<p>brown has been an incredible school for nearly 250 years. </p>
<p>u.s. news has been around for a fraction of that time and has less credibility each year</p>
<p>Well if you want to nitpick, Brown (along with just about every other American university) has only been incredible for about 50-60 years, thanks to the exodus of Europe's best minds fleeing WWII and coming to America, the influx of massive government funds into US higher education with the GI Bill and Sputnik, and the home-field advantage brought about by speaking English as it became the lingua franca of academia...</p>
<p>;)</p>
<p>US News Rankings aren't that important, nor accurate (Berkeley at 21?). Personally, I don't even care what they rank the schools. Brown is a member of the Ivy League and a good school.</p>
<p>I think Berkeley at 21 as an UNDERGRAD institution is pretty accurate.</p>
<p>Not really. In every other ranking, it's given 3 at lowest. It's the number one public, but number 21 in the US? Doubt it.</p>
<h1>3 for what? As a graduate school its top 6, but its not as strong for undergrad. Its far too big to be ranked higher for undergrad. Make it 6,000 undergrads with the same endowment, spending, faculty ratio, etc than its easily a top 10 school. As is, its not. 21 seems about right.</h1>
<p>We had a transfer from Berkeley last year, he didn't like it.</p>
<p>Berkeley at 21 is more than fair for undergrad. What slipper said is right, its size, endowment, faculty ratio all are detriments. The very fact that its a state school makes it have a weaker student body</p>
<p>this is so ridiculous. i'm transferring from northwestern and even though its ranked higher, guess what, i'd do it again. </p>
<p>additionally, everyone from home, nyc, who i've told that i'm going to brown, the basic response, is "wow, northwestern was great, but brown is really great"</p>
<p>It's too bad the National Research Council rankings aren't used as the gold standard, rather than the profit-driven USNWR. </p>
<p>In academic circles, NRC is well regarded as the most accurate depiction. Unfortunately, it only comes out once a decade or so.</p>
<p>^Applejack, do you have a link to their last rankings? I'd like to see it.</p>
<p>I just realized they only focus on graduate programs, but here it is:</p>
<p>United</a> States National Research Council rankings - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia</p>
<p>If that's the study I think it is, it focuses quite a bit on quantity and money and hurts smaller programs. Although I wouldn't be surprised to see Brown skyrocket in the next poll because some similar data I was looking at recently saw Brown increase grant money/funds in the sciences 150% from 2003 to 2005. It was one of the Wikipedia linked ranking systems that looks primarily at endowment and research grants.</p>
<p>Still, 25 exceeds my expectation of Brown on that list.</p>
<p>You guys are all so full of it. The US News and World Rankings may have flaws but they provide priceless information for uninformed students. Moreover, for students like many of yourselves who "perceive" the strength of a school largely through word of mouth, US News and World Report should offer the best and most scientific way to understand how the colleges add up. Look, all they did was add facts together and create a ranking. If you don't like it, look at the facts induvidually. What you will find is that Brown does deserve its stop, inflated ivy-league assumptions aside. And by the way, its abhorant out entitled Brownies feel when it comes to being ranked above schools like Northwestern. If Brown was really a better school, it would have done better. Maybe its better for some people but NC state is better for some people. Over all, the only way to measure a school is something like what US News has done and frankly, Brown didn't add up. deal with it the way Northwestern kids had to deal with the fact that despite the excellent performance of their school it still wasn't good enough. </p>
<p>And by the way, word of mouth or rather, "reputation," has a lot more to do with location; for instance in New England Brown is renowned, outside not so much...also that's why its acceptance is lower - not because its a better or even more desirable school. More people in New England - more people who know its name - more will apply.</p>
<p>JCT-- if you've gone to college and taken a single course in a social science, God help us all for what the Bachelor's degree has become.</p>
<p>USNWR can be a useful starting point for uninformed students, but to say it's good enough that it actually does measure the overall quality of the institution ignores flaws so big a really crappy freshman social science class would prepare you to realize that USNWR is hardly accurate.</p>
<p>JCT30 - I have no dog in the fight about Brown at all, and agree that USNWR has some value, but remember that USNWR is a for profit magazine. </p>
<p>Just like Maxim and People and all the others that make lists so eager consumers will buy their products to see if their town, hospital, or favorite celebrity made the list, so too does USNWR. </p>
<p>That's why they frequently change their criteria. Colleges don't change very quickly, but if there's no shift between one year and the next, sales go down.</p>
<p>Be careful what you deem "scientific". It is a very subjective decision to decide which factors to weight different - not at all scientific.</p>
<p>The USNWR rankings provide a good starting point for many students who are considering college because they provide a generalized understanding of where reputations lie. However, the rankings fail to help students understand just how their undergraduate experience will be and do not give reasonable data about the quality of the undergraduate educations the schools they rank offer. They used to do a separate ranking on undergraduate teaching quality and Brown was at the top with Dartmouth year after year; they stopped this ranking around 1996. Much of what the current rankings measure has to do with the financial health of these institutions - a contest Brown will never win. But Brown pours most of its resources into undergraduate education - this is what should matter to those of you doing research about college...grad school is a different story. I loved Brown for my undergraduate education; I did not consider it for graduate school. Why? Because it's not their forte...at Brown, the undergrads matter. </p>
<p>Students vote with their feet. Read this study by Chris Avery and Caroline Hoxby (two of my favorite profs from grad school!!)...it gives you an idea of what students' preferences are, if given the choice to decide between elite schools to attend. While HYPS top Brown here, too, the school is clearly revered more than others that currently outrank it in USNWR. </p>
<p><a href="http://knowledge.wharton.upenn.edu/papers/1287.pdf%5B/url%5D">http://knowledge.wharton.upenn.edu/papers/1287.pdf</a> </p>
<p>USNWR created these rankings to sell magazines because their normal circulation is sad...they are not experts on students or education.</p>
<p>AdOfficer nails it.</p>
<p>The problem, JCT and others, is that much of the criteria used in the USNWR rankings has nothing to do with the quality of the undergraduate education. For instance, alumni giving rate. That doesn't effect my professors, my course selection, my sports team that I love, etc. So no, it doesn't provide invaluable information.</p>