<p>So many threads ask which is better, university of x or university of y? Colleges are incredibly complex organizations of thousands of people and often hundreds of subjects. Yet people who’ve never been to either college often opine which is “better.”</p>
<p>Can you even definitively decide which is better between these pairs (which are wayyyy less complex than colleges)?:</p>
<p>Which is “better”?</p>
<p>Carrie Underwood or Denise Milani? </p>
<p>Which is a better airplane, an F-16 or a Boeing 747?</p>
<p>Which is a “better” movie? Leaving Las Vegas or the Big Lebowski? </p>
<p>Who would be better to spend a weekend with, supermodel Aida Yespica or Fox Business Network wunderkind Alexis Glick? </p>
<p>The point is, as it is with colleges, WHAT DO YOU WANT TO DO WITH THEM? In other words, adjective like “better” are a bad way to describe or analyze something complex. Better to use verbs… “Which airplane is better to transport 300 people?” “Which movie is better if you want to laugh [or cry]?” etc.</p>
<p>The answers aren’t supposed to be easy. They are supposed to have you scratching your head and saying “Yeah, I see what Schmaltz means…in such pairs it’s supposed to be almost pointless to say one is ‘better’ than the other.” Having said that, Milani, F-16, Lebowski, and BOTH Aida and Alexis.</p>
<p>It depends on the pair, and on our purposes.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>For commercial airline transportation of passengers, clearly the Boeing 747 is more useful. As examples of excellence in aircraft engineering, or manufacturing, most of us have no competence to judge. As an instrument of military attack, ordinarily the F-16 is better. Unless you are a gang of 19 terrorists intent on destroying a skyscraper.</p>
<p>Exactly, TK, so when you’re faced with the question, which is better, Amherst of Georgetown, you CAN’T say one is BETTER…it’s one is the one to go to to get good DC internships, one is better for meeting Smith girls, etc. Simply saying one is "better’’ without a context or verbs is ridiculous. Having said that, Land Rover and Madrid.</p>
<p>Too much cheesecake for the guys, I know. Here’s one for the ladies: who is hotter, </p>
Schmaltz, although that may be true, one can address the “Which is better?” question to the purposes themselves. Which is more important to the education of an aspiring diplomat, getting DC internships, or meeting Smith girls? When we make the terms more general, we may discover that the answer changes. Which experiences are more important to the preparation of a productive and happy life, work experiences or social experiences? And so forth.</p>
<p>Yes, I agree TK…there are SOME questions which can be fairly definitively answered (Amherst is clearly better than Georgetown if one’s goal is to meet Smith girls…Georgetown is clearly “better” than Amherst if you want ready access to Federal government internships). </p>
<p>But which school is “better” overall, or even which has a “better” political science department are questions that are quite possibly pointless to even try to answer, as they rely on evaluating incredibly complex things with too many variables. Now if the question is narrowed to something like “Will Georgetown or Amherst better allow me to work closely with faculty members?” then I think it’s been narrowed to a point where an answer isn’t pure speculation…Amherst’s much smaller size, lack of grad students, and perhaps (?) less pressure on faculty to publish would all seem to indicate that one would have an easier time cozying up to a prof there, as opposed to Georgetown.</p>
<p>Look, the point of this thread is to put into perspective the endless & pointless bickering about which college is “better” or “overrated,” given that colleges are amazingly complex things with hundreds of professors, thousands of students, gobs of courses, and tons of different subjects. You want to narrow the question down to something that can be reasonably discussed, fine, but these broad questions with no context are a waste of time.</p>
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