<p>
<p>Pretty empirical and reliable, but doesn't mean much for undergrad.
</p>
<p>Columbia is "tied" for "#1 in research" along with Harvard, MIT, Stanford, and Penn. They're listed alphabetically within the top group (on page 8).</p>
<p>
[quote]
And Duke needs to get out of the top 10. It does not belong.
[/quote]
</p>
<p>Why??</p>
<p>Don't tell me that it's because of 'high' acceptance rate, lacrosse scandal, or simply the fact that it isn't an Ivy.. to be fair.. Duke has had a higher acceptance rate than Penn, Brown, Dartmouth, or Columbia for many years.. and it has still stayed around the same. (Always ranked above Brown, Dartmouth, and Columbia!!!).</p>
<p>Heck, I think U Chicago has a higher acceptance rate than every college in the top 20, and it was ranked #9.</p>
<p>
Actually, TWICE. 2005 and 2006. And they tied in 2002 and 2003:</p>
<p> [quote=yanarchy] The only thing that keeps Penn in the top 10 is Wharton. All other schools (within Penn) are pretty much bs.
First, under the very specific statistical and more general "peer assessment" criteria upon which US News bases its ranking, it would be impossible for Wharton, alone, to keep Penn in the top 10.</p>
<p>Second, Penn's other schools are far from "pretty much bs". Anyone who knows anything about their admissions stats, the quality of their students, the true academic reputations and rankings of these schools and their various departments, and the resources and campus experience available to ALL Penn undergrads, knows that Penn's other undergrad schools very much contriubte to and are part of Penn's overall reputation for undergraduate education. Not to mention Penn's grad and professional schools that are also highly regarded (e.g., Medicine #3 in the country, Law #6 in the country, etc.).</p>
<p>Sweeping generalizations that have no basis in fact contribute nothing to the dicscussion.</p>
<p>The problem main problem with attempting to come up with a top 10 list is that more than 10 universities can make a legitimate claim at top 10 honors It's not like there is a clear 10 or even 12 universities that are clearly better than all other universities. There are over 15 such universities. We all know Harvard, MIT, Princeton, Stanford and Yale are top 10 universities. That's universally accepted. But what other 5 universities make the top 10? </p>
<p>Brown University
California Institute of Technology
Columbia University
Cornell University
Dartmouth College
Duke University
Johns Hopkins University
Northwestern University
University of Chicago
University of Pennsylvania</p>
<p>I am leaving Cal and Michigan out of this discussion for simplicity's sake, but there is a very significant contigent (most notably the entire academic and corporate worlds) out there who would throw those two schools in the list of contenders. </p>
<p>So, which 5 of the 10 elite private universities listed above do you suggest should be left out of the top 10? No matter what you say, no matter how much data you may have to support your biased opinion, you will automatically turn a majority of learned individuals against you the moment you attempt to slash even one school from that list. </p>
<p>The truth of the matter is that besides H,M,P,S&Y, there is not such thing as a "top 10" university. Top 20, perhaps, but not top 10.</p>
<p>alexandre,
I agree that there are many schools that could make strong claims to Top 10 or Top 15 rankings. However, your list of prestige-heavy institutions is just too limited geographically and not reflective of the broad distribution of great schools out around the country. You predictably included all of the Ivy schools and top Northeastern colleges, but you neglected some pretty highly regarded universities in other regions of the country. </p>
<p>SOUTH & SOUTHWEST
Rice
Emory
Vanderbilt
U Virginia
U North Carolina
Wake Forest
William & Mary</p>
<p>MIDWEST
Wash U
Notre Dame
Carnegie Mellon</p>
<p>WEST
UCLA
USC</p>
<p>NORTHEAST
Tufts</p>
<p>MID-ATLANTIC
Georgetown</p>
<p>ALL of these colleges can and do compete effectively for top students around the country and most have as strong a claim to top-ranked status as any of the ten historical powers you listed. I encourage you to broaden your perspective beyond the establishment schools as there is just so much else out there that merits the consideration of top students.</p>
<p>Hawkette, I totally agree that the schools you list are amazing. I would probably add UIUC and Wisconsin in the Midwest, UT-Austin in the South, UDub in the NW and Boston College in the NE. I am not sure many of them can make a claim at being top 10 universities. My point was about the constant disagreement about what constitutes a top 10 university.</p>
