To you, what's the bottom of the "elite" colleges?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Probably T30ish schools

The USNWR is usually top universities, and with that, I would probably agree, but I would also add around 15-20 SLACs to the list, so something like 50 schools that would be "elite"

I think that’s pretty accurate

[Anonymous]

top 25 universities, top 5 lacs. So 30 in total.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:top 25 universities, top 5 lacs. So 30 in total.

Given there are questions around schools like Rochester, Tulane GATech, I would just include those since 1) they are really good schools 2) they have decreasing admission rates and 3) why quibble over 5 schools?

T30 Universities
T15 SLACs

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:The bottom should be Columbia.
HYPSM+Caltech and then Columbia at the bottom.
Chicago is a wannabe elite who aggressively manipulates for the rankings. Columbia manipulates too, but not as hard.

Columbia is #2, tied with H and M. Y is #5, pushing S to #6.
If C were the bottom, Y and S don’t even make the list.

Columbia is not only not #2, there is a huge gap between it and HYPSM.

Pretty huge gap between H/S/M and Y/P too.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Hasn't Columbia been harder to get into than Yale or Princeton for the last several years?

It has a lower acceptance rate, sure, but:
* It has early decision and fills nearly half of its class through that. Yale and Princeton don't. That's 100% yield for Columbia and enables them to admit less students later.
* Princeton has the most coveted location of any of the Ivies. You get a substantial number of under-qualified students applying simply because it's in NYC.
* Columbia gets to push students into alternative routes (Sciences Po, School of General Studies) which are not factored into acceptances. General Studies folks for all intents and purposes undergraduate Columbia students; they take the same courses as those in SEAS and the College. General Studies has a far higher acceptance rate- 33%- which is not accounted into the 5.8% acceptance rate. Yale and Princeton only offer one route into undergraduate.

Let's not kid ourselves here- Yale and Princeton are harder to get into.

+10000

*fewer

Here comes the SGS-obsessed and veteran-hating reject again!

[Anonymous]

In terms of cross admits:

Harvard/Stanford
MIT/Yale
Princeton/Columbia/Caltech
Penn/Duke
Chicago/Dartmouth/Brown
Northwestern/JHU
Cornell

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Imagine these a$$es in the same room. What a cartoon. Probably none of them went to any of the schools they’re trying to rate. Pathetic.

+10000

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Imagine these a$$es in the same room. What a cartoon. Probably none of them went to any of the schools they’re trying to rate. Pathetic.

+1

Off all the people I know personally who graduated from one or more HYPSM, not one cares where anyone else went to school.

Zero. Zip.

+1

Of all the people I know personally who will soon graduate, all are too busy with their course work, extracurricular activities, to care where anyone else went to school. Nada. Zip. Zero.

It’s always the unemployed - or under employed - with way too much free time in their hands who debate these meaningless DYI university rankings.

It's always the LAC grads and those who went to T15-20s that are most obsessed with those rankings. I bet a lot of them went to UVA too.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Hasn't Columbia been harder to get into than Yale or Princeton for the last several years?

It has a lower acceptance rate, sure, but:
* It has early decision and fills nearly half of its class through that. Yale and Princeton don't. That's 100% yield for Columbia and enables them to admit less students later.
* Princeton has the most coveted location of any of the Ivies. You get a substantial number of under-qualified students applying simply because it's in NYC.
* Columbia gets to push students into alternative routes (Sciences Po, School of General Studies) which are not factored into acceptances. General Studies folks for all intents and purposes undergraduate Columbia students; they take the same courses as those in SEAS and the College. General Studies has a far higher acceptance rate- 33%- which is not accounted into the 5.8% acceptance rate. Yale and Princeton only offer one route into undergraduate.

Let's not kid ourselves here- Yale and Princeton are harder to get into.

+10000

*fewer

Here comes the SGS-obsessed and veteran-hating reject again!

I have a degree from Columbia, and that doesn't seem like SGS "hate" so much as a recognition that the reported Columbia admission rate does not reflect the actual composition of the students attending undergraduate classes.

Also agree with the fact that the number of applications at Columbia has been boosted by TV shows like Gossip Girl.

[Anonymous]

As dumb as this thread is, I’ll share a little anecdote:

My husband’s family has a couple generations of Princeton grads, including his mother (one of the first women admits) and his father. My husband went to Yale - and rejected his Princeton admission - and it caused a huge uproar in his family, even among aunts and uncles. He was the rebel kid.

