BREAKING: Columbia vanquishes Dartmouth in U.S.N.&W.R. College Rankings, world stops
After stinging criticism that the U.S. News & World Report's annual college rankings were "dubious" and possibly even damaging to low-income students (leading to many safety schools small liberal arts colleges boycotting the whole process), the magazine vowed greater transparency and "substantial changes in methodology". Today, we can see what a radical changes Mort Zuckerman has wrought (or not), and how the results are sure to send the insecure into spasms of self-doubt once more.
Here's how the Ivies stacked up:
1. Princeton University (NJ) (2007: Ranked 1st)
2. Harvard University (MA) (2007: Ranked 2nd)
3. Yale University (CT) (2007: Ranked 3rd)
5. University of Pennsylvania (2007: Ranked 7th)
9. Columbia University (NY) (2007: Ranked 9th)
11. Dartmouth College (NH) (2007: Ranked 9th)
12. Cornell University (NY) (2007: Ranked 12th)
14. Brown University (RI) (2007: Ranked 15th)
See the release in all its embargoed glory and the top 25 schools after the jump.
--MICHAEL MORISY
EMBARGOED UNTIL 12:01 AM ET
ON FRIDAY, AUGUST 17, 2007
Princeton, Harvard, and Yale Lead U.S.News & World Report's
Annual Ranking of Best National Universities
Williams, Amherst, and Swarthmore Take Top Spots among Best Liberal Arts Colleges
Washington, DC - August 17, 2007 - Three of the most visible names in higher education, Princeton University, Harvard University, and Yale University, top the 2008 edition of "America's Best Colleges" by U.S.News & World Report, the nation's leading source of service journalism and news. The exclusive rankings - which this year feature some substantial changes in methodology - will be published in the magazine's August 27 issue, on newsstands Monday, August 20, and available online at www.usnews.com/colleges beginning today.
The annual rankings - in which U.S. News groups schools based on categories created by the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching - provide an unmatched resource for parents and students contemplating one of life's most challenging financial decisions. Among top liberal arts colleges, categorized by the Carnegie Foundation for their emphasis on undergraduate education and awarding at least half of their degrees in arts and science, were Williams College, Amherst College, and Swarthmore College.
"For nearly a quarter century, consulting the U.S.News & World Report rankings has been a vital first step for prospective college students and their parents in the complex process of determining which institution best fits their goals," said U.S.News & World Report's editor, Brian Kelly. "Designed as a one-stop resource, the rankings supply hard data and analysis to help college applicants make apples-to-apples comparisons of schools across the country. Through these rankings, and the 'America's Best Colleges' guidebook, our goal is to help equip students and their families to make a knowledgeable decision based on clear, comparative research."
Using a proprietary methodology, the annual U.S.News & World Report rankings represent the most comprehensive look at how schools stack up based on a set of 15 widely accepted indicators of excellence, and help consumers evaluate and compare data compiled from more than 1,400 accredited four-year schools. Changes in the U.S.News & World Report methodology for the 2008 edition include:
Category changes - Since U.S.News & World Report categorizes schools based on the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching's classifications, many schools changed from one U.S.News & World Report ranking category to another due to the foundation's recently announced "2006 Basic version." Schools that switched categories since last year's rankings as a result (more than 200) or that are ranked for the first time (55 in all) are noted in the tables.
Military service academies now included - Due to the new Carnegie Classification changes, the U.S. service academies - Army, Navy, Air Force, Coast Guard and Merchant Marine - are ranked for the first time, and all ranked as the top public school in their respective categories. The U.S. Naval Academy (MD) and the U.S. Military Academy (NY) ranked among the top 25 liberal arts colleges: 20th and 22nd respectively. In the list of Best Baccalaureate Colleges, which are grouped by region, the U.S. Air Force Academy (CO) topped the list of schools in the West; and the U.S. Coast Guard (CT) and U.S. Merchant Marine Academy (NY) were in the top 10 for the North: 2nd and 7th respectively.
Pell Grants are a new ranking criterion - The percentage of Pell Grant recipients attending a school is now one of the variables used to calculate the "graduation rate performance" measure for national universities and liberal arts colleges. Because many schools include as part of their mission a focus on educating students from low-income families, the inclusion of this data enables schools with a high proportion of Pell Grant recipients to be measured more accurately against those with fewer recipients in terms of graduation rates. Pell Grants are not used as part of any other ranking component.
Unranked schools are now listed differently - Unranked schools, which had been listed together alphabetically in a single, separate table, now appear in groups beneath the category in which they would have been ranked. Because some schools are unable to report key educational statistics, or because they have certain other characteristics (nontraditional first-year students, small overall enrollment, etc.), it would not be statistically valid to compare them with other schools. In addition, institutions that have indicated that they don't use SAT and ACT scores in admission decisions for first time first-year, degree-seeking applicants now also are included in the list of unranked schools, footnoted as such.
New category title - The category formerly titled "Comprehensive Colleges-Bachelor's" has been re-named "Baccalaureate Colleges" to better clarify the broad educational mission of these schools.
A complete summary of the methodology used to rank each school can be found online at www.usnews.com/colleges.
Best National Universities
1. Princeton University (NJ)
2. Harvard University (MA)
3. Yale University (CT)
4. Stanford University (CA)
5. California Institute of Technology
University of Pennsylvania
7. Massachusetts Inst. Of Technology
8. Duke University (NC)
9. Columbia University (NY)
University of Chicago
11. Dartmouth College (NH)
12. Cornell University (NY)
Washington University in St. Louis
14. Brown University (RI)
Johns Hopkins University (MD)
Northwestern University (IL)
17. Emory University (GA)
Rice University (TX)
19. University of Notre Dame (IN)
Vanderbilt University (TN)
21. University of California - Berkeley
22. Carnegie Mellon University (PA)
23. Georgetown University (DC)
University of Virginia
25. University of California - Los Angeles
University of Michigan - Ann Arbor
Best Liberal Arts Colleges
1.Williams College (MA)
2.Amherst College (MA)
3.Swarthmore College (PA)
4.Wellesley College (MA)
5.Carleton College (MN)
Middlebury College (VT) (UPDATED!)
7.Bowdoin College (ME)
Pomona College (CA)
9. Davidson College (NC)
10. Haverford College (PA)
11. Claremont McKenna College (CA)
Grinnell College (IA)
Vassar College (NY)
Wesleyan College (CT)
15. Harvey Mudd College (CA)
Washington and Lee University (VA)
17.Colgate University (NY)
Hamilton College (NY)
Smith College (MA)
20. Oberlin College (OH)
United States Naval Academy (MD)
22. Colby College (ME)
United States Military Academy (NY)
24. Bates College (ME)
Bryn Mawr (PA)
*Just kidding! We know you're really hidden Ivies just waiting to transform into a beautiful, special snowflake of specialness!
Edit: Pretty-ified the release and fixed a number.
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August 16th, 2007 at 11:33 am
uhhh, link?
August 16th, 2007 at 11:57 am
the official site hasn’t been updated yet. are you sure this isn;t a “fake” report?
August 16th, 2007 at 12:38 pm
Do we blame Wright, Haldeman, or Smith?
August 16th, 2007 at 12:41 pm
how would penn survive these rankings w/o wharton?
August 16th, 2007 at 12:41 pm
how would penn survive these rankings w/o wharton?
August 16th, 2007 at 12:54 pm
gah, we still can’t shake that damn washu!
August 16th, 2007 at 12:55 pm
Does anybody take these rankings seriously?
August 16th, 2007 at 12:59 pm
Ah, the US News rankings. Last year, the Stanford Chappie ran a fake issue of the Daily with a headline announcing we’d dropped to 14th in the rankings. People got upset. Uncharacteristically funny move from the Chappie.
August 16th, 2007 at 1:13 pm
link? i can’t seem to find another site that agrees with you… (CC and autoadmit don’t count!)
August 16th, 2007 at 1:13 pm
to This is not ok:
the answer is all of the above, but mostly Wright and the damn indian scandal.
August 16th, 2007 at 1:21 pm
I wonder if things would be different if the alumni “petition” candidates didn’t run on a misinformed platform of completely trashing Dartmouth as it is (”Classes have over 377 students on average!”, “Students who join fraternities have to undergo punitive psychological examinations!”, “Dartmouth sucks! Vote for me!”, etc.).
August 16th, 2007 at 1:30 pm
Well as long as you’re going to chop off Wharton, you could chop off Nursing and SEAS and Penn’s CAS would probably wind up right back where it is now.
We’re number 5! we’re number 5! I am now a better human being than I was yesterday.
August 16th, 2007 at 1:48 pm
Us News and World Report is bullshit.
period.
August 16th, 2007 at 1:49 pm
Us News and World Report is bullshit.
period.
August 16th, 2007 at 1:50 pm
Annie probably goes to Brown.
August 16th, 2007 at 1:54 pm
I don’t know–when you’re talking about the nation’s best 25 univeristies, isn’t arguing over which is bestest a bit like splitting hairs? Or masturbating?
August 16th, 2007 at 1:59 pm
I’m in SEAS, but do you really think Penn’s CAS can beat Columbia College? HA!
[cut to undergrad college tournament, a la CNBC's Fast Money]
August 16th, 2007 at 2:06 pm
@ @heheh
we’re the best at masterbating
August 16th, 2007 at 2:14 pm
“Masterbating”? Is that like master flame-baiting?
August 16th, 2007 at 2:22 pm
HYP have been dragging along the rest of the Ivies for years now, reputationally
Give Penn credit — Wharton is the turbo engine, at least until subprime sends all of them running back to pre-med post-bacc programs
Columbia and Dartmouth are both legit but have poor leadership, deserving 5 years to earn their place. Brown needs some money
Start by dropping Cornell and add Stanford, Duke, U Chicago, or WUSTL (which has been on parity with Cornell for the past several years). Teams would rather fly to Chicago or the Lou than Ithaca anyway
Brown gets another decade to make its case
August 16th, 2007 at 2:24 pm
let me in – you’re an idiot. hth
August 16th, 2007 at 2:27 pm
FUCK COLUMBIA!! This has nothing to do with the Indian scandal, you dorks. Dartmouth should be ranked 5th, Harvard should be 7th, and US News needs to freaking SEPARATE UNDERGRADUATE from GRADUATE rankings. But, of course, that magazine’s reputation is about as bad as the New York Times’ right now.
August 16th, 2007 at 2:35 pm
Who considers the service academies to be liberal arts schools?
August 16th, 2007 at 2:35 pm
Despite your spastic nature, you do make a good point about separating undergraduate programs from graduate programs. While not mutually exclusive, I’m afraid that, in today’s world, one is usually good at the expense of the other.
