US College Rankings, from the perspective of a college student

[Anonymous]

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Anonymous wrote:I don't why people spend so much effort on these rankings. It's very simple. There are the Ivies and then there's everyone else, including the SLACs, ranked from 1 to 30.

No one cares about the lower half of the Ivies. Don't kid yourself.

Lower half of the Ivies is still at a very high level no matter how you kid yourself.

There is no such thing as lower ranked or higher ranked Ivies. They are grouped together and analyzed as a collective. They are all top quality providing world class education.

And analyzed as a collective, there are certainly several universities that are at their level and/or even *gasp* surpass them.

Collectively surpass ivies? Source?

I can see MIT/Caltech surpassing ivies but these are niche universities. They may own ivies in engineering , but ivies own them in liberal arts. JHU all by itself may own ivies in the medical field, but it can't compete with ivies in liberal arts. Julliard/New England Conservatory/Curtis/Oberlin own them in arts and music, but they can't compete with ivies in liberal arts.

DP. As a collective, I find the 8-or-so best non-Ivies to be more impressive than the 8 Ivies, collectives, to be honest.

T16 > T10

Strange DCUM math.

Stanford, MIT, Chicago, Duke, Northwestern, Hopkins, Caltech, Berkeley > Harvard, Yale, Princeton, Columbia, Penn, Cornell, Brown, Dartmouth

Stanford = (equivalent) Harvard,
MIT = Princeton,
Chicago = Yale (or slight edge to Yale),
Duke = Columbia,
NW = Penn,
Hopkins > Brown,
Caltech > Dartmouth,
Berkeley > Cornell. Conclusion is Top non-Ivy 8 beats 8 Ivies.

Many schools on the left do not have the wow factor on the right.

Not many people in the world care.

Love the school that loves your kids. If it's JHU, then JHU is the greatest school ever.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:For those who couldn't make it to the end, this was the ranking:

1: Harvard
2: Yale, Princeton
3: Stanford
4: Columbia
5: U of Chicago, MIT
6: U Penn, Northwestern
7: Cal Tech
8: Johns Hopkins
9: Duke
10: UC Berkeley
11: Brown
12: Cornell
13: Dartmouth
14: Rice
15: UCLA
16: Carnegie Mellon
17: Vanderbilt
18: USC
19: Emory
20: NYU
21: WashU
22: UMich
23: U of Notre Dame
24: Georgetown

Honestly, it's a decent approximation for what most would think.

There are no SLACs. This list is incomplete. The reviewer probably never heard of Williams, Amherst, Oberlin, Vassar...

Williams and Amherst deserve a place on this list, but Oberlin and Vassar? Lol. Get out of town.

In an increasingly technical world large research universities are eclipsing small liberal arts colleges.

Are "SLACS" a Midwest thing? Never heard of them before DCUM.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:This kind of thinking is ruining our children. Stop it! Education is way too complex for simple rankings. All this does is make people feel superior or inferior.

Thanks. I was starting to lose hope in people.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I don't why people spend so much effort on these rankings. It's very simple. There are the Ivies and then there's everyone else, including the SLACs, ranked from 1 to 30.

No one cares about the lower half of the Ivies. Don't kid yourself.

Lower half of the Ivies is still at a very high level no matter how you kid yourself.

There is no such thing as lower ranked or higher ranked Ivies. They are grouped together and analyzed as a collective. They are all top quality providing world class education.

And analyzed as a collective, there are certainly several universities that are at their level and/or even *gasp* surpass them.

Collectively surpass ivies? Source?

I can see MIT/Caltech surpassing ivies but these are niche universities. They may own ivies in engineering , but ivies own them in liberal arts. JHU all by itself may own ivies in the medical field, but it can't compete with ivies in liberal arts. Julliard/New England Conservatory/Curtis/Oberlin own them in arts and music, but they can't compete with ivies in liberal arts.

DP. As a collective, I find the 8-or-so best non-Ivies to be more impressive than the 8 Ivies, collectives, to be honest.

T16 > T10

Strange DCUM math.

