question: Why are Ivy league colleges considered better than other colleges when the quality of education is subjective?
comment: When considering the actual, objective, quality of an Ivy League Undergraduate education you'll find it is on-par with any reputable state school. You hit a limit where it's "good enough", because you don't need the world's greatest mathematician teaching you Calc 1. Students don't get value out of that level of instruction until they're in Masters and PHD programs, and need to learn the bleeding edge of their industry from those already there. When selecting a grad school, choosing the right Advisor and Institution REALLY matters, and very much depends on context specifics. If you're studying Mechanical Engineering from any State or Ivy school, you'll learn the same general skills, and lets say you have designed a revolutionary new water filtration process. It only needs 3-5 years of full time development and about $1billion in funding to become a viable product to sell across developing nations. However, State School education gets you state school friends. Mom and Dad really believe in you and can mortgage their house for $100k and your friends will give you $10k here and there. If you try REALLY hard you can maybe get lucky and score 1% of what you need to make this project happen. The real value of an Ivy League Undergrad isn't the education itself, but who you're going to class with. Today's elite send their children to Ivy League schools to become tomorrow's elite. They will almost undoubtedly be gainfully employed in their parent's 1% factory and on-track to wealth and power by age 30. By going to Ivy University with the children of today's 1%, you have access to that network of "old college friends" that were once your drinking buddies and now are the CEO's of Fortune 500 companies. Bill Gates isn't going to pick up the phone for some kid with some nice drawings. But he will give you a listen while making breakfast for his daughter's roommate after a sleepover. You can pitch a round of investment at the 10 year reunion over memories and beers to your fraternity brothers who are now VP's at 3 different investment banks. Have the thing almost cracked but need a special steel alloy to make it work? Give your buddy Carnegie Jr. the Steel CEO a call and he can get one of his Senior Metallurgical Engineers look it over for feasibility during lunch. Most reputable education is "good enough". The trick to cracking into the 1% then becomes a game of WHO you know, not WHAT.
passages: Moll, who earned his Master of Divinity degree from Yale University in 1959, was an admissions officer at Yale, and the director of admissions at Bowdoin College, University of California, Santa Cruz, and Vassar College. He traveled the nation examining higher education, and identified eight public institutions (the same as the number of Ivy League members) that he thought had the look and feel of an Ivy League university. In addition to academic excellence, other factors considered by Moll include appearance, age, and school traditions, as well as certain other Ivy League characteristics.
  
  Section::::Original Public Ivy list (1985).
   Over the past half-century, the 'Big Three', and the rest of the Ivy League, have increasingly stressed both diversity and academic merit in their admissions process, and have dissociated themselves from some of their WASP roots. Notwithstanding, a certain lack in economic diversity persists at the three colleges. As Jerome Karabel, a Harvard graduate and the author of "The Chosen" detailing the history of the admissions process at HPY, noted:
   Ivy League schools are generally viewed as some of the most prestigious, and are ranked among the best universities worldwide by "U.S. News & World Report". All eight universities place in the top fourteen of the 2019 "U.S. News & World Report" national university rankings, including four Ivies in the top three (Columbia and Yale are tied for third). In the 2019 "U.S. News & World Report" global university rankings, three Ivies rank in the top ten (Harvard – 1st, Columbia – 8th, and Princeton – 9th) and six in the top twenty. Undergraduate-focused Ivies such as Brown University and Dartmouth College rank 99th and 197th, respectively. "U.S. News" has named a member of the Ivy League as the best national university in each of the past 18 years ending with the 2018 rankings: Princeton eleven times, Harvard twice, and the two schools tied for first five times.
   The influence of these institutions on the founding of other colleges and universities is notable. This included the Southern public college movement which blossomed in the decades surrounding the turn of the 19th century when Georgia, South Carolina, North Carolina and Virginia established what became the flagship universities for each of these states. In 1801, a majority of the first board of trustees for what became the University of South Carolina were Princeton alumni. They appointed Jonathan Maxcy, a Brown graduate, as the university's first president. Thomas Cooper, an Oxford alumnus and University of Pennsylvania faculty member, became the second president of the South Carolina college. The founders of the University of California came from Yale, hence the school colors of University of California are Yale Blue and California Gold.
   Section::::Original Public Ivy list (1985).:The Public Ivies.
  
