Ivy League Universities

In terms of just "prestige", OP, there's no comparison. It's Harvard. Period. Whether deserved or not, that's the reality.

I went to Columbia, but Harvard has the most name recognition. It's also the oldest.

Have experience with Harvard and Yale for undergrad and professional school.

Harvard may have the older name recognition, but found Yale to be hands down the far better institution (in a myriad of ways).

MIT should be on the list. That gets my vote.

Harvard is the wealthiest, oldest, and has had the most illustrious alums and professors.

I went to Princeton and have professional experience at Harvard. MIT should be on the list. It definitely has the smartest people.

In my experience, Jared Kushner exemplifies the “Harvard Grad”.

Need we say more.....?

No Stanford?! Fuck you, OP!

r3 Heavens! A Yale man!

So Penn is the Jan Brady of the Ivies?

Wasn't Cornel asked to leave the Ivy League?

OP posting from the 80s. Nobody, but douche- bros getting cushy jobs from their privilege

Ever since the scandal broke with parents paying and lying to get their idiot kids into prestigious college, it ruined it for me

Yea, I know rich people always have contributed to these fancy colleges, but who knew it went so far and so deep. I mean, when Aunt Becky is scheming to get her dumbass kids into UCLA and succeeded, it’s just obnoxious and wrong

Penn lost all credibility when it admitted DJT. Talk about sacrificing long term gains for short term profit.

You don't seem obnoxious at all, R12. Thanks for the input and state school punctuation.

Stanford

I'm from Europe, and from over here by far the most prestigious is Stanford (although it is not Ivy League?). There are some outstanding groups there, with some departments comprising of many of the absolute leaders in their fields.

Pffft!

I suspect Harvard’s big lead is thanks to its huge professional schools—law, business and medicine. Princeton doesn’t have professional schools and Yale’s are quite small.

Columbia grad. Nothing compares to going to school in Manhattan.

For r4, r15, etc

I went to Penn. Terrible surrounding neighborhood. Got mugged. Always felt a bit unsafe off campus. Didn't have a great time there. Haven't been back to Philadelphia since I graduated.

My brother went to Dartmouth and loved it.

Stanford is not part of the Ivy League. Neither is MIT, although it used to have a no-compete agreement it shared with the other Ivy League schools for financial aid offers.

They’re all overrated. With the Ivy Leagues it’s all about how famous your last name is, how many diversity boxes you check, or how much you give to the new library? I mean Dubya went Harvard and Yale after all.

Harvard is the oldest US College, but Penn is the oldest US University.

Define "prestigious" OP.

The one that most people have heard of and will be impressed by?

Harvard by a mile.

"Cornel"

Oh, dear, R11.

And no.

If you asked the average Joe on the street, they would all say Harvard. If you pressed them to name a second one, they would probably say Princeton, because it sounds prestigious and rich and they've heard of it. A few would say Yale. All the rest they wouldn't even name. They would think Penn is a state school.

All of them with give you excellent educations and chances to meet well-connected grads.

Harvard and Columbia are in nice cities. Yale, Cornell, Dartmouth are in the middle of nowhere. Penn is in sucky Philly. Brown is in sucky Providence. Princeton is in a very wealthy town, at least close to NYC. All are ungodly expensive, but have generous financial aid.

Harvard and Yale are akin to Oxford and Cambridge.

I am surprised, however, that foreigners I've met tend not to know about Yale. Everyone knows Harvard

I’m going to apply to some Ivy league’s next year. Which ones should I apply to? Which is the easiest to get in? Which is the hardest?

Lol R30 - you are asking a bunch of eldergays on datalounge that question? 0/10.

Well, seeing as a lot of you said you went to Ivy league’s, I thought you guys would know! Who better to ask then people who went and have experienced it all firsthand?

I graduated from Penn in 2003... so if you want 20 year old information?

Nah, R27. A lot more people would mention Yale as a second university, rather than Princeton.

