All About The Ivy League

ChrisC

Well-known member
I'm curious whether Dartmouth had become less regional (NY + New England) by the time ChrisC went there.

Dartmouth in the 1990s was quite diverse -as much as 1000 students could be.

It was not just some trophy Ivy League school for a job in Boston/NYC.

The California influence was high. Seattle too. And a decent amount of Southerners.

You all would be disgusted what when on at a frat at Dartmouth.….but I used to chug beers that went down a guy’s back into his ass. Called a “Butt Chug” Gross. And I would jack off according to dick size on Wednesdays. 8-12-16 oz Horrible.

I guess we were bored in New Hampshire.

Can I transfer to Brown or Stanford?

Gay at Dartmouth was not easy. And yes, the guys were very hot.
 
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Dartmouth in the 1990s was quite diverse -as much as 1000 students could be.

It was not just some trophy Ivy League school for a job in Boston/NYC.

The California influence was high. Seattle too. And a decent amount of Southerners.

You all would be disgusted what when at a frat at Dartmouth.….but I used to chug beers that went down a guy’s back into his ass. Gross. And I would jack off according to dick size on Wednesdays. 8-12-16 oz Horrible.
I donate to Berkeley.
 
Dartmouth in the 1990s was quite diverse -as much as 1000 students could be.

It was not just some trophy Ivy League school for a job in Boston/NYC.

The California influence was high. Seattle too. And a decent amount of Southerners.

You all would be disgusted what when on at a frat at Dartmouth.….but I used to chug beers that went down a guy’s back into his ass. Called a “Butt Chug” Gross. And I would jack off according to dick size on Wednesdays. 8-12-16 oz Horrible.

I guess we were bored in New Hampshire.

Can I transfer to Brown or Stanford?

Gay at Dartmouth was not easy. And yes, the guys were very hot.
Well that deteriorated quickly. :)
 
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In the real world where does Dartmouth sit on the pecking order compared to the likes of Harvard, Yale, Columbia, Princeton that us foreigners are aware of?

Columbia was a ‘safety school’ in the 90s. No one in my class in Westchester wanted to go there. UPenn and Cornell were other safety schools. If you got an A minus/B plus….you got in. My friends there - it took a lot less effort. Not impressed.

Honestly - Harvard, Yale and Princeton. And Stanford and MIT. My friends who went there - brilliant.

Dartmouth and Brown are great colleges, and not universities- but both amazing. Maybe the next 2? So are Northwestern, U of Chicago, John Hopkins….Duke!

And the smaller Ivy League - Williams, Amherst, Swarthmorere, Bucknell, etc

Dartmouth is top 10…. In America it gets where you need to go. A Boys Club. Check the box and fraternity. Interview/get hired by everyone.
 
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In the real world where does Dartmouth sit on the pecking order compared to the likes of Harvard, Yale, Columbia, Princeton that us foreigners are aware of?
It’s obviously very inportant if the New Yorker writes a piece about you - and trying to avoid $$$ Trump to his fund.

Trump charged $50M to Brown?
 
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You all would be disgusted what when on at a frat at Dartmouth.
Princeton's eating clubs were historically quite similar to fraternities, but there are no national organizations. Thus when coeduation arrived during my time there, the eating clubs evolved quickly. There were 12-14 of them. Only 3 remained all male and a lawsuit by a feminist activist in the 1980's forced them to go co-ed too. Only 7 remained selective and that number has declined since too. Mine, Charter, was co-ed and selective then but non-selective now. Tiger Inn, all male and home of the rugby team, had the raucous party reputation, but I never heard juicy details.

I'll hazard a guess that the activities ChrisC describes aren't happening at a co-ed club. But being at Princeton during those years was not good socially for me. The male to female ratio was 8-1 freshman year and still 4-1 senior year. Dartmouth first admitted women in the fall of 1972, three years after Yale and Princeton. Both Princeton and Dartmouth are essentially equal male/female now, so I wonder if the culture ChrisC describes has survived there.
Columbia was a ‘safety school’ in the 90s. No one in my class in Westchester wanted to go there. UPenn and Cornell were other safety schools. If you got an A minus/B plus….you got in. My friends there - it took a lot less effort. Not impressed.
IIRC Columbia's academic reputation was good in my era but its student body was majority New Yorkers and reputedly about half Jewish, interesting in view of recent developments there. It already had a radical left wing reputation, with student takeovers of admin buildings during the Vietnam War. Another example of most universities being regional in 1970 is that Stanford (where perhaps I should have gone for a better social life) was majority Californians in 1970 but now it's 36%.

In my day USC was University of Second Choice. But the competition for these places exploded with the Millennials. Princeton's admission rate was 15% in my time and a banner carried by the Class of 1999 at my 50th reunion says theirs was 14%. But by my son Adam's time (class of 2007) it was 7% and now it's 4%. UPenn and Cornell are far from being safety schools these days. USC's admission rate is 10% now. :icon-e-surprised:
 
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In the real world where does Dartmouth sit on the pecking order compared to the likes of Harvard, Yale, Columbia, Princeton that us foreigners are aware of?
To me, Dartmouth and Brown are in the next tier for Ivy League. I grew up in New York City. Lived very close to Columbia. My older brother attended Harvard. In the 1960s, he attended a long-time "magnet" high school in NYC (Bronx Science, founded 1938) for science/math geeks and was more than smart enough to get accepted by Ivy League colleges. He was accepted at Princeton and Yale too. A few of my classmates from a Boston area prep school that was all girls until 1972 were among the first women accepted to Dartmouth after it went co-ed. We graduated in 1974. A few graduates went to Brown every year back then. However, the most popular college was Radcliffe, the women's college associated with Harvard (merged into Harvard in 1999).