August 16th, 2007 at 3:09 pm
agree with The Only Decent Ivy for Undergrades. Dartmouth’s undergraduate program is the strongest among the Ivies along with Princeton and Yale but it suffers in rankings because while its graduate schools are good, most of the focus is on the undergraduates.
August 16th, 2007 at 3:16 pm
I’m curious – what school did mort zuckerman go to?
August 16th, 2007 at 3:19 pm
ok, this is via wikipedia – Zuckerman graduated from Harvard University’s Law School with LL.M. in 1962, University of Pennsylvania’s the Wharton School with M.B.A. and distinction of honor in 1961, McGill University in Montreal, Canada with LL.B. in 1961, and B.A. in 1957. He entered McGill at the age of sixteen.
Zuckerman taught at Harvard Business School as an associate professor for nine years and at Yale University.
August 16th, 2007 at 4:17 pm
Well, I was really hoping we would move up to third after another dominating year in college admissions. It’s really hard to argue that Princeton is more selective than Stanford, although HY still have a slight edge.
Penn is a terrible school. Brown and Columbia are just as good, if not better. Columbia’s CCAS or whatever is much better than Penn’s CAS. They depend on Wharton for all their money, all their pestige and whatnot.
August 16th, 2007 at 4:30 pm
California sucks.
August 16th, 2007 at 4:33 pm
Stanford: a school for rich Californians. California: a state for rich East Coasters.
August 16th, 2007 at 4:54 pm
To “heheh” :
Barnard … laugh your head off if you please.
August 16th, 2007 at 5:03 pm
i didn’t stanford was in the ivy league. they must be, otherwise why would they read an ivy league blog.
August 16th, 2007 at 5:13 pm
this year’s ratings are pretty good, the fifth place for penn being a notable exception. penn beating out mit is laughable.
but seriously what the fuck is up with washu? people always talk great things about the school, but i’ve yet to meet a single person who has gone there. it’s like some made up school that doesn’t actually exist.
August 16th, 2007 at 5:37 pm
I turned down three Ivies, so I clearly don’t have Ivy envy.
The West Coast is an entirely different civilization from the East Coast. And our rap is better.
August 16th, 2007 at 5:44 pm
Without separation of undergrad colleges, these ratings continue to be laughable.
August 16th, 2007 at 5:46 pm
Speaking of made up schools, no Miskatonic U.?
August 16th, 2007 at 6:00 pm
The point about grad schools is lost on me. Dartmouth has a decent B school and a mediocre med school. Cornell has a prestigious med school and top law school, but still can’t stay ahead of Wash U. Princeton does fine without any professional schools (except Woody Woo)
You can understand the prestige of an institution by how heavily they market “we’re Ivy League” instead of “we’re Princeton”. Sorry Cornellians, maybe you can join the Big Ten…hear they’re expanding
August 16th, 2007 at 6:10 pm
Dartmouth’s Tuck School of Business is one of the best in the world–a bit better than “decent.” Trade schools (business, medicine) aside, Dartmouth offers virtually no competitive Ph.D.s.
August 16th, 2007 at 6:14 pm
Does anyone really take Penn’s #5 ranking seriously? I can’t fathom why it’s ranked so high, are they gaming the statistics somehow?
August 16th, 2007 at 6:53 pm
You’re an idiot. Decent? Tuck has been ranked first by a bunch of different publications, including the WSJ, and Forbes. HBS was recently ranked 14th, they’re slacking, riding on the name along. As for undergrad…everyone who goes to Harvard knows we’re getting a shitty education, it’s basically like an expensive high school. Good luck actually getting taught by an actual professor until your in the later months of your junior year.
August 16th, 2007 at 6:53 pm
Because you can objectively rank research universities, exclusive liberal arts colleges, and giant state schools all in one breath. And because prospective undergraduates really need to know how good their future alma mater’s grad programs are, while to-be grad students don’t give a damn.
August 16th, 2007 at 6:54 pm
Penn has extremely high “faculty resources,” whatever that means.
August 16th, 2007 at 6:55 pm
I would be damn happy with Cornell joining the Big Ten. All of Ezra’s colleges can more than rest on their own laurels, and it would get rid of all of the annoying mother fuckers who only go to Cornell on account of a silly athletic conference, and then proceed to complain about Ithaca (heaven on Earth, if you ask me) not give a shit about the sports teams.
And yes, Penn’s #5 is about as egregious as WUSTL’s #12. The biggest loser, in my opinion, is Columbia. How it is behind Duke and Penn is beyond me. (Cornell CAS == Columbia College) >> non-Wharton Penn.
August 16th, 2007 at 8:12 pm
The fact that Dartmouth’s B school is “great” further undermines the argument that a lack of graduate programs accounts for Dartmouth’s slide in USNews. The med school’s mediocrity doesn’t impact the weight of a Dartmouth education at top med schools…the reason is elsewhere
Cornell lives and dies with Ivy membership. Otherwise it’s a cold weather Vanderbilt
August 16th, 2007 at 8:24 pm
“prospective undergraduates” ALREADY know what graduate programs are like, haven’t you even seen US&News’s “America’s Best Graduate Schools” lists?! “current students” already know what their school’s grad programs are like. especially if you go to Harvard, where all you really know is how you all the invisible professors got ripped off by the grad departments. Again, undergrad and grad need to be separated. Princeton or Dartmouth would come out on top, Harvard would be somewhere around 25th.
August 16th, 2007 at 8:30 pm
“Cold weather Vanderbilt?” You’re a delusion idiot. Cornell is ranked in numerous worldwide rankings and has world-class engineering and Ag schools (let’s ignore the Hotel school). It’s also considered the 9th highest “dream” college for American students and parents. Yes, it probably depends more heavily on its Ivy League membership than HYP, but it nonetheless stands on its own merits.
August 16th, 2007 at 8:36 pm
You really are an idiot. Are you saying that Dartmouth’s single prestigious professional school can compete with all of the graduate programs that Harvard, Yale, Princeton, Penn, Columbia, Brown, and Cornell have to offer? Are you really that dumb?
August 16th, 2007 at 10:30 pm
Why are the Cornell ppl always so defensive on here?Their evangelism is so sad. PS: Cal Tech sux!
August 16th, 2007 at 11:38 pm
None of these schools suck. Except for Notre Dame, because they employ a fat, ugly football coach. They’d probably move up a dozen spots if Charlie Weis could lay off the cheeseburgers.
August 17th, 2007 at 12:15 am
Penn > MIT? Lawl.
Columbia will move up next year as the ‘07 stats get reported in the 2009 edition. It’s PA score may go up by a notch due to increased exposure (Nobels, major research) and student selectivity, yield both went up as well.
August 17th, 2007 at 12:15 am
@let me in: A ‘cold weather Vanderbilt’? What you’re saying doesn’t even make sense. Dartmouth is surely colder; and, Vanderbilt is just not that great a school. (Not that I have any issue with Dartmouth — unlike you.)
But let’s go further: “Let you in”? To where? The ivy League? You indicated that you attend a school not in the Ivy League. That you still read this blog suggests you were rejected from all the Ivies you applied to. And I’ll go out on a limb and guess that bitterness over this rejection is clouding your judgement and expressing itself in petulance.
@Anon: I too would not have thought to put any service academies with liberal arts schools. I’d say national universities for all of them. Or is West Point really more like Oberlin than Notre Dame?
August 17th, 2007 at 12:19 am
penn sas = columbia college = other ivies when it comes to humanities… declare major, taking happy mix of easy lectures and reading-intensive seminars, get your 3.7 and sell out. most of the factors that go into these rankings–resources, research, peer rankings etc.–are divorced from the undergraduate experience. so why people are getting into battles about which undergraduate programs are better is beyond me. just kidding… hoorah, hoorah pennsylvaaaaaan-i-a!
does anyone actually know anyone who went to cal tech?
August 17th, 2007 at 12:38 am
@Jim: Yep, I know three “Techers”. One is a nice but quiet nerd. The other two probably started out as normal people and were partially broken by the experience. They (and others) said it’s not unusual to ‘flame out’ for a term and have to take leave. Super smart people, but they tend to twitch if you play “Ride of the Valkyries” near them.
August 17th, 2007 at 1:31 am
Middlebury College (VT)
Bowdoin College (ME)
Pomona College (CA)
Davidson College (NC)
Haverford College (PA)
Claremont McKenna College (CA)
Grinnell College (IA)
ahead of
Vassar College (NY)
Wesleyan College (CT)
Smith College (MA)
Oberlin College (OH)
Bryn Mawr (PA)
?
Sounds pretty wacky to me.
August 17th, 2007 at 1:51 am
So much anger against Penn, my heavens…get a grip people. Go hate something that deserves hating, like fat people.
August 17th, 2007 at 2:12 am
@ ViolentQuaker: Agreed. Everyone hates on Penn because people believe that it only get the #5 spot because of Wharton. Even if that’s the case, they deserve it because they do have Wharton. It’s not like Penn didn’t create the country’s best business school.
August 17th, 2007 at 7:01 am
I have asserted two ideas:
1. Cornell is the doormat of the Ivies and natural selection suggests a culling of the herd once in a while…clearly I’m trying to provoke the “we’re Ivy” Cornellians. The Big Ten? More like the UAA
All I’m saying is that HYP-Wharton is pulling the wagon for the Ivies and it’s about time the rest of the group contributes
2. It’s intellectually dishonest to blame Dartmouth’s slide on lack of graduate programs alone. Based on posts here, Dartmouth has a “top five” B school and at least a medical school…Princeton has Woody Woo and PhD programs – and Princeton has no problem besting Harvard, Yale, Stanford, MIT, and the cats and dogs with prof and grad programs (Penn, Columbia, Duke, UChicago) that rank ahead of Dartmouth
Dartmouth belongs in the top ten every year. Something’s amiss. No use railing against US News when it’s been like this for decades
PS if Vanderbilt had “Ivy” on its name and Cornell didn’t get the applicant bump from Ivy-seekers, it would rank higher than Cornell. And it doesn’t need the state funding
August 17th, 2007 at 7:26 am
Purely in terms of undergraduate educational quality, Dartmouth deserves first hands down, and we (Princeton) deserve second.
August 17th, 2007 at 7:29 am
anybody would be lucky to study at these schools; they all offer fantastic educational experiences, but of course they are all different in their focus and their philosophy so no rating is going to truly capture everything. so why are we getting so caught up in this size contest — especially ivies that don’t want to be considered “second tier” — do you see princeton, harvard and yale whining about this stuff? everyone looks rather petty.
as a columbian i am proud of the statistics more than i care about the ranking. highest rated in our peer group for economic and ethnic diversity. this is precisely what makes columbia unique and attract a different kind of student that wants an open and dynamic experience.
August 17th, 2007 at 7:31 am
You continue to demonstrate an amazing level of stupidity.