I would think plenty of people have heard of Columbia.

Brown and Dartmouth would be the most obscure.

[quote] I’m going to apply to some Ivy league’s next year.

Your punctuation skills need brushing up.

Yeah but Stanford is kind of ugly.

Aren't aesthetics all that really counts?

To me, Cornell will always be above all else the transcendental mise-en-scene of Knossos Pappadopoulis’ fight with the demon Mandrill from his opiated psyche...

Trump University

Princeton.

I think Stanford is now the most selective University in the U.S.?

I went to Cornell and Brown and thought they were very different in important ways but both great. I think the world's top STEM schools have a higher quality of mind among their student body. I taught at two of these. I get the impression a too large proportion of Ivy League undergraduates are "hot house flowers" nowadays, difficult young people. I've taught at European universities and college students are charming, polite, not tortured, spoiled and demanding, and they are hard-working.

Why is there so much UPenn bashing here? I am entertaining an offer from them.

What kind of offer?

I share your experience R41.

A more interesting poll would have been, what is the most prestigious university in the world.

Harvard, Stanford, Oxford, Cambridge, Yale, Princeton, MIT, Cal Tech, University College London, etc....

That would be a terrible poll. The thread would immediately turn to haggling over why-not-x, with a rapid descent in to "yes, dear" before turning into "listen, cunt" and around the last fifty replies evolve into a discussion student debt, capitalist cruelty and Starbucks.

I don't know if there's been any UPenn basing per se - but honestly - just be aware it's in a shitty depressing part of Philadelphia. In retrospect, I wish I had chosen somewhere with more of a campus where I wasn't constantly aware of being in a city. At 18, I was certain I wanted to be in a city but now I realize that was probably more of a way to avoid fully engaging in college social life and more a function of social anxiety. Which is fine, but I don't have any close friends from college and I sort of regret that but also who really cares?

Anyway, I'm still shocked that someone applying to college would even be on DL....

While going to school in a city can be fun, a big city might be too distracting. I see too many NYU boys getting into crazy stuff on the hookup apps.

Amherst and Smith.

Chicago is in a shitty part of a city, Yale is in a shitty town, Palo Alto and Pasadena have their shitty parts, Berkeley is close to a rough neighborhood...

[Chicago is in a shitty part of a city]

I also heard that Illinois was located in the crappy part of a state.

I also apparently forgot how to fucking quote.

Cornell is the place where all the hippies and hipsters go, right? Like the Goldsmiths of the U.S.

[quote]Amherst and Smith.—The western Massachusetts elite

Pffft!

R51, by "Chicago" that poster was referring to the University of Chicago, sometimes just called Chicago.

UPenn (or Penn) is excellent.

And R30/R32, if you want to get into an Ivy League, learn punctuation: "Ivy league’s"

Oh, dear.

Fuck them.

Trying forever to keep the rest of the world locked out of their opportunity.

Fuck them and burn their buildings.

Princeton's whole aura is that it focuses on undergraduate education. Get your Bachelor's there before heading off to grad school at Harvard, Yale, Stanford etc. Why do you think the Melendez brothers were so eager to attend?

We can all agree that UPenn is the absolute worst, right? The fact that they let Trump attend should be enough evidence.

Also LOL does anyone care about Dartmouth? Anyone??

UPenn is a fine school.

2Worst" is silly since they are all excellent and have deep pockets.

R58 no that honor goes to Cornell.

Where would you study engineering in the Ivies, but Cornell? Cornell is the only Ivy in the top 10 nationally.

I am Harvard-trained!

R58 where did you go to school?

Pasadena does have crappy neighborhoods but Cal Tech is not near them. Cal Tech is within walking distance to multi million dollar homes and Huntington library.

My opinion about Stanford changed considerably after reading Why Fish Don’t Exist and finding out that one of the early presidents was a huge promoter of eugenics and possibly had Jane Stanford murdered to cover up his crimes.

