So your point is they are great, but not impressive? And what does geography have do with anything? |
If the Ivy League could share ND's TV revenue, it would have been sent yesterday !
It isn't like they haven't seriously considered expansion for football reasons before: https://www.nytimes.com/1982/01/10/sports/ivy-league-considers-adding-2-schools.html Playing FCS football like the Ivy League and Georgetown continue to do seems silly. The Big 10 might be willing to consider Harvard if they agree to significantly upgrade their facilities! |
Doesn't answer the question. |
TBH I would say Duke and Northwestern are superior to JHU for pretty much everything except med-related disciplines |
I’ve always thought JMU is better than GMU. Maybe I’m too old! |
They are excellent but not in that truly top group of national universities that the Duke alumni crowd in particular believes they are. Geographically, the Chicago reference with NW was to explain that even the students wanting top programs in that city now tend to choose Chicago (which probably wasn't the case 30 years ago). Duke sells their southern location and weather compared to other schools (Vandy does too). Both NW and Duke offer a lot but to confuse them with Harvard or Yale is a mistake. |
Choosing between Chicago and NW is not common considering that they're about as polar opposites as two schools of this level can be. And I'm sorry, but what's with the straw man argument of claiming that people are confusing Duke/NW with Harvard or Yale (no one is actually doing that, so this is a made-up problem)? In any case, they're both stronger schools across the board than Hopkins, which is essentially a medical system that happens to have a university attached to it. |
Exactly. Duke, hopkins, northwestern and the like are great but none of them should be ahead of any Ivy period. Or cal tech. |
| JMU is on the national universities list now (#151) |
in someone’s mind |
| The Insecure Ivies Defense Squad has entered the chat. |
Invitation wise, schools interested in joining a conference softly reach out to member institutions and conference administrators (for recent examples of how it works in practice, look into the USC and UCLA moves to the Big 10 and Texas and Oklahoma moves to the SEC). Actual invitations from a conference are the very last step once a deal is essentially done. ND and Georgetown wouldn't consider those informal communications because of the value they place on football (ND) and basketball (both). I think you've misunderstood the larger point that the "Ivy League" is about sports and could change (like when they almost added Army and Navy for football reasons in the 80s). For some reason, people think they are just the best schools period without understanding what ties them together. Stanford, Northwestern, Duke, and Vanderbilt are other examples of private schools that value top academic reputations but wouldn't consider Ivy League affiliation. "Poor" Stanford was practically begging to join Maryland in the Big 10 this year to no avail. |
Cal Tech is an amazing school that seems to fly under the radar in the DMV (not too many grads out here). I'd prefer it over MIT for undergrad. Duke, JHU, and NW are all very good too (right there with most of the Ivy League). |
Most students would take HYP over the schools above. The second tier Ivies like Columbia and Cornell are a different story. |
+3 Columbia undergrad alum here and I'd never send my kids there. Most of the people I know from undergrad say the same. IIRC Columbia has the lowest percent of the student body who are legacies because most alumni are smart enough not to have their kid repeat the same mistake they made. |