Stanford, MIT, Chicago, Duke, Northwestern, Hopkins, Caltech, Berkeley > Harvard, Yale, Princeton, Columbia, Penn, Cornell, Brown, Dartmouth

Stanford = (equivalent) Harvard,
MIT = Princeton,
Chicago = Yale (or slight edge to Yale),
Duke = Columbia,
NW = Penn,
Hopkins > Brown,
Caltech > Dartmouth,
Berkeley > Cornell. Conclusion is Top non-Ivy 8 beats 8 Ivies.

Many schools on the left do not have the wow factor on the right.

Not many people in the world care.

Love the school that loves your kids. If it's JHU, then JHU is the greatest school ever.

Many schools on the right also do not have the wow factor of some of the schools on the left. Most people in this country are not even aware of what Dartmouth is.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I don't why people spend so much effort on these rankings. It's very simple. There are the Ivies and then there's everyone else, including the SLACs, ranked from 1 to 30.

No one cares about the lower half of the Ivies. Don't kid yourself.

Lower half of the Ivies is still at a very high level no matter how you kid yourself.

There is no such thing as lower ranked or higher ranked Ivies. They are grouped together and analyzed as a collective. They are all top quality providing world class education.

And analyzed as a collective, there are certainly several universities that are at their level and/or even *gasp* surpass them.

Collectively surpass ivies? Source?

I can see MIT/Caltech surpassing ivies but these are niche universities. They may own ivies in engineering , but ivies own them in liberal arts. JHU all by itself may own ivies in the medical field, but it can't compete with ivies in liberal arts. Julliard/New England Conservatory/Curtis/Oberlin own them in arts and music, but they can't compete with ivies in liberal arts.

DP. As a collective, I find the 8-or-so best non-Ivies to be more impressive than the 8 Ivies, collectives, to be honest.

T16 > T10

Strange DCUM math.

Stanford, MIT, Chicago, Duke, Northwestern, Hopkins, Caltech, Berkeley > Harvard, Yale, Princeton, Columbia, Penn, Cornell, Brown, Dartmouth

Stanford = (equivalent) Harvard,
MIT = Princeton,
Chicago = Yale (or slight edge to Yale),
Duke = Columbia,
NW = Penn,
Hopkins > Brown,
Caltech > Dartmouth,
Berkeley > Cornell. Conclusion is Top non-Ivy 8 beats 8 Ivies.

Many schools on the left do not have the wow factor on the right.

Not many people in the world care.

Love the school that loves your kids. If it's JHU, then JHU is the greatest school ever.

Many schools on the right also do not have the wow factor of some of the schools on the left. Most people in this country are not even aware of what Dartmouth is.

If your kid goes to Berkeley, it truly is the best school. Let's not knock down Dartmouth or whatever that rejected your kids.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I don't why people spend so much effort on these rankings. It's very simple. There are the Ivies and then there's everyone else, including the SLACs, ranked from 1 to 30.

No one cares about the lower half of the Ivies. Don't kid yourself.

Lower half of the Ivies is still at a very high level no matter how you kid yourself.

There is no such thing as lower ranked or higher ranked Ivies. They are grouped together and analyzed as a collective. They are all top quality providing world class education.

And analyzed as a collective, there are certainly several universities that are at their level and/or even *gasp* surpass them.

Collectively surpass ivies? Source?

I can see MIT/Caltech surpassing ivies but these are niche universities. They may own ivies in engineering , but ivies own them in liberal arts. JHU all by itself may own ivies in the medical field, but it can't compete with ivies in liberal arts. Julliard/New England Conservatory/Curtis/Oberlin own them in arts and music, but they can't compete with ivies in liberal arts.

DP. As a collective, I find the 8-or-so best non-Ivies to be more impressive than the 8 Ivies, collectives, to be honest.

T16 > T10

Strange DCUM math.