—
Graduate students as a percentage of total students:
—
Dartmouth: 28.9%
Harvard: 64.9%
Yale: 53.3%
Princeton: 29.9%
Columbia: 69.8%
Penn: 51%
Chicago: 67.5%
MIT: 59.7%
Duke: a little over 50%
CalTech: 58.7%
Stanford: 55.1%
—
Hmm.. so, every top-10 school (save Princeton, which probably deserves its place) has a majority of graduate students, meaning that they can pump out research and scholars and all of the awards and recognition that comes with it. In fact, every one of the above schools has some significant amount of brand-name recognition in the country at large, except Dartmouth. Combine these figures with the fact that Dartmouth only offers Ph.D.s in a scattered amount of diverse subjects, and you simply cannot argue that Tuck is enough to compete with the graduate programs of all of these other schools. You’re a fucking moron.
@a simple thought: you’re exactly right. But people do love their alma maters (hopefully), and want to defend them when idiots start yapping.
August 17th, 2007 at 7:37 am
The other schools at Penn are holding their own now. Wharton is only 14 points above the average for the school in SAT scores. Before Judith Rodin, who became the first female university president in the Ivy League, this was not the case and Penn was ranked around 20th.
“The average combined SAT score of those admitted to Wharton was 1400, fourteen points higher than Penn’s overall average score. These scores put the average Penn and Wharton student in the ninety-seventh percentile of test takers.”
Excerpt from pages 10-11 of
The Running of the Bulls: Inside the Cutthroat Race from Wharton to Wall Street; 2005
by Nicole Ridgway
August 17th, 2007 at 8:17 am
i’ll use my completely anecdotal evidence of “the people i know who went to penn” to say that this list is ridiculous. wtf, mate. the fact that so many people thought that this list was a joke probably decreases US News & WR’s credibility (in my mind).
seriously, the people i know at penn are just hardworkers, not the best, and very unimpressive. meanwhile, two of the smartest kids i know (with tons of talent in athletics, music, etc in addition to their intelligence) couldn’t get into mit.
August 17th, 2007 at 8:26 am
I have a small, misshapen penis.
August 17th, 2007 at 8:41 am
If you picked a random student from each of the top 100 schools, which do you think would be the brightest? I’d say Cal Tech or MIT hands down.
My favorite part of these rankings is that people assume that since they went to a higher ranked school, they got a better education. College is what you make of it, and you have the same ridiculous opportunities at any of the Ivies that 99.99% of people don’t bother to try for. I am sure there is someone at Virginia that is getting a much better education than my lazy-ass at Columbia.
Also, ranking the service academies at all? Are they joking? Trying to “rank” Navy and Vasser in the same list is laughable.
August 17th, 2007 at 8:42 am
I know a girl who went to Caltech. She transferred to Cornell after her first year and was much happier in Ithaca, presumably because the boys are a little bit more functional there… admittedly not by much.
August 17th, 2007 at 8:47 am
I hate these rankings, mainly cuz i go to brown. out of all the people who have gotten into Penn SAS and Brown over the past 5 years, 85% went to Brown. Now, its just one high school, but at least two preference rankings show that Brown is more preferred than Penn. Also, Brown has a lower acceptance rate than Penn! So why the heck is it ranked below lesser schools like WashU, Duke, Chicago, Cornell? Its ranked lower because of bullshit criteria like faculty rescource rankings. FUCK Usnews. And Columbia got seriously dinged as well.
August 17th, 2007 at 8:48 am
Ad hominem attacks are the last fall backs in arguments when logic fails you.
You said: “In fact, every one of the above schools has some significant amount of brand-name recognition in the country at large, except Dartmouth.” Dartmouth has great brand awareness, it’s not like it has brand confusion issues like Penn. So that can’t explain the difference.
Second, the relative lack of graduate students doesn’t explain Dartmouth’s predicament. From your data:
Dartmouth: 28.9%
Harvard: 64.9%
Yale: 53.3%
Princeton: 29.9%
Columbia: 69.8%
Penn: 51%
Chicago: 67.5%
MIT: 59.7%
Duke: a little over 50%
CalTech: 58.7%
Stanford: 55.1%
Princeton has no problem blowing away universities far more institutions with more graduate students. Also, a lack of scholarly publications and “quality teaching” don’t march in lockstep, otherwise we’d all be better off at Williams from a teaching perspective
August 17th, 2007 at 9:07 am
You incorrigible dumbass, an ad hominem attack is a logical fallacy. Since calling you a fucking moron has nothing to do with the argument at hand, and is simply pointing out a an irrelevant, albeit obvious, aspect of reality, it’s not an “ad hominem attack.” You douche, it’s an insult. (On a side note, Dartmouth does not have brand-name recognition. Most people in the U.S. have no clue about it, and even people in Massachusetts–only a few dozen miles away–confuse it with UMass-Dartmouth.) I don’t argue that Princeton isn’t an excellent school. It deserves its prestige. You make no sense.
August 17th, 2007 at 9:09 am
Zuckerman got his MBA at Wharton. Maybe that explains the UPenn bias?
August 17th, 2007 at 9:16 am
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/08/17/education/17rankings.html?_r=1&hp&oref=slogin
August 17th, 2007 at 9:57 am
Here’s my suggestion:
1. Princeton
2. Yale
3. Harvard
4. MIT
5. Stanford
6. Columbia
Dartmouth
Duke
9. Cal Tech
10. U Penn
U Chicago
12. Cornell
13. Brown
14. Northwestern
15. Johns Hopkins
Obviously, personal preferences will make a difference – engineers would pick Cal Tech over Columbia and English majors Dartmouth over MIT, etc.
August 17th, 2007 at 10:03 am
http://www.cayugaswaiters.com/new/downloads/mp3/harvard.mp3
Say what you will about Cornell but Cornell’s Cayuga’s Waiters Have the best parody song on Harvard or any other Ivy I’ve heard.
All the Ivies are great!
August 17th, 2007 at 10:07 am
That certainly looks more judicious than the actual U.S. News rankings.
August 17th, 2007 at 10:21 am
that *because* there are so few gradaute students at Dartmouth, the top 40% of all undergraduates have the opportunity to work directly with professors as research assistants in any department, from philosophy to neuroscience.
August 17th, 2007 at 10:47 am
I bet we’re putting on one helluva spoiled-ass show here for anyone not from the Ivy League. Not that they read IvyGate… but still.
August 17th, 2007 at 10:56 am
@so how it should be..
I can appreciate your suggestions. however, i still think duke should drop down another rung, but dartmouth can stay.
duke is still more heavily biased as a sports school with all the genteel charm of their lacrosse team’s prostitute.
August 17th, 2007 at 11:15 am
for all you columbia students…
you are a bunch of fuckin morons
penn is #5
and you are below us…
why don’t you try sayin “oh, if it wasn’t wharton”
well you’ll never be able to get into wharton, or rest of penn schools. dumbasses
August 17th, 2007 at 11:26 am
yea they’re just hating on other schools because they’re insecure about themselves.
get over it columbia cocksuckers.
Colombia ‘X says:
@so how it should be..
duke is still more heavily biased as a sports school with all the genteel charm of their lacrosse team’s prostitute.
what a worthless piece of shit
August 17th, 2007 at 11:40 am
Also, is alum giving still a part of the us news and world report rubric? Is intellectual atmosphere still NOT included as part of the rubric? If so, then it is pretty clear why Penn is at number 5 and Duke is number 8, while schools like Columbia and UChic are ranked below it…or maybe Penn and Duke got special bonuses each for being 50% of the senile Tom Wolfe´s moronic “expose” on the moral bankruptcy of contemporary university students
August 17th, 2007 at 11:41 am
LOL at Penn and Duke’s ranking. Those schools shouldn’t even be in the top ten.
MIT, Columbia, and UChicago got shafted. What lame rankings.
August 17th, 2007 at 11:45 am
Could someone tell us how these rankings would look if the subjective/self-fulfilling and worthless/redundant criteria were excluded from the methodology?
Subjective/self-fulfilling:
Peer assessment
Selectivity
Acceptance Rate
Worthless/redundant:
Predicted Graduation Rate (& +/- performance)
Alumni giving (& average)
Removing these bs criteria would make this an assessment of where the most qualified students (HS rank & SAT/ACT) choose to go and stay (grad rate)under the tutelage of the highest concentration of faculty (%50, sf ratio, % ft) who enjoy the largest amount of resources (fac. resources, fin. resources).
August 17th, 2007 at 11:50 am
If you did that, then all of the top 25 schools would be quickly replaced by a bunch of state schools and liberal arts colleges. The horror! (On another note, SAT/ACT scores are worthless, too.)
August 17th, 2007 at 12:06 pm
ha ha. We’re number 1 baby!
August 17th, 2007 at 12:21 pm
why don’t you try getting into columbia, dumbass? last time i checked, the acceptance rate was pretty damn low.
August 17th, 2007 at 12:22 pm
i think the one year they used a formula you described, caltech was first. the very next year, they reverted back to the old formula and one of hyp (maybe yale?) was at the top again.
i know atlantic monthly did/does a ranking of LAC and universities together and mit topped that list
it’s interesting, though probably expected, that most of the discussion here concerns dartmouth, penn, columbia, and cornell.
August 17th, 2007 at 12:22 pm
You’re an angry dude – I actually like Dartmouth, my 2nd favorite Ivy
Dartmouth has better brand recognition than Brown nationally and doesn’t have the brand confusion around Penn. They’ve got to put down their right wing nut job alumni though
USNews has been fairly consistent and at least uses some numbers in a ranking. Penn has been in the top ten since the late 90s, Duke since the late 80s. UChicago is for masochists who were cross-admitted to BU
August 17th, 2007 at 12:34 pm
wow, why is penn so high? it’s not that great. mit and columbia should be higher.
August 17th, 2007 at 12:36 pm
Although I find Ivygate entertaining, the comments usually make me cringe as they reinforce people’s stereotypes of Ivy League students as self-absorbed, prestige-obsessed jackasses.
August 17th, 2007 at 12:46 pm
One might say that these rankings exist as a pseudo-scientific validation of what people commonly believe the best schools to be.
August 17th, 2007 at 12:47 pm
Amen “Ivy Alum”…someone once told me, “it doesn’t matter where you go to college, they all use the same books.”
August 17th, 2007 at 1:25 pm
at an old job of mine told me that too. He was “downsized” weeks later.
August 17th, 2007 at 1:48 pm
How does Duke fare in cross-admit battles with Columbia?
I ‘ll bet it loses.
August 17th, 2007 at 2:45 pm
wow… as we all know cornell and penn being put above dartmouth and columbia is not reflective of reality. Anyone who knows anything knows that dartmouth and columbia are top ten schools. I have friends from all over the ivy league (or non-ivy ivy league schools like cal tech, stanford, mit, etc). All I have to say is that the folks from top ten schools are all about equal with regard to intellectual capacity. The are all really well rounded and highly intelligent. any difference is really just a shade of gray type of thing.