Having been at prep school, as in " college preparatory school," as a boarder I had no interest in attending any Ivy League college in the northeast. By the time I graduated high school, my mother had moved to North Carolina. Fair to say that the vibe at the Univ. of North Carolina in Chapel Hill was very different. Plus I paid in-state tuition. UNC-CH is a state university that was founded in 1789. Not quite as old as Harvard but still very well respected as top school for undergraduates.
 
IIRC Columbia's academic reputation was good in my era but its student body was majority New Yorkers and reputedly about half Jewish, interesting in view of recent developments there.
In New York City when I was in elementary school in the 1960s, a lot of the K-12 teachers as well as professors were Jewish. My father was a professor at Brooklyn College, part of the City College of NY (CCNY) system. The NYC public schools were usually closed for major Jewish holidays. Not because of the student body, but because of the demographics of the teachers.

Apparently in the 2020s NYC is the home for the largest Jewish population outside Israel.
 
Dartmouth and Brown are great colleges, and not universities- but both amazing. Maybe the next 2? So are Northwestern, U of Chicago, John Hopkins….Duke!

And the smaller Ivy League - Williams, Amherst, Swarthmorere, Bucknell, etc
@Sbooker , US News and World Report is the college ranking publication everyone uses and also loves to hate... they put Dartmouth at #15 in the US.

US College rankings

@ChrisC , Felt odd for you to randomly mention my undergrad school in your listings of only a dozen or so top schools in the US considering it's not an Ivy (Bucknell).
 
My oldest went to Cornell engineering then MIT
she said Cornell wasn’t a great experience
But enjoyed Mit
Geeze it cost a fortune
 
@Sbooker , US News and World Report is the college ranking publication everyone uses and also loves to hate... they put Dartmouth at #15 in the US.

US College rankings

@ChrisC , Felt odd for you to randomly mention my undergrad school in your listings of only a dozen or so top schools in the US considering it's not an Ivy (Bucknell).

Dartmouth and Brown function as colleges.

They are amazing places to attend. They are not universities.

So both get downgraded in US News.

I think Dartmouth was #6 in the 90s - look it up. Trump will raise its ranking.

College selection is such an NE obsession.
Seattle- no one cares.
SF - semi cares.
Boston- every one cares - a lot
 
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@ChrisC , Felt odd for you to randomly mention my undergrad school in your listings of only a dozen or so top schools in the US considering it's not an Ivy (Bucknell).

I can delete it. Honestly I don’t care.

It’s the person who becomes greater with time. Not a University Label at 20 yo.
 
@Sbooker , US News and World Report is the college ranking publication everyone uses and also loves to hate... they put Dartmouth at #15 in the US.

US College rankings

@ChrisC , Felt odd for you to randomly mention my undergrad school in your listings of only a dozen or so top schools in the US considering it's not an Ivy (Bucknell).
Thanks. I have no idea why I’m interested in this topic given I have no education past high school myself.
I have partial regret that I didn’t pursue a professional career but my gig as a salesperson has probably paid better than most professions would have anyway. Would have been nice to have made a more positive contribution to society……I’ll have to leave that to my daughter.

Edit. No one overseas would know any Australian tertiary institutions but there is some kind of pecking order apparently.

I’m not really comfortable with the fact that kids that can’t afford a prestigious education get overlooked for professional positions. Just the way things are I guess.
 
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In the 1960's there were more Jews in NYC than in Israel, and more Jews in Brooklyn than in Tel Aviv.
Dartmouth and Brown function as colleges.

They are amazing places to attend. They are not universities.
Princeton is undergraduate dominant also. This is a desirable setup because almost all courses, including intro/freshman courses, are taught by professors, not graduate student teaching assistants.
I’m not really comfortable with the fact that kids that can’t afford a prestigious education
Princeton was the first university to abolish student loans in 2001. If you need aid, you get a grant. Many of the other comparable places have had to follow suit to be competitive. That doesn't change the fact that affluent families that prioritize education, with kids going to top prep schools or places like Bronx Science, still have better chances of admission.

Princeton has some skeletons in its closet. Woodrow Wilson, who put it on the academic map in the late 19th century as college president, was rabidly racist and resegregated the federal civil service when he became President of the US in 1912. It had an antisemitic reputation through the 1950's and was considered the most hospitable Ivy to Southerners. The first black student was admitted in 1947. In 2020 Wilson's name was removed from a residential college and the school of public and international affairs at Princeton.
 
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Princeton was the first university to abolish student loans in 2001. If you need aid, you get a grant.
I left my undergrad studies at CU Boulder with an eye-watering $38K in loans ($110K adjusted for inflation), which took me 20 years to pay off.

U of Chicago
For all intents and purposes, the University of Chicago is a top-tier Ivy League school. I completed two years of doctoral coursework there but decided not to carry on with a dissertation. Sometimes referred to as an academic concentration camp, my time there permanently cured me of wanting to be around intellectuals.
 
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