This discussion was created from comments split from: Can you use profanity in college essays??.
@MaryGJ Off topic, but a phrase you used caught my eye – what’s a public Ivy?
@JenJenJenJen - It describes an elite, generally pretty high-ranking public university or college. The University of Virginia is frequently referred to in that manner. According to Wikipedia, the term was coined in 1985:
“Public Ivy” is a term coined by Richard Moll in his 1985 book Public Ivies: A Guide to America’s Best Public Undergraduate Colleges and Universities to refer to US universities that are claimed to provide an Ivy League collegiate experience at a public school price.[1] Public Ivies are considered, according to The Journal of Blacks in Higher Education, to be capable of “successfully competing with the Ivy League schools in academic rigor… attracting superstar faculty and in competing for the best and brightest students of all races.”[2]
The original Public Ivies as Moll listed them in 1985:
College of William & Mary (Williamsburg, Virginia)
Miami University (Oxford, Ohio)
University of California (9 campuses as of 1985)[7]
University of Michigan (Ann Arbor)
University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
University of Texas at Austin
University of Vermont (Burlington)
University of Virginia (Charlottesville)
What you might be interested in too are some of the public honors colleges that strive to provide the benefits of a liberal arts college within a larger university:
http://publicuniversityhonors.com/new-top-programs-by-category/
@LoveTheBard No UCB or UCLA on that list?
They list the nine UC campuses (Merced = Princeton? Hardly)
Merced is clearly the Cornell of that group.
My kiddo is at University of Michigan. She’s in a premed program, but following a research track. UMich is second only to John Hopkins for research, with a research budget of over a billion dollars a year.
https://ncsesdata.nsf.gov/profiles/site?method=rankingBySource&ds=herd
So yeah, “Public Ivy” is a coined term that doesn’t mean much, but the opportunities in research at UMich exceed what can be found at most “Ivies” (again, a coined term that doesn’t mean much)…
For a kid whose passion is research, she’s where she belongs.
They listed all 9 UC’s. Year after year, Berkeley is identified as the #1 Public Research University in the country, by the likes of USN&WR and others. UCLA also ranked high among public ivies. And yes, it means something. It’s of the same calabre as the ivies. So is Stanford, though it too is not an ivy.
I didn’t know that U of Vermont was originally considered one of the Public Ivies. And when I first heard of it , back in the 80s, it was described to me in negative terms, by a friend who had (in his own words) “escaped Vermont” to go to college and was so grateful that his family had the resources to send him OOS; he felt bad for his HS classmates who were still there. USNWR doesn’t think too highly of it these days; there are 40 state schools ahead of it in their National Universities list.
To return to the original question: it would take a skilled writer to pull off the use of profanity. In the OP’s case I don’t think he/she should take the risk.
http://www.universityreview.org/list-of-public-ivy-schools/
Essentially, a “public ivy” is a public school with similar academic rigor and world reputation as an “ivy league” school.
One reason my daughter chose UMich, in spite of it not being “Ivy League”…is that it has a bigger budget for research and development than any other school in the nation, with the exception of John Hopkins (which has a MASSIVE research budget). (this, according to the National Science Foundation)
John Hopkins is really the only college she would have preferred
Many “Public Ivies” have a better global reputation than Ivy League schools.
Many people are surprised to learn that Stanford, Duke and MIT are also not “Ivy League” schools.
Essentially the term “Ivy League” is becoming antiquated. It does not necessarily indicate the best of the best or even the best opportunity. Not to say the Ivy League schools aren’t exceptional…most are. But there are other exceptional schools that are comparable and competitive. (and sometimes surpass them)
Also in 1985 I believe UCB and UNC-CH were top 10 ranked schools. Other publics were highly ranked until the methodology was changed to favor things that privates had going for them.
it’s always interesting to me to see Americans default to The US News and World Report as the supreme authority on ranking universities. QS World University Rankings, Higher Times Education World University Rankings, and Academic Ranking of World Universities have very different opinions.
Research opportunities and global reputation aside, I do think most of the Ivy League schools (it’s an athletic conference, not an antiquated term) offer an exceptional liberal education and are more undergraduate focused than many larger research universities. My kids attended Brown and Harvard - they learned to communicate exceptionally well and think critically, as did the majority of their classmates - most students are very engaged in academics and other activities.
I attended a top state flagship (now a “public ivy”) a long time ago, and I still remember that many of my classmates only did what they had to do to get by to graduate – the atmosphere was very disappointing and I felt isolated much of the time because many of my classmates were not very interested or interesting.
I meant the connotations of academic excellence, selectivity in admissions, etc. associated with the term “Ivy League”…are antiquated. These qualities are clearly not exclusive to these schools.
I cannot imagine a kid at ANY highly selective university who is not “engaged in academics and other activities”.
“I meant the connotations of academic excellence, selectivity in admissions, etc. associated with the term “Ivy League”…are antiquated.”
What is antiquated? All of these points are still very much in effect at all of the Ivy League schools. And this does not in any way diminish any other selective universities.
I don’t see USNWR as the “supreme” ranking, but when looking at US universities in their local context
and in terms of American perception it can certainly be a quick indicator.
BTW when it comes to “Public Ivies” the QS World University Rankings do show them in places similar to USNWR , with several of them high and with numbers close to their USNWR numbers (U of Michigan 23, UC Berkeley 28, UCLA 31, UCSD 40, U of Wisconsin 53, U of Illinois Urbana-Champaign 66 and U of Texas Austin 67)
QS World University Rankings has all of the Ivies except for Brown and Dartmouth in the top 20, higher than any of the Public Ivies.
Interestingly, UVA, very high up on USNWR (maybe in the top 25?) is ranked 177 in QS World University Rankings, and William and Mary which I think USNWR ranks in the top 50 is somewhere between 551-600, as is U of Vermont-Burlington.
When I hear “public Ivy” it refers to the top public universities in the country – schools such as (but not limited to: Berkeley, UVa, William & Mary, UMichigan, UCLA, UNC) The use of “Ivy” in my opinion is unnecessary – the Ivy League is a sports league. While the Ivy schools are uniformly excellent, there are other schools (ex. Stanford, MIT, Chicago, Duke to name a few) of the same academic caliber not in that sports league.
“What is antiquated? All of these points are still very much in effect at all of the Ivy League schools. And this does not in any way diminish any other selective universities.”
I’ll agree with your points here…but see if you can follow mine.
The idea that Ivy League colleges are the best of the best schools…is antiquated.
Some are exceptional…but no more so than MIT or Stanford or University of Chicago, etc…
For the layman, “Ivy Leagues” used to be synonymous with “best colleges”
And that’s just not true anymore. That very common inference…is antiquated.
We should acknowledge that USNWR is specifically ranking undergraduate programs and taking into account – indeed weighting heavily – things that may matter to undergraduates, while QS and the like are pretty much looking at graduate programs and faculty research productivity and reputation (and some of the ratings systems are limited to STEM, or STEM plus a few social sciences). I am not a big fan of USNWR, and agree that its rubric is designed to reward the qualities of small, private universities over public flagships, but it’s not easy to design a rating system for every purpose.