  The original Public Ivies, as Moll listed them in 1985:
  
  BULLET::::- College of William & Mary (Williamsburg, Virginia)
  
  BULLET::::- Miami University (Oxford, Ohio)
  
  BULLET::::- University of California (nine campuses as of 1985)
  
  BULLET::::- University of Michigan (Ann Arbor)
  
  BULLET::::- University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
  
  BULLET::::- University of Texas at Austin
  
  BULLET::::- University of Vermont (Burlington)
  
  BULLET::::- University of Virginia (Charlottesville)
  
  Section::::Original Public Ivy list (1985).:Worthy runners-up.
  
  Moll also offered in the same book "a list of worthy runners-up" and brief summaries of them:
  
  BULLET::::- University of Colorado Boulder
   Ivy League schools including Harvard, Yale and Princeton have in the past been regarded as the goals for many children in WASP circles. Some educators have attempted to discourage this fixation. Jay Mathews, author of "Harvard Schmarvard", addresses seniors obsessed with Ivy League schools with the analysis: “It does not matter where you go to school, it matters what you do when you get there and what you do after you graduate.”
  
  Section::::Rankings.
  
  Section::::Rankings.:"U.S. News & World Report".
   Further, Ivy League members have produced many Nobel laureates, winners of the Nobel Prize and the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences. According to the Nobel Foundation's website, the number of prize-winners affiliated with each Ivy League university at the time of their awards is: Brown, 2; Columbia, 17; Cornell, 8; Dartmouth, 0; Harvard, 36; Penn, 4; Princeton, 14; and Yale, 8. In addition, each university self-reports their number of affiliated Nobel laureates, but they use varying definitions for which Nobel winners they claim (for example, alumni, active faculty, former faculty, visiting faculty, adjunct faculty, etc.)
  
  Section::::Academics.:Collaboration.
   Aspects of Ivy stereotyping were illustrated during the 1988 presidential election, when George H. W. Bush (Yale '48) derided Michael Dukakis (graduate of Harvard Law School) for having "foreign-policy views born in Harvard Yard's boutique." "New York Times" columnist Maureen Dowd asked "Wasn't this a case of the pot calling the kettle elite?" Bush explained, however, that, unlike Harvard, Yale's reputation was "so diffuse, there isn't a symbol, I don't think, in the Yale situation, any symbolism in it. ... Harvard boutique to me has the connotation of liberalism and elitism" and said "Harvard" in his remark was intended to represent "a philosophical enclave" and not a statement about class. Columnist Russell Baker opined that "Voters inclined to loathe and fear elite Ivy League schools rarely make fine distinctions between Yale and Harvard. All they know is that both are full of rich, fancy, stuck-up and possibly dangerous intellectuals who never sit down to supper in their undershirt no matter how hot the weather gets." Still, the last five presidents have all attended Ivy League schools for at least part of their education— George H. W. Bush (Yale undergrad), Bill Clinton (Yale Law School), George W. Bush (Yale undergrad, Harvard Business School), Barack Obama (Columbia undergrad, Harvard Law School), and Donald Trump (Penn undergrad).
   After the Second World War, the present Ivy League institutions slowly widened their selection of their students. They had always had distinguished faculties; some of the first Americans with doctorates had taught for them; but they now decided that they could not both be world-class research institutions and be competitive in the highest ranks of American college sport; in addition, the schools experienced the scandals of any other big-time football programs, although more quietly.
  
  Section::::History.:History of the athletic league.
  
