<p>“it would be hard to find a reason not to pick Northwestern above those other universities”</p>
<p>well, talk to the thousands of students who turn down Northwestern each year, they might have some reasons.</p>
<p>i am sure you can talk about the thousands of students that turn down Cornell each year lol</p>
<p>yes, and they will have their reasons as well. Same for Northwestern. </p>
<p>any decision yet?</p>
<p>i’d stick it out at cornell another year and try to get into the schools you really want to go to.</p>
<p>other than that, northwestern FTW.</p>
<p>Texas is the Bible Belt? I think you need to realize what a huge state Texas is. Sure, parts of it feel like part of the deep south, but I’d consider it Southwest more than anything else.</p>
<p>As for picking another school over Northwestern, here’s my take: Northwestern gets the wind right off of lake Michigan, which leads to a biting, unpleasant cold during the winter. More important to me, however, was the fact that Northwestern offered very poor financial aid, although I’m sure that varies from person to person.</p>
<p>So…who’s winning?</p>
<p>Not that you should be basing your opinion on a very flawed internet poll anyways. But it doesn’t sound like there is one school that you like definitively more than any others. In that case, I’d just stick with Cornell and avoid the trouble of transferring.</p>
<p>Texas is just Texas. A separate place neither Southern nor midwestern.</p>
<p>Rice or Cornell. Honestly, if I were humanities or premed major I’d probably shoot for Brown or Rice.</p>
<p>Prestige or Wow Factor if u will</p>
<ol>
<li> Chicago</li>
<li> Cornell</li>
<li> Northwest</li>
<li> WashUSTL</li>
<li> Rice</li>
</ol>
<p>Cornell should win the prestige factor.</p>
<p>Chicago is more of a local school…where I live, people have never heard of uchiago. cornell would win the prestige and wow factor.</p>
<p>I don’t know about that. Maybe with random people on the East Coast it would…</p>
<p>No, Cornell would likely win prestige factor overall.</p>
<p>The Texas prestige perspective:
Cornell
Rice
NU
UChicago
WUStL</p>
<p>I still think that’s not true. Prestige depends largely on location. I don’t see any of these shools having more universal prestige than the others.</p>
<p>yeah, people where i’m from (midwest) don’t even know cornell is ivy league, and those who do, know it’s the very bottom of the ivy league and that carries very little weight. From the perspective of the midwest its:</p>
<ol>
<li>Northwestern/Uchicago (depends who you talk to, northwestern has more prestige among most people but really nerdy people like uchicago more)</li>
<li>Rice</li>
<li>WUStl</li>
<li>Cornell</li>
</ol>
<p>Rice and WUSTL are not more prestigious than Cornell in the Midwest. I lived in the Midwest for 10 years and most people really respect Cornell.</p>
<p>And elsijfdl, there is no such thing as “bottom” of the Ivy League. You have Harvard Princeton and Yale, and then you have the top 5. All 8 Ivies are extremely respected, with the first three being only slightly more respected. </p>
<p>KK, I disagree with you. In terms of university prestige, Rice and WUSTL are not on not quite on par with the other three schools. Don’t get me wrong, all 5 universities are highly respected where it counts, but in terms of university prestige, Rice and WUSTL are not quite there.</p>
<p>“And elsijfdl, there is no such thing as “bottom” of the Ivy League.”</p>
<ol>
<li>Princeton University(NJ)<br></li>
<li>Harvard University(MA)</li>
<li>Yale University(CT)<br></li>
<li>University of Pennsylvania</li>
<li>Columbia University(NY)</li>
<li>Cornell University(NY)</li>
<li>Brown University(RI)</li>
</ol>
<p>see the ones on top? see the ones on bottom? there is such a thing, whether you want to call it “more respected” and “less respected” or top and bottom, it’s the same thing.</p>
<p>I don’t know where you lived in the midwest but hardly anyone from where i’m from even knows what cornell is, let alone know that it’s an ivy league school, and the ones that do are the ones who go to school on the east coast; schools like yale, princeton, middlebury, and thus do not look with awe upon cornell.</p>
<p>Also, on a side note, everyone i know who DOES know something about it considers it, for whatever reason, to be a depressing place to be, and as such try to avoid it. In fact, cornell is the only ivy league school that i don’t know someone who attends, for the sole reason that no one even applies to it.</p>
<p>On another note, i wouldn’t adhere entirely to those rankings i just posted as an order of prestige; i would put columbia above upenn and brown above cornell, and obviously harvard above princeton, in terms of how people regard them.</p>
<p>but that’s just what people from my town think, it can’t really be argued if you came from a place where that was different. I live in a place that sends a very large portion of its students to east coast colleges, and also a very large portion attend east coast boarding schools, and that order of prestige is just the status quo.</p>
<p>I’d go with Cornell.</p>
<p>“see the ones on top? see the ones on bottom? there is such a thing, whether you want to call it “more respected” and “less respected” or top and bottom, it’s the same thing.”
Well… you have to consider that US News uses factors such as acceptance rates, SAT score and Alumni giving rate. Since Cornell is so much bigger than other elite schools, it has a higher acceptance rate. Since Cornell has 5 specialty schools that don’t consider SAT scores as much as A&S and Engineering, its SAT score range is distorted. And with respect to alumni giving rate… well… I don’t think anyone really cares because Cornell isn’t lacking in the money department.
I’d say the best measure of “prestige” is the peer assesment rating and by that standard, Cornell is tied with Columbia as the fourth Ivy. Further, Cornell is ranked in the top 25 in pretty much everything which is something you can’t really say for Brown, Penn and Dartmouth.
Also, if you look at some of the international rankings like the Academic Ranking of World Universities and the Times Higher World University Ranking, Cornell is usually the 4th or 5th Ivy.</p>