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Add to the Ivy League list

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macrumors 603
Original poster
Jun 12, 2006
5,269
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norcal
in my neck of the woods, stanford has been called a western ivy and berkeley a public ivy

on these two lists i have seen something like this...

Western Ivy League:

Stanford
USC
and sometimes Cal Tech

Public Ivy League:

Cal
Michigan
Virginia

...so i am curious, would you add to the list for these two categories? and if so, who and why? and how would you rank them?
 
Dunno, but would add the Ivies are as much reputation as they are anything. Schools are about the people in them at the moment, even if their name "gets you in the door."

For example, if I wanted to study contemporary American poetry, I'd go to an Ivy, curl up, and die (except maybe Penn). Or, I'd go to a school like the University of Maine or Wayne State or UCSD and have my life changed for the better.

That said, the woman did her DVM at Cornell (top ranked in Vet. Medicine) and got just about the best education she could've gotten. But that, then, is about people again. Though I 'spose the freaking capital and infrastructure at Cornell didn't hurt, either.
 
Yeah, I tend to agree... beyond being a conference (in the same sense as the Big 10) I think the Ivy League thing is just a pissing rights sort of thing. LOL at Michigan, there are bumper stickers that say "Harvard, the Michigan of the East." :D

But with any of those schools on that list... it really depends on what you want to do. What distinguishes *some* of the Ivy schools, and also many of the schools on your "add to" list, is that if you roll the dice and randomly select a field they teach, the odds are that they are very good at it. Like most of those schools simultaneously maintain prestige in the large fields like engineering, medicine, law, business, psychology, and so on, while still having excellence in many smaller fields.

But then when you get to the level of, "I want to do xxx, and I want to go to the best place in the world for that" it doesn't always work that way. As thedude pointed out, you will often find immense expertise in a small field at a much more minor school. That school won't be excellent at everything in the way Harvard, Yale, Stanford, Cal, and Michigan are. But they may well be better than any of them at *that* thing.
 
mkrishnan said:
But then when you get to the level of, "I want to do xxx, and I want to go to the best place in the world for that" it doesn't always work that way. As thedude pointed out, you will often find immense expertise in a small field at a much more minor school. That school won't be excellent at everything in the way Harvard, Yale, Stanford, Cal, and Michigan are. But they may well be better than any of them at *that* thing.
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i know for a state school for agriculture in california, cal poly state university slo is very well regarded

and for 3-D art, uc davis is tops

cal state northridge has a renowned english dept.

uc hastings in san francisco is only there as a law school, but have been considered the harvard law school of the west and did have rights to that designation since it was a conduit for retired and relocated harvard law school professors (other great law schools in the west have been built since then but hastings has a mystique to it the same way harvard law school does in the east that can never be taken away, no matter what the us news and world report or time mag. ranking says in any given year)

these small or specialized schools can't compete on many subjects like the better funded berkeley, stanford, and ucla so they pick and choose where they want to have a national or even international reputation
 
There is no Western Ivy League or Public Ivy League. The Ivy League is an athletic conference, nothing else.







Well, to some extent the IVY league is a social club for elitist blue-blood kids who have never worked a day in their lives. (Not criticizing the ivies, and many of their students are great kids, but unfortunately many of them aren't as well)
 
thedude110 said:
Dunno, but would add the Ivies are as much reputation as they are anything. Schools are about the people in them at the moment, even if their name "gets you in the door."

For example, if I wanted to study contemporary American poetry, I'd go to an Ivy, curl up, and die (except maybe Penn). Or, I'd go to a school like the University of Maine or Wayne State or UCSD and have my life changed for the better.

That said, the woman did her DVM at Cornell (top ranked in Vet. Medicine) and got just about the best education she could've gotten. But that, then, is about people again. Though I 'spose the freaking capital and infrastructure at Cornell didn't hurt, either.
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Yeaaaa I go to Penn Law; /i went to Duke undergrad, which I suppose provides me with the Southern "ivy" to add to the list. I would remove usc from that list, no one callas it part of the non-ivy ivys, while cal tech is a great institution and should be with stanford.
 
ivy league schools are not necessarily indicative of the best programs depending on your major. i am only looking at one Ivy school for grad school (Yale) because it is one of the top, but not the best program in the country for what i do (graphic design.), and it is actually one of my lower choices. calling something an "ivy" automatically connotes "the best" for the entire school to most people when it reality it is not.
 
if you do your homework you'll realize that usc really isnt that good. its a private school, yes, but the only really stellar program they offer is limited to the music industry. which, as a snotty academic, i find it hard to really give much credit to that. the ivy leagues are on the east coast and the only school that can compare to that set is stanford. berkeley is amazing, but its a public school and all about the diversity most of the ivy leagues lack
 
shecky said:
i think you might be forgetting about the USC Film School
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yes your right, im sorry i just sorta group all of that artsy stuff in my head in one of the same and shoulda given the respect where its due. even so, im still partial to the traditional academics but thats not really the discussion here
 
jamesi said:
if you do your homework you'll realize that usc really isnt that good. its a private school, yes, but the only really stellar program they offer is limited to the music industry. which, as a snotty academic, i find it hard to really give much credit to that.
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What is the particular program? *asks the person going to a tiny little Div-III state school with one of the best music ed. programs on the coast.*

Also, Graduate music students at Yale have free tuition.
 
jamesi said:
even so, im still partial to the traditional academics but thats not really the discussion here
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jamesi said:
but the only really stellar program they offer is limited to the music industry. which, as a snotty academic, i find it hard to really give much credit to that
Click to expand...

i assume i am misunderstanding you somehow, because i do not understand the point of these comments; by your logic only "traditional academic" programs can be good? the best art program in the world is bad and not worthy of any credit because it is not a program in traditional academics? that an incredibly ignorant point of view to have.