However, the people I know from the next tier down – Penn, Cornell, Cal Berkeley, etc, are not of the same “stock”. I spent 2 weeks with a bunch of Cornell folks back in 95 during spring break. I was astounded at the difference between those people and my peers back at Dartmouth. They were definately a notch down. And regarding Penn… Upenn, Penn State… what’s the difference? As another example. I went to a top grad school (U of M)… and during my time there, I was utterly amazed by the low quality of the undergraduates. I can’t for the life of me understand why top firms would even begin recruiting from there (not for Business School, but for undergrad).
In my work life, however, there is not a dimes worth of difference between a cornell guy and a princeton guy. The stuff you do at work does not require the level of intellectual prowess that coursework at school does, so after a certain level of smarts, the rest is just gravy.
I’ve worked in consulting for YEARS, and that’s my two cents.
So yeah, we from the “real” ivies are smarter, better spoken, and more well rounded. But will we be more successful in life? hardly. Where our degrees really help is getting through the door. If I had graduated from the University of Wyoming, I would not have been offered the kind of job I got after Dartmouth. After 5 years of working, people aren’t going to care as much about where you went to school. They will care about how you performed at work.
August 17th, 2007 at 2:58 pm
It’s interesting that the only posters that agree with Duke/Penn rankings are Duke/Penn students, while members of several other colleges believe (objectively) that Columbia and MIT were ranked lower than they should have been.
August 17th, 2007 at 3:00 pm
@Dartmouth96
If “2 weeks with a bunch of Cornell folks back in 95″ is sufficient time for you to draw those definitive conclusions, than it’s also fair for readers to conclude that you are a d-bag after spending 30 seconds reading your post.
August 17th, 2007 at 3:09 pm
@Objectivity.
Two Questions.
1)How long have you spent with Cornell folks? Did you go there?
2)Did you go to an ivy league at all?
Here are what I think your answers will be (feel free to “objectively” correct me if i’m wrong).
Answer 1: None. I have never spent any extended time with cornell people. I did not go to Cornell. Therefore I have even less basis to judge the quality of Cornell students than Dartmouth96. I’m just being my normal idiotic self
Answer 2: I did not go to an Ivy School… that’s why I can be objective. Oh wait… I guess I can’t be objective since, having not gone to any ivy, i have no idea what any ivies are really like and because as a non-ivy leaguer I have a chip on my shoulder about not having been able to get in. Oh and.. what am I doing on here anyway, since this is an Ivy forum? Oh well. I can dream can’t I?
August 17th, 2007 at 3:13 pm
Thank you for confirming my point.
August 17th, 2007 at 3:13 pm
Eh… please stop.
August 17th, 2007 at 4:27 pm
here i thought that us news rankings were either a joke or a snooze because they are nearly the same every year — case in point, hyp have been in the top three spots for who knows how long. but who knew that so much can be said about 5 schools MAINTAINING THEIR RANK and 3 schools MOVING BY NO MORE THAN TWO SPOTS. i remember when GOD FORBID, harvard and princeton were TIED at #1 and people grumbled that harvard got the top spot because H came before P. if this is the stuff that elicits hundreds of comments at a blog that usually gets 20, us news has the easiest job ever. but that is not to say they aren’t very smart — they completely understand how self absorbed and anal ivy leaguers are.
August 17th, 2007 at 4:49 pm
frankly i am glad that dartmouth moved down in the rankings; the one dimensional toolbags and their obsessive parents who live and die by impressing others will hopefully stay the fuck away. Also, Dartmouth is in superbad, which is a shitton cooler that a rankings bump in USnews.
August 17th, 2007 at 5:38 pm
if you want to get a real education and not just sit through lectures and TA’s instead of professors, go to a liberal arts school. otherwise, continue to waste your 40 grand a year and keep up this pointless debate
August 17th, 2007 at 6:02 pm
Dartmouth96 “more well rounded” lol
Columbia 09 – Columbia is a school in long term decline, Penn is a school on a long term rise. Not that it matters but Dook has ranked higher in USNews than Columbia since the late 1980s and in the London Times last year
August 17th, 2007 at 6:33 pm
“let me in” you almost had me going with that Columbia is in lomg term decline. You damn troll! Now can we all agree that Penn is a fucking toilet and Duke rhymes with Puke for a reason?
August 17th, 2007 at 6:45 pm
These rankings undermine American competitiveness by incentivizing institutional behavior that privileges the privileged, undermines equality and fairness, and diverts schools’; priorities from educating students to fudging figures.
August 17th, 2007 at 7:09 pm
LOL “let me in” is a troll. No international paper would rank Penn higher than anything, especially Columbia. Penn has no reputation overseas (and barely one in the U.S…people care more about Penn State, trufax).
August 17th, 2007 at 7:30 pm
seriously, the only people that care about these rankings are paranoid mothers, asian parents, and morons that troll collegeconfidential after they get into school and beyond
im convinced that half the kids in the ivy league have extreme inferiority complexes
August 17th, 2007 at 7:35 pm
I’m not sure why a few posters always get bent if a Stanford person shows up. It reinforces quite a few negative stereotypes. I mean, Stanford and Harvard probably have more in common with one another than either does with Cornell or Brown, right? Whenever someone gets annoyed at any “de facto ivy” posters lurking around here, it’s obnoxious.
August 17th, 2007 at 7:58 pm
Right? Nope.
August 17th, 2007 at 9:28 pm
My god, I’ve never seen so much unmitigated stupidity in a single thread. You’re all fired.
August 17th, 2007 at 10:32 pm
I think Penn’s #5 ranking is irrefutable evidence of a Jewish cabal at work.
August 18th, 2007 at 12:30 am
@let me in
For the record, there is no such thing as the “London Times” it’s simply “The Times” or ‘The Times’ of London.
August 18th, 2007 at 12:42 am
Simply put…
I haven’t seen a Penn student in here disputing the rankings of other schools.
And if you do go to a different school, then you obviously don’t go to Penn. You have no idea how great it is.
Unlike everyone else, I’m not going to just sit here and just say “this school sucks” or “my school is better.”
Penn – From Last Year to This Year
Ranking:
2007: 7 2008: 4
Acceptance Rate:
2006: 20.8% 2007: 17.7 (2008: 16.1%) – Serious drop in acceptance rate
The campus is still expanding (in a city, no less).
The matriculation rate is still 66%.
The endowment has increased by over a billion dollars from last year to this year.
I fail to see why so many people think Penn didn’t deserve to improve on its previous ranking.
Just because it’s not as widely renowned as many of the other school near the top of that list, doesn’t mean it isn’t just as good a school.
I regard these rankings as loosely as anyone else, but I’d suggest that in a comment thread with Ivy League gentlemen and women, we don’t back up our comments with “well I just don’t like it” or “Jew conspiracy” or “the people I know from Penn are stupid.”
#5
August 18th, 2007 at 1:15 am
I’m a man of Old Dartmouth and I write for The Dartmouth Review – so yeah, I’m pretty much one of those right-wing nutjobs you all usually get your panties in a bunch about.
I don’t give a shit about the rankings. Dartmouth could be #1 or it could be dead last, it wouldn’t matter to me. I wouldn’t trade Dartmouth for anything – I love the school, and I can honestly say that I’m able to savor every moment that I’m there, and that I miss the hell out of it when I’m not. If you were to tell me that I’d have to spend the rest of my life in Hanover, well, you might just see me smiling. How many schools are there, Ivy, top-10 or not, that you can say that about? My choice to attend Dartmouth will be one that I’ll be able to look back on for the rest of my life as one moment of brilliance in my otherwise haphazard, somewhat arbitrary decision making process.
August 18th, 2007 at 1:49 am
OK, so let me espouse two completely contradictory viewpoints regarding my beloved Cornell. First, Cornell deserves to be ranked much higher than 12th. It has numerous world-class colleges and departments and continues to attract leaders in every field. It has a reputation internationally. Furthermore, the acceptance rate continues to drop. Finally, as evidenced by our much advertised high suicide rate (although this is in reality a myth), a Cornell education is one of the most rigorous and difficult programs to succeed in (”Easiest Ivy to get into, hardest to get out.”)
But for all these accolades, the average student that Cornell attracts is of lesser intellectual acumen than peer institutions (not Puke BTW). I’ve taken upper-level engineering and physics courses and i Have been continually appalled that many of these individuals, on the basis on academic ability, are considered Ivy Leaguers.
The school itself is of a far greater merit than its average (UNDERGRADUATE!) student. I feel treasonous.
August 18th, 2007 at 2:56 am
@let me in… what do you know about Columbia, and why is it in long term decline–
Does YOUR school:
have the largest ever, $4Billion fundraising campaign to be completed 2010?
want to double the size of campus (read: manhattanville) in the next 15 years?
have an increasing number of nobel laureates including 2 last year (i think? if not more, at least 1 in econ)
still administer the Pullitzer prize?
have an art school dean that actively controls the Metropolitan Museum of Art?
have deep connections to Wall Street?
get donations of $400 million for Fin Aid from one person?
have the most MPEG 2 patent rights and many patent claims generating the most patent loyalties in ivy league (and i think it was last stated, among any university)?
These minor things seem to say to me one point: Sustainability.
sorry dude, you got served.
August 18th, 2007 at 2:57 am
@let me in… what do you know about Columbia, and why is it in long term decline–
Does YOUR school:
have the largest ever, $4Billion fundraising campaign to be completed 2010?
want to double the size of campus (read: manhattanville) in the next 15 years?
have an increasing number of nobel laureates including 2 last year (i think? if not more, at least 1 in econ)
still administer the Pullitzer prize?
have an art school dean that actively controls the Metropolitan Museum of Art?
have deep connections to Wall Street?
get donations of $400 million for Fin Aid from one person?
have the most MPEG 2 patent rights and many patent claims generating the most patent loyalties in ivy league (and i think it was last stated, among any university)?
These minor things seem to say to me one point: Sustainability.
sorry dude, you got served.
August 18th, 2007 at 8:54 am
My my, this is quite the penis-size contest we’ve got going on here. Haha.
Can we really just settle this on a game show? Knowing how riled up people get about things like this, I don’t know why major TV stations haven’t thought of pitting insecure Ivy Leaguers against one another on a game show. Think of the ratings! And the target demographic … I can see the Rolls-Royce advertisements rolling in now …
August 18th, 2007 at 12:27 pm
I stand corrected on one point – Columbia is ranked 12 by THES, Dook is ranked 13th. The international ranking is slightly different than USNews, but not materially so
Columbia used to be a peer of HYP. That’s what I meant by “long term decline” – the best days are behind it
Penn has marched into the top five from like 19 in the early 1990s
Cornell’s not at the same level as the 2nd tier Ivies. More like Northwestern or WUSTL. Ivy League only in the athletic conference sense
August 18th, 2007 at 2:07 pm
Sorry to bring up stanford again, but i have to respond to Stanford 2009’s absurd statement:
“Well, I was really hoping we would move up to third after another dominating year in college admissions. It’s really hard to argue that Princeton is more selective than Stanford”
Actually, it’s pretty easy – 2007 undergrad admit stats:
Princeton Class of 2011 – 9.5%
Stanford Class of 2011 – 10.3%
Maybe if you weren’t high, you could’ve done that math before posting.
