The Times Will Help You Find the Right Safety School
According to an article in Sunday's New York Times, schools once institutionalized as safeties for Ivy aspirants are becoming first choices themselves due to higher application rates. It's a pretty no-fucking-shit argument, but the Times goes further and offers the kids this juicy morsel:
If you want an intellectually rigorous, urban campus, the University of Chicago may be a fallback for the University of Pennsylvania. If you fell in love with Columbia for its international studies program, consider Georgetown as a safety."
Whosawhatsitnow? I thought Chicago and Georgetown were like, hard to get into and stuff. Didn't U.S. News & World Report rank Chicago and Columbia as a tie for ninth in 2007? Isn't Georgetown ranked sixteenth for selectivity, six spots above Cornell? Sounds like this "world report" should read the Times' naughty little secret: any Ivy League wannabe can get into Georgetown and Chicago. How ignorant we all were before this tell-all!
Read the Times, you bright-eyed 16-year-old Ivy gropers. The old standby safeties may be competitive now, but you'll always have stinky Georgetown and Chicago to land on. Lying liars like U.S. News might rank them as top-tier, but, um, do you see an "Ivy" in the names of their leagues? If you can't get into those "schools," then stop masquerading as a student and go to voky.
And don't say the Times might be wrong. When has the Times ever been wrong about serious issues in recent years?
If you hadn't caught onto the sarcasm, hopefully that last sentence cleared it up. It's not that I hate the Times. I enjoy Frank Rich's columns instantly confirming my predetermined views as much as the next guy. But describing Chicago and G'town as safety schools for anyone is like saying that I have job prospects. I know only one person who ever got into Georgetown but 3.5 who got into Princeton. Does the Times want no one to go to college, like heartbroken Colin Hanks in Orange County? Find some real safety schools. We can't all be like that girl who refused to read Romeo & Juliet:
--JIM NEWELL
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July 31st, 2007 at 9:33 pm
Amen. The UofC acceptance rate is higher because applicants know it is a hardcore nerdfest.
Now, between my fellow grad students and I, we’ve been to Columbia, Cornell, Harvard, and Princeton. And our first comments about the undergrad experience were all how foreign it seemed to us: UofC undergrad is more like grad school than Ivy undergrad. I’ve heard “fraternities” blasting classical music for their parties; saw only two people puke in the bushes in two years living next to a dorm; and, the library is a hot place to hang out on Friday nights… to study. Hello? WTF!?
The Times should do their homework next time. I can’t speak to Georgetown; but, I wouldn’t consider it to be a step down from Columbia either. And Stanford is a safety for Brown if you want to be a free-thinker, right? Isn’t a safety school supposed to be easier and more fun than your top choices?
July 31st, 2007 at 10:38 pm
I’m not saying the US News and World Report has it right (I’ve heard that the most “accurate” formula resulted in Caltech being first) and I go to Princeton, heh. I think the idea is that a student aiming for schools #1, 2, and 3 wouldn’t necessarily look at school #50 as a safety, so the Times is suggesting school #8 as a backup. Is it wrong to assume that a student who thinks he has a chance at Harvard might be more confident at getting into Chicago? And we might know that a Chicago education is rigorous, but students obviously choose a school for more than its academic reputation. And if you take an informal poll of who at Princeton was accepted into Chicago, I think that number would be higher than the number of students at Chicago who were accepted into Princeton.
But if that’s too elitist for you, I took the whole point of the Times to be that the idea that Grinnell, Tufts, and University of Chicago are safety schools is laughable. And anyway, I think that any article run by the NYT about college admissions is a no brainer for anyone currently in or applying for college. About a month ago they had an op-ed piece on how Harvard is harder to get into now than 30 years ago — duh. The fault in the article seems to be that the main idea is aimed at an older, Ivy-attending audience who *did* view Chicago, Tufts, Duke as safeties while the tips are aimed at college applicants. And plus, what do you expect from the Times? Did you read the article on the quarter million dollar parking spot? Preschoolers being chauffered to the 92nd Street Y? Any part of the wedding announcements? I mean, who *doesn’t* go to an Ivy League?
July 31st, 2007 at 11:00 pm
I’d say that approximately 20% of the people I know at Penn would not have gone here if they had gotten in elsewhere. *Cough*Harvard*cough* I’d assume that Chicago is similar, and Georgetown maybe a bit more so. Though I enjoy denigrating the Grey Lady as much as the next effete, city-dwelling liberal, I think you may have missed the point. The Times’ endless college coverage is penned by and tailored to UES prep school parents and Park Slope yuppies. These are the kinds of people who need to be reassured that their kid’s tenure at WashU will not make them the laughingstock of their upper-middle class social circle. They wholeheartedly believe that their little prodigy is bound for an Ivy, not Bard, or–God forbid–a SUNY. The piece isn’t really about the “The New Safeties” so much as it’s an ego boost for the parents who feel like their kid got dicked over by the Ivy admissions clusterfuck. So there’s really no need to defend our lesser brethren among the nation’s elite.
July 31st, 2007 at 11:25 pm
quoted by the times makes them look like a bunch of idiots who have no research done. personally, i couldn’t easily rank the penn, columbia, chicago and georgetown and would hardly suggest that any of them can really be safely called safety schools.
this reminds me of those days in the science honors program at columbia when one lad told me that he had applied to harvard, princeton, yale, columbia, and nyu as his safety school. needless to say he was rejected from all of them and was really left scrambling.
douchebags that call georgetown and chicago safety schools deserve a beating.
