What's the REAL difference between an Ivy and any other decent private university

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Immediate, comprehensive, universal access. Different to such a degree that those who did not graduate from an Ivy or something very, very close really do not understand.

I went to Harvard. I don't understand. I guess I slept through the lecture on the secret handshake.

I think pp was joking.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:1. A lifetime of not having to prove how smart you are...especially important for women.

2. Some organizations only higher Ivies (especially in high-level finance and top law firms)

3. You never have to apologize for where you went.
(For example...why would you go to Bates and pay private tuition when a great state university would be cheaper/better).

4. If you have to ask...

This person gets it. Number one is huge and NEVER really brought up.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:People think that the probability that your room mate will in the future be president of the united states is much larger at Harvard and Yale. However, it really is only the graduate schools of these institutions that produce presidents, not the undergraduate ones.

Not interested in debating merits of ivy schools, but as a matter of presidential history, let's be accurate:
Since 1900-
Undergrad Harvard- T Roosevelt, FDR, JFK
Undergrad Yale- Taft, G HW Bush 41, G W Bush 43
Undergrad Princeton- Wilson

[Anonymous]

I'm someone who's been to both types of schools for undergrad. Started out at a well-respected LAC for a year and transferred to a middle of the pack Ivy.

Is there a difference? Yes there is. I'll break it down as much as I can.

The LAC had excellent teaching. While the Ivy was good and I had wonderful classes and professors, on the whole I have to give the edge to the LAC. The faculty seemed more committed to being excellent teachers and less dedicated to research. My LAC had bright students so the conversations and debates were never dull. The Ivy had more dull students than you might expect, they were doubtlessly good students on paper with high scores but were content to take notes and ace the exams and not really prod the great questions of life. However, the Ivy also had truly brilliant students who were stimulating. I found the LAC faculty to challenge the students more and for the top 10-20% of LAC students who responded to the challenge, it could be a very rewarding academic experience, whereas at the Ivy the faculty accepted we were all bright and didn't challenge us so much. So while I give my old LAC the edge for teaching, I give the Ivy the edge in the overall quality of students.

The LAC was more limited in offerings. The range of courses on offer at the Ivy was amazing compared to the LAC. Same with resources. The variety of campus clubs and organizations outstripped the LAC. The campus paper was published daily, not weekly, the quality of the writing was much better, the student body was more "engaged," whatever that may mean. The social scene was more diverse because the student body was more diverse. The roster of campus speakers was impressive. The LAC felt much more provincial, parochial, an extension of boarding school in many ways. I noticed that at the LAC a greater percentage of students took semesters abroad whereas at the Ivy far fewer did and that's because we knew the campus experience was too special to sacrifice any time elsewhere so I did my "semester abroad" after I graduated and worked overseas for a year.

In short, the LAC wins in teaching, but the Ivy wins on everything else.

As for the post-collegiate benefits, it's a much more of a mixed bag. The Ivy had its strengths in certain key industries such as banking and consulting and it manifested itself through major campus recruiting drives and close connections with the banks/consulting firms through alums and prior recruitment history. The LAC was practically ignored as most LACs are, at least for the prestige groups. But beyond that I don't know how much of a benefit there really is to having an Ivy diploma other than perhaps acceptance at the same professional schools on campus. A bright graduate from a LAC will probably have to work slightly harder to get noticed but will be just as rewarded by graduate schools and post-college opportunities (other than the banking/consulting firms I referred to, they are noticeably snobby). Actually, if you were an Ivy student and weren't interested in going into i-banking or law school or consulting, I found the campus career center to be useless for the most part. They could help you only if you were very clear on what you wanted to do and where you went and had already taken the initiative to find jobs or internships, but they weren't "connecting" you to the right people or magically had a list of employers eager to hire the graduates.