August 18th, 2007 at 3:55 pm
I would say that selectivity differences at the top end are inconsequential to change rankings one way or another. It’s worth 1.5% of the final score and they use rejection rates, so for the Stanford/Princeton comparison, (0.905-0.897)*0.015=0.00012 point difference in Princeton’s favour. This is very small(!).
The weights in their formula can be seen here:
http://chronicle.com/free/v53/i38/38a01301.htm
Financial resources (~endowment/student?) are weighted 10% and Princeton has double of that compared to Stanford.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_U.S._colleges_and_universities_by_endowment
So, stock market and managers’ luck has a lot me to do with the rankings than selectivity…
August 18th, 2007 at 4:18 pm
Stanford is not in the ivy league. period. This does not mean Stanford is less of a school and this does not mean Stanford is more of a school. Simply, Stanford is not one of the eight schools in the ivy league. I wonder why these non-ivy schools visit this blog and so passionately post comments here… hmmm – envyous perhaps?
August 18th, 2007 at 6:08 pm
@ let me in: stop trying to pimp your school. like someone said before, penn has ZERO reputation overseas, and barely one in the united states, as most people can’t distinguish it from penn state.
As for THES, Columbia is #12, Penn is #26, below Johns Hopkins, where is belongs.
http://www.topuniversities.com/worlduniversityrankings/results/2006/top_200_universities/
I can’t even find these Dook rankings you speak of, so I’m assuming they’re not that great. A link would be good, but since you’re probably lying, I doubt you’ll provide one.
Penn has no business at #5. The end.
August 18th, 2007 at 6:58 pm
who gives a shit about reputation overseas. The sorbonne has a pretty historic reputation worldwide but ranks only 200 in the THES rankings. I got into yale but not penn, my first choice.
if foreigners had any idea what makes a good college, perhaps they’d find a way to make one. the US owns higher education, and US News, kill me if you will, reflects this more accurately.
people who base their best college rankings on reputations don’t deserve to get into any of the top 50 schools. penn is a great school, and as far as reputations go, is considered the best all around college experience in the ivy league. it’s on the rise (was ranked around #20 in the 90s) and that’s why people haven’t heard of it as much as harvard, plus the fact that it shares its name with a state, admittedly a stupid decision by ben franklin.
do any of you actually know anything about penn??? certainly much rather be there than here…
August 18th, 2007 at 9:37 pm
Frankly, I don’t know what the other Stanford posters are doing trying to associate Stanford with the Ivy League. We’re not, and that’s okay.
Stanford has a bigger endowment than Princeton and fundraises THREE TIMES AS MUCH. Better financial resources ? Whatever USNews says, the answer is clear. Endowed chairs and buildings aren’t built on a per-student basis (nor is anything else, really), so “endowment per capita” is a useless measure.
I can’t take Penn’s admit rate or yield rate seriously unless they drop ED. They take 2/3 of their class ED. And even then, in terms of admit rate, Penn still comes in just fifth in the Ivy League, behind HYP, Columbia, and Brown.
August 18th, 2007 at 10:25 pm
@stanford 2009:
harvard EA = 47 percent of class
princeton ED = 48 percent of class
penn ED =48 percent of class
(ivysuccess.com admission stats 2011)
much harder to find the stanford stats, but they’re around 50 percent if my math is correct.
basically what i’m saying is, get your facts right, and shut the fuck up.
August 18th, 2007 at 11:15 pm
“penn is a great school, and as far as reputations go, is considered the best all around college experience in the ivy league.”
According to whom? I have rarely heard Penn’s undergrad experience particularly exalted.
August 18th, 2007 at 11:16 pm
have any of you even considered quality of life? the so-called “tier-1 ivies,” from what i understand of them, have much worse qualities of life than penn, cornell, and columbia. that is, terrible parties and terrible night life and an unattractive student body. in case some of you might have forgotten, some people go to college to have a little but of fun as well as study. in terms of education, one of my best friends from 1st grade through high school is an editor at the crimson, and i can promise you i’m getting just as good an education in my major (English) in my “2nd-tier ivy” as she is.
August 18th, 2007 at 11:44 pm
you all are crazy. penn is a good school. i don’t think it’s better than mit, caltech, or columbia, but it’s a good school.
if people want to rag on any school, rag on duke.
August 19th, 2007 at 12:17 am
Nice math, asshole! Penn would be 6th. Glad I turned Stanford down
August 19th, 2007 at 12:30 am
I don’t understand why Columbia is under the impression it deserves a higher spot than Penn- for better or for worse, we have one of the best business schools in the world, along with its corresponding funds and alumni. In addition, SAS (not CAS!)is extremely well-regarded- it seems like Columbia only prides itself on its liberal arts program because its Core gives it something to differentiate itself from the other Ivies. Congratulations… you all have to take the same class. I’m not sure why Columbia considers this worthy of merit, but I suppose I don’t have real insight into the pseudo-hipster, majority-of-resources-due-to-location, half-backdoored-through-Barnard mindset. (PS, you can get the same thing at Reed College for twice the fun.)
Also, I thought for the main ratings that US News/Princeton Review/etc. took into account “well-rounded-ness” of schools; thus, while MIT is incredible in the sciences and econ, it might not be regarded as highly as Penn, which is strong in a lot of diverse programs.
I apologize for the egregious overuse of hyphens.
August 19th, 2007 at 1:30 am
Penn = Party School
= Hottest Chicks
= Sickk Starting Salary
Clearly I was recruited.
August 19th, 2007 at 2:28 am
No no, you don’t understand the sophistication of my argument. Ignoring the fact that Stanford’s SCEA acceptance rate is 16% compared to Penn’s 29%, Stanford only defers 20% of the applicant pool, while Penn doesn’t even say how many they defer (the vast majority of them–60% maybe). That means that Stanford only accepts a few students from the deferral pool, while Penn accepts much more.
Meaning, then, that the total early pool at Stanford will be significantly smaller than the total early pool at Penn.
Penn’s yield rate is still a joke without ED.
August 19th, 2007 at 3:22 am
the only thing that’s a joke is stanfords founding date… 1891. HA “the wind and freedom blows”…what’s that? more like blows the ivy leagues cock like a little bitch. kindly find your way back to alleyways of pali.
August 19th, 2007 at 2:58 pm
Yale ‘10: most recent THES data from wikipedia. I’m surprised that an alleged Yalie cares but Duke is solidly equivalent to 2nd tier Ivies.
As for Columbia, specious arguments about “dominating Wall Street” don’t make the case for upswing…if anything, Wharton has far more sway. Frankly, Cornell at least has the ceo of Goldman (Dartmouth had the last one). I don’t think any major wall street or alt asset ceo went to columbia for undergrad (de shaw as a professor doesn’t count).
Ranking the Ivies (trending)
1. Princeton (up)
2. Harvard (flat)
3. Yale (slightly down)
…
4. Penn (up)
5. Dartmouth (flat)
6. Columbia (slightly down)
7. Brown (flat)
8. Cornell (upswing, such as it is)
Stanford is an honorary member of HYP, Duke is an honorary member of Dartmouth/Columbia/Penn tier, and Chicago/Northwestern/WUSTL/Hopkins are honorary members of the Cornell/Brown tier
And you all have my ivy allegiance wrong, naïve and angry hateposters
August 19th, 2007 at 4:05 pm
1. Harvard
2. Princeton
3. Yale
4. Columbuia
5. Dartmouth
6. Penn
7. Cornell
8. Brown
These Penn kids who think they’re better than Dartmouth and Columbia are making me laugh. Especially “let me in.
What a troll.
August 19th, 2007 at 5:06 pm
Dear Ivy League Undergrads -
Congratulations on doing ever so well in high school (or on having influential parents). Please note that all you need to do now to add legitimacy and credibility to your sense of superiority is do at least one of the following:
a) Get a good job AND excel at it (you are an ivy leaguer after all).
b) Produce something: book, website, patent, etc… (Please note that blogs do not count here.)
c) Gain admittance to a top notch grad school.
Best of luck…and kindest regards,
Ivy League Grad students
August 19th, 2007 at 5:21 pm
@ Penn ‘09: Wow, you really don’t know anything about my school at all. Yes, Penn has Wharton…whoop de fucking doo. But when you take out Wharton and just compare Columbia College vs. Penn SAS, clearly CC comes out the winner. I admit that Penn has a fantastic economics and pre-med departments (bio and chem), but Columbia’s are just as good (Edmund Phelps won a fucking NOBEL PRIZE last year). And in the humanities, Penn gets pwned by Columbia in almost every subject. Penn’s history department is decent, but certainly not better than CU’s, and their political science department is nonexistent. Columbia also holds an advantage over Penn in English, classics, anthropology, psychology, and languages.
The main difference is that Penn is arguably the most preprofessional of the Ivies, whereas as Columbia is highly intellectual. Penn’s atmosphere is hardly intellectual; in fact many Wharton students refer to the place as having hardly any intellectual discourse.
Columbia has produced many distinguished alumni in almost every field; Penn has a distinct lack of many interesting/distinguished alumni, but a superfluity of corporate scumbag alumni like Michael Milliken and Donald Trump.
So while USNWR says otherwise, in the minds of most people Columbia is viewed higher than your university in scenic West Philadelphia.
Actual Ivy Prestige Rank:
1. Harvard
2. Princeton
3. Yale
4. Columbia
5. Dartmouth
6. Penn
7. Brown
8. Cornell
Cornellians are the only people who, when asked where they went to college, will say “I went to an Ivy League school.” Penn people do this too, to an extent.
August 19th, 2007 at 5:37 pm
@ Cruel Reality has it right. And in addition to his post, without those Ivy grad students, many of these schools would not be quite so impressive. A princeton prof (maybe even a dean) said at one point in an editorial this year in the dailyprincetonian that the reason the stellar faculty is at his school is because of the grad students. Undergrad students, completely secondary. The Ivy League needs to stop pretending that it gives a meaningful and good undergrad education.
