2018 US News Best Colleges rankings have been released

College Search & Selection
141

I see Stanford folks are trotting out that dubious Times ranking of Nobel Prizes since 2000.
I’ve noted in the past how it is severely flawed. sballer claimed in the past that it doesn’t matter that it is flawed because they were transparent with their flawed methodology.

First, it only credits a university for Nobel Prizes awarded to faculty members at the specific time of the award, even if the research was done earlier at another institution or university. That institution thats supported the scientist and work gets no credit, which is ridiculous. Second, it does not credit universities for Nobel Prizes awarded to its alumni. Third, it discounts Nobel Prizes awarded to 3 people versus those awarded to only 2 people (which there really is no justification for doing… it’s not like the quality of work is less).

If a researcher did research at institution A as a PhD student, and said research continued at institution B as a postdoc that resulted in a Nobel Prize winning breakthrough, and yet received the award years later when the researcher was at institution C, you think that it is “fair” that only institution C gets credit for that award, but not institution A and B??

Nobel Prizes are not awarded for “lifetime achievement”… they are awarded for specific breakthroughs and scientific discoveries. There is no reason to not credit the institutions that trained the scientist or the institution that supported the award-winning work.

I looked at recent Nobel Prize winners in Physics and noted a number of scientists who did the work at Harvard during graduate school or shortly thereafter, but a 3rd institution where the work wasn’t done would have received “credit” for the award.

This is why most institutions include alumni in their Nobel Prize counts (including Stanford).

In Physics, only 3 Stanford graduates have ever won the Nobel Prize EVER… and 2 of them won it together.
Harvard graduates have won 14 Nobel prizes in Physics, including 5 since 2004… that’s right, Harvard graduates have more Nobel Prizes in Physics in the past 12 years than Stanford’s entire history.

19 Harvard graduates have won Chemistry Nobel Prizes vs. Stanford’s 4.
6 of Harvard alumni Nobel Prizes were awarded since 2001… so more Harvard alumni have won Nobel Prizes in Chemistry just in the past 15 years than all of Stanford’s entire history.

In medicine, 19 Harvard alumni have won Nobel Prizes vs. only 1 (ONE!!) Stanford alumnus.
4 were awarded in the past 15 years… so Harvard alumni have won 4 times more Medicine Nobel Prizes in the past 15 years than Stanford alumni ever.

In economics, 13 Harvard alumni have won Nobel Prizes vs. only 3 Stanford alumni.
8 of them in the past 15 years, nearly 3 times more than Stanford alumni ever.

It sure seems to me that Harvard alumni win far more Nobel Prizes in the past 15 years than Stanford alumni over its entire history.

142

What does this have to do with the quality of teaching or over-all undergraduate experience??

143

@dragonmom3 Absolutely nothing. Then again, what does the USNWR rankings have to do with the quality of undergrad teaching or over-all experience? Nothing! So it’s not like this silly pointless argument is off-topic of this thread.

144

That’s why I confirm things I read on the internet with youtube videos.

I think Berkeley’s position around 21 in the undergraduate-focused US News ranking is at about the right tier. The undergrad classes are just too big, and the people I see coming out of there with undergrad degrees aren’t any different from alumni of other big state flagships. Berkeley’s undergrad reputation is riding the coattails of its graduate schools and research.

145

“That’s not what I heard many stores about Bill and Steve; it seems to me that they were hanging around Xerox for early computer technology and concepts than Stanford.”

Correct. Jobs got the Apple’s mouse/GUI interface from Xerox Parc. But he wasn’t hanging around Xerox in Rochester, NY. He was hanging around Parc (i.e. Palo Alto Research Center). Because Xerox decided to locate its research center in the…wait for it…Stanford Research Park owned/operated by Stanford!! Because that was a good location to allow collaborations between Xerox and Stanford personnel.

Jobs also was in Palo Alto to participate in the Homebrew Computer Club. Which used to meet at…wait for it…Stanford’s accelerator center!!

Stanford didn’t just happen to wind up being located in Silicon Valley. Stanford was a big reason why Silicon Valley located where it did.

146

“Morse took over, crunched the numbers his way, and in the National Universities category Yale surfaced as No. 1. Believing that the result justified the methodology-a philosophy from which the rankings issue has yet to escape-the editors ran with it.”

Like I said before, USNWR is set up to measure Yale-ness.

Although other schools apparently can be more Yale than Yale itself.

147

Here is some trend analysis I found interesting in the USNews Ranking. Some Universities that were missing when they first started ranking like Northeastern are not included in this table. Includes data from 1983-2018