I went to Dartmouth and met DH right after undergrad. When I met his parents it was clear that I *barely* passed the “is she elite enough to marry my son” test. Like, they acted at times like I went to community college. I actually never applied to Princeton (I applied to Harvard and was rejected) and my ILs have used that at introductions at parties - “she went to Dartmouth, but the poor thing didn’t know to apply to Princeton, so we’ll never know if she would have been admitted!” I mean, heaven forbid someone in their circle thinks their son married someone who *didnt* get into Princeton.

There are people - many, many people - who look down on anything that’s not Princeton or maybe Yale. Harvard, among these folks, is widely known to accept “anyone” if they score highly enough, whereas Princeton and Yale look at overall “pedigree”. Like, Harvard is obviously for dorks and losers, not well rounded children from elite families. Stanford is in California and no one cares about California, and literally no other school is worth mentioning. Like, they are all the same. Ordinary schools for ordinary people. None - none! - are elite.

This is dumb, of course, and I absolutely hate my ILs and the circles they run in. But it puts into perspective that what is regarded as “elite” really depends ENTIRELY on your audience. I mean, there are women in this family who married Harvard grads and you should see how they’re treated - like interlopers who just barely managed to get an invitation to the ball. There’s one cousin who went to U Penn, but everyone kind of knew she was a loser, so we just are polite and don’t bring it up. I mean, all of this is so dumb, but I swear to god I’m not exaggerating in the slightest.

So you can argue on dcum about what is and isn’t elite, but to the people who see themselves as elite, I can guarantee you - you aren’t. I’m not. Almost no one is.

[Anonymous]

If you buy the notion that the top 1% in a category is elite, then 1% of approximately 2,800 four-year colleges and universities would make 28 of them elite. Round to 30 if you like. To me, that suggests T20 universities and T10 SLACs. Within that, DCUM clearly believes in gradations of elite.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:As dumb as this thread is, I’ll share a little anecdote:

My husband’s family has a couple generations of Princeton grads, including his mother (one of the first women admits) and his father. My husband went to Yale - and rejected his Princeton admission - and it caused a huge uproar in his family, even among aunts and uncles. He was the rebel kid.

I went to Dartmouth and met DH right after undergrad. When I met his parents it was clear that I *barely* passed the “is she elite enough to marry my son” test. Like, they acted at times like I went to community college. I actually never applied to Princeton (I applied to Harvard and was rejected) and my ILs have used that at introductions at parties - “she went to Dartmouth, but the poor thing didn’t know to apply to Princeton, so we’ll never know if she would have been admitted!” I mean, heaven forbid someone in their circle thinks their son married someone who *didnt* get into Princeton.

There are people - many, many people - who look down on anything that’s not Princeton or maybe Yale. Harvard, among these folks, is widely known to accept “anyone” if they score highly enough, whereas Princeton and Yale look at overall “pedigree”. Like, Harvard is obviously for dorks and losers, not well rounded children from elite families. Stanford is in California and no one cares about California, and literally no other school is worth mentioning. Like, they are all the same. Ordinary schools for ordinary people. None - none! - are elite.

This is dumb, of course, and I absolutely hate my ILs and the circles they run in. But it puts into perspective that what is regarded as “elite” really depends ENTIRELY on your audience. I mean, there are women in this family who married Harvard grads and you should see how they’re treated - like interlopers who just barely managed to get an invitation to the ball. There’s one cousin who went to U Penn, but everyone kind of knew she was a loser, so we just are polite and don’t bring it up. I mean, all of this is so dumb, but I swear to god I’m not exaggerating in the slightest.

So you can argue on dcum about what is and isn’t elite, but to the people who see themselves as elite, I can guarantee you - you aren’t. I’m not. Almost no one is.

Which is funny because most people see Princeton as dead last in hypsm on DCUM or College Confidential. Don't get where that sense of superiority/entitlement comes from.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Hasn't Columbia been harder to get into than Yale or Princeton for the last several years?