<p>I'm pretty sure Brown University or Dartmouth College don't meet the criteria for top 10. In fact, I personally wouldn't include them even in my top 30 list, because of their relative weakness in research (compared to research powerhouses like Columbia or Cornell for example) and their LAC-like profile.</p>
<p>any reason why NU/Dartmouth have PA of 4.3 and Duke has 4.4? Why are they so low?????</p>
<p>alexandre,
I thought about those schools you mention and a few others, but couldn't quite get there as I don't think any make a strong enough claim to Top 10 or even Top 15 status. </p>
<p>Even a few on my list (Wake, W&M, CMU) are probably stretches. But the others are very legitimate, many increasingly win in competition with historical powers, and all are places that many top high school students are choosing as their FIRST college choice. </p>
<p>I certainly think that Rice and Wash U could make strong claims to Top 10 status. I also believe that the argument for most of the other colleges is at least as strong as several of the ones you mention (eg, Brown, Cornell, Johns Hopkins, Northwestern).</p>
<p>So, is this legit or not? I'm hoping it isn't - i really wanted Georgetown to make the top 20!</p>
<p>To me there are 7 'locks' in the top 10:</p>
<p>Harvard
Princeton
Yale
Stanford
MIT
CalTech
Columbia</p>
<hr>
<p>Then you have many many many schools that could argue for those other 3 spots:
The other 4 Ivies, Rice, WUSTL, Northwestern, UChicago, Johns Hopkins, Duke, UCB, UM, Georgetown, Notre Dame, and Virginia to name some.</p>
<p>I personally would put Penn, Duke, Northwestern, UChicago, and Rice as the next 5. But that is my own highly subjective list.</p>
<p>hawkette, I think you've probably dealt this to death already, but I'm interested in your views with regards to bruno's comments - would you exclude Brown and Dartmouth from National University top-flight status taking into account their relative weakness in research? If so, perhaps US News should take into account research productivity.</p>
<p>I'm not knocking any particular college, but Bruno has a point that research ought not be undervalued in a consideration of what makes a great university. There's an aspect of making a contribution to knowledge and to society through research findings, and the pride in one's university that comes with that. There's the trickle down effect of impact on curriculum and being not only current, but on the cutting edge of developments in a given field. And there are opportunities for research made available to undergrads that greatly enhance the experience for those that pursue and win them.</p>
<p>^ Would you still say that if it doesn't benefit Cornell?</p>
<p>I would advocate that there should be some sort of a "percentage of research positions available to undergrads" criteria included in US News.</p>
<p>It's a bit tough to rank universities based on "cutting-edge" research though - very often, even the brilliant students who have the good fortune and ability to do research with the star faculty form a tiny minority in the university. Nuances like these are lost in broad rankings like the US News and that is inevitable.</p>
<p>I think for overall Top 10 undergraduate, US News aside:</p>
<ol>
<li>Harvard</li>
<li>Yale</li>
<li>Princeton</li>
<li>Stanford</li>
<li>MIT/(Caltech- it's REALLY small)</li>
<li>Columbia</li>
<li>Penn</li>
<li>Dartmouth</li>
<li>Duke</li>
<li>Cornell</li>
</ol>
<p>Stanford and MIT/Caltech can be interchanged easily and it's rather hard after Dartmouth for spots # 9 & 10. But overall I think 1-8 on this list is almost Unviersally agreed upon to be THE best colleges in the UNited States.</p>
<p>DSC is on the money.</p>
<p>5 Schools That Are Universally Accepted as The Big 5: HYPSM
2 Schools That Are Universally Accepted as Top 10: Columbia & Caltech (varying placement)</p>
<p>And the three remaining spots can be handed out to any of the following:
-Dartmouth, Brown, Penn, Duke, UChicago, NWern, Hopkins, Rice</p>
<p>D.T.,
Re your question on Brown and Dartmouth and the appropriateness of including them in a listing of top National Universities, my answer is unequivocally YES. The whole issue of research is way overrated at the undergraduate level and furthermore, I suspect that the measurement most strongly reflects research work in the hard sciences. IMO, it is extremely difficult to parse the difference in the reputation of any university based on the quality of research coming from a humanities department vs that coming from the Life Sciences or from that coming from any number of other fields. Yet this is the impossible task that PA attempts to perform and IMO, greatly undermines the value of the USNWR rankings.</p>
