I find it difficult to believe Cal-Berkeley deserves its high rating (undergraduate) these days, given that every time someone posts about possibly attending there is a slew of “you can’t graduate in four years” and the like posts due to the inability to get the courses you want or need.
Even with some of Berkeley’s “resource” issues, it still has world class faculty and facilities.
I agree that “public Ivy” refers to the top public universities in the country and I also agree that the term “Ivy” is not necessary. There are also many private schools that in my opinion are of the same caliber as the Ivy League.
People seem to forget that the Ivy League is merely an athletic conference.
Although UCB is still an excellent school, UMich has taken the top public spots in some recent rankings.
Remove “Faculty-Student Ratio”–which, apart from being particularly nontransparent and the Privates’ favorite metric to manipulate, has a tenuous bearing on “research power”–and Berkeley springs to #3-or-so in the QS ranks, behind MIT and perhaps ETH Zurich; UCLA, to about #15; other Publics with the notable exceptions of Oxford and Cambridge rise a few spots too.
Drop “International Faculty” and “International Students” and most non-American schools lose their sails.
Much to be said about w/y/rank(ers) shuffling their shuffly “methodologies” to get certain results–
There is no such thing as a public ivy, it is just a way to glean on to the Ivy League reputation. Public schools are inherently different than private schools, and as such have different weaknesses and strengths.
As I recall, at the time there was a price vector and a “non-zoo” (very few 300+ sections) in addition to the overall feel of the place.
I don’t think freshman classes with 600 students would have cut it back then. Possibly not now.
I was at an original public ivy when the book came out. I had only a vague idea of the common connotations. Wouldn’t recommend one, mostly due to the prestige thing so the public ivy concept cuts both ways. Others see it differently, and I’m good with that too.
I have a child at a so called “public Ivy” ( i don’t use that term). It works for her and she is very happy. Whether it’s better, worse, top, bottom, lower, higher… # 5… 6…2… 12… 37… Whatever… She loves it and that’s all that matters. Others may not love it… They may not even like it…and that’s ok. Most things come with pros and cons… and that list is different for everybody.
There’s nothing “archaic” about the notion of the Ivies as the best colleges, because back in the day they never had any kind of monopoly on being the best colleges. When I was in high school, there was definitely as sense of HYP as the top colleges (with Dartmouth actually not so far behind), but plenty of kids preferred LACs Amherst/Williams/Wesleyan/Swarthmore to Penn or Brown at the time. MIT was always a valid choice for those who were science and engineering oriented, and I had a classmate who would have been accepted anywhere he applied who chose RPI. The notion of the Ivies as the be-all and end-all is recent (and, well, ignorant), not old.
On the other hand . . . do the Ivies deserve the brand equity they have built for quality education and tradition? Of course they do! Except for Cornell, I believe they are the seven oldest continuously operating universities in the country, and Cornell when it was founded pretty much changed American higher education vastly for the better, creating the model that we still generally follow. They are an admirable set of colleges, just not the only great ones.
(Also, people should stop saying “it’s only a sports league.” While that’s true now, for a long time, until the Department of Justice made them stop, they and MIT used to co-ordinate financial aid policies and offers, for everyone, not just athletes.)
Top public universities like Cal and Michigan offer students everything Harvard and Yale do except a certain level of luxury and exclusivity. They accept a mission to educate a broader range of students, so they have a broader range of students, and everyone merely feel special for being there, not extrasuperduper-special. I don’t think that detracts from their quality as universities.
Mom talks about how it used to be cheaper for students in the northern row of Pennsylvania counties to attend Cornell instead of Penn State, once you factored in transportation.
The commoditization of education is much greater than a generation ago, I think. Public Ivies as a concept probably didn’t help.
Gag. People are labeling schools with the term IVY? Does it validate your school more?
For the record, William & Mary is the second-oldest college in the country, & I think Rutgers is the 8th…older than Dartmouth & Cornell. But yeah, they are an impressive group of old colleges.
Look at College Confidential.
There’s a tab for Colleges and Universities
And there’s a special tab…all by itself…for eight special schools that are “Ivy League” The “Ivy League” is even mentioned on the opening screen of CC.
Does CC make this distinction because the athletic conference is really important to CC readers?
