We all apply to an Ivy?

[Crucial BBQ]

Just an observation:  it seems that nearly every gradcafe biology/life sciences user who lists their schools in their sig has at least one Ivy and one other prestigious school-typically MIT.  Why so?  

 

For me, I am only applying to MIT and Brown because the program at MIT I am interested in is a joint program with Woods Hole and the program I am interested in at Brown has their lab at Woods Hole.  In essence, I am applying to Woods Hole and if Woods Hole had a joint program with You-Never-Heard-Of-This-School-It-Is-Ranked-Dead-Last-In-USNWR, I'd apply there, too. 

 

Anyways, just curious.  

[Vene]

I think there's a selection bias going on here, most regular users at grad cafe are very interested in graduate school and academia in general and so will have stronger than average profiles leading them to at least attempt a highly prestigious university. I could also see it where people who post universities in their signature are also more likely to be the people who apply to the Ivy League.

Edited September 16, 2014 by Vene

[Gvh]

I think there's a selection bias going on here, most regular users at grad cafe are very interested in graduate school and academia in general and so will have stronger than average profiles leading them to at least attempt a highly prestigious university. I could also see it where people who post universities in their signature are also more likely to be the people who apply to the Ivy League.

 

Although I agree with Vene, on the flip side, I would also go so far as to say that people who do apply to one or more Ivys are also people who do not declare their choices in their signature in order to not to seem pompous/arrogant. Interestingly, the impression I get of the culture here is that if someone is applying to many ivies they are a naive candidate who only wants to attend a prestigious school - which is obviously seen as negative from the average academic.

Edited September 16, 2014 by Gvh

[bsharpe269]

Well top schools tend to have stong research so it makes sense that there is at least one or two top schools that matches well with each person's research interests.

 

I am applying to 2 top 10 schools and the rest are ranked around 20 or 30. I did not intentionally choose those schools because of prestige but rather, am applying to the schools that best match my research interests.

[Eigen]

Biochemistry, but I didn't apply to an Ivy, I didn't really have any interest in going to one. 

[Crucial BBQ]

I suppose I have always viewed the Ivy League to more or less be of humanities, classics, Latin, rhetoric, and so on than science. You know, those who major in Letters and do Crew 

[GeoDUDE!]

You might look at all the important scientists that work at Ivy Leagues.

 

to name a few, Walley Broecker, Don Forsyth, Lisa Randall. I don't know much about outside of earth science and physics, but Harvard's math department is known to have some amazing alumni (and the hardest undergraduate class in the world, there is a wikipedia page on it). 

 

My guess is that as a group of colleges, the Ivy League out puts more scientific research than any other community, and probably the only group of schools that rivals it as a whole are the UCs (though the gap between Ivy's and UCs might not be as big as people think). 

[Eigen]

"Ivies" are widely varied. Princeton, Harvard and Yale are good schools, although only one makes top10 in my field.

The rest of the Ivies really aren't top notch research institues. Good, but not top.

[Catria]

At my undergraduate department, many people would somehow place MIT (and sometimes Caltech and Stanford) as Ivies as well, while excluding UPenn for whatever reason... assuming they even know about UPenn.

 

UPenn is one, but one has to be inclined towards either soft condensed matter or particle physics/cosmology to ever know about UPenn back at my physics dept. End result: I am the first from that department to ever apply at UPenn and Dartmouth (not sure about Columbia, knowing the other five had at least one applicant apiece from my dept, and matriculants at 3).

 

As far as Dartmouth is concerned, it really is there only so that I can have a balanced list; how I conceived Dartmouth was that it was easy to turn down, despite its Ivy League status. Again, many at my undergrad would not even think of Dartmouth as even having a physics PhD program in the first place.

[Chimeric Phoenix]

There are pros and cons to every school, but in general more prestigious schools tend to have more money to spend. That can be nice if your research requires expensive equipment, or if you want to have some of the big names in your field give a talk. There are going to be great professors and not-so-great professors at every school, same with the students.

 

In the end, nobody will care where you did your PhD after you do a post-doc. Just like nobody will care where you did your post-doc after you get your first job. It's all about getting to the next level and every school expects you to be the driving force for your success.