<p>i’d admit an average kid from Princeton is more qualified than an average kid from Michigan, STATISTICALLY. However, if you pick a random kid from Michigan and a random kid from Princeton, I would not quickly draw the conclusion that the Pton kid is smarter, I’d say they have the potential to be equally qualified. It might be the michigan kid doesnt have enough money to attend princeton, i might be the michigan kid loves college sports. There are TONS of reasons why people pick one school over another… I’ve met kids from Michigan who are much more intellectually curious than my pton sister, who just wants to work for Goldman.</p>
<p>Ivy League schools graduate less than 20,000 students every year, America has well over 20,000 uber-qualified candidates for all the career fields… comparing top 25 schools is stupid, all those schools can send you to wherever you want to be, the resources are all there.</p>
<p>Of course the potential exisits that the Michigan person will be more qualified than someone at Princeton, but the point is that the Michigan will have to work a little harder to prove it.</p>
<p>“i’d admit an average kid from Princeton is more qualified than an average kid from Michigan, STATISTICALLY”</p>
<p>That is the whole point. STATISTICALLY umich as undergrad lacks in student body quality from other top 20 schools. </p>
<p>I do want to thank Alex though. Before this argument, I thought Umich wasn’t deserving of its top 25 status as an undergrad institution. However by reviewing some data, I have changed my opinion and think that Umich deserves at best to be ranked with UVA. However, saying Umich for ugrad is any higher than that is quite erroneous.</p>
<p><em>wakes up</em>
<em>yawns</em>
<em>tries to finish reading thread</em></p>
<p>Like Untilted said, it’s stupid to nit-pick between top schools, Michigan included. I’m a student at Duke, my high school friends are at UNC, and I’ve spent a great deal of time at both. The average Duke student may be smarter than the average UNC student, but I’ll be danged if you can tell the difference. My intro geology class is as full of dummies as you’ll find at Duke, and organic chem was full of some of the smartest. The same goes for UNC. I have friends from Virginia who say the same thing about Duke and UVa. Indeed, UNC and UVa fall behind only HYPS and USMA in the number of Rhodes scholarships they’ve won. There’s such a wide range at the top schools that it does not make any sense AT ALL to categorize them and say “A is better than B” or “A has smarter students than B.” </p>
<p>Just for the record, Duke isn’t self-selected at all.</p>
<p>Sorry Alexandre, hate to say this, but I’m very intrigued by the fact you’re including Caltech as fractionally better than Michigan as a top feeder. Hate to sound like a ■■■■■, but please count only Science and Engineering fields when you mention Caltech. The average students’ quality at Caltech is arguably the best academically in the States. Comparing it with other schools as a feeder to professional fields will be biased.</p>
<p>Doing anything will be biased. We’re all humans and can only see the world throgh our views. How is it fair to only count certain fields with caltech? If it’s so narrow, how can it rank with the best broad universities in the nation?</p>
<p>rtkysg, I totally agree with you. I even said it clearly that schools with large Engineering programs will not to as well as schools where 90% of the students major in a traditional discipline like Political Science or Math or Economics. That is why schools like MIT, Caltech, Cal, Michigan and Cornell don’t do as well as some of their peers in placing students in top graduate programs.</p>
<p>Bball8, Slipper isn’t trying to convert me or I him. We are trying to give students on this forum as much information and show them as many points of views as possible.</p>
<p>Look at the context of the debate. When we are talking about popularity contest then perhaps what you said was right. BUT, here we are talking about THE QUALITY of the student body. Is it right to use indicator like how many Physics PhD wannabes go to professional fields as a measure of the quality of the student body. The number of non-science/engrg aspired grads at Caltech can be counted by fingers. Isn’t it obvious why we shouldn’t compare it in other fields??</p>
<ul>
<li>alumni connections. old money is prestige. like it or not…it’s a fact.</li>
</ul>
<p>
</p>
<ul>
<li>would agree with vandy being one of the best. don’t know enough about chicago to say it’s one of the worst though. </li>
</ul>
<p>
</p>
<ul>
<li>sorry…it really does. 1) success in life generally coorelates with connects. social life = networking. 2) companies hire personable people, not world of warcraft heroes.</li>
</ul>
<p>
</p>
<ul>
<li>agreed.</li>
</ul>
<p>
</p>
<ul>
<li>absolutely agreed.</li>
</ul>
<p>
</p>
<ul>
<li>absolutely agreed. vanderbilt is about as old money as it gets in the south. that coorelates to people in the “nicer” parts of the world wanting to hire you. it’s obviously changing (for the better or worse, whichever you argue) as all other top private universities have done in the past or are doing (duke in the 80s was exactly where vanderbilt is now…like it or not folks, that’s just the way things are).</li>
</ul>
<p>
</p>
<ul>
<li>tuesday is also a big night. i’m a member of a fraternity and we usually do both.</li>
</ul>
<p>
</p>
<ul>
<li>back to the old money comment. vanderbilt has never really had a lot of international students due to its former WASPic nature. it has always accepted the mega affluent with open arms of course, those arabics were the sons of Oil Gods.</li>