As it is, I'm glad to have my Ivy degree because of my time as a student on the campus. As the years have gone by my post-collegiate career has become much more relevant than the degree but it's still a nice thing to have. Every now and then someone hears where I went to college and and they're impressed, which is a nice feeling to have. But truth be told, I'm confident I would have still ended up in the same place had I remained at my LAC.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I'm someone who's been to both types of schools for undergrad. Started out at a well-respected LAC for a year and transferred to a middle of the pack Ivy.

Is there a difference? Yes there is. I'll break it down as much as I can.

The LAC had excellent teaching. While the Ivy was good and I had wonderful classes and professors, on the whole I have to give the edge to the LAC. The faculty seemed more committed to being excellent teachers and less dedicated to research. My LAC had bright students so the conversations and debates were never dull. The Ivy had more dull students than you might expect, they were doubtlessly good students on paper with high scores but were content to take notes and ace the exams and not really prod the great questions of life. However, the Ivy also had truly brilliant students who were stimulating. I found the LAC faculty to challenge the students more and for the top 10-20% of LAC students who responded to the challenge, it could be a very rewarding academic experience, whereas at the Ivy the faculty accepted we were all bright and didn't challenge us so much. So while I give my old LAC the edge for teaching, I give the Ivy the edge in the overall quality of students.

The LAC was more limited in offerings. The range of courses on offer at the Ivy was amazing compared to the LAC. Same with resources. The variety of campus clubs and organizations outstripped the LAC. The campus paper was published daily, not weekly, the quality of the writing was much better, the student body was more "engaged," whatever that may mean. The social scene was more diverse because the student body was more diverse. The roster of campus speakers was impressive. The LAC felt much more provincial, parochial, an extension of boarding school in many ways. I noticed that at the LAC a greater percentage of students took semesters abroad whereas at the Ivy far fewer did and that's because we knew the campus experience was too special to sacrifice any time elsewhere so I did my "semester abroad" after I graduated and worked overseas for a year.

In short, the LAC wins in teaching, but the Ivy wins on everything else.

As for the post-collegiate benefits, it's a much more of a mixed bag. The Ivy had its strengths in certain key industries such as banking and consulting and it manifested itself through major campus recruiting drives and close connections with the banks/consulting firms through alums and prior recruitment history. The LAC was practically ignored as most LACs are, at least for the prestige groups. But beyond that I don't know how much of a benefit there really is to having an Ivy diploma other than perhaps acceptance at the same professional schools on campus. A bright graduate from a LAC will probably have to work slightly harder to get noticed but will be just as rewarded by graduate schools and post-college opportunities (other than the banking/consulting firms I referred to, they are noticeably snobby). Actually, if you were an Ivy student and weren't interested in going into i-banking or law school or consulting, I found the campus career center to be useless for the most part. They could help you only if you were very clear on what you wanted to do and where you went and had already taken the initiative to find jobs or internships, but they weren't "connecting" you to the right people or magically had a list of employers eager to hire the graduates.

As it is, I'm glad to have my Ivy degree because of my time as a student on the campus. As the years have gone by my post-collegiate career has become much more relevant than the degree but it's still a nice thing to have. Every now and then someone hears where I went to college and and they're impressed, which is a nice feeling to have. But truth be told, I'm confident I would have still ended up in the same place had I remained at my LAC.

Yeah, the same people who brought us the 2008 financial crisis. Hooray! I watched a Frontline documentary on the origins of the crisis and virtually every single one of the f**k ups who brought down the world economy they interviewed were a bunch of twenty-something graduates of the "best" schools. Obviously, these schools are not getting something right if their brilliant graduates don't have the ethical sense to at least "do no harm" and at worst engage in criminal fraud.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I didn't care about connections, but had a great intellectual experience at Harvard. Professors, resources (libraries, museums, bookstores), and environment were all really important to me, in terms of quantity, quality, variety, and intensity. But, honestly, that's not what most undergrads want from college.

No way in hell could I have found what I was looking for at Williams. OTOH, I doubt I'd have found it at every other Ivy -- and I know I could have found it at other excellent research universities, including a few public flagships.