<p>A key, key element of this is that we are talking about undergraduate education. Research reputations are much more commonly formed at the graduate level and much more heavily involve graduate students. The proximity that any undergraduate is going to have to highly regarded academics will differ enormously from college to college and department to department. But what good is the reputation of a top scholar if you, the student, never get access to that person?? If a faculty member is highly accomplished or highly published but never or only modestly available to students, then how does the student benefit from that?? </p>
<p>For those who are concerned about postgraduate placement, do you ever think that Wall Street recruiters mark down the students coming from Dartmouth or Brown because their schools have lower comparative PAs and reputations among academics? Not a chance in the world. Or do you think that graduate schools (take your pick of med, law and business) mark down Dartmouth and Brown students because their schools have lower comparative PAs? Looked at in these terms, one easily sees the foolishness of those promoting PAs as the true measure of the academic quality of an undergraduate experience. </p>
<p>IMO, the single biggest factors in the undergraduate experience are the quality of your classmates, the size of the classroom in which you will learn, the quality and nature of the instruction that you will receive in that classroom and the ability and willingness of that institution to commit resources to assist undergraduate education. On those measures, Brown and Dartmouth are both terrific colleges and certainly on par with any of the other elites not named HYPSM.</p>
<p>DSC,
I agree with most of your locks, but does a Caltech with a student population of less than 1000 and a near complete focus on technical fields deserve a ranking among National Universities. No knock on Caltech, but I have never really felt like it (and maybe even MIT for similar reasons) belongs in the same ranking list as HYPS. </p>
<p>truazn,
Do you realize that 8 of your Top 10 are in the Northeast and include 7 of the Ivies? While excellent academic colleges, those non-HYPS schools are far from universally agreed upon as the top schools. You really need to get out of the Northeast, stop reading the NYT, and take off those blinders. There are a lot of great colleges all over the country.</p>
<p>The issue of research is an interesting one, and one's attitude towards the value of research depends on what one is seeking. In the abstract, the research institute aspect of universities produces knowledge that is useful in many facets of the human experience. It improves lives, often in material ways. In THAT sense, one can argue that great universities must be great research institutions.</p>
<p>Having said that, my experience teaching at large, research-oriented institutions is that they tend to reduce the value of undergraduate education. I can tell you from experience that the faculty in my department spend almost no time talking about the best way to educate undergrads or, for that matter, what undergrads should learn and be able to do upon graduation. We are focused on our "work," which most of us define as obtaining research grants, managing employees under those grants, and publishing our findings. I'm not saying it's this way at all research-oriented institutions, but I can say that it was this way at the only other university at which I was a faculty member.</p>
<p>Personally, when working with my own children to find suitable colleges, large, research-oriented schools generally made our "don't apply" list for undergrad. Grad school is a different issue. </p>
<p>I'm not disagreeing that research is important. To do that would mimimize the importance of my own research, wouldn't it? ;-) I'm simply saying that, when evaluating "top" schools, be sure to give some thought to whom they are best for, and who should avoid them.</p>
<p>(I didn't address the issue of whether a school like the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art actually produces people who improve our quality of life more than engineers graduating from MIT. But I often wonder if RADA isn't really more important to us.)</p>