The Most Well-Rounded Undergraduate Experiences

lesdiablesbleus
Wed, 04 Aug 2010 17:18:35 +0000

Bay:

You ranked UC Berkeley as tied for 2nd place, with scores of 4.5, 5 and 5.

You ranked Yale way down at 39th place, with scores of 5, 3 and 2.

Athletic life:

Yale offers 33 different D1/Varsity sports for 5,200 students.
Cal offers 19 D1/Varsity sports for 25,500 students.
Obviously, a much higher percentage of students actually compete athletically at Yale.
For most sports (not football), athletes have the potential to compete at the same national level for both schools.
Cal has the Pac-10, great football and the Stanford-Cal rivalry. Yale has the Ivy-League, the Harvard-Yale football game and rivalry and hockey games.

I’d say Yale students are more well-rounded than Cal students in athletic life.

Social life:
Yale has its renowned residential college system where all students live together on a compact campus for all 4 years. Aside from vibrant housing social life, other available social organizations include 12 a cappella groups, 9 Greek houses, Secret Societies and 33 varsity athletic teams. Yale students have a reputation for being very happy.

Cal’s housing is an uncohesive mix of options on and off its more sprawling campus. I have heard that Greek life is vibrant at Cal. Other than that, I don’t know and haven’t heard anything else impressive about Cal’s social life other than its well-attended football games. Cal students are reputed to be competitive serious studiers.

I’d say Yale wins for the well-rounded social life.

I would re-score the 2 schools as:

UCBerkeley: 4.5, 3.5, 4

Yale: 5, 4.5, 3.5

This bumps Yale above Cal.

Just my two-cents.

First off, lets define what social life and athletic life is in the eyes of MOST college students and adults in societies.

In order for a school to have a good social life, it must have students who are very interested in partying first and foremost. That means going out on an average of 2-4 nights a week to apartment parties/house parties/frat parties/bars/clubs, etc. In addition, it must have a good tailgate culture where football Saturdays are filled with beer and debauchery. The wine and cheese tailgate that happens before the Harvard-Yale rivalry game doesn’t count. Sorry.

As far as athletic life goes, in order to get full marks, a school should be nationally renowned as a powerhouse in one sport and also be competitive in many others. For instance, Duke is a basketball powerhouse but also has competitive tennis, lacrosse, golf and soccer teams. Michigan is a football powerhouse but also has competitive hockey and swimming teams. Texas is a football powerhouse but is extremely competitive in sports like basketball and baseball as well.

By the way, Rice and Vandy aren’t “powerhouse” baseball teams in the same way that Duke is a powerhouse basketball team, Michigan is a powerhouse football team and USC is a powerhouse baseball team. Anyone who tells you otherwise is fooling you.

I don’t have time to change all of Hawkette’s ratings but here would be my take:

SCHOOL ACADEMIC, SOCIAL, ATHLETIC
Michigan 4.5, 4.5, 5.0
Duke 5, 4.5, 5.0
Stanford 5, 3.5, 4.5
Cal 4.5, 4.0, 4.0
Yale 5, 4.0, 2.0
UNC 4.5, 5.0, 5.0

Stanford is totally overrated on the athletic and social front by Hawkette and other CC posters. Its football/basketball games aren’t well attended, it has fairly weak Greek Life, its campus is often quiet and the opposite of vibrant and it lacks the tight-knit residential experience that schools like Yale, Rice, Duke, Princeton, etc. provide.

IMHO, UNC is the most well-rounded university in the country and this is coming from a Dukie. It’s hard to beat Chapel Thrill: top-notch public school, strong students, amazing college town, pretty campus, world-class basketball program, excellent in almost every sport, etc. It might lack in geographical and racial diversity but that’s about it.

I think ya’ll are really harsh on the academic ratings IMO. Considering the thousands and thousands of universities located in the USA, top 20 schools like Vandy and Rice should get the perfect 5.0 rating.