least pretentious ivy

Laid-back: Dartmouth and Brown with the former having a stronger Wall Street Network

honestly.

I can't speak for cornell or brown, but Dartmouth is definitely not elitist, and much less uppity that H,Y,P, Penn, and Columbia. If you are worried about elitism, I would definitely say go with dartmouth.

Heh, Princeton my ass - the Southern money goes to Princeton, the New England money goes to Harvard. If you're a recruited athlete I'd suggest figuring out which one has the best team in your sport(s), or, alternately, with which team you fit in the best. Take it from someone who rowed varsity crew, if you're spending every day practicing you better damn well be able to make friends with 'em.

The idea that you should be choosing schools based on which is "least uppity" is ridiculous - that's presuming that there's no way for you to differentiate yourself from some image and forge your own personality.

What sport do you play? I am a varsity athlete at harvard and my teammates aren't pretentious. And the rest of the student body is so diverse that you should be able to find whatever crowd that you want to hang with. Of course there are some pretentious people but you really don't have to be bothered with them. You should go to the school with the best team or the team you feel most comfortable with.

I think Harvard, Princeton, and Columbia are slightly more pretentious than the other 5, but honestly there's all types of people at all the ivies.

Princeton is probably the worst.

Least pretentious in order:

Dartmouth Brown Cornell Columbia Yale/Penn (tied) Harvard Princeton

Just go to Harvard. Seriously. Don't worry about abstract crap like "eliteness" of the student body.

Cornell AEM is good too and has terrific recruiting (Im in Math in A&S but have taken several upper finance courses there). But if I were you I would still pick Harvard for bragging rights if nothing else.

With these schools it doesn't matter which you choose.

princeton is amazing for s&t because they offer so many quantitative programs, in addition to the traditional econ major.

math program - best in country engineering - best in ivy league ORFE - one of a kind, the single most recruited major on the street

Dartmouth has the best alumni network and with its small student body, it's definitley best for recruiting. A sweet alum who's a md will be much better for you than whatever certificate or major

you really cant go wrong either way, if you work hard and have a good gpa you will be able to get jobs in s&t from any of the ivies

as princeton and harvard have the best two swimming programs and are the best two schools in the nation, these two are no brainers

decide on where you felt the best fit and think you'd enjoy your college years the most.

WHEN THEY COULD GO TO ANY OTHER IVY IS AN IDIOT.

I'd choose Cornell AEM over Brown any day.

i know a bunch of kids from cornell, they seem pretty chill...easiest ivy to get into, but they work the hardest or so they claim. Got some princeton friends too....much more into themselves.

where did you go to school jimbo?

if the choice is between harvard and princeton, then i'd choose harvard, hands down. ever heard of eating clubs? vast majority of parties at princeton are hosted by eating clubs and you have to be a member or know someone in order to get in. when i was there visiting a friend of mine, we went to a wine cocktail party where everyone dressed up in expensive suits and dresses...on a friday night. i don't know, the general feel of the school seems very pretentious and upper-class, even my friend who goes there says so.

also, whoever says Princeton has the best math program in the country doesn't know their shit. sure, it's great, but u'd have a hard time proving it's better than harvard. and in terms of recruiting, harvard wins hands down. i was on a credit suisse program this summer and there was twice as many harvard interns as princeton interns...u do the math. i'm not sure if you're interested in consulting, but if you are, the biggest consulting firms all recruit heavily at harvard. BCG and Bains take most of their incoming associates from Harvard. Princeton wasn't even mentioned in the top 5 schools they recruit from.

anywyas, congrats on the awesome acceptances and good luck w/ ur studies.

Thanks Everyone,

I appreciate your insight and assistance. I've narrowed it down to Columbia, Cornell, Harvard, and Princeton. Can anyone who attends these schools share their view of the place (pros & cons, campus life, general atmosphere, workload, grading, etc). I'm not looking for something out of BusinessWeek (I'm well aware of where each school ranks) --just your honest opinion of these schools, no matter how brief it may be. I would hate to accept an offer only to find that I want to put a bullet in my brain by the time Thanksgiving rolls around :)

Be a real man and attend Yale. Everybody knows Yallies run the nation. Anyway, that doesn't answer your question, so here's my view: 1. Columbia +: NYC, solid rep -: not really known for anything special, ugly girls

2. Cornell +: solid rep, strong in math and sciences, can pretty much find any course -: location; reputation for grade deflation; guys there are generally better looking than girls, hence the slim pickens

3. Harvard +: everything -: lack of finance course work, zero hotties

4. Princeton +: everything -: cant think of any

Pick Princeton

note: just because Princeton has the eating clubs and (supposedly) the popped collars, etc doesn't mean that they are necessarily more pretentious. boarding school kids from rich/powerful families can be perfectly normal and nice. you should visit the actual campus.