August 19th, 2007 at 5:54 pm
You guys are so ridiculous priding yourselves on your rankings. You get the same education that you do as a harvard undergrad as you do at Penn or Columbia or Northwestern or Michigan or johns Hopkins or any one of the country’s top universities. Please stop basing your views of ‘prestige’ on your inflated egos and solipsisms and stop being so superficial. The only reason most of you got into Harvard or Yale or Columbia is because you spent your high school years studying the SATs and writing essays for scholarships while jerking off to movie posters of Michelle Pfeiffer. Or maybe you were on the rowing team. Big deal. Either way, half the kids at any of the Ivies suck (as in, fucking lame) and couldn’t get a date if they tried. There’s more to life than the ranking of your university.
Also, I’m curious to see what all of your GPAs are. I have a feeling at least half of you have 2.5-3.0, which isn’t very elite at all. So please shut the fuck up.
August 19th, 2007 at 6:33 pm
@shutthefuckup: You are poor and on a full-ride athletics scholarship at Stanford. Congratulations, for the rest of your life you will be posting on sites like this to inflate your suffering, Ivy-obsessed ego. Stanford is no ancient eight (less Cornell)… it is simply Stanford. A great school, but no Ivy. Go back to practice meat-head.
August 19th, 2007 at 6:35 pm
ps: go tigers
August 19th, 2007 at 8:25 pm
COLGATE UNIVERSITY SHOULD BE IN THE TOP 5. I WENT TO SYRACUSE U AND SPENT TIME WITH FRIENDS AT COLGATE AND IN TERMS OF EDUCATION THE PLACE BLEW THE DOORS OFF MOST OF THE OTHER SCHOOLS IN THE TOP 20. VERY STRANGE THAT THEY DIDN’T RISE IN THE RANKS GIVEN THE QUALITY AND NEW INFRASTRUCTURE.
August 19th, 2007 at 10:46 pm
@stanford…ha. Wow. Thank you for confirming my point. I go to an Ivy League school and no, I didn’t use my daddy’s status to get me in.
August 19th, 2007 at 11:25 pm
@Stanford posters: Stanford stole its startup faculty and many organizational details from Cornell. Hell, you even ripped off Cornell’s colors. And that’s the closest you ever got to the Ivy League. (Although had WWII gone the other way, I’m sure your German ‘wind of freedom’ motto would have put you in good stead. Ausgezeichnet!)
But apart from my taunting you: Why are you reading this site? And why mention which school you think Stanford resembles? Just curious.
August 19th, 2007 at 11:29 pm
Everyone on here needs to chill. I’m embarrassed for my school to even be associated with snobbish bickering that goes down on this blog. Let’s just cut to the point of the argument, all the top schools on USN&WR offer exceptional opportunities that will help us all to pretty much the same extent. After that you’re just discussing favorite flavors. I happen to like a diverse student body in the middle of nyc better than the rural frat parties of dartmouth. Just like I thought it would have been fun to pwn newbs and build cool gizmos at MIT, or join an eating club at Princeton. We all choose the type of environment we perfer to learn in, so of course we’re going to have a preference for the school we picked. The real scandal is USN&WR trying to make it sound as if their rankings have any sort of legitimacy. Seriously, go read some more books.
August 20th, 2007 at 12:34 am
Word, Columbia 10. I got caught up in DEFENDING OUR HONOR ZOMG, but you’ve a very valid point.
August 20th, 2007 at 12:51 am
nooo! keep fighting! peace agreements over USN&WR ranking spats completely ruin the fun of USN&WR ranking spats. christmas comes but once a year, so: stanford, keep that venom pouring, cause youll be famous one day; columbia, continue to champion your humanities over well-roundedness; yale, keep picking fights even though you own that solid 3 spot; and penn, as one of you, please make people understand that wharton isnt as flawlessly regarded as it once was, nursing and seas have always sucked, so the college must be responsible for our meteoric rise in rankings over the last decade.
August 20th, 2007 at 10:36 am
These rankings are a waste of time and energy. Each of the Ivies provides a very different intellectual, social and personal experience for undergraduates. Claiming “Columbia > Penn” or “Dartmouth >> Cornell” is ridiculous because it ignores nearly everything that is important about the schools. Unless one is some FOB Korean barbarian who can’t understand that the effectiveness of an education derives from something other than a haphazard conflation of admissions rate, alumni giving and applicant yield, one would do well to simply ignore these rankings. By obsessing over them, one merely betrays himself as a glory hunter looking to punch his ticket on the way to some imagined end-of-greatness rather than the cultured masters of civilization that these schools are meant to produce.
August 20th, 2007 at 11:44 am
Amen. The ranking methodology is questionable to start with — and then it changes every year.
While I’ve done my share of taunting here, I truly believe that most* of the top 20 or so schools are excellent. I also believe that the education you get is more what you make of it than what you drift through.
* Except Duke; I really think Duke has problems.
August 20th, 2007 at 12:36 pm
and I think we can all agree that stanford needs to go find its own, non-Ivy blog to toot its horn… meat-heads
August 20th, 2007 at 1:47 pm
Did an IvyGate thread suddenly become kind of… civil? Clearly this is some sort of oversight on the part of the past few posters. I’m sure they meant to fling personal insults at each other, or shit all over each others’ schools, or something shameful like that.
August 20th, 2007 at 2:52 pm
This is all very amusing but enough’s enough.
Listen up punks, get it right already and stop the pussyfooting.
Two tiers in the Ivies – Yale, Princeton, Haaahvad, and Penn. And then there’s the rest of’em – Brown, Cornell, Dartmouth and Columbia. The order is irrelevant. Everybody knows this, deal with it and keep the crying to a minimum.
There’s only One honorary Ivy, and that is MIT – you’ve got to admit they’ve got some nasty brainpower over there.
As for those of you in the rest of the collegiate world – eat my shorts.
August 20th, 2007 at 2:58 pm
@Douchehousen
What about Stanford?
August 20th, 2007 at 3:04 pm
No.
No Stanford.
Stanford can eat my shorts.
August 20th, 2007 at 5:20 pm
Stanford gives athletic scholarships to extremely under qualified applicants. Probably 25% of the school doesn’t deserve to be there. Thus, no honorary Ivy
August 20th, 2007 at 5:44 pm
did someone just group penn with hyp? don’t make me laugh. hyp is it’s own tier. then comes columbia, then dartmouth, *then* the rest.
note i’m only talking about prestige here. there’s no way to measure the quality of a school quantitatively, so there’s really no point in trying.
August 20th, 2007 at 8:10 pm
So you are all telling me that a) Penn (the nation’s first university, home of the first student union, home of the nation’s oldest stadium, home of the world’s first school of business, home of the nation’s first medical school, etc.) does not have prestige? And b) Penn, the creator of the computer, is not better than MIT. If we didn’t create that fucking computer then all you assholes wouldn’t be doing all this shit right now. In fact, if Penn didn’t create all that stuff, the ivy league, no… nation… wait, world would be a very uncivilized place.
no prestige, huh. wow
Penn is not Harvard nor Yale, but it is on par with Princeton and Columbia. In fact, I don’t know why everyone sucks Princeton’s cock. For one reason Harvard and Yale both don’t care about it. Further and quite frankly, they suck at basketball.
hurrah hurrah indeed
August 20th, 2007 at 8:29 pm
@Stanford??!?: You wanna cite your sources? Or is it kosher at your school to simply throw arbitrary numbers out? Take a look at recent Stanford Magazine articles in which the athletic coaches have bemoaned how difficult it is to get recruited athletes through the admissions process. Are exceptions made? Of course. Is a full quarter of the student body unqualified? Not at all. Just consider the math for a moment. Stanford’s average M + CR score is, according to these new rankings, 1440. If 25% of students were unqualified to the tune of a 1200 average (still pretty formidable, I should point out), the three-quarters who “earned” their spots would boast 1520 M + CR averages– well above the HYP averages, where, or so you imply, these exceptions for athletes don’t occur. So does that mean that the 75% of Stanford students for whom exceptions weren’t made are all smarter than the average HYP student? No, of course not, but hopefully you see how adopting your faulty logic leads to other silly conclusions.
August 20th, 2007 at 9:02 pm
@Real Stanford -
Easy there big guy. You’re addressing ivy league undergrads here. If they valued logic and scholastic rigor over history and notoriety they’d attend MIT, UChic or…Stanford.
August 20th, 2007 at 9:05 pm
@Real Stanford -
Easy there big guy. You’re addressing ivy league undergrads here. If they valued logic and scholastic rigor over history and notoriety they’d attend MIT, UChic or…Stanford.
August 20th, 2007 at 9:42 pm
The only realistic comment that has been posted so far is: “seriously, the only people that care about these rankings are paranoid mothers, asian parents, and morons that troll collegeconfidential after they get into school and beyond”. Well said d*
I think I’ll to add the useless bile that is being spewed around here: people complaining about Penn’s ranking are so fucking insecure, notably from Dartmouth and Columbia. First of all, Dartmouth – along with Brown – is more like some liberal arts college than an ivy. Small, not a research powerhouse, shitty to nonexistent graduate programs, etc. Second, while I would personally rank Penn and Columbia as TIED in overall prestige, I will say that having been admitted to both, Columbia’s core is such a pain in the ass and the enormous amounts of red tape make academic flexibility pretty much unheard of.
So everyone just stop your fucking whining. All the schools in the top 15 or whatever are fine institutions, but if you start bickering about why Penn or Duke or whichever school is flavor of the week to pick on, just understand that negative shit can be said about ANY school.
August 20th, 2007 at 9:45 pm
Don’t they call Stanford a “Junior University”— and didn’t the founder try to give money to H but was rejected to went to West Coast, or whatever. Oh and Stanford football sucks.
August 20th, 2007 at 9:51 pm
Look here “lol” – the only thing laughable here are punks like you.
Your opinion is useless. Columbia and Dartmouth are second tier – Behind the previously mentioned HYPP. EVERYBODY knows this – punk.
Now pipe down and stop crying. Its not my fault you are who you are.
August 20th, 2007 at 10:04 pm
@CornellRocks: Stanford football sucks? At least they’re in a legit conference. You don’t have to play Southern Cal and Berkeley each year.
BTW, I go to Columbia, and we torched you guys last year. Let’s go LIONS!!!
August 20th, 2007 at 10:22 pm
Somebody may have said this already (I got tired of reading the posts), but Dartmouth should be in the liberal arts rankings where it would be first every damned year, hands down, no contest. It’s a college, not a university (despite some of the delusions of some of the faculty and admin), and shouldn’t waste it’s money trying to develop graduate programs in a feeble attempt to become a research institution. It’s dropping because it’s falling between the stools, destroying it’s liberal arts college character and becoming a truly second rate research university. Hopefully the petition trustee candidates will get it back to what it does best.
August 20th, 2007 at 10:30 pm
@ baron: Are you Penn kids all so delusional that you make stuff up? HYPP doesn’t exist, it’s HYP (or HYPSM with Stanford and MIT). If you mention “Penn,” 95% of people will think you’re referring to Penn State. The fact that you think Penn has the same level of prestige as Harvard, Yale, and Princeton is laughable at best. And no, your school is not more well-known than Columbia or Dartmouth (especially after Superbad).
