Best Ivy League School

If you had to choose an ivy league school based on both academics and the running program, which would it be?

i'd choose: none of the above

if you want to run, go to arkansas, oregon, wisconsin (and to a lesser extent stanford)

if you want to learn, go to MIT.

that said, you can be a good runner anywhere, a good student anywhere and everything in between.

my advice to you- which was passed on to me by a very wise man: find a place, within your budget, that will give you the best education possible. this means that when you leave the campus after 4 years or so - you will be prepared to get a job anywhere in the world, doing virtually anything you want.

the best college should prepare you to dig a ditch as well as write a novel.

and always enjoy your life, that includes college.

Penn- good coach and great academics. Cornell- sort of remote, but still good academics and Rojo is the coach.

Dartmouth- awesome running and academics. Brown and Princeton are good, too. Harvard is the bottom for running.

Cornell. Can't beat the coaching combo of Rojo, JK, and Wejo, plus the academics are great. Stanford and Georgetown, while not Ivies, are also fantastic academic/running combos.

Talk to the aliumni. You won't find many Ivy grads down on their school. Most Yale grads would do it all over again - in fact wish they could.

easy! wrote:

Can't beat the coaching combo of Rojo, JK, and Wejo, plus the academics are great.

The academics may be great (though they are consistently ranked as one of the lowest Ivy), but judging from the Heps Xc results in the past few years - apparently you CAN beat the coaching of Rojo, et al. - and quite easily too.

7th in 04

8th in 03

7th in 02 (1 pt ahead of 8th)

Notice how yale went from last in 02 - to #3 in 03, then #5 lasy year. Does anyone think that dan ireland is one of the greatest coaches around?

You should consider a couple of things when asking this question: 1) What area of study do you want to undertake, as each school has some very strong concentrations that the others do not, for instance, Columbia is very strong pre-med and engineering, while Penn has a great undergraduate Business School. 2) Location of campus, do you like city life or would you rather stay in the suburbs. 3) Coaching personalty - all the coaches in the IVY League are first rate, but all are very different and bring different things to the table. Charlie Powell is quiet and reserved, but very intense and competitive and has had great success with middle distances. Barry Harwick of Dartmouth is low key, but just great with his guys. Willy Wood of Columbia has done a great job in an inner city environment. His athletes run with a great deal of confidence.

As an alternative school with an excellent academic program and a very good coach, look at Duke and Norm Ogilvie

Any place but Dartmouth

Columbia's strength does not lie in engineering.

Cornell is the place for engineering or technical studies in general, at least in the context of the ivy league.

That being said, Michigan has better running than any ivy league school, and FAR better engineering than any ivy except Cornell (which it isn't far behind).

Can't speak for the other schools, but Cornell is awesome. Academics are top notch and the school is constantly expanding. In four years, the place changed dramatically, all for the better. They've put significant money into athletics - a new track about a decade ago, put bleachers in a few years back, added a brand new wrestling complex, and more... Same for academics - a whole bunch of new freshman dorms, expanded the engineering building, etc. Maybe the other Ivies, maybe they are doing the same, but Cornell is really doing a good job overall.

The running sucks in the winter, and some of the fall and spring because it's cold and snowy - lots of workouts indoors. But running in general is great - lots of good trails.

Running in Cambridge sucks during the winter (and isn't great during any of the other seasons, in my opinion), but I'd probably still choose Harvard. Yale and Princeton would also merit consideration. I don't know much about any of their running programs, and probably wouldn't weigh the quality of the running programs very heavily anyway.

I run at Cornell, and I have to say they are the best Ivy League school for academics/running. I know this is a distance site, and therefore you're probably a distance runner and Cornell's XC team isn't the Ivy's best. However, Cornell has won 5 out of the last 6 T&F Heps championships, including 3 straight outdoors. Rankings that state that Cornell is "lower" than the other Ivies are foolish. There's a reason we're the easiest Ivy to get into and the hardest to graduate from. The EDUCATION is the best, if you ask me. I have friends in pre-med programs (I'm pre-med) at all of the other Ivies and I can say that Cornell's is the most demanding. In terms of facilities and coaching, Cornell is one of only three schools with an indoor track facility worthy of hosting Heps and the only one that has 8 lanes. There's a track center so track athletes don't have to lift with athletes from other sports. The outdoor track was renovated about a decade ago and a new one may be in the works. The coaching, at least for sprints/jumps/hurdles, cannot be beat. I have met the other coaches and have seen their teams work out and I must say that Cornell's coaching staff is the best. The track team receives a tremendous amount of support from the community because of its recent success. According to the US Track Coaches Association D1 Power Rankings, Cornell is ranked #22. The next-best Ivy is Princeton at #41. 'Nuff said.

P.S.: RoJo: Slim Jim better drop a 1:46.xx this year!

PENN

No question- Penn.

I thought Duke had a pretty poor program, according to other threads on this board. Is Ogelvie a good coach? Do the distance guys improve while they are there?

It's not technically an Ivy League school, but I'd have to say Stanford. The running *program* is not top 3 but the running environment sure is. Great track facilities and the best climate in the world. If only it were at altitude but you can't have everything.

why is it that, when asked where they went to school, cournell grads reply, "An Ivy League school," and all other Ivy league grads name their school?

Cornell grads aren't the only Ivy grads to do that. I tell people I went to a college in northern New England and leave it at that. I don't really feel like getting into a discussion about the place.

Cornell is always ranked the worst Ivy academically. To make up for it, Cornell uses its students like whipping boys to take out their frustration for being ranked last all the time. They kick the shit out of their students.

There's a reason why they put a net under the bridges around midterms and finals.

KIDS KILL THEMSELVES AT CORNELL.

But yeah, the track team is good.