I thought r11 was a joke about Cornel West, r26

Back in the 00s I remember being infuriated by the way GOSSIP GIRL’s Serena van der Woodsen—hardly a model student—vocally and constantly flip-flopped every other episode over which school she’d go to, as she were trying to pick a pair of heels.

Serena had no business going to College at all, let alone an Ivy, but of course it was understood and unspoken that her illustrious family name would buy her a free ride into any she wanted, and she seemed very attracted to the idea of a freewheeling student life despite her lack of interest in education.

By contrast, Serena’s best frenemy Blair Waldorf, for all her faults, was occasionally said and shown in-story to be studying hard and testing well in order to earn a longed-for place at Yale. It was a source of hot contention between the girls when Serena applied to Yale.

At least Stanford is a place with great weather

To this day, the funniest post I ever read on DL was in the "What is the Harvard of the South?" thread and someone responded "Yale."

Given that the sample set is comprised of a large number of older gay men who have not been to college, many of who have rarely left their home state, DL is an unlikely forum for this type of question and you are not likely to get an answer beyond "which is the most well known?" which of course is Harvard.

I have found that people in Europe and Latin America are very aware of Georgetown and are surprised to learn that it is not one of the top two or three schools in the US-- I suspect the recognition is because it is the best school in DC and sends a lot of kids into the US Foreign Service.

Elle Woods didn’t go to Dartmouth or Brown. She wouldn’t have deigned to follow Warner to any school except Harvard.

Penn kept a very low profile until a few decades ago, plus people confuse it with Penn State. Like a lot of urban universities, they've been active in redeveloping the neighborhood---Drexel, their near neighbor, too.

Brown was super popular for awhile, but mostly because it was perceived as easy. I know a lot of people who teach there and large proportion aren't very good and some of the others are arrogant out of proportion to their stature.

Yale has long had the rep for being better for undergrad than Harvard, while Harvard was the better school for grad school and med school---many of their programs are larger than Yale and better funded. Yale and Harvard both are places that treat assistant professors very shabbily, with crappy pay. Their expectation is that most will not get tenure but will be able to coast on the Harvard/Yale name and get a job someplace "credible". They'd rather spend money to poach someone who got themselves established elsewhere.

Cornell always had a prestige problem because part of it is a land grant, but I've found Cornell grads and faculty far more down to earth than people at the other Ivies.

Columbia had some real problems during the late/middle 20th century. Their alums were not giving and they closed entire departments including ones where they had always had stature. They've made a real come back since the 90s and got rid of the dead wood that had been collecting from their leaner years.

What are their rankings in suicide rates? I know Cornell was up there with all those gorge jumpers, but they’ve worked to curtail those.

When people picture what an idyllic Ivy League campus looks like, it looks an awful lot like Princeton. It has that pristine aura none of the others can really touch in that regard.

r71....you sound like a pretentious asshole.

Cornell is more gorgeous (hehe) than Princeton.

[quote] Elle Woods didn’t go to Dartmouth or Brown. She wouldn’t have deigned to follow Warner to any school except Harvard.

Elle Woods was originally supposed to go to Stanford in the movie but Stanford said no.

You think Harvard said yes?

R79, yes, Harvard officially said yes to the movie script writers

It wasn’t filmed at Harvard.

Harvard Law - what, like it's hard?

When I grow up, I wanna go to Bovine University!

I graduated from Brown in 1972. It was a shithole.

Yale’s law school is more prestigious than is Harvard’s.

^But only to those who know.

The Harvard name trumps everything to lay people even if Harvard’s programs aren’t all the top programs academically.

But we are so obsessed with hierarchy that something just has to be #1

I read that Harvard doesn't forbid use of its name in movies and TV, but doesn't allow filming on campus. Ucla, on the other hand, allows filming on its campus but forbids use of its name. A lot of university campus scenes in movies, TV shows and commerciald are filmed in the quad area with the Italianate buildings at ucla.