</ul>
<p>
</p>
<ul>
<li>disagree…heavily. reference old money comment and fact that alumni do better in the corporate world due to mix of legacy and personable traits.</li>
</ul>
<p>
</p>
<ul>
<li>here’s a quick way to figure out of a school is prestigious. was it founded with the money of a corrupt and evil corporate tycoon that made their money through exploiting the poor? hey, sweet, yours was John D. Rockeller and mine was Cornelius Vanderbilt…both of whom were the richest man in the world at times and New Money themselves.</li>
</ul>
<p>
</p>
<ul>
<li>agreed.</li>
</ul>
<p>
</p>
<ul>
<li>matter of opinion. our women are always well dressed and can usually be found bathing in the sun. hawaii has a bunch of surfers and UNC isn’t all that great, it’s just southern and all southern schools have good looking women.</li>
</ul>
<p>Sure, UChicago may be one of the very top schools in the nation. I believe it is, i was extremely close to going there and I think it is an amazing school, but it is not in the top 15 of overall prestige to the general public. If you just asked someone on the street to start naming schools that hes heard of, do you think Chicago would be on the list? Sadly, it wouldnt.</p>
<p>ckmets13, i highly disagree with your list. I know Notre Dame is a fine school but I never really thought much of it. In fact, I know of someone who grew up right around the school and went to a high school that was a feeder to Notre Dame. His own impressions: It is a sports driven school where sports supersede academics.
I think your list is basically equating sports/name recognition with prestige. Just because someone knows of Michigan or USC does not mean that the person thinks of both as upper-prestigious schools. Your logic is similar to saying that b/c I know of Univ of Kansas (from bball) that it is a great academic school.</p>
<p>ckmets13: agreed. I never understood why people think Chicago has a lot of general prestige, because it doesn’t. It certainly does in academic circles (hell, many seem to confuse it with UIC). Caltech is also one that doesn’t have as much prestige as people here would think (as shown partly by the # applicants it gets).</p>
<p>^ i think you’re confusing prestige with well-known. amherst is a pretigious school but it is not as well known as boston university, a less prestigious one. chicago and caltech are both prestigious and the fact that some joe schmo living down the street from you has never heard of them doesn’t make them any less prestigious. academic circles, as you mentioned, think they are pretigious and that’s what counts. here’s my list of top 15 in no particular order;</p>
<p>harvard
yale
princeton
mit
stanford
caltech
columbia
upenn
brown
dartmouth
cornell
duke
berkeley
chicago
johns hopkins- will soon be replaced by wustl :)</p>
<p>columbiahopeful, thats not what it means. More people know that Michigan and USC are good schools than know that UChicago is a good school, therefore Michigan and USC are more prestigious. Prestige gets misunderstood a lot. I get put down a lot on these threads for boosting up Notre Dame, but how many people in the country dont know that Notre Dame is a good school. I would argue that although we are overappreciated in the general public, in academic circles we are underappreciated because of our Catholic affiliation and our football team. Many academics cant seem to understand how a sports culture can coexist with an academic one. They have never been here, and they will never understand it.</p>
<p>ckmets13,
I am completely with you on Notre Dame. Don’t ever feel you have to apologize for the quality of the students or the academics or the prestige of Notre Dame. It is a terrific school, (but don’t expect the academics to ever recognize that) and extremely well regarded in the business community. In certain markets, eg Chicago, ND would be one of the five most prestigious colleges in the country. And the name recognition that ND has (whether formed by their football team or their strong academic history/record among Catholics and others across the country) is surpassed by very, very few colleges. I would say that outside of the Northeast, only HYP among the Ivies, has more or equal prestige than ND. </p>
<p>Ilovebagels,
I suggest you check the battery on your prestige radar-Vanderbilt has definitely got it. But it may not to the same degree and in the same circles (eg, Wall Street) that you likely frequent as a U Penn student. Your perspective is common among those who attend or graduated from an Ivy or some other elite NE schools, but I think you and some others fail to appreciate the quality that exists around the country. When you move around the country, the reality of Vanderbilt’s prestige is apparent and is very visible. For example, throughout the South, Vanderbilt has a superb brand name. On the national stage, the brand and the prestige is waaay up over the last decade (in much the same way as U Penn) with a great improvement in its student profile and selectivity over that time. Among top colleges outside of the NE, IMO Vanderbilt would rank only slightly below Duke and Rice and at the same level as Emory, Wash U and Northwestern. </p>
<p>Finally, 15 is the wrong number to use for measuring prestige. IMO, there are plenty of schools (30-40 at least) that have strong regional prestige, but there are probably only 5-6 (HYPSMD) that truly have consequential and differentiated national prestige.</p>