Top Ten Toughest Colleges to get into in the U.S.

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Originally posted by Lhadatt
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Large schools suck. I'm in a sub-10k student school and I'm getting a better education that at the 40k student school down the street and the 50k student school I went to in another state. Why anyone would want to go to one of those is beyond me...

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To each his own. I can say the exact reverse, the sub-10k school I went to was not as good as the plus-20k I am going to now. Small schools have their appeal, but some people prefer the big college atmosphere. I know Im one of them.

Regus: GTA: VC is stunting your brain.

I dunno, in most cases, I'd agree that smaller schools are better. Fall, Freshman year, I went to a school with about 3,000 people, and it was nice to be able to recognize most faces by my second semester.

Left that school, went to a place with about 12,000 undergrads, and generally the size is a disadvantage. However, it does sometimes have the feel of a bunch of separate, smaller colleges just clustered together - I mainly encounter Arts and Sciences students on campus, and there are about 4,000 of us.

When I do venture out of the English department into classes with enrollment from multiple colleges, I kind of welcome it: it's nice to meet girls interested in the Hotel School, engineering chicks, Home Ec chicks, Agriculture, so on. The variety is refreshing - something I think I'd miss if I was only around girls in the humanities.

Eh, like I said Stone, to each his own. I went to a small university for 2 years and let me tell you I got real sick of seeing the same group of people after a while, especially if I didnt like them.

Maybe Cornell is split up like you describe, but I dunno, where I go (UCLA) everything seems integrated more. Maybe that will change as I go higher and higher up in my major, but thats to be expected. But the college I am in does feature everything from the life sciences to the humanities, so its just a big mess of people by default in the same college.

The big university vs. small university debate is about as useful and worthy as a PSX vs. N64 one. Everybody has their own opinion, as long as they like whatever college they are in thats all that matters.

I wonder what Regus originally posted.

At first I thought this was a list of the ten *toughest* schools in terms of academics, not admissions (in which case the inclusion of Brown would have been a complete joke). But yeah Stone, I guess Brown does get a lot of applicants.

As for the small school vs. big school debate, I went to a small school for undergrad (Amherst) and a large school for graduate school (University of Arizona) and I'm not sure which I prefer. A small school in a big city would be ideal; you'd get the small learning environment plus the change to move outside your pathetic little liberal arts circle.

Personally I could never stand to go to a large school for undergrad, at least not for the first couple years. I didn't want some grad school knucklehead teaching my introductory classes.

I live near Harvard, very near.


It truly is. They would only take one student from our high school every year. Only the graduating valedictorian. Thats it. We had people with 3.8 GPA's and the such applying, but if you weren't number one, you didn't get in.

Stanford is very tough, but imo no where near as tough as harvard.


Also I wash shocked to see Tufts university wasn't mentioned.

Ahh well, whatever, I live in the town where Tufts is, and I know two things about the school itself that you probably don't.

It is extremely hard to get into,
and where Jessica Biel lives.

I would say Harvard would have to be the hardest to get into. My older brother graduated Magna Kum Laude (or something like that), had the third highest GPA in his graduating class (only .1 less than the valedictorian's), and was captain of the debate team. Plus, he was graduating from Jesuit, one of the most prestigious private schools in Dallas, and he STILL wasn't accepted at Harvard.

Just about everyone else accepted him. Yale, Northwestern, Georgetown....he ended up going to Duke where he graduated near tops of his class there too and is now at NYU Law. And yes, on an academic level, my accomplishments are significantly inferior. There's no sibling rivalry there, because there has to be an actual competitive nature for there to be a rivalry, and I can't compete with him at all from an academic standpoint :sweat:

If you don't like BIG colleges- DON'T go to Rutgers.

We will destroy your soul...seriously.

salutatorian with a perfect score on the SAT didn't get into MIT from my school. i think you have to sell like 5 babies to get in there

the school you go to that has a better reputation will most likely get you a better job in the future..go to a community college as to harvard or what not, you'll probably have a better chance of getting a job if you went to a well-known school

*gazes into crystal ball*

this thread will turn into another "is college really that important?" thread...