Harvard allowed Love Story to film on campus, then in the late 1970s they allowed A Small Circle of Friends to film. They spread fake snow around the Yard, offending someone powerful. I don’t think they’ve allowed filming since.

The name is used all the time, including Stealing Harvard. Hard to imagine anyone had to approve that.

Harvard, Yale & Princeton are pretty much the Ivy-League standard-bearers.

Of course, I went to Columbia - but it didn't feel very Ivy-esque.

[88] ucla makes a pretty penny renting out the campus to film crews. You get paid nothing allowing your name to be used...

From the 80s through the 00s, Penn recruited heavily at all the very Jewish high schools in the Northeast, private and public, and there were easily more than a half dozen kids from my class who went there. and the Nice Jewish Boy who went to Wharton and got a job at Goldman after was a common enough stereotype in that world. (Ivanka, who while she wasn't Jewish at the time, might as well have been given her friend group, must have fit in quite easily, even as a transfer)

As college admissions went from just "Insane" to "Truly Insane" they've been able to move beyond that and get that Noah's Ark national student body that all colleges aspire to.

Would you pick Penn for Graduate School?

Yup. I went to Princeton. With David Duchovny, a few years after Donia Sotomayor, and too many famous writers in my class to mention.

Sonia.

I think people in the know know that Chicago is top 3 at this point.

R94, I knew a gorgeous woman who dated David Duchovny when he was a grad student (in English, I think) at Yale and she was an undergrad.

She said he had a massive dick. Hilariously, she broke up with him because he would constantly talk about how famous he would be one day and it just got old.

R96, sure, Jan

R47...That's why Princeton is good. The town is lovely and has little incidence of crime. However, no place is immune...anywhere.

Princeton’s campus looks like a country club

Princeton, the town, is a suburb of Trenton, NJ. I wouldn't want to force that on anyone. Penn has been constantly redeveloping the area around it since the 50s.. I suspect R47 would have been uncomfortable anywhere outside of their parents' basement at age 18. If they knew how much actual crime took place in their Cheever-like suburb, they never would have gone to the supermarket without an escort.

SMH

While there may be people who commuted from Princeton to Trenton at one point, no one is commuting to Trenton these days unless they work for the NJ State Government (Trenton is the capital of NJ)

Princeton residents mostly commute to NYC though some commute to Philly

It is a beautiful campus and a very charming town, but by senior year we were all bored of it and taking the train into NY many weekends

The nice thing about Princeton, the trains are very close for the escape to NYC or Philly, if you want. Also, major highways are close if you want to drive to the shore, or to the big cities. It's pretty convenient.

Sort of R103

If you take the train that is near campus you have to go one quick stop to Princeton Junction and then switch for a train to NYC. Easy enough at rush hour, much less so on weekends.

Yes, there were no shortage of "Dinky" puns

How is the sex at Princeton?

I don’t know. I was a virgin!!

In Southern California you often have to endure obnoxious USC grads who act like they're Ivy League alumni.

I attended the Harvard of the South.

[quote] Why is there so much UPenn bashing here? I am entertaining an offer from them.

Trump. The whole family bought their degrees from UPenn.

I also attended the University of Tampa, R108.

I went to Stanford undergrad, Harvard grad.

Stanford was a lovely campus but the students were not as bright as I expected, and the campus had a kind of weird anti-intellectual atmosphere. If you were caught reading a book instead playing frisbee you were considered a weirdo.

On the other hand Harvard was uptight and pretentious. However far brighter students, or at least, more articulate and verbal about their intelligence.

If I could do it all over, I'd have gone to some place like Bard or Reed where students aren't as constrained to conform to their institution.

What I loved about Harvard is that it knew and acted like the best university in the world—at every level.

When I needed a light changed, within 15 minutes, someone came and did it. It was that slick