Which ones?

Certainly Berkeley, Madison, and Ann Arbor. Others depend on field -- for STEM, I'd also look at UCSD and University of Washington -- Seattle. Don't know UCLA and UT Austin well enough to have an opinion re where strengths and weaknesses are.

I would add the following schools to the public flagship list:

UCLA
University of Illiniois at Champaign - Urbana
UCSD
UCSB
Georgia Tech
UC Davis
UT Austin
Penn State
Pitt
Ohio State
Michigan State

All of the above are ranked within the top 100 universities in the world according to the Time World University Rankings - above even the likes of Georgetown, UVA and Dartmouth!

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I'm someone who's been to both types of schools for undergrad. Started out at a well-respected LAC for a year and transferred to a middle of the pack Ivy.

Is there a difference? Yes there is. I'll break it down as much as I can.

The LAC had excellent teaching. While the Ivy was good and I had wonderful classes and professors, on the whole I have to give the edge to the LAC. The faculty seemed more committed to being excellent teachers and less dedicated to research. My LAC had bright students so the conversations and debates were never dull. The Ivy had more dull students than you might expect, they were doubtlessly good students on paper with high scores but were content to take notes and ace the exams and not really prod the great questions of life. However, the Ivy also had truly brilliant students who were stimulating. I found the LAC faculty to challenge the students more and for the top 10-20% of LAC students who responded to the challenge, it could be a very rewarding academic experience, whereas at the Ivy the faculty accepted we were all bright and didn't challenge us so much. So while I give my old LAC the edge for teaching, I give the Ivy the edge in the overall quality of students.

The LAC was more limited in offerings. The range of courses on offer at the Ivy was amazing compared to the LAC. Same with resources. The variety of campus clubs and organizations outstripped the LAC. The campus paper was published daily, not weekly, the quality of the writing was much better, the student body was more "engaged," whatever that may mean. The social scene was more diverse because the student body was more diverse. The roster of campus speakers was impressive. The LAC felt much more provincial, parochial, an extension of boarding school in many ways. I noticed that at the LAC a greater percentage of students took semesters abroad whereas at the Ivy far fewer did and that's because we knew the campus experience was too special to sacrifice any time elsewhere so I did my "semester abroad" after I graduated and worked overseas for a year.

In short, the LAC wins in teaching, but the Ivy wins on everything else.

As for the post-collegiate benefits, it's a much more of a mixed bag. The Ivy had its strengths in certain key industries such as banking and consulting and it manifested itself through major campus recruiting drives and close connections with the banks/consulting firms through alums and prior recruitment history. The LAC was practically ignored as most LACs are, at least for the prestige groups. But beyond that I don't know how much of a benefit there really is to having an Ivy diploma other than perhaps acceptance at the same professional schools on campus. A bright graduate from a LAC will probably have to work slightly harder to get noticed but will be just as rewarded by graduate schools and post-college opportunities (other than the banking/consulting firms I referred to, they are noticeably snobby). Actually, if you were an Ivy student and weren't interested in going into i-banking or law school or consulting, I found the campus career center to be useless for the most part. They could help you only if you were very clear on what you wanted to do and where you went and had already taken the initiative to find jobs or internships, but they weren't "connecting" you to the right people or magically had a list of employers eager to hire the graduates.

As it is, I'm glad to have my Ivy degree because of my time as a student on the campus. As the years have gone by my post-collegiate career has become much more relevant than the degree but it's still a nice thing to have. Every now and then someone hears where I went to college and and they're impressed, which is a nice feeling to have. But truth be told, I'm confident I would have still ended up in the same place had I remained at my LAC.

This sounds about right. I went to a SLAC and totally agree with this about the teaching, it was great. But it was a small school in a remote location so that had some limitations on guest speakers and recruiting.

I should note that many people from my school (now in the top 5 LACs) went to ivied for grad school. Two guys from my class went on to clerk in the Supreme Court, not too bad for a class of 400!