  Section::::History.:History of the athletic league.:19th and early 20th centuries.
   Members of the League have been highly ranked by various university rankings. In addition to the broad rankings listed in the accompanying chart, several Ivy League schools are highly ranked in the current "2018 US News & World Report" assessment of Best Undergraduate Teaching: 1. Princeton; 2. Dartmouth; 3. Brown; 10. Yale. The "Wall Street Journal" rankings place all eight of the universities within the top 20 in the country.
   The Ivy League schools are highly selective, with acceptance rates since 2018 being 10% or less at each of the universities. Admitted students come from around the world, although students from New England and the Northeastern United States make up a significant proportion of students. In 2018, seven of the eight Ivy League schools reported record-high application numbers; seven also reported record-low acceptance rates.
  
  Section::::Academics.:Prestige.
   The term "Ivy Plus" is sometimes used to refer to the Ancient Eight plus several other schools for purposes of alumni associations, university consortia, or endowment comparisons. In his book "Untangling the Ivy League", Zawel writes, "The inclusion of non–Ivy League schools under this term is commonplace for some schools and extremely rare for others. Among these other schools, Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Stanford University are almost always included. The University of Chicago and Duke University are often included as well." In their 2015 book "Acing Admissions", Mehta and Dixit write, "The ["Ivy Plus" schools] include, but are not limited to: Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), Stanford University and Northwestern University. Besides selectivity, these Ivy Plus colleges are thought to share similar values around academic and professional excellence, intellectual curiosity, leadership and civil engagement."
   The term "Ivy" is often used to connote a positive comparison to or association with the Ivy League, often along academic lines. The term has been used to describe the Little Ivies, a grouping of small liberal arts colleges in the Northeastern United States. Other uses include the Southern Ivies, Hidden Ivies, and the Public Ivies. The 2007 edition of "Newsweek's How to Get Into College Now", the editors designated 25 schools as "New Ivies".
  
  Section::::Other Ivies.:Ivy Plus.
   The phrase "Ivy League" historically has been perceived as connected not only with academic excellence, but also with social elitism. In 1936, sportswriter John Kieran noted that student editors at Harvard, Yale, Princeton, Cornell, Columbia, Dartmouth, and Penn were advocating the formation of an athletic association. In urging them to consider "Army and Navy and Georgetown and Fordham and Syracuse and Brown and Pitt" as candidates for membership, he exhorted:
   A book titled "The Public Ivies: America's Flagship Public Universities" (2001) by Howard and Matthew Greene of "Greenes' Guides" included 30 colleges and universities. The table below is organized by region, and colleges are listed in alphabetical order.
  
  BULLET::::- Northeastern
  
  BULLET::::- Pennsylvania State University (University Park)
  
  BULLET::::- Rutgers University (New Brunswick)
  
  BULLET::::- State University of New York at Binghamton (also known as Binghamton University)
  
  BULLET::::- University of Connecticut (Storrs)
  
  BULLET::::- Mid-Atlantic
  
  BULLET::::- College of William & Mary (Williamsburg, Virginia)
  
  BULLET::::- University of Delaware (Newark)
  
  BULLET::::- University of Maryland (College Park)
  
  BULLET::::- University of Virginia (Charlottesville)
  
  BULLET::::- Southern
   The first usage of "Ivy" in reference to a group of colleges is from sportswriter Stanley Woodward (1895–1965).
   The Ivy League has drawn many comparisons to other elite grouping of universities in other nations such as Oxbridge and the Golden Triangle in the United Kingdom, C9 League in China, Group of Eight in Australia, and Imperial Universities in Japan. These counterparts are often referred to in the American media as the "Ivy League" of their respective nations. Additionally, groupings of schools use the "Ivy" nomenclature to denote a perceived comparability, such as American liberal arts colleges (Little Ivies), lesser known schools (Hidden Ivies), public universities (Public Ivies), and schools in the Southern United States (Southern Ivies).
  