Take it from someone who has been through this and worked in the biz for a few years.

Go to Harvard. The cache will last the rest of your life, there are something like 60 other schools in boston if you get tired of the social scene at H. You won't go wrong there.

Jimbo

you went to holy cross, so i'm not really sure how your 'insight' is relevant.

you went to holy cross, so i'm not really sure how your 'insight' is relevant.

Why do you keep toting around this 'persona' when everyone on the board knows you're just a pathological liar? (see IB forum- Dartmouth Undergrad)

But your dream is to go to MIT/Harvard for a phd right? So maybe you do know ALL about the programs from your extensive research...

"all there are are usgly non-americans, especially asains."

Yes, the admissions standards are already much higher for asians but it looks like they need to be increased further because there are too many of these ugly foreigners on campus. After all MIT and the ivy league are social parlors for white male discussion, not institutions of academic research open to the most capable.

fuck you.

i went to wharton/penn, so i am biased, but look at any banks analyst class, s&t or corp fin, and penn will always have the most people. it also happens to be one of the most social and diverse schools. all of the 'elite' and highly ranked school will have plenty of rich people, but penn is big enough and diverse enough to get around that. i was just a middle class kid from texas and i loved it.

wharton is great, don't get me wrong...but i still like Harvard better. If you decide this whole finance thing isn't for you, you're better served going to the big H.

I go to Harvard. Is is definitely the most pretentious with the most money - I know several billionaires. It is also the best for getting into anything.

From my experience, when your looking at elitism in colleges, as an athlete you will be spared somewhat because you'll exist in an environment where you're pretty much surrounded by other athletes(who are not necessarily from blue-blood backgrounds; because of scholarships). The elitism will stem more from athletic ability.

That being said I have a fairly decent cluster of friends who went to Brown and their families are pretty much all working class people, and they are minorities. And they loved it at Brown.

You may also want to see how big of a role sports plays at each respective school. Some schools revolve around their sports teams(ie. Duke, VaTech, Michigan) while others couldnt care less(NYU, Columbia).

Unless you're looking at becoming a professional athlete, I would try to maximize the benefit of your athletic ability and hard work up to now, by going to the best school you can possibly go to.

I have a difficult time seeing Harvard as too uppity, I think it must have something to do with all of the Indians, Asians and awful-looking girls. This is beside the point, but the stuffiest place I've ever set foot has to be Yale Law. The faculty were nearly comical and I had a hard time keeping a straight face.

wow, seems like the only thing more unfortunate than being poor is being poor and asian

I went to Cornell.

Had a great time. Ithica sucks though, but I was able to play in sports leagues throughout school

Cornell was fun, but the weather is depressing as hell. Leaves fall in September and don't come back until after Spring semester ends.

Just go to Harvard, and don't dick up your GPA....done

If you went to Princeton, you could probably hang out with J-Woww, Pauly D, and The Situation.

Princeton is probably the stuffiest ivy. Very preppy, upper-crust social scene. They also have the most attractive girls amongst the ivies.

Brown is the most laid-back; it attracts a lot of artsy liberal types.

You can easily go to a non-ivy target and not deal with the elitists that are all over each of the campuses. Fact is, you will find it on any ivy campus. If you're that worried about it, check out Georgetown, Notre Dame, UMich,

Notre Dame produces some of the most obnoxious football fans, but the NDers who head east tend to be pretty down to earth- certainly relatve to your typical New Yorker and probably even by Midwestern standards.

My experience is that most of the alumni I've met are easy to get along with and make great friends when they're not talking about football (usually when your alma mater is beating them- then you have to be nice and just stay quiet about it). I'm sure this will provoke responses from the ND football fan crowd about the last time you guys beat Illinois. :D

Every "good" school produces pretentious people. Im just saying that the odds are a lot better if going to ND or UMich, or G'town. I personally would go there over the Ivies. A lot better balance, and still a target.

I dunno. My experience was very different than jjc's.

Michigan is an amazing business school, and for someone who's lucky enough to be able to pay in-state tuition for it, I don't think there's a good reason to pick HYP over it unless your family is filthy rich or you're getting a lot of financial aid/scholarships. Same story with Berkeley, UT, and maybe UVA (throw in Illinois if you're really gung-ho about accounting.) .

They're all great schools and HYP might be better, but going to HYP is a heavily leveraged bet on your future. If things don't work out- and I've met a lot of people who things didn't work out for, you're $100K in debt with no means of paying it back. Debt that you can't even BK on if you wind up in financial trouble. And if you can get into Princeton, you've got what it takes to get into banking or trading from Michigan with six figures less debt. The sensible, conservative choice for a middle-class kid is to take advantage of all those taxes your parents have been paying for the past 18 years and go to a (strong) state school if you don't qualify for grants and don't have millions of dollars in the bank.

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