About 10-15 years ago someone looked at recruiting at Yale. Something like 70 percent of the seniors one interviewed for investment banks. I find that pretty depressing. I'm more impressed by people who use their intelligence to change the world, create something or do something to help their fellow man.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Nope, I'm an academic that has studied and/or taught at seven different colleges/universities and who has close friends and former students that teach/taught/have studied at many others.

I'm an academic who
Former students who

I'm sorry to be petty; just so sick of the general inability to distinguish between that/who.

Perhaps you'll feel better if you stop treating a stylistic preference as if it were a rule of grammar. Or maybe closer reading will help. Note the use of "who" as well as "that" in the original sentence and how this variation enables the writer to distinguish an essential attribute (familiarity with a variety of schools) from an incidental one (friendship).

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I didn't care about connections, but had a great intellectual experience at Harvard. Professors, resources (libraries, museums, bookstores), and environment were all really important to me, in terms of quantity, quality, variety, and intensity. But, honestly, that's not what most undergrads want from college.

No way in hell could I have found what I was looking for at Williams. OTOH, I doubt I'd have found it at every other Ivy -- and I know I could have found it at other excellent research universities, including a few public flagships.

Which ones?

Certainly Berkeley, Madison, and Ann Arbor. Others depend on field -- for STEM, I'd also look at UCSD and University of Washington -- Seattle. Don't know UCLA and UT Austin well enough to have an opinion re where strengths and weaknesses are.

I would add the following schools to the public flagship list:

UCLA
University of Illiniois at Champaign - Urbana
UCSD
UCSB
Georgia Tech
UC Davis
UT Austin
Penn State
Pitt
Ohio State
Michigan State

All of the above are ranked within the top 100 universities in the world according to the Time World University Rankings - above even the likes of Georgetown, UVA and Dartmouth!

You realize that adding Penn State to this list immediately discredits it?

[Anonymous]

I have worked in management consulting for over 20 years and every year we hire a new crop of entry level analysts out of the top 10-15 universities and selective liberal arts colleges. I can pretty safely say, that of the hundreds of people I've hired and supervised in their first jobs out of college, there are no meaningful differences in ability or performance that can be systematically tied to going to a top 3 school versus a top 15 school. There are lots and lots of smart, talented, energetic people at all the selective schools, and they all get (or can get) a great education that prepares them for a career. Our exmissions are generally to top 5 business, law and policy schools and, again, I can't see any meaningful differences regarding who gets in to the top grad schools, based on where they went to undergrad.

[Anonymous]

I don't see how having Penn State on this list discredits it. Penn State is an internationally regarded research university. Not only does the Times World University Rankings put it at number 75 in its worldwide survey, but ranks it in the top 20% in teaching, top 10% in research and top 20% in faculty citations.

You can read about the Times methodology here: https://www.timeshighereducation.com/news/ranking-methodology-2016

Other international indices that rank universities also rank Penn State highly. The Academic Ranking of World Universities puts Penn State at 60. The Center for World University Rankings puts Penn State at number 47.

Rankings systems are, by and large, very subjective. the USNWR rankings list barely tells you anything about the academic quality of the school. Malcolm Gladwell pointed this out in his critique of the USNWR rankings in 2011 in the New Yorker. http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2011/02/14/the-order-of-things

The USNWR rankings are geared heavily towards measures of wealth, and not how well the universities do at carrying out their intended educational mission. If he mission of the univesity it taking a broad range of students and providing them with a good education, then Penn State does this well.

PP, you present no arguement as to whether or not Penn State is a good school other than you subjective opinion. You can counter argue with with an arguments or facts.

However, as Penn State's President says in Gladwell's article, “If you look at the top twenty schools every year, forever, they are all wealthy private universities. Do you mean that even the most prestigious public universities in the United States, and you can take your pick of what you think they are—Berkeley, U.C.L.A., University of Michigan, University of Wisconsin, Illinois, Penn State, U.N.C.—do you mean to say that not one of those is in the top tier of institutions? It doesn’t really make sense, until you drill down into the rankings, and what do you find? What I find more than anything else is a measure of wealth: institutional wealth, how big is your endowment, what percentage of alumni are donating each year, what are your faculty salaries, how much are you spending per student.

