On the Ivy League

When it comes to describing different colleges, there are a lot of less-than-helpful distinctions and categories out there that don't tell the whole story. For me, the best example of this is the Ivy League distinction. What is it, exactly, that makes an education from one of these eight schools (Brown, Columbia, Cornell, Dartmouth, Harvard, Penn, Princeton, and Yale) so much better or greater or more special than an education anywhere else? I don't want to make the case that these schools are not exceptional places to get an education; I'm a proud graduate of one of them, and I know they're extraordinary educational communities.

My point is that no one label or ranking gives you the whole story about what your life as a student would be like at any college. Instead, it's important to look closely at the schools you research to get a strong sense of what's really out there. For example, the undergraduate experience at Harvard is very different from the experience at Brown--the former school has a required core curriculum while the other does not, for example. Cornell is very large and has exceptional programs in engineering and architecture; Dartmouth has an emerging program in cognitive and linguistic sciences that's gaining a strong international reputation. These schools are all outstanding, but there's much more to the story than that.

One thing that distinguishes the Ivies from one another is their size. You might be surprised to know just how much they differ in this point. Sometimes, a university's size can be a much bigger factor in your college decision: it affects how "homey" or intimate the campus feels; it affects the amount of personal attention you'll receive from professors and support staff. It affects just how at home you'll feel after you leave the small school where you finished high school.

School	# Undergraduates	# Total Students
Brown University	5,874	8,020
Columbia University	6,923	24,820
Cornell University	13,510	19,800
Dartmouth College	4,147	5,848
Harvard University	6,714	19,140
Princeton University	4,918	7,334
University of Pennsylvania	10,153	19,816
Yale University	5,316	11,398

If you've got your sights set on an Ivy, admissions officers I've talked to at Cornell, Columbia, Dartmouth, Harvard, and Brown have all insisted that it's important to make a very specific case for why you want to attend their school, not just any prestigious school. So it's vital that you dig deeper at the places you already know to be exceptional so you can find out which exceptional schools would really fit you best. And you might dig even deeper to find that there are other exceptional places out there--maybe a little newer, maybe a little less in the news--that would fit you well too. No group of schools has a monopoly on excellence.

I challenge you to look beyond this one label to more nuanced information on colleges. There are other great lists out there that might be worth perusing too; they're helpful ways to reform the question of what makes an exceptional undergraduate education in the United States.

Colleges That Change Lives: A great book with an accompanying website: http://www.ctcl.org
The "Hidden Ivies": An earlier book that listed some of the "other" best universities and colleges in the US. Note how many are currently attended by STES grads: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hidden_Ivies