Well, for what it's worth, USNA carries pretty much the same weight as those Ivy league schools you were referring to.
I would agree, I'm definitely not disputing the quality of the education. However, for the liberal arts majors, I don't see much of a difference as to where one goes to school. English is the same at Wyoming as it is at Princeton, IMO. You read the same books and have intelligent discussion, and the instructors at both have respectable terminal degrees. Would I compare USNA's engineering programs to WYO for instance? Not even close, but there's a huge difference in learning in an engineering program vs. that of a humanities where the top schools are heads and tails above the rest, which leads to the masters discussion: if someone wanted to major in philosophy or something, chances are they'll need a masters to get a decent job, whereas someone with a BS in mechanical engineering would be fair off without the masters in the civilian world.
Huh? These are the majors at the Academy:
Aerospace Engineering (Aeronautics/Astronautics Tracks)
Electrical Engineering
Computer Engineering
Mechanical Engineering
Naval Architecture and Ocean Engineering
Systems Engineering
Chemistry
Math
Computer Science
Oceanography
Physics
Economics
English
History
Political Science
For what it's worth, it's a science & engineering school. Compare it to a place like MIT or Georgia Tech, where the emphasis is on science and engineering...
I can understand the emphasis, especially considering how technically oriented the Navy is; but compare that to UMaine, even with the largest engineering college in the NE and arguably the school's bread and butter, we still have about 80 majors, not include the honors college, interdisciplinary curriculums, minors, certs, concentrations, etc.
It really highlights the difference of the experience and how subjective it is from person to person. In all honesty, I think it's pretty cool that one person could be militarily engrossed 24/7 at the Academy and get a very prestigious technical degree, and still commission and work and do the same job with guys coming from a liberal arts background at a notable civilian institution. Different strokes for different folks.