If The Ivy League Hasn’t Already Destroyed Itself This Summer, Forbes Will
Well we've come to that point in the summer where its time for the temporary IvyGate editors (Max and Michael, not that it matters) to say goodbye. It hasn't been a great season for the Ivy League though. Cornell lost everyone's social security numbers. Harvard is broke and is trying to own English. A Brown student and a Yale student competed to see who could be more annoying. Californians don't understand us. Don't even mention lacrosse. And we seem to be forgetting something. What could it be? Oh well, it probably wasn't important.
But the worst news of all came just this week. Forbes Magazine, the nation's premier experts on all things list-related, released their ranking of America's Best Colleges. Here are the sobering results:
1. Army
2. Princeton
3. Caltech
4. Williams
5. Harvard
6. Wellesley
7. Air Force
8. Amherst
9. Yale
10. Stanford
11. MIT
12. Swarthmore
13. Columbia
14. Centre
15. Haverford
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Umm, it'll be a while until we reach the next Ivy League school, so we'll warp ahead after the jump.
Okay, picking it back up.
72. Brown
83. Penn
98. Dartmouth
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Yeah, still going...
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207. Cornell
So there you have it. Princeton is not number 1, Williams is better than Harvard, Amherst is better than Yale, and Cornell couldn't even crack the top 200. Well, that about wraps it up for the Ivy League. It's completely dead now. Good thing we're getting out. I feel sorry for whoever is taking over this site next week. Don't they know the elitism is dead?
Thanks for reading this summer. We sacrificed looking for summer employment in order to work hard to distract you while you work at your internship. We hope you enjoyed it. Nothing more to do now but to cue the music. And there's only one song that is appropriate for this moment.
Dammit! It was supposed to be Keyboard Cat!
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August 7th, 2009 at 5:55 pm
the people who rank colleges have followed the lead of college admissions boards and academic merit no longer means anything.
BUT, I would like to add here the rankings according to my own metric, whereby the number of affiliated Nobel laureates and Fields Medalists count for a point apiece.
1) Columbia
…
3) Harvard
…
7) Cornell
8) Yale
…
10) Princeton
Yeah, that sounds about right.
August 7th, 2009 at 6:37 pm
Nobody takes this list seriously (as if that’s any surprise). I mean, who honestly gives a 20% ranking to random profs’ listings in “Rate My Professors.com” When did McDonald’s start ranking schools?
August 7th, 2009 at 6:43 pm
Let’s see the rest of the list.
August 7th, 2009 at 7:26 pm
doesn’t forbes mag have light ties with the waste of a school princeton?
August 7th, 2009 at 9:49 pm
Steve Forbes thinks we should go back on the gold standard.
Clearly a magazine published by an idiot.
August 7th, 2009 at 10:19 pm
Comment #1 has the right idea. It’s a shame the whole college process has become such a marketable joke.
Apparently you don’t get many points for things like a nanofabrication facility, synchrotron, #1 architecture school, and the ability to compost roadkill deer carcasses.
August 7th, 2009 at 10:25 pm
20% weight on RateMyProfessors? I’m surprised Yale made it as high as it did with that formula, seeing as we have our own course eval program instead (as does everyone else, I’m sure). Unorthodox, “shake-em-up” rankings- yawn.
August 7th, 2009 at 11:35 pm
lol @ “Center College”’s notable alumni:
“Chase Palisch ‘09, 2009 Rhodes Scholar; Shariya Terrell ‘06, Harvard Medical School fellowship winner; Will Lavender ‘99, NYTimes best-selling novelist; John Farris ‘95, former Kentucky Finance Secretary; Che Rhodes ‘95, hot-glass artist.”
Nice. One of their kids got into Harvard Med, and another one was KY’s finance secretary. Let’s rank them 70 ahead of PENN.
Who the hell is Center College? I have never heard of it.
August 7th, 2009 at 11:37 pm
^ Also 63% admit rate? lololol
August 8th, 2009 at 12:38 am
a hot mess.
August 8th, 2009 at 2:18 am
I just want to say that you’ve done a really good job Max. Ivygate hasn’t been consistent for awhile, but you have brought more consistency to it–especially this summer.
Thanks
August 8th, 2009 at 4:03 am
You fucks. (Dartmouth students) But really we drink more than anyone. Dartmouth rules, suck a donkey dick…
August 8th, 2009 at 4:07 am
Not really, though. That’s just hesitation. Get involved with our shit.
August 8th, 2009 at 11:10 am
In their intro they say that Cornell is #105. Except that #105 is Cornell College. This is what happens when you rely on websites like ratemyprofessor.com for information, and then don’t care enough to check the data.
August 8th, 2009 at 11:56 am
CC-perhaps you should learn to spell a college before you slam it. It is CENTRE COLLEGE. I encourage you to research it and audit a class or two. I can assure you that the alums know how to spell….
August 8th, 2009 at 2:06 pm
Say it in your best 3rd grade playground voice: “at least WE know how to SPELL”
August 8th, 2009 at 9:22 pm
There is a flaw with your ranking based upon Nobel laureates and Fields medalists. The problem is that the Nobel prize is often awarded late in ones career and the person is rarely still at the cutting edge of their respective research. But winners make for a great faculty trophies which is why any university which can afford them prefers a laureate come recruitment season. So your metric only measures a schools willingness to pay for senior scientists who were once hot shit.
