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

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I'm Gen X New Yorker, but moved to DC in my 20s, and my mental list is like:

1. Harvard
2. Yale
3. Stanford
4. Columbia
5. Princeton
6. MIT
7. Penn
8. Chicago
9. Cornell
10. Northwestern
11. Duke
12. Dartmouth
13. Brown
14. Johns Hopkins
15. Berkeley
16. Williams/Amherst

More like:

1. Harvard
2. Yale
3. Stanford
4. MIT
5. Princeton
6. Columbia
7. Penn
8. Chicago
9. Duke
10. Caltech
11. Northwestern
12. Dartmouth
13. Brown
14. Johns Hopkins
15. Berkeley
16. Williams/Amherst

Caltech is cool and great but it has relatively little social prestige, and is so small and niche so as basically to be an arm of the JPL.

I’m impressed by Caltech in the same way that I am by Juilliard, and am not sure I would necessarily include either in a group of universities like the ones above.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I'm Gen X New Yorker, but moved to DC in my 20s, and my mental list is like:

1. Harvard
2. Yale
3. Stanford
4. Columbia
5. Princeton
6. MIT
7. Penn
8. Chicago
9. Cornell
10. Northwestern
11. Duke
12. Dartmouth
13. Brown
14. Johns Hopkins
15. Berkeley
16. Williams/Amherst

More like:

1. Harvard
2. Yale
3. Stanford
4. MIT
5. Princeton
6. Columbia
7. Penn
8. Chicago
9. Duke
10. Caltech
11. Northwestern
12. Dartmouth
13. Brown
14. Johns Hopkins
15. Berkeley
16. Williams/Amherst

Caltech is cool and great but it has relatively little social prestige, and is so small and niche so as basically to be an arm of the JPL.

I’m impressed by Caltech in the same way that I am by Juilliard, and am not sure I would necessarily include either in a group of universities like the ones above.

Reasonable list. I would probably add Cornell at #14 alongside JHU

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I'm Gen X New Yorker, but moved to DC in my 20s, and my mental list is like:

1. Harvard
2. Yale
3. Stanford
4. Columbia
5. Princeton
6. MIT
7. Penn
8. Chicago
9. Cornell
10. Northwestern
11. Duke
12. Dartmouth
13. Brown
14. Johns Hopkins
15. Berkeley
16. Williams/Amherst

Reasonable list.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I'm Gen X New Yorker, but moved to DC in my 20s, and my mental list is like:

1. Harvard
2. Yale
3. Stanford
4. Columbia
5. Princeton
6. MIT
7. Penn
8. Chicago
9. Cornell
10. Northwestern
11. Duke
12. Dartmouth
13. Brown
14. Johns Hopkins
15. Berkeley
16. Williams/Amherst

Reasonable list.

I’d drop Stanford down a bit because of their emphasis on athletes over academics. This bumps Columbia up a notch for the #1 position, tied with fellow #1s - Harvard and Yale.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:The most elite schools, including Princeton, have moved on the types of obsessions about social class that a lot of uninformed DCUM posters with archaic assumptions bring to the discussion. They maintain their position in higher education by limiting the number of students they admit, but figured out a long time ago they were at least as good at conferring status than rewarding it.

bwa hahahah

[Anonymous]

My list:

1. Harvard
2. Stanford
3. MIT
4. Columbia
5. Yale
6. Princeton
7. Chicago
8. Penn
9. Berkeley
10. Johns Hopkins
11. Cornell
12. Northwestern
13. Brown
14. Duke
15. Dartmouth

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I'm Gen X New Yorker, but moved to DC in my 20s, and my mental list is like:

1. Harvard
2. Yale
3. Stanford
4. Columbia
5. Princeton
6. MIT
7. Penn
8. Chicago
9. Cornell
10. Northwestern
11. Duke
12. Dartmouth
13. Brown
14. Johns Hopkins
15. Berkeley
16. Williams/Amherst

Reasonable list.

I’d drop Stanford down a bit because of their emphasis on athletes over academics. This bumps Columbia up a notch for the #1 position, tied with fellow #1s - Harvard and Yale.

We should move Columbia down to #10

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I'm Gen X New Yorker, but moved to DC in my 20s, and my mental list is like:

1. Harvard
2. Yale
3. Stanford
4. Columbia
5. Princeton
6. MIT
7. Penn
8. Chicago
9. Cornell
10. Northwestern
11. Duke
12. Dartmouth
13. Brown
14. Johns Hopkins
15. Berkeley
16. Williams/Amherst

Reasonable list.

+1

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I'm Gen X New Yorker, but moved to DC in my 20s, and my mental list is like:

1. Harvard
2. Yale
3. Stanford
4. Columbia
5. Princeton
6. MIT
7. Penn
8. Chicago
9. Cornell
10. Northwestern
11. Duke
12. Dartmouth
13. Brown
14. Johns Hopkins
15. Berkeley
16. Williams/Amherst

Reasonable list.

I’d drop Stanford down a bit because of their emphasis on athletes over academics. This bumps Columbia up a notch for the #1 position, tied with fellow #1s - Harvard and Yale.

We should move Columbia down to #10

Then move Penn, Northwestern, Duke, and Chicago down 5 spots too.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I'm Gen X New Yorker, but moved to DC in my 20s, and my mental list is like:

1. Harvard
2. Yale
3. Stanford
4. Columbia
5. Princeton
6. MIT
7. Penn
8. Chicago
9. Cornell
10. Northwestern
11. Duke
12. Dartmouth
13. Brown
14. Johns Hopkins
15. Berkeley
16. Williams/Amherst

Reasonable list.