It has a lower acceptance rate, sure, but:
* It has early decision and fills nearly half of its class through that. Yale and Princeton don't. That's 100% yield for Columbia and enables them to admit less students later.
* Princeton has the most coveted location of any of the Ivies. You get a substantial number of under-qualified students applying simply because it's in NYC.
* Columbia gets to push students into alternative routes (Sciences Po, School of General Studies) which are not factored into acceptances. General Studies folks for all intents and purposes undergraduate Columbia students; they take the same courses as those in SEAS and the College. General Studies has a far higher acceptance rate- 33%- which is not accounted into the 5.8% acceptance rate. Yale and Princeton only offer one route into undergraduate.

Let's not kid ourselves here- Yale and Princeton are harder to get into.

+10000

*fewer

Here comes the SGS-obsessed and veteran-hating reject again!

I have a degree from Columbia, and that doesn't seem like SGS "hate" so much as a recognition that the reported Columbia admission rate does not reflect the actual composition of the students attending undergraduate classes.

Also agree with the fact that the number of applications at Columbia has been boosted by TV shows like Gossip Girl.

NYT reports there are a lot of unemployed or underemployed Columbia master’s students who majored in things like MFA. With $100,000-300,000 loans, students can end up with $30,000-50,000/yr paying jobs. NYT also did a similar investigation on USC grad school recently. Someone also did a similar investigation into Harvard.

Good luck Disgruntled PP. Your mistake in picking a not-so-lucrative major.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Hasn't Columbia been harder to get into than Yale or Princeton for the last several years?

It has a lower acceptance rate, sure, but:
* It has early decision and fills nearly half of its class through that. Yale and Princeton don't. That's 100% yield for Columbia and enables them to admit less students later.
* Princeton has the most coveted location of any of the Ivies. You get a substantial number of under-qualified students applying simply because it's in NYC.
* Columbia gets to push students into alternative routes (Sciences Po, School of General Studies) which are not factored into acceptances. General Studies folks for all intents and purposes undergraduate Columbia students; they take the same courses as those in SEAS and the College. General Studies has a far higher acceptance rate- 33%- which is not accounted into the 5.8% acceptance rate. Yale and Princeton only offer one route into undergraduate.

Let's not kid ourselves here- Yale and Princeton are harder to get into.

+10000

*fewer

Here comes the SGS-obsessed and veteran-hating reject again!

I have a degree from Columbia, and that doesn't seem like SGS "hate" so much as a recognition that the reported Columbia admission rate does not reflect the actual composition of the students attending undergraduate classes.

Also agree with the fact that the number of applications at Columbia has been boosted by TV shows like Gossip Girl.

Columbia GS.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:As dumb as this thread is, I’ll share a little anecdote:

My husband’s family has a couple generations of Princeton grads, including his mother (one of the first women admits) and his father. My husband went to Yale - and rejected his Princeton admission - and it caused a huge uproar in his family, even among aunts and uncles. He was the rebel kid.

I went to Dartmouth and met DH right after undergrad. When I met his parents it was clear that I *barely* passed the “is she elite enough to marry my son” test. Like, they acted at times like I went to community college. I actually never applied to Princeton (I applied to Harvard and was rejected) and my ILs have used that at introductions at parties - “she went to Dartmouth, but the poor thing didn’t know to apply to Princeton, so we’ll never know if she would have been admitted!” I mean, heaven forbid someone in their circle thinks their son married someone who *didnt* get into Princeton.

There are people - many, many people - who look down on anything that’s not Princeton or maybe Yale. Harvard, among these folks, is widely known to accept “anyone” if they score highly enough, whereas Princeton and Yale look at overall “pedigree”. Like, Harvard is obviously for dorks and losers, not well rounded children from elite families. Stanford is in California and no one cares about California, and literally no other school is worth mentioning. Like, they are all the same. Ordinary schools for ordinary people. None - none! - are elite.

This is dumb, of course, and I absolutely hate my ILs and the circles they run in. But it puts into perspective that what is regarded as “elite” really depends ENTIRELY on your audience. I mean, there are women in this family who married Harvard grads and you should see how they’re treated - like interlopers who just barely managed to get an invitation to the ball. There’s one cousin who went to U Penn, but everyone kind of knew she was a loser, so we just are polite and don’t bring it up. I mean, all of this is so dumb, but I swear to god I’m not exaggerating in the slightest.

So you can argue on dcum about what is and isn’t elite, but to the people who see themselves as elite, I can guarantee you - you aren’t. I’m not. Almost no one is.

Which is funny because most people see Princeton as dead last in hypsm on DCUM or College Confidential. Don't get where that sense of superiority/entitlement comes from.

I mean…. Old money.