<p>Let's have a little fun. Look at the following data for ABC college and XYZ college. Would you consider ABC and XYZ to be of similar quality? Which one do you believe is stronger? Given your answers to the above, which school do you believe is more highly ranked for teaching excellence? Which for research excellence? What would you expect to be the difference in their respective PA scores? </p>
<p>GRADUATION RATES<br>
-% OF STUDENTS EXPECTED TO GRADUATE IN 6 YEARS:
ABC 92% XYZ 92%
-% OF STUDENTS WHO DO GRADUATE IN 6 YEARS:
ABC 96% XYZ 90%
-% OF STUDENTS WHO GRADUATE IN 4 YEARS:
ABC 88% XYZ 85%
FRESHMAN RETENTION RATE<br>
ABC 98% XYZ 97%
GRADUATION & RETENTION RANK:<br>
ABC 3rd XYZ 20th</p>
<p>FACULTY RESOURCES<br>
-% OF CLASSES WITH <20 STUDENTS
ABC 55% XYZ 72%
-% OF CLASSES WITH 50+ STUDENTS
ABC 11% XYZ 4%
FACULTY RESOURCES RANK<br>
ABC 21st XYZ 6th</p>
<p>STUDENT SELECTIVITY<br>
-% ACCEPTANCE RATE<br>
ABC 27% XYZ 38%
-SAT/ACT RANGE (Middle 50%)
ABC 1290-1500, 30-33 XYZ 1320-1530, 28-33
-% OF STUDENTS RANKING IN TOP 10% IN HS CLASS
ABC 84% XYZ 80%</p>
<p>To call a school overrated or underrated, I don't know. To me, it implies that somebody actually knows what is happening in the school. I don't know what is happening in the Notre Dame classroom. When somebody compares Notre Dame favorably to Chicago, I'd like to know what is actually happening in the classroom at Notre Dame. </p>
<p>Somebody mentioned the Gourman rankings of departments. I don't know, maybe those rankings are garbage. What is happening in those departments at Notre Dame and Chicago? Why is Chicago ranked higher in all those individual departments? </p>
<p>Notre Dame is stronger than Chicago in which departments?</p>
<p>Whoa! Slow down. Not everyone has time during business hours to answer questions instantly. Yes, I do want an answer to my question, to follow up on a factual statement, but I'm willing to give the OP time to work, eat, have family time, and look up facts before replying.</p>
<p>nannyogg,
I love your passionate mischaracterizations of my posts. However, such passion does not replace the truth. I'm happy to let others make their own decisions about whether I attacked or derided U Chicago. </p>
<p>My mistake here was to claim that ND might be an equal of U Chicago (this is akin to saying something like Appalachian State is as good as or better than U Michigan in football). Among academics, such a comparison will never be accepted and I stated as much in # 284. I don't expect the opinion of the academics to ever change, but I don't take their intransigence to mean that U Chicago is automatically a better school or that the U Chicago students are better. As I said earlier (# 279), </p>
<p>"My personal feeling is to let the historical powers have theirs, but more importantly it is to let the others rise to an IMO much-deserved, comparable level. I am pretty confident that a more current PA (Personal Assessment) done by employers would go a long way to telling students just how much difference there really is in these institutions (my view: it’s a lot smaller than the current PA numbers would have us believe)."</p>
<p>It never ceases to amaze me how people react when the higher education status quo is challenged by thinking that is not dictated by the academics, but rather by an assessment of student quality according to the objective facts and by a personal assessment of the attractiveness of various institutions to employers.</p>
<p>Isn't the number (and identity) of employers who travel to a campus to do on-campus recruiting a verifiable fact that could serve as a reality check on which colleges are most reputable to employers?</p>
<p>hawkette...
I think you are hanging your hat on Notre Dame's USN&WR SAT range of 1290-1500. I don't think that number is correct.
Notre Dame does not publish a Common Data Set. The College Board website has Notre Dame's range as 1230-1460, Chicago's as 1320-1530. Not anywhere near the same range of student strength.