I’d drop Stanford down a bit because of their emphasis on athletes over academics. This bumps Columbia up a notch for the #1 position, tied with fellow #1s - Harvard and Yale.

We should move Columbia down to #10

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I'm Gen X New Yorker, but moved to DC in my 20s, and my mental list is like:

1. Harvard
2. Yale
3. Stanford
4. Columbia
5. Princeton
6. MIT
7. Penn
8. Chicago
9. Cornell
10. Northwestern
11. Duke
12. Dartmouth
13. Brown
14. Johns Hopkins
15. Berkeley
16. Williams/Amherst

No sane person placed Columbia at #4

Columbia could be anywhere from #4-#6 for a variety of reasons.
Superior to MIT in social sciences/humanities and Yale in STEM.
Grad school wise >= Princeton for the latter's lack of professional schools.
Plus PP said she's from New York, which explains it all.

More like #6-9. But there is a gap after HYPSM, if anything bc of the resources difference of these institutions

Not really when you consider Yale’s lackluster stem programs and average business school or MIT being devoid of humanities and social science except economics or political science. The gap is much smaller than you actively make it out to be.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I'm Gen X New Yorker, but moved to DC in my 20s, and my mental list is like:

1. Harvard
2. Yale
3. Stanford
4. Columbia
5. Princeton
6. MIT
7. Penn
8. Chicago
9. Cornell
10. Northwestern
11. Duke
12. Dartmouth
13. Brown
14. Johns Hopkins
15. Berkeley
16. Williams/Amherst

Reasonable list.

I’d drop Stanford down a bit because of their emphasis on athletes over academics. This bumps Columbia up a notch for the #1 position, tied with fellow #1s - Harvard and Yale.

We should move Columbia down to #10

Snarky comments from GS grads don’t count. They were always segregated. It was designed for military full-pay veterans. If PP had to full pay out of pocket, his or her experience is different from Columbia students.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:HYPSM, caltech, chicago, Columbia, Williams.

That's my list.

+1 as defined by the academic cohort at the top 10% (arbitrary) of their respective classes

Pomona has more students in the top 10% of the class than Williams. There are plenty of others as well like Dartmouth and Brown. If that's your criteria, you're clearly not informed.

I'm referring to the top 10% of the college's own classes (not entry HS grades or SAT scores for admissions to the institutions).
My personal opinion is that the cohort at the top are strongest at the schools listed because it's a mix of our best plus the top international students. I'm not saying that there aren't brilliant students at other schools but I think there are less of them and they are not tested on a daily basis in the same way. Williams is also rated as one of the most rigorous schools in the country among universites and LACs. For their grade inflation alone I agreed with the original posters assessment. Ther are plenty of students at Pomona, Brown and Dartmouth that go on to have successful and lucrative careers but that's not the same as the academic elites who are game changers. IMO.

I agree that HYPMS and maybe UChicago/Caltech/Columbia are in a tier of their own. I only disagree with Williams. It's really not at the HYPMS level in terms of selectivity/strength of student body, and not so much higher than Amherst/Pomona/Swarthmore/Bowdoin at this day and time. Here's the list of colleges sorted by average SAT of enrolled students: http://www.businessinsider.com/the-50-smartest-colleges-in-america-2016-10 Williams is 17th.

Also, just a side-note that HYS all have median GPAs above 3.6 and are known for having a ton of grade inflation. I've heard that less than 10% of grades given out there are C's or below. If you want to identify the most rigorous elite schools by a combination of workload and average GPA, that'd be Reed, Swarthmore, UChicago, Princeton, and Davidson. I'd include Williams too- it's definitely rigorous- but being rigorous and attracting the smartest students are two different measures.

CMU should be in this most rigorous list

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Not really when you consider Yale’s lackluster stem programs and average business school or MIT being devoid of humanities and social science except economics or political science. The gap is much smaller than you actively make it out to be.

Damn people do a frickin' google search before you post:

https://shass.mit.edu/undergraduate/majors

MIT Major Fields

Anthropology
Comparative Media Studies
Economics (Economics; Mathematical Economics; Computer Science, Economics, and Data Science)
Global Languages (French, German, Spanish)
History
Humanities (African & African Diaspora Studies, American Studies, Ancient and Medieval Studies, Asian and Asian Diaspora Studies, Latin American and Latino/a Studies, Russian and Eurasian Studies, Women's and Gender Studies)
Humanities and Engineering
Humanities and Science
Linguistics
Literature
Music
Philosophy
Political Science
Science, Technology, and Society
Theater Arts
Writing

This is indicative of the quality of advice you get here. Buyer beware.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Not really when you consider Yale’s lackluster stem programs and average business school or MIT being devoid of humanities and social science except economics or political science. The gap is much smaller than you actively make it out to be.

Damn people do a frickin' google search before you post:

https://shass.mit.edu/undergraduate/majors

MIT Major Fields

Anthropology
Comparative Media Studies
Economics (Economics; Mathematical Economics; Computer Science, Economics, and Data Science)
Global Languages (French, German, Spanish)
History
Humanities (African & African Diaspora Studies, American Studies, Ancient and Medieval Studies, Asian and Asian Diaspora Studies, Latin American and Latino/a Studies, Russian and Eurasian Studies, Women's and Gender Studies)
Humanities and Engineering
Humanities and Science
Linguistics
Literature
Music
Philosophy
Political Science
Science, Technology, and Society
Theater Arts
Writing

This is indicative of the quality of advice you get here. Buyer beware.

I think the poster’s point was that the strength of these humanities and social sciences fields at MIT are lackluster, not so much whether they exist or not. While I’m sure the teaching quality in these fields are quite decent at MIT, I doubt that MIT’s English or History department houses the best professors and academics in the country. Just saying.