Universities Weblog

(Source: Kenyon College)

Line right up, journalists, and take turns beating the same drum. Yes, we know American higher education includes more than the Ivies, Stanford, Duke, Amherst and Williams. Yes, we know good educations and bargains can be found just about everywhere. Yes, we know many students ignore all this and pine for the Ivies anyway.

But let's rehash it once more, courtesy of the New York Times. Here's how we begin:

If you live and die by status, if the name Harvard, Yale, Stanford or Penn must hang etched in sheepskin on your wall, then read no further. There is nothing we can do for you here. The demographic bulge of college-age students has made the journey to a top-tier campus the most arduous, angst-ridden an 18-year-old can make.

"If you decide that there's only one place to go to college and it's Harvard, you are setting yourself up for rejection," says Barmak Nassirian, associate executive director for the American Association of Collegiate Registrars and Admissions Officers.

There are more than 2,500 four-year colleges and universities in the United States – an educational landscape unmatched anywhere in the world – yet only 25 or so of the usual suspects end up on high school seniors' lists. Higher education experts have this message for those squabbling over a handful of spots: you're probably not going to room with the next president anyway. Pay less attention to prestige and more to "fit" – the marriage of interests and comfort level with factors like campus size, access to professors, instruction philosophy. In their caliber of undergraduate teaching, many lesser-known campuses, in their opinion, are on equal or near-equal footing with brand-name universities, and in some ways are more three-dimensional.

"My view is that there is a very modest to zero correlation between general academic prestige and the quality of undergraduate experience available to students," says Lee S. Shulman, president of the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching. "Those seeking hidden gems are very wise, especially if they are committed to coming to a campus and becoming very active students, taking advantage of faculty office hours, undergrad research experiences and the like."

Ah, so true.

For everyone interested in those "hidden gems," the piece goes on to offer brief descriptions of the following schools: Pitzer, Santa Clara, Mills, Southern Oregon, evergreen State, Whitman, Colorado College, Oklahoma, Macalester, Carleton, Grinnell, Cornell College, Kalamazoo, Earlham, Miami U., Kenyon, College of Wooster, SUNY Geneseo, Union College and Wheaton.

Of course, for those obsessed with the Ivies, none of this matters.

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