August 1st, 2007 at 12:47 am
@p07: I meant to stress that Chicago is just culturally very different from Penn. UofC undergrads come here because it is just as nerdy and socially awkward as they are. So it makes a poor substitute — even if it is USNWR #1.
Another spanner in the works: 25% of the undergrads are econ concentrators. If I were an econobot, I’m not sure I’d choose anywhere else over Chicago. Maybe Harvard. So overall I’m not sure there’d be many Princeton-Chicago switchers.
Now to throw a real bomb: I’ve had occasion to visit Northwestern regularly. And *culturally*, Northwestern feels more like the Ivy League than the UofC. If you attended Dalton, would you lower yourself to attending Northwestern? (O how I don’t miss the UES.)
August 1st, 2007 at 12:56 am
BTW p07 and Penn’08: I agree overall with your points about the bias of NYT reportage. I just thought the article was way more aggressive than usual in pandering to that crowd. What next? New York magazine on the “shame of going to a false ivy”?
August 1st, 2007 at 1:38 am
@ crescat: Not that I consider this a particular point of pride about my school, but if you’re looking to become an econobot, Wharton would surely be towards the top of your list.
August 1st, 2007 at 1:54 am
I have to say that this article is refreshing because it goes against the typical Ivy League sentiment. I think one of the “perks” of going to an Ivy vs. going to Chicago, Georgetown, et al. is that there’s none of that “We’re just as good/better than Ivy League schools” indignation. (Instead, there’s tons of inter-Ivy one-upmanship — even this very article notes where Cornell ranks.) The truth is, once people get into an Ivy, they have a funny way of assuming that it was their birthright rather than what it was in most cases — slightly higher SATs, college counseling, application savviness, and luck. If we were having this conversation at a typical Ivy League dining hall, I’m sure many would scoff at the idea that Chicago isn’t a safety school and that Georgetown is comparable to Ivy League. In fact, I’m surprised that no one has done so in this thread.
And surely the Princeton econ department isn’t that far behind Chicago’s?
August 1st, 2007 at 3:05 am
@p07: I always had respect for Chicago which is probably why I applied and came here. And maybe I’d note that it’s not an Ivy — in an Ivy League dining hall or to other ex-Ivy grad students. But never to a UofC undergrad who was being a complete dick. (Well… not more than once; once was enough to shut him up.)
August 1st, 2007 at 7:54 am
When I pulled up the article just now (yep, the article on the “New Safeties”), an advert for Penn popped up. How unfortunate.
Also, the NYT has been beating this horse for years. Research or common sense won’t dissuade them from what they believe is a P Prize winning thread.
August 1st, 2007 at 8:34 am
WHO STILL READS THE LIBERAL LIE-FEST THAT IS THE NEW YORK TIMES, ANYWAY??
August 6th, 2007 at 1:02 pm
The point that you all are missing is not that the New York Times has it wrong, as it so often does, but that the whole college ranking system is wrong, has failed, and is leading the next generation of college students down a path that focuses not upon education, but on how you will be viewed. Any “authoritative” source that ranks St. John’s College as in the third tier of Liberal Arts schools is obviously not focusing on the quality of the undergraduate education.
August 6th, 2007 at 1:40 pm
Your point (rankings are broken and imperfect, yes?) is implicit in the prior comments. Every school has its strengths and weaknesses. Economics may be better at UPenn and UChicago, international affairs at Princeton and Georgetown, drama at Yale and Northwestern, and so on. For the undecided, numerous schools might provide the environment to inspire academic and intellectual success.
Do students consider these nuances when applying to college? Do parents point out these distinctions? Do students, parents, or administrators care about education quality? Of course rankings are broken, but some people have a psychological need to be told what to do.
August 10th, 2007 at 12:13 am
http://www.thehoya.com/viewpoint/011703/view1.cfm
to put things in perspective for everyone…
November 6th, 2008 at 3:09 pm
Without attending either an Ivy-League school or a false ivy as popularly described I thought I could provide some perspective from say, the rest of us.
First, the notion that an Ivy-league is elite, and anything not within those eight schools is qualified as either a safety school or glorified community college is predominantly an eastern bias. The school with the most prestige discussed in cafeterias in my Washington high school is Stanford. I’m sure those from southern states may point out the academic reputation that Duke has or Vanderbilt. How about considering the fact that Jesuit schools such as Georgetown, Notre Dame and Boston College would otherwise generally be considered as Ivy programs had a bias against Catholics not existed? In fact, John F. Kennedy a prominent Harvard graduate referred to Boston College as a Jesuit Ivy and visited Chestnut Hill more than his alma mater in Cambridge.
I’m a student at the Georgetown Law Center now, and while I applied and was denied to Harvard and Yale, I chose Georgetown over Cornell, Penn and Columbia where I was admitted. In addition, I am sure there are plenty of students at those aforementioned progams that applied for and were denied at Stanford. The point is that the Ivy designation refers to eight amazing programs but in no way do those school represent the only elite academic programs in the country. There are a multiple of considerations to make when applying for school and I would advise people to seek out the best program for what they want. Would we advise an outstanding high school senior whose ambition is to one day lead a fleet to reject admission at the Naval Academy in favor of Dartmouth? The truth is the Ivy-League should probably be extended to about twenty schools that are well-respected within both academic and professional circles. With all respect to the New York Times, they are quite simply behind the times in recognizing what an elite education is.
Here is my list for noteworthy schools.
Stanford
MIT
Georgetown
Duke
Vanderbilt
Univ of Chicago
West Point
Naval Academy
Air Force Academy
Notre Dame
and I am sure there are others that I am not including.