 10 but not top 5). In all other graduate programs common to the two schools, Cal detroys Dartmouth. </p>

<p>For undergraduate education, unless you are willing to call me ignorant, Cal is equal to Dartmouth. Who knows though, maybe I am ignorant.</p>

213

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<p>If any school destroys another in the undergrad / grad discussion, Dartmouth destroys Cal.</p>

<p>USNWR average ranking from 1983 (when it began) to 2010:</p>

<p>Dartmouth: 8.72
Cal: 18.60</p>

<p>Equal? How does 8 = 18?</p>

214

<p>Thats only for undergrad. Overall Cal destroys Dartmouth</p>

215

<p>“If any school destroys another in the undergrad / grad discussion, Dartmouth destroys Cal.”</p>

<p>Interesting. By your comment, am I to understand that Dartmouth destroys #13 Cornell or #14 Brown as well? </p>

<p>“How does 8 = 18?”</p>

<p>How? Easy, there are 2,000 universities. The difference between 8 and 18 is fractional and since the USNWR ranking is based on a flawed formula, one can easily argue that universities within a certain proximity of each other are equal. </p>

<p>Now, for the comparison of their graduate programs.</p>

<p>BUSINESS:
Haas #7 and #11 by USNWR and BW respectively
Tuck #8 and #13 by USNWR and BW respectively</p>

<p>This is the only graduate program where Dartmouth is equal to Cal…not better as you claimed.</p>

<p>Now for the rest:</p>

<p>BIOLOGY:</p>

<h1>2 Cal</h1>

<h1>34 Dartmouth</h1>

<p>CHEMISTRY</p>

<h1>1 Cal</h1>

<h1>74 Dartmouth</h1>

<p>COMPUTER SCIENCE</p>

<h1>1 Cal</h1>

<h1>48 Dartmouth</h1>

<p>ENGINEERING</p>

<h1>3 Cal</h1>

<h1>54 Dartmouth</h1>

<p>MATHEMATICS</p>

<h1>2 Cal</h1>

<h1>48 Dartmouth</h1>

<p>PHYSICS</p>

<h1>3 Cal</h1>

<h1>56 Dartmouth</h1>

<p>I think you can agree the_prestige, there is a clear difference in quality. I agree that the word “destroy” was extreme, but a difference of 10 (or even 15) spots among thousands of undergraduate institutions is negligible. A difference of 45-70 spots among 150-200 graduate programs is significant.</p>

216

<p>You will recall that I wrote (post #210):</p>

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<p>Besides, realistically, how many folks pursue a Chemistry grad degree vs. b-school, law school or med school? Cal is decent (read: note elite) when it comes to professional grad degrees.</p>

217

<p>umm… everybody knows Cal is better than Dartmouth when it comes to grad programs… what point is trying to be made here…</p>

218

<p>But the_prestige, Dartmouth only offers graduate degrees in Business, Engineering, the Sciences and Medicine. Cal has no medical school and in Business, Tuck and Haas are peers. In all other graduate programs, Cal is significantly better than Dartmouth. </p>

<p>Alam, I for one do not agree that a university can be elite in every single field of study at the graduate level and somehow, not be elite at the undergraduate level. It is possible for the opposite to be true, as some universities that offer great undergraduate education have average (or no) graduate offerings. LACs and schools such as Dartmouth come immediately to mind. But for a university to be among the top 10 in virtually every single field of study and not be among the very best undergraduate institutions is impossible.</p>

<p>Like I said above, unless I am completely ignorant, there is no way Dartmouth is better than Cal as an undergraduate institution. In close to 20 years of studying universities intently, I have seen no evidence that would support such a conjecture. They are obviously two very different insitutions, but in terms of quality, they are equal.</p>

219

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<p>Alex, this will always be our point of contention.</p>

<p>I could not disagree more. I believe – strongly – that Dartmouth’s undergraduate program (quality of student body, overall learning environment / experience, et. al.) is not simply just better than Cal – it is significantly better. </p>

<p>And, frankly, the numbers back me on this. Why, if Cal is equal to Dartmouth, is it consistently ranked outside the Top 20, whereas Dartmouth is consistently ranked in the Top 10? Why do 8 out of 10 Cal/Dartmouth cross admits choose Dartmouth? Shouldn’t it be 50 / 50?</p>

<p>But it’s not just about numbers. I have spoken to a number of Cal graduates (undergrad) and I have spoken to Dartmouth graduates. The Cal graduates had a lot of gripes and complaints about their experience vs. Dartmouth grads who absolutely rave about theirs (and this is reflected in their alumni giving numbers). Dartmouth students also rank highly in areas like “Quality of Life” and “Happiest Students” (alongside perennial high rankers, Stanford, Brown and Princeton) – yet funnily enough, you never see Cal make those kinds of rankings.</p>

<p>There is a difference – how big may be a point of conjecture – the fact there is one shouldn’t be.</p>

220

<p>"I could not disagree more. I believe – strongly – that Dartmouth’s undergraduate program (quality of student body, overall learning environment / experience, et. al.) is not simply just better than Cal – it is significantly better. "</p>

<p>None of the criteria you listed matter. Students will always gravitate toward classes and social events that attract students of equal calibre.Learning environment and preferences varry from person to person.</p>

<p>“And, frankly, the numbers back me on this. Why, if Cal is equal to Dartmouth, is it consistently ranked outside the Top 20, whereas Dartmouth is consistently ranked in the Top 10? Why do 8 out of 10 Cal/Dartmouth cross admits choose Dartmouth? Shouldn’t it be 50 / 50?”</p>

<p>The USNWR ranking is just one ranking and is flawed. Cal alone proves how flawed that ranking is. Most polls conducted on highly regarded individuals (such as corporate leaders, leading intellectuals and highly regarded professors and researchers) seem to support my opinion. One must be incredibly shallow to believe the BS that is the USNWR. And those students who chose Dartmouth over Cal at a rate of 8:2 are just impressionable young people who place too much weight on the USNWR…a for-profit ranking of non-profit institutions! Let us be honest, the USNWR’s sole purpose is to sell. 25% of the magazine’s revenues are generated by that single annual ranking. The numbers don’t back you the_prestige. Numbers cannot back anybody in thois arguement as numbers are meanongless when avaluating education. One cannot measure the quality of education. </p>

<p>“But it’s not just about numbers. I have spoken to a number of Cal graduates (undergrad) and I have spoken to Dartmouth graduates. The Cal graduates had a lot of gripes and complaints about their experience vs. Dartmouth grads who absolutely rave about theirs (and this is reflected in their alumni giving numbers).”</p>

<p>Alumni giving rates are not a reflection of satisfaction the_prestige. Alumni giving rates are a reflection of alumni size and agressiveness (and tradition) of the alumni office. And yes, Cal students (like Chicago and Harvard students) tend to bash their universities. I don’t know why that is, but it has nothing to do with quality of education. Those are three of the top 10 universities in the US. </p>

<p>“There is a difference – how big may be a point of conjecture – the fact there is one shouldn’t be.”</p>

<p>There is a difference, but not in quality. Cal and Dartmouth are two vastly different universities, but that does not mean one is better than the other.</p>