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Anonymous wrote:In this thread: Busybody striver parents (very likely state school alums themselves) who've never been to any Ivy outside of maybe a tour of Cambridge, who present themselves as experts because they know the US News top 15 by heart and read pages of old circle jerk threads on College Confidential. You're right, your kid's tier two or three college *is* just as good as Princeton, Brown and Penn. Totally. You win! You sound *super* confident about your lot in life.

The way you snuck Brown in there. If Princeton is tier one then Brown is not. If Brown is tier one so is Vandy, Emory, Notre Dame etc. If fact Brown said these schools were peers in the peer survey.

This is what's so douchey about this whole fixation on the Ivy League, which it seems is mostly just propagated by the "bottom half" of the Ivy League. Which "tier two or three colleges" is PP even talking about? And the only people mentioning US News are the Ivy boosters.

Anonymous wrote:Vandy, Emory, Hopkins, NW were safety schools for top students when we went to colleges...

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:In this thread: Busybody striver parents (very likely state school alums themselves) who've never been to any Ivy outside of maybe a tour of Cambridge, who present themselves as experts because they know the US News top 15 by heart and read pages of old circle jerk threads on College Confidential. You're right, your kid's tier two or three college *is* just as good as Princeton, Brown and Penn. Totally. You win! You sound *super* confident about your lot in life.

The way you snuck Brown in there. If Princeton is tier one then Brown is not. If Brown is tier one so is Vandy, Emory, Notre Dame etc. If fact Brown said these schools were peers in the peer survey.

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Anonymous wrote:Coming across the JHU thread and it’s clear there are some people unfamiliar with American colleges who think Ivy League = the best. It is worth repeating that there are just as many universities NOT in the Ivy League that are just as good and just as prestigious as the Ivies.

Stanford, MIT, Chicago, Cal Tech, JHU, Northwestern, Duke

If we expand to LACS, add Williams, Amherst, Swarthmore and Pomona.

If these schools were to just start their own separate academic “league,” they would rival the Ivy League, easily.

No one thinks only Ivy League is the best. It's a straw man in your own head. But Ivy League is a real grouping that conveys prestige for lay people. MIT and Stanford are also widely accepted as being in the top 5 prestigious schools in the country. T5, HYPMS is a real grouping.

The rest of them are all good schools. But they are not prestigious.

Approximately 40% at H are legacies (read, $$$$$.) That's what H cares about.
This is the dumbest comment. T5 or HYPMS is no more a “real grouping” than this list here. And to claim that any of these schools aren’t prestigious is uneducated, by which I mean in academia and among the educated elite in this country, these schools certainly do carry prestige.

HYPMS is a real grouping. The list you invented is only in your head and serves no meaningful purpose. You keep changing the subject. You were not talking about prestige among educated elite. For lay people Ivy league has certain prestige even if they may not know all 8. MIT and Stanford have earned their prestige, and are well known by lay people too.

I've never heard of HYPMS outside DCUM/College Confidential. Only the "big three" or the "ivy league" in both official and colloquial contexts.

MIT and Stanford were founded in late 1800s, before the "big three" - HYP. The grouping is rather new. HYPMS is widely accepted as T5. If you google HYPMS, DCUM/College Confidential are not even on the first page. HS juniors know it. The parents know it. College consultants know it. They are the only EA schools (Caltech is too small) among the top privates.

https://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=HYPSM

TOP DEFINITION
HYPSM
The 5 most prestigious universities in the United States:

Anonymous wrote:FWIW I chose to attend one of the schools on OP’s list (not MIT or Stanford) over two Ivies, Dartmouth and Penn, and knew more than just several at my alma mater who had chosen similarly.

The Ivies derive their prestige from their association with Harvard, Yale, and Princeton. All of the other top schools outside of HYP are peer institutions and generally equal in prestige. As others have noted, Stanford and MIT easily match HYP.

Anonymous wrote:In this thread: Busybody striver parents (very likely state school alums themselves) who've never been to any Ivy outside of maybe a tour of Cambridge, who present themselves as experts because they know the US News top 15 by heart and read pages of old circle jerk threads on College Confidential. You're right, your kid's tier two or three college *is* just as good as Princeton, Brown and Penn. Totally. You win! You sound *super* confident about your lot in life.

Anonymous wrote:It’s a shame. I’ve actually seen some helpful info on this forum, but clearly the nastiness is taking over. I truly feel for the children of any adult who would insult college choices like PP.

Best of luck to everyone in the college process and in real life beyond your kid’s acceptance letter. “Where you go is not who you will be”

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Anonymous wrote:Can I be the person who asks how Duke made it onto OP’s list?

I’d leave Duke but I was side-eying Northwestern. Only to tiger moms who obsess over US news is Northwestern undergrad in any way that impressive.

What? I don’t know a single soul who wouldn’t consider Duke or Northwestern prestigious.

Nobody gives a sh-t about Northwestern undergrad in real life. It's just psycho tiger moms posting about NU over and over and over online because of US News.

You’re literally the one person ranting about Northwestern on this forum with the same, tired one-liner about tiger moms and US News. We get it, your kid didn’t get into Northwestern.

None of my kids wanted to go to college in the Rust Belt suburbs of northern Cook County, a half hour N of Chicago. Nobody with better options does.

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Anonymous wrote:Coming across the JHU thread and it’s clear there are some people unfamiliar with American colleges who think Ivy League = the best. It is worth repeating that there are just as many universities NOT in the Ivy League that are just as good and just as prestigious as the Ivies.

Stanford, MIT, Chicago, Cal Tech, JHU, Northwestern, Duke

If we expand to LACS, add Williams, Amherst, Swarthmore and Pomona.

If these schools were to just start their own separate academic “league,” they would rival the Ivy League, easily.

They might be as "good", but they are certainly not as prestigious.

Even a "Ivy" like Dartmouth, which is in reality is an above-average LAC, would be more prestigious in the minds of the wealthy and powerful than say, JHU or Chicago. Entirely due to its association with the Ivy League and schools like Harvard and Princeton. Sure, upper-middle-class educated folks might think otherwise, but they are middle-managers, not board room members.