If so…why doesn’t the CC also make a more popular tab of “Big Ten” athletic conference schools?
it’s not about sports. That’s not why CC is setting those eight schools apart.
The most widely understood connotation of the term “Ivy League” is academic excellence. That’s why CC highlights them and references them on their opening page. These are super special, super prestigious schools.
But the reality is…there are several schools that are BETTER than the Ivy League schools. Just factually. By all rankings.
Here’s something else that’s interesting.
Some historians theorize that Ivy is actually a misnomer, and the athletic league…that was originally called the IV League because it consisted of four schools: Harvard, Yale, Princeton and Dartmouth.
Roman numeral 4…I V…Ivy.
But are these schools really that special?
Let’s take Dartmouth, for instance…
It’s ranked #11 by US News and World Report
It’s ranked #82 by Times Higher Learning World University rankings
it’s ranked #158 by QS World University Rankings
it’s ranked among schools #200-300 by Academic Ranking of World Universities
So, clearly, the world doesn’t agree that Dartmout is among the best of the best.
Contrast this with Harvard
It’s ranked #2 by US News and World Report
It’s ranked #6 by Times Higher Learning World University rankings
it’s ranked #3 by QS World University Rankings
it’s ranked #1 by Academic Ranking of World Universities
Harvard is consistently, globally…considered to be an amazing school.
Now look at University of California Berkely…a “public ivy”
It’s ranked #20 by US News and World Report
It’s ranked #10 by Times Higher Learning World University rankings
it’s ranked #28 by QS World University Rankings
it’s ranked #3 by Academic Ranking of World Universities
These numbers are a LOT better than “Ivy League” Dartmouth
MIT ranks comparably to Harvard (but it’s not an Ivy)
It’s ranked #7 by US News and World Report
It’s ranked #5 by Times Higher Learning World University rankings
it’s ranked #1 by QS World University Rankings
it’s ranked #5 by Academic Ranking of World Universities
If you look at schools that consistently fall in the top 50 of ALL OF THESE RANKING outfits…schools that have a global reputation for excellence across the board…you’re going to find schools like MIT, University of Chicago, Stanford, and public schools on the “public ivy” list.
And yes, you’ll find some of the “Ivy League” schools, too. Sometimes ranked higher, and often times a lot lower…than other American schools, including a few of the best public schools.
Food for thought.
I’ll agree with much of what you said but will also add that RPI is also rated higher in Engineering than Yale, Brown and Dartmouth which explains why a person would chose RPI for it’s reputation over these IVYs. It is the oldest technical school in the United States.
RPI is one of the oldest, but not the oldest engineering/tech school in the US. That distinction goes to USMA(West Point) which was founded 22 years before RPI.
It’s also a factor in why most engineers educated in the US during the first half of the 19th century tended to be West Point graduates.
And RPI’s engineering being ranked higher than the 3 Ivies you listed isn’t a surprise.
With the exception of Cornell, Columbia SEAS, and Princeton the rest of the Ivy League were notorious for having average to mediocre engineering programs compared to regular publics…much less the elite publics like UIUC, UW-Seattle, Georgia Tech(engineering/CS only), etc.
In fact many engineers of my uncle’s generation tended to regard Ivy engineering graduates…even those from elite engineering programs in the CCP group with some skepticism as to their technical capabilities.
And my uncle was among them despite he himself being an Ivy graduate(Columbia Seas from the late '50s),especially after his decade long experience being stuck with an incredibly incompetent employee who happened to be a Harvard engineering graduate as his secretary. Said uncle still regards him as the most incompetent/worst employee he’s had to supervise in an engineering/engineering management career spanning several decades.
CC has a page titled “CC Top Universities.” http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/cc-top-universities/ (It’s not a tab; one level lower.) The list could be argued with in places, but besides being colleges that get a lot of CC forum traffic, they are highly-ranked. In mostly alphabetic order, the colleges included are:
UC Berkeley
UCLA
Caltech
CMU
UChicago
Duke
Emory
Georgetown
JHU
MIT
UMichigan
UNC
Notre Dame
Rice
Stanford
UVa
Vanderbilt
WUSTL
The original question has been answered sufficiently.