August 20th, 2007 at 10:33 pm
@PENN 08: I’d agree that the top 15 (I said 20 or so, whatever) schools are fine. EXCEPT Duke.
I’ve said it elsewhere: Go read the Rolling Stone article on Duke. If even 2% of it is true, that place is in the shitter. Personally, everyone I know involved with Duke either hated it or was a douche. (But that’s just anecdotal evidence.)
August 20th, 2007 at 10:38 pm
Can Emory get some luv?
August 20th, 2007 at 10:47 pm
Hay CronellRocks! Stanford football dose NOT suck!!! U com here and say that ill beat t shit out of u!!!! Stanford foootball does NOT suck!! NOT!!! the ONL;Y thing here that sux is some of the playurz but thats ok 4 me!!! YEH I SCOR!!! EVERY NIHGTT!!!
August 20th, 2007 at 10:50 pm
Emory: I think the Stanford football team would be willing to share some love with you.
August 20th, 2007 at 11:38 pm
hey, do you have a link to that article? or a scan somewhere? i’m genuinely curious.
August 20th, 2007 at 11:47 pm
Here it is:
http://www.rollingstone.com/news/story/10464110/sex_scandal_at_duke
Take it with a big grain of salt; but, even with that, it’s not a pretty picture.
August 20th, 2007 at 11:57 pm
whoa, it’s kinda long lol. i’ll probably read it tomorrow.
August 21st, 2007 at 1:06 am
I go to Columbia, and I told my friend at Penn about the jump and gave him a high-five for beating out MIT, which rejected us both.
We then drank to the fact that all the Ivies have hideous girls.
August 21st, 2007 at 1:34 am
Agreed. But I still tihnk you guys put way too much into athletics. Colleges should be primarily academically oriented institutions, quantified by the excess or lack of athletic scholarships. Stanford doesn’t pass that test.
August 21st, 2007 at 1:42 am
I was watching a show tonight and the following dialog was said:
“But he’s an Ivy Leaguer.”
“Uhh barely, he goes to Brown.”
The writers of the show explicitly chose Brown as the worst Ivy. Suck on it Cornell bashers.
August 21st, 2007 at 3:09 am
I love Penn.
August 21st, 2007 at 10:32 am
Let me guess, you’re a ‘10 or an ‘11 who has jumped onto the alumni controversy bandwagon. Guess what? Dartmouth’s medical school is over 200 years old, it’s engineering school began in the 19th century, and Tuck was the first school ever to offer MBAs. So, what the hell are you talking about? Dartmouth has a long history with its graduate schools. That said, I do think that graduate and undergraduate programs should be ranked separately. If a school has a great graduate program (Harvard, Yale, Columbia, etc.), the odds are that its undergraduate program suffers.
August 21st, 2007 at 9:44 pm
Why do these rankings always bring out the worst in people?
August 22nd, 2007 at 4:11 pm
everyone always says HYP girls are busted, but most of the girls i know at any of the tier 2 ivies are wayyy uglier… although i will admit guys here are conceited and obnoxious. p.s. penn people are ridiculous, they’re just angry cause no one wants to go there.
also, yale eats babies and princeton clubs baby seals.
August 22nd, 2007 at 7:11 pm
HAHAHA DISREGARD THAT, I SUCK COCKS
August 22nd, 2007 at 9:09 pm
@H’10: mebbe you, emory, and stanford football kin git murried ‘n’ have a 3some. boa, u got a purdy mouf.
August 24th, 2007 at 11:12 am
@ COLUMBIA
Penn is more well-rounded than columbia.
have you heard of columbia business school? no
have you heard of columbia nursing school? no
have you heard of columbia dental school? no
penn’s medical school is #3 in the nation.
penn’s nursing school is #1 in the nation.
penn’s dental school is #1 in the nation
penn’s engineering is also decent (bioengineering is #4 in the nation)
penn’s law school is #6 in the nation
penn’s political science is strong
and have you heard of Penn’s business school called wharton?
yea, it’s been #1 forever.
and i’m in it you fuckin morons.
and you’ll be pissin ur pants after a look at my salary.
i’ll just make all the columbia bitches suck my cock for a cent. douchebags. get a life
August 24th, 2007 at 11:50 am
Columbia beats Penn in Law, Engineering, and Education, as well as a whole bunch of Sciences, Humanities, and Social Sciences.
Also note that you’re UNDERGRAD Wharton, which impresses no one. Go back into your hole and accept Columbia and Penn are pretty much on par with each other.
August 24th, 2007 at 12:22 pm
Cornell ‘99 here. First of all, the difference between our athletes’ qualifications and our general student body is the least in the Ivy League. We aren’t Princeton where their athletes have no business even being in the same area code as the student body. Also, Stanford?? Great school, best in the west, but seriously, outside of California, NOBODY CARES. I am glad we kicked Brown’s ass. Serves those lefty freaks right.
August 24th, 2007 at 12:33 pm
1) Nobody cares about Cornell regardless of which state they may be in.
2) A strong argument could be made for Stanford being the best school in the country. Cornell can’t even say that about New York.
August 24th, 2007 at 1:02 pm
“Penn is not Harvard nor Yale, but it is on par with Princeton and Columbia.”
I have never heard a more ridiculous statement in my life. There is no comparison between Princeton and Columbia. None. And you are suffering from severe Penn syndrome – sure, HY don’t care about Princeton, but P knows that and admits it. Penn seems to think that Princeton actually gives a shit about them. Trust me, they don’t. Penn’s basically a state school, that’s the simple truth.
August 24th, 2007 at 1:03 pm
“2) A strong argument could be made for Stanford being the best school in the country. Cornell can’t even say that about New York.”
And MIT can’t say that about Mass. Caltech can’t say that about California. Strong states can have more than 1 exceptional school.
August 24th, 2007 at 1:21 pm
@ CU
Both MIT and Caltech could make a reasonable argument, but Cornell can not compare to Columbia.
August 24th, 2007 at 1:35 pm
Nobody outside of California cares about Stanford? Check again. Stanford had more applicants last year than any school in its peer group, Harvard included. Yeah, California kids make up a hefty chunk of both the applicants and students (~40%), but if you compare California’s massive population to, say, New England’s, you’ll find Stanford’s regional bias isn’t much different than that at most Ivies. Also, if you look at international rankings (which, granted, are slanted toward graduate programs), Stanford dominates most of the Ivy League (so does Berkeley, in fact) and ranks alongside or just behind Harvard.
August 24th, 2007 at 2:09 pm
according to US News:
Harvard is at 2 and MIT is at 7
Columbia is at 9 while Cornell is at 12.
Soooo, we can compare the first pair, but not the second? Even the peer assessment score (arguably the most important indicator of perception) puts MIT with Harvard and Cornell with Columbia.
August 24th, 2007 at 2:27 pm
1) USNews is pseudo-scientific bs.
2) All else equal, if you get into Cornell and Columbia, you go to Columbia. If you get into MIT and Harvard, you think about it. If you are more technically inclined, you’d probably choose MIT. On the other hand, there is nary a discipline/specialty offered by Cornell that would lead one to choose that school over Columbia (all else equal).
August 24th, 2007 at 3:23 pm
columbia is popular for its location. Based on reputation, it’s tied with Cornell (at least according to the largest survey of its kind).
“there is nary a discipline/specialty offered by Cornell that would lead one to choose that school over Columbia (all else equal).” —> right, lets just throw out subjects such as agricultural sciences, business, architecture, hotel management, labor relations, and the ever present engineering … forget about them!
August 24th, 2007 at 3:50 pm
“Labor relations” is a real major at Cornell?
Doesn’t that just sort of… sum up the argument right there?
August 24th, 2007 at 4:36 pm
I honestly think there is a bit of penis, ahem, Penn envy going on here. Aside from Harvard, what other Ivy League University covers as many bases as Penn. As said earlier, we are the best if not tops in almost all colleges, both undergraduate and graduate. I think many of you who went to a Dartmouth, Princeton, Columbia or Yale did more so for the name, rather the education. Though Penn might not have the name recognition compared to its peers, it has done a wonderful job at developing itself internally over the last 20 years and climbing the ranks as a top university in the world. The only thing Yale or Princeton has on us is an international reputation founded on old facts.
August 24th, 2007 at 8:14 pm
“”Labor relations” is a real major at Cornell?
Doesn’t that just sort of… sum up the argument right there?”
Ummm – no. Especially when you consider the companies that recruit specifically at the labor relations school.
August 24th, 2007 at 10:14 pm
I work on Wall Street. I have to say there are lots more rich young PENN grads than any other IVY grads. I think it’s just the school’s culture if you’re into that kinda stuff. If you want to go be a paper scholar and teach or something, go to Harvard.
August 24th, 2007 at 10:19 pm
“2) All else equal, if you get into Cornell and Columbia, you go to Columbia. If you get into MIT and Harvard, you think about it. If you are more technically inclined, you’d probably choose MIT. On the other hand, there is nary a discipline/specialty offered by Cornell that would lead one to choose that school over Columbia (all else equal).” All else is not equal.
August 25th, 2007 at 7:59 pm
FYI, when people say they work on Wall Street, they don’t mean Century 21 or the deli that all the I-bankers buy there lunch from.
August 25th, 2007 at 11:29 pm
again,
you can go to columbia and win nobel prizes.
bravo. great. you are one smart kiddo.
ill just go to wall street and make more money in one year than you will ever make in ur life.
so come suck it.
August 26th, 2007 at 12:37 am
Good job. Clearly the only indicator of success is one’s bank account.
August 26th, 2007 at 12:37 am
People like Wharton 09 are bringing my fine university down.
August 26th, 2007 at 1:37 pm
“ill just go to wall street and make more money in one year than you will ever make in ur life.” It’s too bad you can’t buy class, taste, or intelligence with money–then you’d be all set!
August 26th, 2007 at 4:57 pm
Stanford will surpass Harvard as best university in the world in 25 years…unless an earthquake hits
August 26th, 2007 at 5:03 pm
Stanford will surpass Harvard as best university in the world in 25 years…unless an earthquake hits
It’s not fair to say that Cornell is in New York. Cornell is upstate, which is more like the midwest. Cornell is not the best college in the midwest either – UChicago is.
Don’t mess with princeton athletes quals – the dumbest tiger > Cornell
August 26th, 2007 at 6:43 pm
You’re not getting in, not even to Cornell. Sorry.