The problem for those who take issue with critiques of the USNWR is that indicators that downplay wealth, would alter the list. Isn't that a shame.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:went to an HYP. I’ve also taught at public/private universities. The advantages of Ivy attendance were
1) Connections – For example, my first job upon graduating was a plum research assistantship that my TA had had several years before, and he recommended me. It also helped though, that I had the requisite technical skills.
2) Benefit of the doubt: For job applications early in my career, the school name got me on the short list.
3) Compared to public universities: Much easier to graduate in 4 years, since there are no class shortages.
4) Compared to smaller private universities: If you want to do a PhD in a STEM field, there’s no substitute for going to undergrad at a university with a PhD program. When I got to grad school, the SLAC graduates in my program were at sea. Their relatively small departments, with older professors focused on teaching rather than research, hadn’t offered the kind of preparation/technical skills necessary to prepare for a PhD program. The SLACs had no one who had recently gone through or who was going through such a program at the school. At the Ivy I attended, the professors/grad students knew what to teach to make me competitive for the program they were currently running/attending. People will tell you that Bio 101 or Econ 101 are the same everywhere, but they are not.
5) Also compared to some (not all) small private universities: Some of the smaller private schools are really tuition dependent and often have small endowments. They treat the kids like customers, and coursework is less challenging than at an Ivy or public flagship in order to keep grades high. Still, morale is pretty low, as the undergraduates are less of a priority than fundraising, since the schools are often kind of desperate.

+ Connections. I have been around Ivy grads my entire adult life -- they really stick together after graduation. There are firms that have 85% Ivy grads. This is particularly true in Law, banking, medicine, top government positions, judges etc. Most Ivy grads are not posting on DCUM. They think that is ridiculous. Married to one myself -- good looks, great body.

[Anonymous]

Wrong about medicine. Nobody cares where you went undergrad (except to make conversation about football, etc.) Med school matters some. Residency or fellowship matters most.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:went to an HYP. I’ve also taught at public/private universities. The advantages of Ivy attendance were
1) Connections – For example, my first job upon graduating was a plum research assistantship that my TA had had several years before, and he recommended me. It also helped though, that I had the requisite technical skills.
2) Benefit of the doubt: For job applications early in my career, the school name got me on the short list.
3) Compared to public universities: Much easier to graduate in 4 years, since there are no class shortages.
4) Compared to smaller private universities: If you want to do a PhD in a STEM field, there’s no substitute for going to undergrad at a university with a PhD program. When I got to grad school, the SLAC graduates in my program were at sea. Their relatively small departments, with older professors focused on teaching rather than research, hadn’t offered the kind of preparation/technical skills necessary to prepare for a PhD program. The SLACs had no one who had recently gone through or who was going through such a program at the school. At the Ivy I attended, the professors/grad students knew what to teach to make me competitive for the program they were currently running/attending. People will tell you that Bio 101 or Econ 101 are the same everywhere, but they are not.
5) Also compared to some (not all) small private universities: Some of the smaller private schools are really tuition dependent and often have small endowments. They treat the kids like customers, and coursework is less challenging than at an Ivy or public flagship in order to keep grades high. Still, morale is pretty low, as the undergraduates are less of a priority than fundraising, since the schools are often kind of desperate.

+ Connections. [b]I have been around Ivy grads my entire adult life -- they really stick together after graduation. There are firms that have 85% Ivy grads. This is particularly true in Law, banking, medicine, top government positions, judges etc. Most Ivy grads are not posting on DCUM. They think that is ridiculous. Married to one myself -- good looks, great body.

Maybe that is your problem.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Yes, but its the same thing.

No, it's not remotely the same thing, unless you are on Wall Street.