  Section::::Members.
   Ivy League universities have some of the largest university financial endowments in the world, which allows the universities to provide many resources for their academic programs and research endeavors. , Harvard University has an endowment of $37.1 billion, the highest of any US university Additionally, each university receives millions of dollars in research grants and other subsidies from federal and state governments.
  
  Section::::History.
  
  Section::::History.:Origin of the name.
   Based on research output, Princeton's Woodrow Wilson School ranks as No. 1 out of all policy schools, followed by Harvard's Kennedy School and Columbia's SIPA. Based on number of publications, the Kennedy School ranks No. 1, followed by the Wilson School and SIPA.
  
  The Ivy League's international relations programs are ranked in "Foreign Policy's" "Best International Relations Schools in the World" article. The rankings provide a glimpse of international relations as an academic and professional discipline, aggregating responses from 1,514 international relations scholars at U.S. colleges and universities around the country.
  
  Section::::See also.
  
  BULLET::::- Public policy school
   Undergraduate enrollments range from about 4,000 to 14,000, making them larger than those of a typical private liberal arts college and smaller than a typical public state university. Total enrollments, including graduate students, range from approximately 6,400 at Dartmouth to over 20,000 at Columbia, Cornell, Harvard, and Penn. Ivy League financial endowments range from Brown's $3.5 billion to Harvard's $34.5 billion, the largest financial endowment of any academic institution in the world.
   Students of the Ivy League, both graduate and undergraduate, come primarily from upper middle and upper class families. In recent years, however, the universities have looked towards increasing socioeconomic and class diversity, by providing greater financial aid packages to applicants from lower, working, and middle class American families.
   While the term was in use as early as 1933, it became official only after the formation of the NCAA Division I athletic conference in 1954. Seven of the eight schools were founded during the colonial period (Cornell was founded in 1865), and thus account for seven of the nine Colonial Colleges chartered before the American Revolution. The other two colonial colleges Rutgers University and the College of William & Mary became public institutions instead.
   Seven out of the eight Ivy League schools were founded before the American Revolution; Cornell was founded just after the American Civil War. These seven were the primary colleges in the Northern and Middle Colonies, and their early faculties and founding boards were largely drawn from other Ivy League institutions. There were also some British graduates from the University of Cambridge, the University of Oxford, the University of St. Andrews, the University of Edinburgh, and elsewhere on their boards. Similarly, the founder of The College of William & Mary, in 1693, was a British graduate of the University of Edinburgh. Cornell provided Stanford University with its first president.
   Phrases such as "Ivy League snobbery" are ubiquitous in nonfiction and fiction writing of the early and mid-twentieth century. A Louis Auchincloss character dreads "the aridity of snobbery which he knew infected the Ivy League colleges". A business writer, warning in 2001 against discriminatory hiring, presented a cautionary example of an attitude to avoid (the bracketed phrase is his):
   BULLET::::- Georgia Institute of Technology (Atlanta)
  
  BULLET::::- University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign
  
  BULLET::::- New College of the University of South Florida (Sarasota; now New College of Florida)
  
  BULLET::::- Pennsylvania State University at University Park
  
  BULLET::::- University of Pittsburgh
  
  BULLET::::- State University of New York at Binghamton (now branded as Binghamton University)
  
  BULLET::::- University of Washington (Seattle)
  
  BULLET::::- University of Wisconsin–Madison
  
  Section::::"Greenes' Guides" list (2001).
  
raw_presuppositions: Ivy league colleges are better than other colleges when it comes to education. Ivy league colleges are better than other colleges when it comes to education. Ivy league colleges are better than other colleges when it comes to education. Ivy league colleges are better than other colleges when it comes to education. Ivy league colleges are better than other colleges when it comes to education.
raw_corrections: Ivy league colleges are on par with any reputable state school. Ivy league colleges are on par with any reputable state school. Ivy league colleges are on par with any reputable state school. Ivy league colleges are on par with any reputable state school. Ivy league colleges are on par with any reputable state school.