A better metric would be to look at citation count of current professors. This will measure accomplishment in real time, just before a price tag is placed on the prize winners, and just before the prize winners go out to graze.
For physics research, the NRC rankings did just that in 1993. I don’t know why more people don’t use this measure.
August 8th, 2009 at 10:19 pm
^^ You overestimate the impact geriatric scientists have on that ranking.
When ranked according to the number of graduates and faculty who earned the Nobel prize after or during their affiliation with the school, the rankings barely budge, except Cornell drops to roughly tie with Yale.
August 9th, 2009 at 11:56 am
Why are Barack Obama and Ban Ki-Moon listed as Harvard alumni? This farce of a list is entitled “America’s best COLLEGES.” As if the lack of any fact-checking wasn’t already obvious.
August 9th, 2009 at 9:36 pm
I’ve always thought that college rankings were the best IvyGate posts, particularly for the comments.
These rankings (both Forbes and Princeton Review are just bizarre due to the methodology. It’s more fun to tear them apart because we know they’re ridiculous, while the USNWR ones always sting a bit more (Duke > Columbia still hurts).
August 10th, 2009 at 9:54 am
With ill-informed lists like this and articles like “Celebrity 100″ and “Dump Stocks, Buy Bonds” in a depression, Forbes is quickly becoming irrelevant fodder for the masses.
August 10th, 2009 at 1:11 pm
The scale looks at salary after graduation. Maybe Ivy Leaguers have too many English majors…
August 10th, 2009 at 3:36 pm
haha guys at least were the fuckin frattiest poundin brews all da time mad fratty lol
August 10th, 2009 at 5:56 pm
i think this comment on forbes pretty much sums up how everyone feels:
Posted by jmk975 | 08/10/09 03:11 PM EDT
These rankings are great news for Transylvania College (nice job beating Dartmouth!), but seriously embarassing for Forbes.
August 10th, 2009 at 6:30 pm
Cool-umbia 08, according to USNWR, Columbia and Duke (and Chicago) tied for 8th place this year.
August 11th, 2009 at 4:33 pm
Unlike Sean Connery’s career, we’re on an upward trajectory!
August 11th, 2009 at 7:05 pm
Everyone knows that the best schools are the ones where the Jews, Asians, and Indians go. Schools where these populations are declining are schools that are in decline and schools where these populations are rising are the places to be. You can’t go wrong with Jews, Asians, and Indians.
August 11th, 2009 at 7:44 pm
JAT, you’re an idiot. Jews, Asians, and Indians read USNWR just like everyone else.
August 12th, 2009 at 12:13 pm
You realize that the Asian and Jewish populations at most Ivy League schools are far lower than they could/should be due to reverse affirmative action, right? They’re not declining- they’re being capped as the qualified applicant pool continues to explode.
August 12th, 2009 at 12:44 pm
Are you proposing that a great injustice is being dealt to the people India? China and India have a combined population 2.5 billion people, more than 8 times the U.S. population, and their respective cultures hold American education in high esteem. If the Ivies supplanted America’s own top 10 percent for the top ten of these countries they would become nothing more than Asian boarding schools (we’re talking an 8 to 1 Asian/American student ratio). You have truly become indoctrinated into American culture, because you are blinded by your own sense of entitlement.
August 12th, 2009 at 12:47 pm
in case you missed it, the subtext is that America is under no obligation to educate the rest of the world.
August 12th, 2009 at 1:22 pm
Unfortuntaly Asians’ “superior intelligence” stems from an extreme work-life imbalance and intense parents that Asians. The Ivy league trains america’s future leaders, not bookworms. Being successful is more than just acing an exam…
August 12th, 2009 at 1:23 pm
Unfortuntaly Asians’ “superior intelligence” stems from an extreme work-life imbalance and intense parents. The Ivy league trains america’s future leaders, not bookworms. Being successful is more than just acing an exam…
August 12th, 2009 at 11:42 pm
The point is that were the Ivy League to accept the most qualified students available, as it should, it would be predominantly Asian and Jewish. Now I’m neither of those things, but I’m a big advocate of survival of the fittest. American high schoolers would have to adapt or die. I’m not sure how advocating the admission of qualified foreigners over potentially less-qualified American citizens makes me blinded and entitled. Quite the opposite, really.
August 13th, 2009 at 9:42 am
@^^^&btw Nice to see that when someone mentions Jews, Asians, and Indians you automatically think “foreigner.” Good job. Considering that international enrollment (you know, outside the US) in the Ivies is around 10% all these rest of these Jews, Asians, Indians must be, let’s say, closer to home.
Nevertheless, while I’m too lazy to do it myself, I strongly suspect that if a JAI (Jewish,Asian, Indian) index were applied to the schools on the above list, we would get our “overrated” and “underrated” schools.
August 13th, 2009 at 11:41 am
Stop being such a contrarian asshat. If you read the initial post by ^^^ you’ll see that we were talking about the specific COUNTRIES of China and India in terms of population and education… and therefore the Asians and Indians in question would indeed be foreigners. I was simply including the Jewish population because the point about certain high-achieving cultures applies there as well. And again, if you would read the bloody thread, you would realize that what I’m getting at is that there would be a lot MORE Asian and Indian internationals if the Ivy League took all the applicants that were qualified, and those are the kids who are the supercharged academics, not necessarily their home-grown cousins (the other 90%). Which is exactly what you were just bitching about.
September 7th, 2009 at 4:54 pm
man, so intense…o_o
le’s chill, people…