Counterfit said:
Also, Graduate music students at Yale have free tuition.
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but not the design students. ::: sighs :::
 
I went to the Harvard of Hamilton, Ontario, Canada. Forget the fact that it's also the only uni in Hamilton, Ontario, Canada. It's still a decent uni and I enjoyed it very much.
 
School reputation is really funny sometimes. I went to Purdue and Penn State (two excellent horticulture schools). I find the further away from the school you go, the greater the reputation is. Of course I mention Penn State and everyone here in Indiana wants to talk football and Joe Pa!
 
ejb190 said:
School reputation is really funny sometimes. I went to Purdue and Penn State (two excellent horticulture schools). I find the further away from the school you go, the greater the reputation is. Of course I mention Penn State and everyone here in Indiana wants to talk football and Joe Pa!
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it's interesting seeing how others view northern california schools who live in other areas

i suspected that people, like one poster above, whether they live here or not would say that only stanford (in the west) matches up to the ivy league...they do have a top rated medical school, law school, and mba school so having high marks in all three of those, plus a great hospital to boot, puts stanford up there with the eastern ivies

yes, the ivy league of the east coast...harvard, yale, columbia, princeton, cornell, dartmouth, brown, and the university of pennsylvania...were originally just an athletic league, but by almost anyone's book, all those schools are top tier and i can't think of any college sports league that has the same big academic names of all of its sports team schools

a couple people mentioned usc not being, let's say, as good as the ivies...well, besides their great film school, they do have a great dental school, and when i was considering an mba program back in the early to mid 90s, the gourman report, which holds the highest standards for academic rankings, put their program at third best in california, just behind stanford and anderson (ucla)...so that isn't shabby at all

i do think, program for program, ucla is a better, if not broader school than usc, but if i got a free ride to either law school (i am returning to school via my employer for jd degree), i would take usc over ucla any day even though ucla is usually one or two spots above usc on any law school list rankings of law schools i have seen in california (but usc is always in the top five in california from what i have seen for law, but never number one but i don't think that ever hurt a usc law alum :) )

i do think usc has a snobbish attitude in california that many here don't like and it has led a lot of academic liberals to attack the school academically...and whether it's deserved or not, this blue state of california is not so friendly to a school which is known to cater to rich orange county kids (OC) whose parents are one of the richest bases for the gop in this country

i am a liberal and i went to a couple of schools known for their conservative bent, and while i sometimes felt uncomfortable at times, i cherish my education

so here's my list of western ives (in no order) if i had to pick eight as in the ivies back east

Stanford
USC
Cal Tech
Claremont
UOP
Thunderbird (specialized mostly in business administration)
St. Mary's (collectively)
Pepperdine

...and here is my perception of public ivies, again in no order

Univ. of Washington
Univ. of Virginia
Cal
UCLA
UC Davis
Univ. of Michigan
Indiana University
Rutgers, State Univ. of New Jersey

since this thread started as schools around a public ivy (cal) and western ivy (stanford), other regions, which i have never looked at for myself, are perceptions i have less researched by what i sometimes hear...so here's a southern list, and midwestern list of eight each

southern usa...

Duke
Emory
NC State
North Carolina
Univ. of Georgia
Univ. of Florida
Virginia (again)
Texas (Austin)

midwest...

Michigan (again)
IU (again)
Northwestern
Notre Dame
Air Force Academy (specialized with no grad school)
Univ. of Chicago
Univ. of Illinois
Univ. of Ohio

and which of these schools did i attend?

none of them :) ... and no, i never had the combined high school grade point average and SAT to qualify for any of them, either (from the short list of great west coast schools)

and one more thing, if i had to pick eight schools from each category as to who had the best sports programs, the names would change :) ... go coach tarkanian, YEAH
 
I'm in the process of applying to grad school right now. This is probably taking the "ivy" name a little too far even though I respect many of the schools that's on your list. Some of the schools I've heard as being like an "ivy" such as Rice, Duke, Vanderbilt. UT Austin is a great school but it's not an ivy. Actually I don't think public schools are supposed to be considered "like an ivy." I'm not from the west coast so it's really odd to be labeling any school "like an ivy" except for Stanford. But look closely at what specific programs you want to apply to and the pros and cons. Here's my list of 8 factors, which are not all equal and varies with person (more for bschool):

1) Career Service
2) Network
3) Learning environment
4) Faculty
5) Tuition
6) Primary Major
7) Secondary Major or Minor
8) Reputation

On a side note, I've applied for 3 schools already. If I can decide whether I should drop NYU for marketing or entrepreneurship. I'm quite tired of writing essays. Or should I replace it with UC Berkley, MIT, or another school???

Good luck!
 
Duke = Havard of the South

I really wouldn't put NC State and U of F in any list that had "ivy" in it unless you were talking about horticulture.
 
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