If the College Board info is just a year old, then they went from 1230-1460 to 1290-1500 in just one year. I have never seen a jump like this in one year. I think the College Board's 1230-1460 is correct.</p>
<p>"It never ceases to amaze me how people react when the higher education status quo is challenged by thinking that is not dictated by the academics, but rather by an assessment of student quality according to the objective facts and by a personal assessment of the attractiveness of various institutions to employers."</p>
<p>I think the objective facts are an eye opener and can lead to further assessments of the schools. They are not the final conclusion.</p>
<p>I would like to see these objective facts match the academics. I see strong data, now I look at the academics. I see strong academics, I look at the objective data.</p>
<p>So Hawkete, you have given us some objective data (and subjective analysis too). Now I would like to see the academic data back up the objective data that you used.</p>
<p>And after reading danas' post, is your objective data correct?</p>
<p>So, even though you obviously have the time to respond, hawkette, you are not going to. Moreover, you would replace one PA with another "opinion" survey, done by employers, who probably know very little about the academics of a school and probably have very info about the vast majority of schools. Then, you assume that anyone who doesn't agree with you must be part of the vast academic conspiracy that is primarily located on the two coasts and spends enormous amounts of time primarily boosting the snooty non-HYP ivies. Finally, in my favorite part, you basically give us your mantra; that the academic quality of a school is really not that important and even if it is, it can be determined by employers and the stats of the student body.</p>
<p>For those who bothered to read the stats above for ABC college and XYZ college, you probably noticed a few things:</p>
<ol>
<li> There were a lot of categories when the schools had great similarities in their numbers.</li>
<li> ABC seems to do a slightly better job of graduating its students while XYZ probably provides a little more high-touch educational experience.</li>
<li> For student quality, ABC has a slight edge with small advantages in ACT scores (although XYZ is slightly stronger on SAT scores), Top 10% students and acceptance rate. There were equal numbers of 1500 scorers on each campus.</li>
</ol>
<p>So, ABC has a slightly stronger student statistical profile, graduates its students at a higher rate (both 6-year and 4-year) and offers modestly lower-touch classroom experience.</p>
<p>ABC = Notre Dame</p>
<p>XYZ = U Chicago</p>
<p>Both are terrific universities (but only one seems to get any respect here and among academics).</p>
<p>midatlmom,
I refer you to my post # 291 which says that both academics and employers should have a say in evaluating the faculty at a college (and I even assigned a higher weight to the academics).</p>
<p>
[quote]
Isn't the number (and identity) of employers who travel to a campus to do on-campus recruiting a verifiable fact that could serve as a reality check on which colleges are most reputable to employers?
[/quote]
</p>
<p>The BIG problem with this, token, is that employers flock to schools which have pre-professional offerings, such as undergrad biz and undergrad engineering. A school without such offerings will automatically be at a competitive disadvantage, no?</p>
<p>btw: Hawkette, you might add another data point to your comparison - % of SAT scorers 700+.</p>
<p>CR/M 700+
Chicago = 62%, 57%
ND = 43%, 57%</p>
<p>Pretty extreme difference in the CR, particularly since Ted O'Neill has no love for standardized testing.</p>
<p>One way that I compare specific colleges of interest to me is to read the course syllabuses for comparable courses. Some colleges don't HAVE courses comparable to some of the courses offered to undergraduates at the most elite colleges. Chicago is very noteworthy for having strong math courses and excellent math teachers, which raises the level of its economics department and all of its hard science departments.</p>
<p>dstark,
I think you raise a good point about the ND data. I downloaded the SAT data directly from USNWR and that is where that number came from. However, I took the ACT data from collegeboard.com. </p>
<p>I just rechecked the SAT data on ND on collegeboard.com and there is a discrepancy between their numbers (1230-1460) and the USNWR numbers (1290-1500). I'm not sure which is right, but it is completely possible that USNWR is reporting ACCEPTED data (which would be a no-no IMO) or that there is a year mismatch in the data or some other explanation. However, the collegeboard data for ACT compares well to U Chicago so one can make their own judgment about the quality of the data and where it is coming from. </p>
<p>If the SAT data is the lower set of numbers, I accept that this weakens the arguments for ND though not critically. My point all along is that the relative strength of these two schools is not that different and certainly no where near the great disparity as indicated by the PA score.</p>
<p>Hawkette, I don't think the possible lower SAT scores makes a difference as far as Notre Dame's education goes, but it does to your analysis.</p>
<p>If I want a good surgeon, I ask doctors and other surgeons for advice. If I want a good lawyer, I ask other lawyers. I know who is good and who isn't in my field. My dad was a barber and he knew who were the good barbers. :)</p>
<p>You have stated that Michigan's PA ranking is too high. You think Notre dame's is too low? Can you at least tell me how Notre Dame's math department compares to Michigan's?</p>
<p>You have stated the quality of a grad school has no bearing on the quality of the undergrad school. I am puzzled by this statement. If I can take grad courses, take courses with grad students, have the same professors as the grad school students, how does that not impact my undergrad education?</p>
<p>A tokenadult stated that a strong math department can lead to other strong departments. I agree. I agree with post #320.</p>
<p>nannyogg,
Your description of ND as a "regional midwest school" exemplifies the lack of understanding and appreciation of what ND is. ND's student body is actually every bit as geographically diverse as U Chicago. collegehelp provided some data in another thread on where students at top schools come from. Here are the top states for the entering students at ND and U Chicago:</p>
<p>ND U Chicago </p>
<p>10% , 15% , IL
8% , 11% , IN
6% , 10% , NY
6% , 7% , CA
7% , 3% , TX
6% , 5% , PA
5% , 3% , MI
5% , 3% , OH
4% , 4% , NJ
3% , 3% , FL
2% , 4% , MA
2% , 3% , MD
2% , 3% , WI
4% , 10% , Int'l</p>
<p>Overall, I calculated that about 33% of the U Chicago student body came from Midwestern states while 37% of ND's student body came from the same states.</p>