<p>“but reading words in this thread like “tier 3” and “lesser Ivy” nearly made me gag. What rot.”</p>
<p>I suggest Cornell as a good fit for you.</p>
<p>Actually Mensa, Cornell was a better fit for one of my very good friends, a senior corporate executive (at a young age) at a leading national company and a Cornell alumnus. I guess I should stop teasing him about not having a ‘classical college education.’</p>
<p>I find this whole thread amusing and see that people either don’t know or lose sight of the fact that the Ivy League was founded in 1956 as an athletic conference between some of the older schools in the country, located in relatively close proximity to each other, that wanted to de-emphasize big-time football. This was the only academic association between them. Some of the other like-minded, similar size & location schools (Colgate, Holy Cross, Bucknell, Lehigh, Lafayette) that also played these eight institutions in sports also wanted to counter-balance their athletic/academic paradigm and later, in similar fashion, created the Patriot League. The Ivy League isn’t meant to be considered the 1-8 schools of academic quality any more than the Patriot League should be considered schools 9-14. I find it interesting that someone in this thread pointed out that Stanford, MIT & CalTech were better at engineering despite the fact that they weren’t even Ivy League like it was a theoretical impossibility, instead of the fact that Stanford is 3,000 miles away and plays big-time sports and MIT & Cal Tech have little to no interest in fielding sports teams and this, and nothing else, is what differentiates them from Cornell and its inclusion in the Ivy League.</p>
<p>Things are often founded for different reasons than what they end up becoming.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>Exactly.</p>
<p>gellino’s comment about the Ivy League’s historical founding having little to do with its current reputation as a consortium of America’s elite educational institutions tells us what exactly?</p>
<ul>
<li>that the Ivy League as an “official” institution initially established as an athletic conference has failed?</li>
</ul>
<p>To that I offer the following comments:</p>
<p>1) The Ivy League is known around the world for academic excellence. Period. It’s now become very much a part of American culture / history and the term’s usage goes well beyond that initial mandate - i.e. has transformed to become a term to describe things of either prestige and / or academic excellence - this is absolutely clear. The fact that the “Ivy League” was officially established in the 50s as an athletic conference is now merely an historical footnote.</p>
<p>2) To those who continue to cling to the “official establishment in 1954” as a basis for their arguments - I offer some summary information (from Wiki) which traces the roots of these institutions whose collective history and connection extend well beyond the 1950’s:</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>Those are some deep connections, I’d say. </p>
<p>Note: all of this is all happening BEFORE America was even FOUNDED as a country - oh, and by the way, where does “football” play a part in this? I thought THAT was the common thread that gellini was trying to convey? Football wasn’t even invented at this point.</p>
<p>Which brings up an interesting point. Should people just recognize America’s history starting from 1776 just because that was the date it was “officially” founded? What about all the events that led to that date to form the original colonies? I’d say that’s pretty important stuff to be leaving out.</p>
<p>The main point here is simply this: to discount the long and deep history of these institutions (both individually and collectively) which, over time, have only strengthened by claiming “eh, the Ivy League is an afterthought collection of a bunch of football teams in the 1950s” flies in the face of historical fact.</p>
<p>As to its association with athletics:</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>Again, the point here is that the relationships, the agreements, collaboration between and amongst Ivy schools existed way before they formally agreed to establish an official organization (the actual 1950 founding date is more a “footnote” that should only be relevant to obscure historians)</p>
<p>One: The Ivys were playing each other in football even further back in the late 1800’s too. In fact, one derivation of Ivy league is from the roman numeral four (IV), which represented four schools (Harvard, Yale, Princeton, Penn {the oldest four schools in the country, other than William & Mary}) playing each other in football.</p>
<p>Two: I was merely reacting to the thread where someone (it seemed possibly an international student) was incredulously questioning how could Stanford, MIT, Cal Tech & others rank above Penn and Cornell in engineering without being in the Ivy League as if these eight schools had a monopoly 1-8 in all facets of American higher education. I agree the term “Ivy League” has come to have an academic prestige association to it and is more than a sports conference, but to imply that there aren’t equal and better college choices with regard to a variety of disciplines and environments is very short-sighted to me; which is why I like to see studies that combine national universities with LACs. To me MIT, Cal Tech, RPI, etc are too narrowly focused and shouldn’t be on the same lists, but placing Williams, Amherst, Stanford, Rice, Georgetown amongst the Ivys really shows how many additional great college choices there are, which are just as “good” and in many cases more suited to students. I’m just trying to point out for the student choosing btwn Stanford, Williams & Dartmouth to not pick Dartmouth because it’s the only one in the Ivy League because it’s more than justifiable to pick any of the three for a variety of reasons.</p>
<p>there aren’t that many people that choose penn over brown. there are always some, but it’s less than 1 in 5 cross-admits</p>
<p>Aaaand there are plenty of people who choose Wharton over HYP.</p>
<p>liek omg penn state is tha wrost iveeeeeeee. good thing joe paterno iz thar!</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>Where can one find cross-admit data like this?</p>
<p>“liek omg penn state is tha wrost iveeeeeeee. good thing joe paterno iz thar!”</p>
<p>I thought Paterno was at the Univeristy of Pennsylvania?</p>
<p>+500 points.</p>
<p>And bear in mind, Columbia destroyed Stanford in the 1939 Rose Bowl game.</p>
<p><a href=“Welcome cfbdatawarehouse.com - BlueHost.com”>Welcome cfbdatawarehouse.com - BlueHost.com;
<p>on the cross admit data
as seen on page 31, 98% of the 3,000+ high-achieving high school students ranked brown higher than penn in preference based on admission
rounded for fin aid, and other factors, it is more than 4 out of 5 that choose brown over penn
<a href=“http://post.economics.harvard.edu/faculty/hoxby/papers/revealedprefranking.pdf[/url]”>http://post.economics.harvard.edu/faculty/hoxby/papers/revealedprefranking.pdf</a></p>
<p>as to Wharton, some students do chose Wharton over HYP but the vast majority choose HYP</p>
<p>
In that page you cite, look at the 20th Rose Bowl, played in 1934.
Columbia beat Stanford 7-0.</p>
<p>Thanks to Pumpkin. And Gellino never heard of Sid Luckman either. Hah. “Who owns New York, oh Who owns New york? That’s what all the people say!”</p>
<p>Cornell has suchh low standards compared to some other nonivy schools…</p>
<p>What a stupid thing to say. Sure there is a handful of schools outside the Ivy League that may “have higher standards” in terms of admissions selectivity, but I don’t think any university is far ahead of Cornell for quality. I’m sick of people attending prestigious non-ivies who are obsessed with destroying Cornell and some of the other “lower ivies” (which is also such a stupid characterization). You should be happy with your school. Nobody is saying Cornell is better than Stanford or MIT or Duke and anyone who says it’s much worse than these schools or Chicago, Northwestern, Johns Hopkins, Berkeley, etc. is an idiot. Cornell is a great school as are all the others, so stop all the animosity.</p>
<p>If College Confidential is an accurate representation of today’s youth, people like “laxgirl” make me weap for the future.</p>