Re #39, I tend to disagree with that in part. In their early stages of association, future Ivy League colleges may have had some general features in common, but what at least some of them most specifically had in common was their strength in intercollegiate football, a collective attribute that lasted at least into the 1930s.
Take the SAT subject tests too, many competitive engineering programs require them. (Math 2 and either Physics or Chemistry). Run the net price calculators. Depending on your income, you may need to go for merit scholarships. As an African-American in a STEM field you should be pretty desirable. Don’t take too many loans. Generally speaking the absolute maximum you should take out should be equal to what you are confident you would have as a first year salary. You might look at some of the HBCU’s as well. My son had merit offers from RPI and WPI.
Thanks for your recommendations. Is the Ivy League on football, though. Can’t it be soccer?
I understand what you mean…a school that would give auto merit is not as prestigious as one that doesn’t, which limits job prospects after grad. That is not really true though. Some schools have better recruiting offices than more prestigious schools. For instance, Northeastern’s co-op programs are great for job prospects. Villanova being in Phil and close to NYC works in their favor. Lots of stories like that.
College only matters on your first job anyway, then experience matters. Look for what you can afford that has a good placement program.
The Ivy League is an NCAA Division I athletic conference. It has many sports, including football, basketball, and soccer. You can look up the sports at http://www.ivyleaguesports.com/landing/index .
Note that Ivy League football is in the “lower subdivision” of NCAA Division I, the Football Championship Subdivision (as opposed to the Football Bowl Subdivision), although the conference does not go to the post-season playoff.
Oh, now I understand.
U of M, UVA, UIUC, Duke, Vanderbilt, Stanford, Wesleyan, WUISL, Northwestern, University of Chicago. Boston College. NYU.
“The group of schools now known as the Ivy League schools were known to have things in common and to be different from the non-Ivy League schools before they were an athletic conference, which is why they are in a conference with each other and not with other schools.” (#39)
One of the things they may have had in common, however, was SAT averages that were not especially high. These, for example, were Harvard’s in 1952:
Verbal: 583
Math: 598
In the early 1950s, the “elite” colleges took in a substantial percentage from frosh from SES-elite boarding schools, with a smaller portion of academically elite students from mostly public schools. This was described in Vance Packard’s 1959 book The Status Seekers. At the time, the rising percentage of students from public schools was an indication of increasing emphasis on academic eliteness over SES eliteness (which the schools had to manage carefully to avoid upsetting donors).
So it is not surprising that SAT averages back then at HYP were not that high by today’s standards (even accounting for the 1995 recentering which would make 583/598 equivalent to about 650/600 today).
How one views the recentering is itself a matter of interpretation. A section score of 580 in 1952 had the same relationship to the average score as a 580 would today.
Still, SAT recentering or not, HYPetc. were heavily populated by academically non-elite scions of the SES elite, who were content with their gentlemen’s C grades, with some actual academically elite students (more likely from public schools and on financial aid) to hold up their academic reputations. So the SAT scores of the time reflected that mix.
“So the SAT scores of the time reflected that mix [at Harvard].”
And which extended to measurably below average students when compared to college students nationally, as would be indicated by these tenth percentile scores:
Verbal: 474
Math: 469
There’s a group of schools called the “little ivies”, including schools like bates, WUSTL, johns hopkins, etc.
I’d look into those
To the extent that Little Ivies can be defined, it is commonly applied to purely undergraduate focused colleges, particularly those in the NESCAC, and similar colleges such as Swarthmore.
Since we’re talking about “ivies” there are the “public ivies” and “new ivies”. Both are completely subjective and unofficial, but good lists nevertheless.
merc81, no quite accurate. Actually Rutgers beat Princeton in football in 1869, over 75 years before the Ivy League was officially named as such. Guess what school was not invited to the party! Tufts beat Harvard in 1875. Tufts was also not invited to the party. Bernstein"s book on the topic has a football centric viewpoint but the focus of the schools that would later constitute the “Ivy League” was not all about football in those days–although athletics was a more significant part of college and academics a lot less so compared to today.
@lostaccount: The difference between a comment being not fully comprehensive and its not being accurate is a great one. You know better than to suggest otherwise. And I’d think the Rutgers v. Princeton game is part of common knowledge for many.
Is Stanford more selective than Harvard?
Yes, Stanford’s acceptance rate is 5% and Harvard’s is 6%.
A 0.9% difference in acceptance rate is meaningless. They are both extremely selective schools and there’s no point in trying to differentiate based on admissions difficulty.