Posted by Trentonjoe on 3/13/2014 12:54:00 PM (view original):
Posted by ettaexpress on 3/13/2014 12:22:00 PM (view original):
Posted by scaturo on 3/13/2014 9:40:00 AM (view original):
Princeton sued Trenton State College a couple years back when TSC wanted to change their name to The College of NJ. Apparently, that was Princeton's name like 300 years ago for an hour and a half. Princeton lost, or settled or something....
That was a great branding move by TCNJ. Not only does it sound a helluva lot better than Trenton State, it kind of sounds like a private school.
Plus their baseball uniforms look just like the Yankees, only with an NJ rather than NY.
I think they just wanted to ditch the Trenton aspect. They have transitioned into the best small public school in NJ. The running joke around here is TCNJ is the Princeton of Mercer County, if you don't count Princeton.
I don't know if wanting to sound like it's a private school was it's goal tough. There's no perceived advantage to that in NJ. The pecking order of academic prestige around here is:
Princeton
Rutgers College
TCNJ
Seton Hall
Other Rutgers New Brunswick Colleges
Everyone else (and theres about 30)
Even out of state, other than the local Ivy's (and Johns Hopkins) there isn't a private college within 250 miles of NJ with a better academic rep than Rutgers or TCNJ.
that last part is a bit of a stretch... there are quite a few private schools in a 250-mile radius of NJ with good academic reps. All depends on what you're looking for, which programs, etc.
But Swarthmore outside Philly is a top-10 liberal arts school, there are lots of small schools near Philly, in DC, etc that have great academic reputations.
A lot of it is just local rep, too-- I live in Virginia and would put a bunch of our local private schools ahead of those two. (And UR is 200-ish miles from Jersey, has a good reputation, and draws tons of Jersey kids, too).