The Ivy League, HBCUs & College comparisons.

<aside> 🧮 The stats show that you are 60 times more likely to be a CEO in the US if you went to any Ivy League school. Compared to other prestigious schools, you’re ~5 times more likely.

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It’s a sport league, purely.

The Ivy League is the first 8 US unis to be created. They made a sports league to play each other. That’s it… but purely the definition, but it doesnt stop there..
A uni that is first to educate people will have more important things associated with it, hence will be more prestigious than a newer uni.
So the Ivy League was and is like the English football Premier League but instead it’s the most intelligent, powerful and well-connected people in the world.

They are all fantastic schools and, by virtue of at least the academic history and alumni of the school, you are pretty guaranteed to be successful. I also am not saying that not going to an Ivy school will mean you won't be successful.

These are: Columbia, Yale, Penn, Princeton, Harvard, Brown, Dartmouth & Cornell.
- General strengths of Ivy League schoold: Clout, Everyone who attends who super smart or sliding scale of very rich or super successful - everyone is a mix of any of those. Finding a six-figure ($) job will be easier than for a graduate of any other college in America. Nice campuses.

THE IVY LEAGUES, DIRECTLY COMPARED

SCHOOL	SIZE	STRENGTHS	CONS	FAMOUS ALUMS & PROFS
Brown	Small	prestigious for writing, next to RISD (has a joint program). Nice campus.	In a sleepy, pretty irrelevant city.	Emma Watson, founder of AirBnb
Columbia	Medium	Overall world’s best university. Most compact campus of any US college, easy to get from A-B. Best professional schools in the world. Ranked #1 for food in the US by 2 rankings. In NYC, most powerful & important city on earth - best proximity to incredible things and people. Has a 24-hr dining hall where French Toast is served daily, haha - seriously though, the 24-hr dining is a massive plus. Very pretty campus.	Academically hard. Some ugly architecture. Some people might like more room.	Obama, Warren Buffet, Mike Bloomberg, Founders of KKR, Apollo & Ares Mgmt, all the biggest and ebst Private Equity firms globally. CEO Carlyle Group, biggest PE firm. #2 for Noble prize winners.

Profs: NASA astronaut Mike Mass, Hilary Clinton, Zohran Mamdani’s Dad | | Cornell | Super Large | Large pool of people to pick from, for clubs, for dating, for vibes. | In a sleepy, pretty irrelevant city - no-one is going to Ithaca for anything | - | | Dartmouth | Small/Medium | Good professional (grad) schools, like business. | It’s in New Hampshire, kind of in the middle of nowhere. | Open AI CTO | | Harvard | Medium/Large | Arguably wor’s best uni. Relatively most popular. Not super hard to graduate from. Campus is spread out. Top global professional schools | Campus is very spread out, need to take college transit to get around. | Obama, Sheryl Sandberg (MBA), lots of top finance people

#1 for Nobel Prize winners | | **Penn** | Large | Great professional schools, esp. business and medicine. Strong successful alum network for a change of careers. | | Lots of top finance bros. | | Princeton | Medium | Undergraduate focused (90% of student population is undergrads) | No professional schools - uni has less world power than Penn, H, C - their world impact is lesser, though not less instrisically excellent. Secluded/suburban, nearest place outside of campus to chop life is NY. | Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos, Michelle Obama, Richard Feynman | | Yale | Medium | Campus emulates Oxford. popular. Top professional schools | It’s in New Haven, CT. | Lots of top people in politics, Alibaba Founder & CEO |

MIT vs Stanford

one is just engineers, other is everyone. Think about what you want to be connected to in your long career. East coast vs west coast. Purely tech vs a mix of tech and humanities. Both great schools for tech

Harvard vs Yale

One is in a cool city (Harvard), one is not. Harvard has better known professional schools in the social world, but not the professional. Yale’s professional schools are very strong.

Columbia vs Stanford

New York is the better city for professional, social, and creative reasons. Stanford is a slightly higher proportion of STEM students. Stanford is more known for start-ups and tech. Columbia is known for start-ups, as well as politics and law and media. BOTH are exceptional for both those fields - exceptional tech commmunity at Columbia, exceptional law and media community @ Stanford.

Columbia vs MIT

I got an offer for both.

Columbia is the best in the world for finance, and everything else. MIT is engineering & tech prowess but has less prowess in other things. IT doesn’t have some professional schools like Law and Medicine. Columbia business > MIT business. MIT also doesn’t have the Quant major - Operations Research/Financial Engineering. Both very hard to graduate from, especially for engineering.
I can meet current & future leading politicians and future everything elses at Columbia, compared to just overwhelmingly tech people at MIT. Means my network will be richer and my life will be more interested as a reuslt of knowing people who do everything. When I want to pivot role or try new things, my Columbia network will be better than the MIT one. MIT does have non-STEM people but it’s a tiny miniority.