General Discussion
In reply to the discussion: This message was self-deleted by its author [View all]regnaD kciN
(27,639 posts)First off, the "Ivy League" isn't some vague concept of top-level schools. It's a specific athletic conference, not unlike the SEC or Pac-12, with very distinct membership: "Brown, Columbia, Cornell, Dartmouth, Harvard, Princeton, University of Pennsylvania, and Yale." You're either a member of the league or you're not. You're no more "considered to be virtually Ivy League" than you can be "a little bit pregnant."
Second, although BU isn't exactly an academic doormat, it's just a large middling institution in the middle of a hotbed of academic excellence, waaaaaay off the top, even among schools in the Boston area. You've got Harvard/Radcliffe, Tufts, Brandeis, and M.I.T. Then you've got Boston College, then B.U., then Northeastern. In the pecking order of schools in that immediate area, B.U. is pretty far down, more a "safety school" for those who can't get into any of the schools above it than anything else.