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Pomona College in Claremont, California ranked #2 in Forbes Magazine's Annual Best Colleges
I am mystified that the Ivy League universities are considered the pinnacle of U.S. higher education by some. It was an organization found as athletic conference in the early part of the last century. Most Americans can name the Big Ten, not the Ivy League.
The fact is that there are other universities with at least comparable reputations (Stanford, MIT, Caltech, Duke, Johns Hopkins, etc.), as well as the far smaller smaller liberal arts colleges which offer often a better education.
The New York Times does a lot of trumpeting about the Ivy League schools (Who really can name all eight institutions? Is Amherst one of the eight? Is Dartmouth? William and Mary?), which speaks to the particular obsession with elite, ivy-covered institutions that is to be found in the Northeast.
In fact, seven liberal arts colleges have a higher endowment per student than all but the Big Three of the Ivy League (Harvard, Princeton, Yale), which means they have more financial resources to spend on their undergraduates.
The often lower nominal student-to-faculty ratio at the Ivy League can be explained by the fact that they include graduate instruction, where classes are by necessity smaller. The truth is that there are classes with students in the hundreds at Harvard (as in first-year chemistry, economics, etc.).
I'm not sure why anyone would want to attend college in upper Harlem or in one of the worst parts of Philadelphia or anywhere in New Haven except if one is addicted--as the young today often are--to shots of urban excitement, no pun intended. Furthermore, it would be all to easy to skip classes and do the zillions of things kids like to do in "the big city."
Despite the fame of the faculty "stars" residing at the universities, the attention, in fact, goes to graduate education and to supporting research carried out by those faculty, and hardly to lowly undergraduates, a dime a dozen even at HYP. In fact, many courses will be taught by graduate students, certainly not the big-name.
It would be hard for me to believe that Harvard cares as much about the personal growth and "moral character" of its undergraduates than, let's say, Haverford.
Narrow professionalism and single-minded, cut-throat competition to get into grad school to me are not exactly conducive to a quality college education.
Whatever undergraduate institution one attends will be largely displaced by the graduate school one attends, if any. And even among graduate and professional schools, it is often Berkeley, Chicago, Michigan, etc. that will be higher ranked than any of the Ivy League.
The value of a college education resides in what one actually learns--including outside of class, rather than simply the name or perceived prestige of a particular institution.
In a more pragmatic vein, it is better to have aced one's coursework wherever one attends rather than to be in the bottom half of one's class at Princeton. And it is more important to find a place one actually flourishes, rather than where the parents of a college-age student would like their son or daughter to go, based on what is considered either more popular or more prestigious an institution.
Besides, yapping about having gone to an Ivy League college is usually more about inflating a wobbly sense of ego, rather like Americans who speak with a British (Received Pronunciation) accent. It is also strongly regional: Only in the Northeast does it matter so much.
(In an affront to the Ivy League, Forbes magazine this year named Stanford University and Pomona College, both in California, as the top two undergraduate institutions of higher learning in the country, over all eight Ivies).
Bottom line: One can fail as a human being, no matter what one's alma mater is or how many degrees one has.
Endowment per Student at Selected Colleges (2012)
A school's endowment is its most significant source of financial aid.
| Endowment ($million) | # of Students | Endowment/Student ($000) | |
| Princeton | 16,954 | 7,567 | 2,241 |
| Yale | 19,345 | 11,593 | 1,669 |
| Harvard | 30,435 | 21,225 | 1,434 |
| Stanford | 17,036 | 15,870 | 1,073 |
| Pomona | 1,680 | 1,586 | 1,059 |
| Swarthmore | 1,499 | 1,545 | 970 |
| MIT | 10,150 | 10,894 | 932 |
| Amherst | 1,641 | 1,817 | 903 |
| Williams | 1,799 | 2,188 | 822 |
| Grinnell | 1,384 | 1,688 | 820 |
| Cal Tech | 1,747 | 2,231 | 783 |
| Wellesley | 1,445 | 2,300 | 628 |
| Washington & Lee | 1,262 | 2,203 | 573 |
| Dartmouth institutions in boldface italic are liberal arts institutions http://www.reachhighscholars.org/college_endowments.html |
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