Stanford, MIT, Chicago, Duke, Northwestern, Hopkins, Caltech, Berkeley > Harvard, Yale, Princeton, Columbia, Penn, Cornell, Brown, Dartmouth

Stanford = (equivalent) Harvard,
MIT = Princeton,
Chicago = Yale (or slight edge to Yale),
Duke = Columbia,
NW = Penn,
Hopkins > Brown,
Caltech > Dartmouth,
Berkeley > Cornell. Conclusion is Top non-Ivy 8 beats 8 Ivies.

Many schools on the left do not have the wow factor on the right.

Not many people in the world care.

Love the school that loves your kids. If it's JHU, then JHU is the greatest school ever.

Many schools on the right also do not have the wow factor of some of the schools on the left. Most people in this country are not even aware of what Dartmouth is.

Or what Brown is other than a color.

[Anonymous]

Oooh, what bitter people. I guess Dartmouth and Brown must have rejected your precious snowflakes.

[Anonymous]

Parents are so full of themselves. Especially, the parents who went to Ivys. From their mouth they spout out every Ivy (in fact every school) is different and fit is very important in choosing a college. If that is true, the college that best fits a particular student is the number one school for that student. All other colleges are in a single but different pile. Besides, different colleges specialize in different majors (subject areas). As an example, Harvard may live for another 1000 years, but it will never be MIT. Each has its own core competency. You can’t say one is better than the other. Also, every college has its own way of filling the class - legacies, kids of celebrities, kids of major donors, recruited Athletes, First-gen, affirmative action candidates, foreign students, pure merit students, full-pay versus financial aid students, etc. it’s absolute stupidity to rank schools. As an aside, how do you rank your spouses? If you think that question is idiotic, then ranking and fighting over rankings of colleges is even more idiotic.

This is how we put too much, absolutely unnecessary pressure on our children. We subject them to unhealthy stress and we stress ourselves out. When you get married, you choose a partner among the eligible people you come across during a certain time and the other person also happen to choose you. You didn’t date all or even a few thousand eligible people before selecting your spouse to be. As another example, would you rank all the athletes in all the sports into a single ranking? Every sport is different requiring different skill set. An individual with a certain type of skill set gravitates to a certain sport. It doesn’t mean the athlete is pursuing number one sport or number thirty-fifth sport.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:If you check out her early videos, she was rejected or waitlisted from many of these top schools and was pretty bitter about attending her UC for the first year or so (my kid watches her videos). It's a good lesson in getting over disappointment and making the most of the opportunities that are available to you, so I hope kids watching her have that takeaway. Coming from PA/Midwest, I was surprised to see how competitive and stressful her HS experience of applying to college and receiving decisions was and how bitter (and somewhat entitled) that environment of overachieving and competition can make 18 year olds. It was news to me that kids felt disappointed by UCLA and UCB and snarked about or harbored resentment for kids who did get in, whom they perceived to be less competitive.

This is very, very common among UC Berkeley students.

I find this to be very true also. There main comparison is Stanford which does not help with self image. Also, most of the other UCs have closed the gap or even past them. UCLA definitely has better undergraduate experience with housing and food, etc.
A common rivalry joke is what do Stanford and Berkeley students have in common? They both applied to Stanford.

I guess it helps her ego to rank Berkeley in the Top 10.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Oooh, what bitter people. I guess Dartmouth and Brown must have rejected your precious snowflakes.

I thought that typical and juvenile line was reserved only for crude UVA grads.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:If you check out her early videos, she was rejected or waitlisted from many of these top schools and was pretty bitter about attending her UC for the first year or so (my kid watches her videos). It's a good lesson in getting over disappointment and making the most of the opportunities that are available to you, so I hope kids watching her have that takeaway. Coming from PA/Midwest, I was surprised to see how competitive and stressful her HS experience of applying to college and receiving decisions was and how bitter (and somewhat entitled) that environment of overachieving and competition can make 18 year olds. It was news to me that kids felt disappointed by UCLA and UCB and snarked about or harbored resentment for kids who did get in, whom they perceived to be less competitive.

This is very, very common among UC Berkeley students.