August 26th, 2007 at 8:46 pm
I really don’t have much at stake in the rankings as I go to school out of the country (Oxford), yet I am American. That being said, looking from the outside and thinking about the system in which these rankings are created, they are clearly trivial. The academic systems of the small liberal arts schools are often far more respected and similar to those in Europe than the Ivies. Even further, I feel like the only Ivy Leagues that most people ACTUALLY care about outside of the States are Harvard, Princeton, Yale, Columbia and Cornell (Yes, Cornell). While it is easy for me to say this, not really being involved (although interested, hence the post), at the end of the day, no one really cares about how the school you are going to ranks and most of you think your school (and the Ivies) are much better than they actually are.
August 27th, 2007 at 7:18 am
You’re too late
Look, the folks on this blog need to wake up to reality. Stanford is a peer of HYP, whether we like it or not
The 2nd tier Ivies include Penn/Dartmouth/Columbia and Brown (not according to US News but according to student preference anyway). Penn is legit and, no, I don’t go to Penn
Cornell is a notch below B/C/D/P. Cornell’s distinctive asset is its membership in the Ivy League.
Let’s assume for a moment that the founding of the Ivy League could have a do-over, but that the same rules were in effect – northeastern, old universities with grad programs of a sort. I would rank Hopkins > Cornell > Carnegie Mellon > Rochester > Syracuse/NYU/BU
Hopkins is distinctive in medicine, has academic programs comparable or superior to Cornell (except for hotel and labor)…if Hopkins were an Ivy or Cornell didn’t enjoy its “we’re an Ivy” bump, it would rank significantly higher than Cornell (check out USNews peer scores)
August 27th, 2007 at 10:48 am
Stanford is 3,000 miles away from anything worth anything.
August 27th, 2007 at 1:13 pm
We Stanleys will always look up to Harvard. Stanford is really only recognized for technical achievements – usually at a graduate level. Name one distinctive achievement pertaining to liberal arts…
August 27th, 2007 at 4:59 pm
I go to Cambridge. I win. Give your schools a few hundred more years, then they will be alright.
August 27th, 2007 at 9:13 pm
Please everyone, lighten up, you all go to great schools. They are all very different and really, no one is any better than any other.
August 28th, 2007 at 1:07 am
as a wharton ‘11 i hope i find that my upperclassman peer above is not representative of the greater population… oh and tight, shower some more attention on zuckerman and his highly esteemed and relevant publications
August 28th, 2007 at 8:22 pm
http://www.dartmouthindependent.com/archives/2007/08/decline_and_fal.html
August 28th, 2007 at 10:34 pm
The Independent blows.
August 29th, 2007 at 12:14 am
Upstate New York is NOTHING like the U.S. Midwest.
August 29th, 2007 at 9:03 am
He’s right, it really isn’t anything like the midwest. Sure, it’s not like New York or Westchester or New England. It’s more like Ontario than the Midwest. Whoever thinks the latter has never been there.
September 16th, 2007 at 11:56 pm
Columbia is great for being in the NYC. Where else can you study and party hard at the same time. If you can survive a Columbia education in New York City, you can survive anything.
September 17th, 2007 at 12:04 am
I went to Columbia once…I thought it was pretty boring.
September 17th, 2007 at 12:10 am
It’s pretty funny to see some (not all) Wharton students bragging about their school because of the salaries they’ll some day command. You’ll make lots of money working on Wall Street. Congrats. But what about all of the other grads who will go on to Wall Street jobs right after college? Certainly they’ll be positioned to make the same amount of money as you and they’ll have the added bonus of having gotten an actual education. Woops.
September 17th, 2007 at 1:29 am
Education in America is thin gruel irrespective of prestige, so Wharton seems a correct, get-something-out-of-it choice. That said, Penn is a lovely school without Wharton — as is Cornell — and obsession with these rankings will probably grow hair on your palms. My poor parents and their relatives still boast about their SATs at dinner. That has to undermine quality of life. Allah Akhbar!
September 21st, 2007 at 2:26 am
We have a suicide bomber in the house, please run, and seek the exits. CAN THIS REALLY BE THE MOST COMMENTED-ON THREAD IN IVYGATE HISTORY?!
September 21st, 2007 at 11:33 am
as someone fresh out of the admissions process, i just have a question: how many people buy their way into penn? maybe because i attended high school in new york, an apparent hot bed of penn alums, i saw it more, but i can honestly say, of the people from my set of private high schools in manhattan , i only know of one of about fifteen person who was even in the top 50% of his or her class to go to penn – everyone else had their mommy buy their way in. no other school, let alone ivy, is considered as big an admissions joke as penn – if you know somebody, you’re in. isn’t that recent article on the sudden quitting of their head of admissions a little bit of an indicator of penn?
September 24th, 2007 at 2:00 am
Well, first off I’d like to second/third/fourth the notion that arguing over minute differences between fantastic institutions is silly. If you’re a student applying to college the single most important thing should be finding a GOOD FIT, not angling to get into the “best” (in terms of USN&WR rank/most prestige/whatever other random measure you happen upon) school. If you end up someplace where you’re miserable, even if that school is Harvard, you’ll probably graduate with a shitty educational experience. Guaranteed, you’ll get the best education for you at the school that best fits you as an individual student and wholistic person. I picked Columbia (note the full disclosure) because I looked at the big picture and decided it was the best “match” for me. I would have picked Swarthmore over Princeton in a nanosecond, though, so please don’t call me a prestige-whore (obviously Swarthmore is an amazing school, but it has .5% of the name recognition of Princeton, deservedly or not).
That said, I stil find all of this rather amusing, so I might as well add in my relevant two-cent ranking, given I haven’t seen anyone contribute same (btw, anyone else out there coming from the same place?):
The conventional wisdom when I was making my way through varied elite East coast junior high/high schools was that the Ivies would fall in the following basic order, ONLY in terms of what school would be your first-choice matriculation, if you were choosing in a cross-admit battle(the schools I’ve “/” paired are a close call, with the school placed first having the slight edge):
1. Yale/Harvard
3. Princeton
4. Columbia/Brown
6. Dartmouth
7. Penn/Cornell
I grew up thinking that Cornell and Penn (excluding Wharton) were the “backdoor” into the Ivies – I am in no way alleging that this is or ever was true, merely that it was considered conventional wisdom amongst the many kids I went to school with and talked about colleges/college admissions with.
Venturing: of the Ivies, the schools that place the most institutional emphasis on undergraduate education would be Princeton & Dartmouth hands down, then mayhap Yale and Brown.
I personally endorse none of the above rankings; I’m just relaying what I considered conventional wisdom growing up. Theoretically I now know a multitude of ways to debunk all this bullshit using various cross-disciplinary methodological tools. Theoretically. Maybe if I’d matriculated at Swarthmore I would have better things to do than posting on an Ivy blog at 3 o’clock in the morning.
December 2nd, 2007 at 1:40 am
Brownies are noticeably absent from these bizarre and unhealthy ranking battles…no, i didnt go there (my son does want to, however), but i think its rather telling. Just a thought.
August 14th, 2008 at 5:15 am
To Dartmouth96:
You’re an idiot and snobbish asshole. Get with the times. The Penn of the early-mid 90s (read: when your friends might have attended it) was NOT the Penn of today. It boasted a 50% acceptance rate. It was horrible, easily at the bottom of the Ivy League barrel.
The Penn of today is approaching the top. Rodin, and Guttman following her, have continued to slow yet inevitable lowering of the SAS acceptance rate. It is now LOWER than Wharton’s (11% vs Wharton’s 16% and nursing and SEAS even higher rates). Its SAT average is only 14 points lower, arguably negligible.
Dartmouth is WORSE THAN PENN TODAY. This is a fact. I’m sorry.
4 of my friends chose Penn over Columbia. I myself was merely waitlisted there, but that’s only indicative of the crap-shoot, not the quality. Penn is a better school. That’s all. Thank you and good night.
December 8th, 2008 at 6:43 pm
Okay,
I’ve heard all sorts of idiotic comments here and some good ones.
But Jazzarini has brought out my ire…
I went to Dartmouth (Class of 03) and then went to Wharton (Class of ‘07).
You are full of crap. Although I was in the B-school at Penn, I still spent two years around Penn undergrads…
You say that Dartmouth is WORSE than Penn today? Are you kidding me? The Penn kids weren’t even half the students the undergrads at Dartmouth are (and were during my time there). Penn felt like a big state school. Dartmouth felt like an elite learning community. If it weren’t for Wharton, Penn would be out of the running period. The rest of the school rode our coat tails.
Penn today is NOT better than Dartmouth. Using your faulty logic, Dartmouth’s acceptance rate is not in decline. Every standard of admission has in fact increased. The budget has increased, the facilities have been improved, and the curriculum has been expanded. How does that translate into worse?
The main reason for the dartmouth slippage over the past several years has been the fact that dartmouth simply cannot compete with larger schools when it comes to resources. At it’s core Dartmouth is a liberal arts institution. The level of grant driven revenue is just not there. The entire schools population is roughly 5K. On top of this, many alumns have been utterly infuriated by the Trustees’ decision to eliminate democracy from the elections, which has resulted in tons of bad publicity over the past few years. Dartmouth will recover though, as she always does.
The best 4 years of my life were spent in hanover. Any alum will say the same. How many schools can boast this kind of loyalty. Dartmouth has a sense of place lacking in so many other schools. It’s an experience like none other.
December 8th, 2008 at 6:46 pm
The real ivy rankings are broken into tiers…
Tier 1: Harvard, Princeton, Yale
Tier 2: Dartmouth, Columbia, Brown
Tier 3: Cornell, Penn
There is a huge drop between Tier 2 and 3.
I don’t care what the rankings in US News say. In society, this is just a given.
March 23rd, 2009 at 2:02 am
In regards to my peers at the other schools, I really think people need to understand that Dartmouth is purely an undergraduate institution. I’ve taken maybe 5 out of 35 classes with more than 50 people and maybe 10 out of 35 with more than 25. Its all about learning and the professors don’t really care much about their research, and there are virtually no TAs.
Harvard, Princeton, Yale, etc. are excellent schools, but I definitely think they are inflated by their graduate studies, with Princeton being the exception. I really wish they separated undergraduate from graduate studies in the rankings, and I think Princeton and Dartmouth would be at the top every year. In regards to Penn/Columbia, UPenn is a great school, but I turned it down because no one seemed to like it there, while as every Dartmouth alum got that gleam in their eye when they spoke of the school (I’ll be one of them).
Nevertheless, with all that said, I would rank the undergraduate education as follows:
1. Princeton
2. Dartmouth
3. Yale
4. Brown
5. Harvard
6. Columbia
7. UPenn
8. Cornell
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June 23rd, 2009 at 2:17 pm
Why is everybody shitting on each other? You know most of us might go undergrad at one school and graduate at a completely different school. Why shit on other schools if there’s a possibility of ending up there in a few years? I know the graduate school where I go to college doesn’t accept its own undergraduates.