College Name 35 Yr Avg, 10 Yr Avg, 5 Yr Avg
Princeton 1.82 1.200 1.000
Harvard University 1.64 1.500 2.000
Yale University 2.61 3.000 3.000
Chicago 8.94 5.300 3.800
Columbia 8.61 5.000 4.400
Stanford University 4.39 4.700 4.600
MIT 5.66 5.900 6.600
Penn 8.84 6.800 8.000
Duke University 7.06 8.500 8.000
CalTech 7.06 8.400 10.400
Dartmouth College 9.18 10.700 11.000
Johns Hopkins 13.52 12.300 11.000
Northwestern 12.94 12.000 12.000
Brown University 13.63 14.900 14.400
Cornell University 12.84 14.900 15.000
Vanderbilt 18.79 16.300 15.400
WashU 15.87 14.500 16.000
Rice University 15.35 16.900 16.800
Notre Dame 18.67 17.800 17.000
Berkeley 19.09 20.700 20.200
Georgetown 21.50 21.200 20.400
Emory University 19.04 19.800 20.600
UCLA 24.10 23.700 22.800
USC 30.13 23.800 23.000
CMU 22.66 23.300 24.000
Virginia 22.00 24.200 24.200
Wake Forest 27.22 26.400 26.200
Tufts University 27.17 27.900 27.600
Michigan 23.91 28.000 28.200
Chapel Hill 26.00 29.700 30.000
Boston College 35.04 31.600 31.000
NYU 33.52 32.500 32.400
William and Mary 31.46 32.500 32.600
Rochester 33.13 33.900 32.800
Brandeis University 31.91 32.900 33.800
Georgia Tech 37.91 35.300 35.200
Case Western 37.52 38.400 37.200
UC Santa Barbara 43.18 40.000 38.400
UC San Diego 35.78 38.100 40.200
RPI 43.95 42.000 41.000
UC Davis 41.87 40.900 41.600
UC Irvine 42.83 43.100 42.200
Lehigh University 37.22 40.100 43.600
Wisconsin 36.24 42.100 43.800
Urbana-Champaign 39.76 43.700 44.000
Tulane University 44.57 47.900 45.200
University of Florida 49.24 49.700 47.200
Pepperdine 52.50 53.500 51.800
Pennsylvania State 49.45 53.600 52.000
U of Washington 46.05 47.400 52.400
George Washington 52.00 52.600 53.600
UT Austin 47.70 49.900 53.800
Syracuse University 54.05 58.800 60.400
Yeshiva University 49.18 55.000 61.400
Texas A&M 62.82 66.100 70.000
Rutgers 63.88 68.000 70.000

148

the nobel prizes ranking is by faculty… not by alumni. yes you are correct.

I guess it’s only dubious for the Harvard guy:)

149

@pupflier the fact still remains No Stanford… No Silicon Valley… the father of silicon valley was Frederick Terman the dean of engineering at Stanford. and while Shockley was an important figure along with William Hewlett and David Packard… without Stanford Silicon Valley would not exist as it exists today.

150

Silicon Valley is most definitely a hub of technological innovation, and Stanford certainly played a key role in its evolution. But Stanford folks tend to go overboard with the hype… plenty of scientists and engineers throughout the country and world were making rapid advances… Stanford can rightfully claim preeminence in computer science, but without Stanford or Silicon Valley, the rise of modern computer science would still have occurred with very little delay.

151

@northwesty don’t forget the use of the USNWR “logarithmic qualifier” which is essential to measure Yale… ness or Princeton curve fittedness… because when USNWR removes it you get Caltech. oopsie:)

152

@f2000sa, those averages across 8 years have just been updated.

153

“but without Stanford or Silicon Valley, the rise of modern computer science would still have occurred with very little delay.”

Agree that Silicon Valley could have sprung up in several other places – Boston, SoCal, maybe even New Jersey. But there’s no way that NoCal would have even been a contender without Stanford. So no Stanford/no Silicon Valley is accurate.

Also Stanford did do a lot of things that raised the chances of the industry settling in NoCal. It’s not like Stanford got rich by just being lucky (like striking gold/oil under the football stadium). But there was a little bit of luck involved – I believe Shockley had an ailing mother who lived in Palo Alto.

154

Official Rankings of Public Schools:

  1. Cal
  2. Michigan
  3. UCLA
  4. UVA

sorry but its true

155

I had a neighbor named Jef Raskin who said that he was the guy who brought the Xerox Parc GUI to the attention of Jobs, and that Jobs wanted nothing to do with it at first. Raskin was always bitter that Jobs took the credit for the GUI when Jobs had to have it crammed down his throat.

https://web.stanford.edu/dept/SUL/sites/mac/parc.html

The area that eventually became Silicon Valley already had a fair amount of high tech, engineering and aerospace firms before Shockley showed up. In the 1940s, Stanford took that seed and grew it into a massive tree. (Not the Stanford dancing tree.)

And Bill Gates never hung around Stanford. He grew up in Seattle and went to Harvard before dropping out to start Microsoft.

156

The most egregious​ is this (I wish there was an article published bringing this to light):

7.5% of the ranking comes from 85 guidance counselors! If I were a university president I would make sure every fall visit made by my admission officers to the high schools included a big sales pitch and lots of positive stats taylored to impress the GC.

157

@prezbucky I respectfully dissent to some extent:

  1. Harvard, Stanford (showing my generosity)
  2. Princeton, UChicago, Yale, MIT
  3. Columbia, Penn, Cal Tech (agree that Cal tech is an odd ball -- but so much genius must be acknowledged)
  4. Duke, JHU, NW
  5. Dartmouth. Cornell, Brown.
  6. Cal, UCLA, Michigan, UVA
  7. Vanderbilt, Rice, WUST, Georgetown, Emory
158

USNWR calibrate its ranking criteria to ensure HYP are in top five, and UChicago and a bunch of other schools game the system trying to get an advantage.

159

@pupflier Interesting trend analysis in #146. What seemed notable to me:

  1. Surprisingly little variation for most schools over time. Makes you wonder why people pay attention to this.
  2. Few significant upward trends, other than Chicago and Columbia (8 or 9 to 4), and USC (30 to 23). (It's too bad Chicago hasn't gone 25 or 6 to 4. That would have been great.)
  3. Most downward trends are large state schools around five spots down from their historical average, like Michigan, Wisconsin, UT Austin, some others.

Too bad Northeastern is not included (would be interesting to see). I wonder if any school has done the Bizarro Northeastern, which would be a 35-year average below 50 and a 5-year average over, say, 75. Can’t think of any.

160

@Chrchill , you might be biased. You know that Princeton is the # 1 Undergraduate University. When you want to enter graduate school Harvard and Stanford are #1 for certain MBAs Yale will always be #3 and University of Chicago is great and will always be the killer of hopes and trees. The rest are irrelevant;)