"new ivies"

[nibot]

College rankings are widely acknowledged as at least distracting and at worst completely bogus. Nonetheless, Newsweek has chimed in with a list of the "25 new ivies," and, for what it's worth, UR made their list (via ur):

University of Rochester. Rochester, N.Y. Over the past decade, this small, private university has dramatically changed its curriculum. "We threw out general education," says Jonathan Burdick, dean of admissions. Students now pick all their courses. As a research institution, Rochester is particularly strong in science and engineering, but liberal arts are also popular, along with music and nursing. About 70 percent of humanities students study overseas, and about 80 percent go to grad school. Most students live on campus, which is some distance from downtown Rochester. Overlap schools: Cornell, Brown, Tufts, NYU and Northwestern.

As a Berkeley graduate, the whole notion of "ivy league" strikes me as non sequitur, unless you happen to be talking about division one athletics. Their list also includes acknowledged greats such as UCLA and University of Michigan.

Comments

[xaosenkosmos.livejournal.com]

That list is clearly bunk: i just got out of UNC Chapel Hill. "Elite" or "exclusive" it ain't. I won't argue with the list too much, though. Anything that makes my silly little piece of paper more valuable...

(It frightens me to realize that they rejected 3 people for every person they let in.)

[spoonless.livejournal.com]

Speaking of Berkeley, why didn't they put Berkeley on the list? I wonder what their criteria was.