I've been asked to help out with 'the scholarship committee' at a local HS

[Chavez]

What did University of Wisconsin do to get dropped from the near miss list?

They lost their bowl game this year.

[rocknrobn26]

Not a homer pick, but you can't eliminate Northwestern. University of Chicago is also a top national school. Not sure who you could knock off, but U of C doesn't come close to the scholastic rating of Northwestern.

[muck]

I would suggest that you read through the articles listed here as a way to begin building out your list. They all offer different takes on ranking of universities. However, I'd pay special attention to the links in the blue box at the top of the page. From University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

 

I looked at five different rankings when making my list, and got three of them from the link you offered (found it on my own, tyvm! ) ...

[muck]

Not a homer pick, but you can't eliminate Northwestern. University of Chicago is also a top national school. Not sure who you could knock off, but U of C doesn't come close to the scholastic rating of Northwestern.

 

So you don't feel too bad, Cornell didn't make the list either.

[jetsfan]

Background: have a Ph.D. in engineering. I have taught classes at both state and private universities. However, I am not a professor.

 

I would like to disagree entirely with your list.

 

Nearly any small State school will provide an equivalent, if not better, undergraduate degree than any private institution at a fraction of the cost. My personal experience, and most others that I work with, all attended State schools, be it NY (for me) or Texas for my office-mate, for our undergraduate degrees. I, and most of my colleagues, then went on to private institutions for graduate school.

 

The rationale behind this path is that in a private, well-regarded institution, the school will attract the best and brightest researchers. Those researchers know how to do one thing well, research. Teaching others is an entirely different matter. When you are working on your doctorate, you want to collaborate with the best researchers in the world and your coarse load is minimal, i.e. having good teachers is not as critical.

 

Your state schools excel at undergrad because the professors are not required to compete for research dollars and can focus on teaching. Also important, the class sizes are smaller.

 

For undergrad, I far, far, prefer to teach at smaller state schools because you can clearly see how you are affecting the students and can easily work with them individually if needed. At the private school, where undergrad classes are held in an auditorium, I hardly know some students other than their name on a homework. For graduate work, the private schools excel because the resources are much better, such as laboratories, and the students are far more motivated.

 

I hope this helps. To comment specifically, I went to the State University of NY for my undergrad and I feel (biased of course) that my undergrad education there was exceptional. It was certainly better than what I would have gotten any nearly any of the Colleges you put on your list based on my discussions with people who went to those schools for undergrad and grad school.

[muck]

I would like to disagree entirely with your list.

 

If you want to suggest other schools to replace the ones I have here, please feel free to do so.

 

FWIW, I think there is a good balance between the "really big" and "really small" and "sorta in between" sized schools. In fact, only three schools had more than 10000 undergrads and only seven schools had more than 10000 between undergrad and graduate students...so, I'm not really sure what you're talking about. The numbers (for everyone but Oxford, Cambridge and RISD):

 

Amherst College (1600 students; all undergraduate)

Bowdoin College (1850 students; all undergraduate)

Brown University (5800 undergrads; 8000 total)

California Institute of Technology (864 undergrad; 2025 total)

Cambridge University (UK)

Columbia University (7500 undergrad; 24600 total)

Dartmouth College (4100 students; no break out between grad and undergrad)

Duke University (6300 undergrad; 12200 total)

Harvard University (6500 undergrad; 18500 total)

Julliard School (1000 total enrollment)

Massachusetts Institute of Technology (4100 undergrad, 6100 total)

Middlebury College (2350 undergrad)

Oxford University (UK)

Pomona College (1550 undergrad)

Princeton University (4850 undergrads; 7150 total)

Rhode Island School of Design

Rice University (3000 undergrads, 5000 total)

Stanford University (6600 undergrad; 13200 total)

Swarthmore College (1500 undergrads)

University of California, Berkeley (23900 undergrads; 33900 total)

University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill (17600 undergrads; 28100 total)

University of Pennsylvania (10200 undergrad; 24000 total)

Wellesley College (2250 undergrads)

Williams College (2000 undergrads)

Yale University (5300 undergrad; 11400 total)

Edited February 13, 2008 by muck

[Ursa Majoris]

I would like to disagree entirely with your list.

I think the point of this is to list schools that have influence in terms of opening doors or having instant recognition rather than providing an excellent education or whatever.

[muck]

I think the point of this is to list schools that have influence in terms of opening doors or having instant recognition rather than providing an excellent education or whatever.

 

As my grandfather said, "Never ever let your books get in the way of you getting a good education."

 

Sometimes the best education can come from being around people who have influence in the halls of power.

Sometimes the best education can come from discussing the greatest ideas of history (i.e., robust liberal arts education).

Sometimes the best education can come from accomplishing a difficult project with defined objectives (i.e., work-oriented education; engineering, architecture, accounting, etc)

 

I want to try to help the graduates of this local HS realize there is more to college education that Kansas, Kansas State, Missouri and a few other schools in their back yards.

[rocknrobn26]

So you don't feel too bad, Cornell didn't make the list either.

 

U of C still sucks, compared to Northwestern!

What does U of C have:

Great marching band

Great football team

Great climate

Great lookin' cheerleaders

Great lookin' cheerleaders

Great lookin' cheerleaders

Great lookin' cheerleaders

Great lookin' cheerleaders

:EmilyLitellavoice"NEVER MIND!":EmilyLitellavoice

[Clubfoothead]

Very nice list(s).

 

I'm a big fan of smaller state schools such as Moorhead State University. I'm even a big fan of junior colleges such as Grayson County Community College. I don't consider it a slight to either of those fine instutitions that they are not on the lists.

[Ursa Majoris]

As my grandfather said, "Never ever let your books get in the way of you getting a good education."

 

Sometimes the best education can come from being around people who have influence in the halls of power.

Sometimes the best education can come from discussing the greatest ideas of history (i.e., robust liberal arts education).

Sometimes the best education can come from accomplishing a difficult project with defined objectives (i.e., work-oriented education; engineering, architecture, accounting, etc)

 

I want to try to help the graduates of this local HS realize there is more to college education that Kansas, Kansas State, Missouri and a few other schools in their back yards.

Well, I was close.