<p>Not much change but more details.</p>
<p>ARWU</a> 2009</p>
<p>Interesting to compare to the QS World University Rankings 2009.</p>
<p>[THE</a> - QS World University Rankings 2009 - top universities | Top Universities](<a href=“http://www.topuniversities.com/university-rankings/world-university-rankings/2009/results]THE”>http://www.topuniversities.com/university-rankings/world-university-rankings/2009/results)</p>
<p>both of these ranks reinforce my sentiment that university rankings by USA domestic agencies underrate our great public universities due to the fact that they include “vanity factors” such as selectivity, yield and such.</p>
<p>It worries me though that with all the “woe is me” stories we are hearing about state U budget cuts, these great public universities may start sliding down, and that will be a real crime.</p>
<p>It’s kind of interesting (to me anyway) that the first 3 publics on the list are UCB, UCLA, and UCSD - fwiw.</p>
<p>While you can question the methodology’s relevance, it is at least better at what it tries to do than the QS rankings.</p>
<p>EDIT: The ARWU Subject categories are new and worth a look.</p>
<p>
More correctly, the first three publics on the list are Cambridge, Berkeley, and Oxford.</p>
<p>^^ Yes - I should have said ‘USA publics’. Thanks for the correction.</p>
<p>The ARWU ranking is really about the university’s strength as a research university (see their methodology: lt’s all about faculty achievement, their awards, reputation, citation, publication, and so on). In my mind, this is not the whole story for the undergraduate education by any means.</p>
<p>On the other hand, the QS ranking does have other components such as employer review and student faculty ratio, in addition to faculty citation. For undergraduates, this ranking seems a better guide.</p>
<p>"It’s kind of interesting (to me anyway) that the first 3 publics on the list are UCB, UCLA, and UCSD - fwiw. "</p>
<p>Actually U of Penn (12) and University of Michigan (19) are ahead of UCLA and UCB. I thought it interesting that UCLA was ahead of UCB…</p>
<p>What are SJTU, ARWU, and QS? None of the links above will open for me. :(</p>
<p>Penn is private.</p>
<p>The SJTU rankings have little to nothing to do with those pesky and annoying undergraduate students. Thanks goodness for that! </p>
<p>I mean, considering the quality of a student’s environment and experience is just sooooooooo naive and such a waste of time and energy. Let’s just take their money and get back to our research work. hahahahahahahahahaha</p>
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<p>My statement was regarding the list the OP posted, the ARWU one, U of Penn (a private Ivy - not a public) is just below UCLA and UCSD, and U of Mich is another few spots down. Not that it really matters anyway since all of these colleges are good and their spots easily shuffle depending on the criteria being used to rank them but regardless of the criteria used in various lists these colleges tend to all end up ranked pretty high.</p>
<p>
“Environment” and “experience” are subjective and therefore cannot be ranked.</p>
<p>Yeah oops, I thought about UPenn being private after I posted :)</p>
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<p>Maybe the rankings do underrate public universities, but I would not dismiss selectivity as a “vanity factor”. Chances are, a highly selective school is objectively stronger, academically, than a less selective school. Though it may be more reliable to focus on median student scores and rank, and use the admit rate primarily to assess acceptance chances.</p>
<p>Now you can compare a school like Berkeley with a LAC that has a much lower admit rate, and cite various reasons why Berkeley is academically superior. And those may be good reasons from a certain perspective (more course offerings and research opportunities, world-famous faculty). Nevertheless, the caliber of the students (as reflected in median stats and to some extent the admit rate) is likely to affect the quality of the learning environment, and also indicate the attractiveness of the school to the applicants who presumably have the greatest range of choices. Though it can be deflated by “drive by” applications from students who have no realistic chance of admission.</p>
<p>TK,</p>
<p>On the average, I agree with you. At the same time, at top private schools, they turned this “marketing drive” to a new height to encourage more students to apply with a resulting lower acceptance rate (low selectivity). A lot students are applying to top private schools with a “What the heck” attitude, just like buying a lottery ticket. When Stanford turned to the Common App, their application number jumped significantly: what the heck, not much more additional work to do, let’s buy a $60 dollar lottery ticket, you never know. U Chicago is experiencing the same significant application number jump with the common app and a better marketing drive. </p>
<p>Come to think of it, U Chicago’s rapidly decreasing acceptance rate (and higher selectivity index number) is a case in point. Traditionally, U Chicago, with the “where the fun comes to die” reputation, was not one of those schools to which “good” students apply to with a “what the heck” attitude. For last 5-10 years or so, they have been catching up with its academic peers in recruitment and marketing and mastering the USNWR ranking game (belatedly). The result? Acceptance rate is less than half of what it used to be 10+ years ago! Did the school become twice as good? NO. Did the overall level of students become that much better? NO (though all indications are yes, it indeed go up, but NOT that much as to reflect the acceptance rate being less than half what if used to be). Last year, their acceptance rate was something like 27%. This year, early indications are, it’s going to be in the low 20’s and may be even lower. It is projected within a few years to be in the vicinity of 15% to be on par with its academic peers. This is not a result of student quality being projected to be that much higher. It’s a result of a savvy marketing drive and a (belated) willingness to game the system just like the rest of its peers.</p>
<p>By now, lowering the acceptance rate and increasing the yield (both of which feed into the USNWR ranking) have become an important mission for admission directors in many tippy top private universities. This is the game public universities are not playing well (but catching up). Hence their dispproportionately “underrated” ranking positions by most domestic ranking agencies.</p>
<p>S1 goes to a private school, and S2 will end up in one of them also. But, still, I think the nation’s great public universities deserve a lot more respect than the “biased” domestic ranking agencies give credit to. International ranking agencies seem to be more fair minded in this regard.</p>
<p>Go Cal Bears! HYPSM faculty at an in-state tuition price!</p>
<p>Nice to see the subject rankings.</p>
<p>hy,
USNWR weights the Acceptance Rate at only 1.5% of the total score. To understand just how small a role this plays in the overall USNWR selectivity ranking, consider that the Top 10% student metric is weighted 4x more heavily. </p>
<p>The big state universities are absolutely, positively playing this game (favoring Top 10% rankings vs a more holistic admissions process). And given the way that the USNWR rankings are created, this emphasis on Top 10% students almost certainly overstates the selectivity of the publics. </p>
<p>The Yield Rate is not considered in the calculation of the USNWR ranking.</p>
<p>I think the issue with public universities is that they are a much bigger tent. They have a slice of students who are in every way the equals of those at HYPS, but they also educate a lot of student who, while strong, would not be candidates for the most selective private universities. From a moral/policy standpoint, it’s hard to disagree with what the publics do, especially given their role, but the USNWR system marks them down severely for that. </p>
<p>I suppose it’s true that, although Berkeley is easily comparable to Harvard in many crucial areas, like faculty strength, the mere fact that one has been accepted by Berkeley or that one has graduated from Berkeley does not carry the same “oomph” that a Harvard acceptance or degree does. And Harvard is a much wealthier institution, and that translates into some things that actually matter (e.g., residential system). Nevertheless, taken as a whole, Berkeley is a world-class major university, unlike many of the places that USNWR ranks above it. </p>
<p>It’s fair to question whether Joe H.S. Senior really WANTS to attend a world-class major university if he can get more attention, a nicer dorm, and less bureaucracy somewhere else. So the USNWR rankings arguably have a lot of utility for students considering where to attend. But in the end they – and these other ranking systems – are policy arguments about what matters to a particular audience, not God-given quality measures.</p>