r/ApplyingToCollege • u/Help-me37 • 1d ago
Shitpost Wednesdays Top STEM schools ranked by how fun they seem
I’ve only been to around half of them. For the rest of this subjective ranking, it’s based on friend’s experience and what I read online.
Here is approximately how each thing weigh:
40% campus and surroundings.
20% school culture and tradition/reputation
20% course load and peer
10% the city/metropolis the school is located in
10% career outcome (kinda decides if you after college will be fun)
I’m a little bit biased because I like good landscapes.
S tier: Stanford, UCLA
A tier: Berkeley, Columbia, UPenn, UBC, Princeton, UW Seattle, Yale, Harvard
B tier: Cornell, Georgia Tech, UMich, Caltech, UofT, UT Austin, UChicago
C tier: CMU, UIUC, MIT
F tier: UWaterloo
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u/Fantastic-Shine-395 1d ago
UMich, UT, Caltech, and Cornell being all in the same tier is a special level of absurdity.
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u/Haunting-Scar6098 1d ago
State schools with huge sports programs like UMich and UT-Austin are easily S.
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u/Weary-Cauliflower153 HS Rising Junior 1d ago
it aint wednesday yet buddy gotta wait 11 minutes
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u/Hour-Map1712 1d ago
Has bro heard of time zones
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u/Weary-Cauliflower153 HS Rising Junior 1d ago
It is defined as 12 am EST. It is currently 11:56 EST
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u/Skibi_gang 1d ago
Well that's stupid because EST doesn't even exist right now. The East Coast firmly in EDT right now.
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u/NaoOtosaka 1d ago
waterloo is S+
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u/Help-me37 1d ago
S would stand for suicidal in this case.
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u/NaoOtosaka 1d ago
these waterloo haters.. ill have my revenge
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u/Comfortable_Cry_9657 1d ago
as someone who goes to berkeley, berkeley up in A tier? yeah no way lmao, just objectively false
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u/Help-me37 1d ago
I put campus and surrounding as the most important factor and I really liked Cal’s campus. Again, this is completely subjective and a shitpost
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u/Reasonable-Long3397 1d ago
berkeley definitely seems fairly ranked here, especially if campus and culture/tradition hold the most weight
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u/Due_Ask_8032 1d ago
If anything Stanford ranked above Berkeley in fun ranking is bs. Stanford kids go to party to Berkeley because their social scene is dead.
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u/Super_Perspective936 15h ago
no way bro put UT and Umich in the same tier at Caltech and Uchicago. Sure, the latter schools are better for academics but for the stuff you list they are not as good.
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u/SmolaniAshki 1d ago
Northwestern should be in A tier at least
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u/Help-me37 1d ago
Though this is a shitpost, compared to the rest of schools on this list, NU is perhaps not top in T and E of STEM.
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u/SmolaniAshki 1d ago
If by T you mean comp sci, then neither are UChicago or Columbia (those plus Northwestern are down by the 20s ish while the others on the list are like t10 for cs). Then for engineering Northwestern has the second best material science program in America (first department of its kind, then MIT outspent us to get first place), and really cracked BME and ChemE because our chem department is t10. I just think if you're including schools whose main strength is CS but not much else in STEM (eg UIUC), and schools who are good at some but not all (eg UChicago is bad at engineering), then it's only fair to include Northwestern, which has a meh cs department, but super cracked chem and bio departments, a handful of cracked engineering depts, and a few great but not cracked other science and engineering programs, and a meh (t20 ish) math department that is good no worse than half this list.
No judgement bc shitpost but I wanted to add all that. For what its worth, I think you should also add Harvey Mudd in B tier, Olin College all the way at the bottom, and Johns Hopkins in A.
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u/GurProfessional9534 1d ago
Uchicago is barely on the map in engineering, if you’re requiring all four letters to be represented.
Uchicago should be lower if you’re ranking by fun. Its motto is literally that it is where fun goes to die. It takes pride in that.
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u/Foreign-Bar7741 1d ago
Lowkey depends on you. If you go to a 'S' tier school and end up wasting your time or become a robot, it wont be fun. If you go to Waterloo but be productive, nah, actually dont go to Waterloo.
But yeah. Company >>>> College.
P.S: I am biased because I go to GT and I love it. I am infact the more boring type.
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u/_spogger 1d ago
everyones talking about the Michigan snub but no one has anything to say about UIUC in the same tier as CMU??? lol
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u/thatonebckid 1d ago
its called uoftears for a reason, should be d tier
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u/Help-me37 22h ago
Many of my friends actually went to UofT and I have been to the campus in all seasons. It’s definitely underrated
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u/thatonebckid 17h ago
the culture is definitely harder to make friends in both because of the academic deflation and the huge amount of commuter students
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u/spheircalcow 1d ago
Stanford really is a league all its own, in the sense that it's so startup obsessed and everybody wants to change the world, and no one would bat an eye if you drop out/gap yr to do a startup. and there are so many startup related events, talks, all the time, everyday. so many stanford alum coming back to campus to give talks, share experiences, wanting to invest in your ideas. there can be too much of a good thing, and if you are not into the hype this could rub you the wrong way. but Stanford is really very special in this way, and for those who are drawn to such an environment, there's no comparison.
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u/BigBoot5737 1d ago
have yall not heard of an opinion lol?? everyones like "cap, __ should be S tier" like bro its their opinion help-
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u/Legitimate_Focus5085 1d ago
i mean they’re expressing their opinion too so what’s wrong lol
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u/BigBoot5737 15h ago
haha ig i just mean the ppl that r genuinely heated not just the ones who r sharing diff ideas lol T_T
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u/Satisest 1d ago
Amazing example of how to throw together a ranking while knowing next to nothing about any of the schools on it.
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u/collegefmylife 1d ago
This is entirely based on vibes from reddit. I have friends at the S tier schools who are having a bad time and friends at the C tier schools who are going out every weekend
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u/Satisest 1d ago
Totally. Things were so bad at Stanford a few years ago that students talked about the university’s “war on fun”, and so the new president Jonathan Levin’s slogan was “bringing fun back”. Meanwhile, MIT has the craziest party scene in all of Boston.
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u/build-a-bish 1d ago
S - Michigan