I find this to be very true also. There main comparison is Stanford which does not help with self image. Also, most of the other UCs have closed the gap or even past them. UCLA definitely has better undergraduate experience with housing and food, etc.
A common rivalry joke is what do Stanford and Berkeley students have in common? They both applied to Stanford.

I guess it helps her ego to rank Berkeley in the Top 10.

Berkeley is in the top 10.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:If you check out her early videos, she was rejected or waitlisted from many of these top schools and was pretty bitter about attending her UC for the first year or so (my kid watches her videos). It's a good lesson in getting over disappointment and making the most of the opportunities that are available to you, so I hope kids watching her have that takeaway. Coming from PA/Midwest, I was surprised to see how competitive and stressful her HS experience of applying to college and receiving decisions was and how bitter (and somewhat entitled) that environment of overachieving and competition can make 18 year olds. It was news to me that kids felt disappointed by UCLA and UCB and snarked about or harbored resentment for kids who did get in, whom they perceived to be less competitive.

This is very, very common among UC Berkeley students.

I find this to be very true also. There main comparison is Stanford which does not help with self image. Also, most of the other UCs have closed the gap or even past them. UCLA definitely has better undergraduate experience with housing and food, etc.
A common rivalry joke is what do Stanford and Berkeley students have in common? They both applied to Stanford.

I guess it helps her ego to rank Berkeley in the Top 10.

Berkeley is in the top 10.

OK. Sorry you did not get into Stanford and had to go to Berkeley

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:If you check out her early videos, she was rejected or waitlisted from many of these top schools and was pretty bitter about attending her UC for the first year or so (my kid watches her videos). It's a good lesson in getting over disappointment and making the most of the opportunities that are available to you, so I hope kids watching her have that takeaway. Coming from PA/Midwest, I was surprised to see how competitive and stressful her HS experience of applying to college and receiving decisions was and how bitter (and somewhat entitled) that environment of overachieving and competition can make 18 year olds. It was news to me that kids felt disappointed by UCLA and UCB and snarked about or harbored resentment for kids who did get in, whom they perceived to be less competitive.

This is very, very common among UC Berkeley students.

I find this to be very true also. There main comparison is Stanford which does not help with self image. Also, most of the other UCs have closed the gap or even past them. UCLA definitely has better undergraduate experience with housing and food, etc.
A common rivalry joke is what do Stanford and Berkeley students have in common? They both applied to Stanford.

I guess it helps her ego to rank Berkeley in the Top 10.

Berkeley is in the top 10.

OK. Sorry you did not get into Stanford and had to go to Berkeley

DP. But the pp must have gotten into Berkeley by pure merit, which Stanford doesn’t value much since it prefers “well-rounded” (with its own definition of what it means).

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:The only reason this list has ANY integrity is because she started with USNWR’s top 30. The rest is her reshuffling the deck based on her narrow worldview, hearsay, and social impressions. I would have expected better from a Berkeley student. Maybe Berkeley should be 30.

Actually, it has NO integrity BECAUSE she started with USNWR's top 30.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I don't why people spend so much effort on these rankings. It's very simple. There are the Ivies and then there's everyone else, including the SLACs, ranked from 1 to 30.

No one cares about the lower half of the Ivies. Don't kid yourself.

Lower half of the Ivies is still at a very high level no matter how you kid yourself.

There is no such thing as lower ranked or higher ranked Ivies. They are grouped together and analyzed as a collective. They are all top quality providing world class education.

And analyzed as a collective, there are certainly several universities that are at their level and/or even *gasp* surpass them.

Collectively surpass ivies? Source?

I can see MIT/Caltech surpassing ivies but these are niche universities. They may own ivies in engineering , but ivies own them in liberal arts. JHU all by itself may own ivies in the medical field, but it can't compete with ivies in liberal arts. Julliard/New England Conservatory/Curtis/Oberlin own them in arts and music, but they can't compete with ivies in liberal arts.

You're asking for sources, but what's yours? What is it that gives you the opinion that the liberal arts are strongest at Ivy League schools? Or is it just self-evident to you?