Academics at the USNWR Top 75---What do the students think?

College Search & Selection
1

<p>College P..row..ler has visited and published materials on many colleges across America. If you have not seen their stuff (books and internet), I urge you to check it out as there is often a lot of insight into the scene at the colleges that they visit, including a lot of information that you won’t pick up in a brochure or an admissions presentation. </p>

<p>In creating their grades, CP visited 273 colleges and collected over 68,000 student reviews. Their cumulative views were analyzed and rankings were created across 20 categories. </p>

<p>One of the most important topics that CP reviewed and graded was ACADEMICS which they defined as: </p>

<p>A high ACADEMICS grade generally indicates that professors are knowledgable, accessible and geniunely interested in their students' welfare. Other determining facors include class size, how well professors communicate, and whether or not classes are engaging.</p>

<p>Based on this criteria, here is how they graded USNWR's Top 75 national universities:</p>

<p>GRADE OF A+</p>

<p>Caltech
Dartmouth
MIT
Princeton
Stanford
U Chicago</p>

<p>GRADE OF A</p>

<p>Brown
Carnegie Mellon
Columbia
Duke
Emory
Harvard
Northwestern
Rice
Tufts
U Penn
U Rochester
Vanderbilt
Yale</p>

<p>GRADE OF A-</p>

<p>Brandeis
Cornell
Georgetown
Georgia Tech
Johns Hopkins
Lehigh
McGill
Notre Dame
Tulane
U Virginia
UC Berkeley
UCLA
USC
W&M
Wash U</p>

<p>GRADE OF B+</p>

<p>Boston College
Case Western
George Washington
NYU
Purdue
Rensselaer
U Illinois
U Maryland
U Miami
U Michigan
U North Carolina
U Pittsburgh
U Texas
UC San Diego
UC Santa Barbara
Virginia Tech
Wake Forest</p>

<p>GRADE OF B</p>

<p>Boston University
BYU
Fordham
Indiana U
Ohio State
Penn State
Rutgers
SMU
Syracuse
U Connecticut
U Delaware
U Florida
U Georgia
U Iowa
U Minnesota
U Washington
U Wisconsin
UC Davis
UC Irvine
UC Riverside
UC Santa Cruz</p>

<p>GRADE OF B-</p>

<p>Clemson
Michigan State
Texas A&M</p>

2

<p>I’m not really sure you can accurately measure this. At my alma mater, the dedication to undergraduate teaching varied wildly from one department to the next. Attempting to come up with a single grade for a department, let alone an entire university, seems a very dubious business to me.</p>

3

<p>Thanks for posting this. My son has been accepted at Tulane and is waiting to hear from several reaches. It’s nice to see that Tulane is listed in the same group as Haverford, Cornell, JHU, Colby, Bates, etc. This will make for less tension in our house from now until April.</p>

4

<p>IB,
I hear you on the difficulty of ranking this and I wish that CP provided more detail on their process, but most of this rings pretty true with impressions that I have read here and elsewhere. </p>

<p>Among the A+ scorers, the only surprise for me was Caltech and that’s because sakky regularly makes very critical comments on the quality of the teaching that goes on there. I think that the other A+ schools are unassailable in their ranking. </p>

<p>Same could probably be said for the A and the A- schools as these seem about right to me based on what I’ve heard, read, and seen first-hand on many of these campuses. I was also glad to see that USNWR’s top 3 publics (UC Berkeley, U Virginia and U Virginia) all received A- grades and that LAC-like W&M also joined this group. </p>

<p>For most prospective undergrads, I would argue that this grading is a better indicator of what you will experience on the college’s campus than what you’ll learn from the PA scores. Tulane is a perfect example of that as students there generally enjoy a very good academic environment with a highly interested and accessible faculty.</p>

5

<p>Yay! Pitt’s in good company.</p>

6

<p>PA = Peer Assessment?</p>

7

<p>Emory and Tufts on par with Harvard and Yale?</p>

<p>Lehigh and Tulane equal to Cal and Cornell?</p>

<p>GWU, Miami and Purdue on par with Michigan?</p>

<p>BYU, UC-Riverside and SMU on par with Wisconsin?</p>

<p>Those rankings don’t seem very reliable. It is more of an estimate of how students perceive their university than of how good they really are. In other words, students at Harvard and Yale seem to have very high standards whereas students at Emory and Tufts are probably more easily impressed.</p>

8

<p>has anyone not told you already? college pr owler is only full of *****<strong><em>…so obviously this ranking is </em></strong>***.</p>

9

<p>

Yeah, usns at Emory and Tufts are mighty impressed with them thar highfalutin teachers and them fancy machines.</p>

10

<p>“has anyone not told you already? college pr owler is only full of *****<strong><em>…so obviously this ranking is </em></strong>***”</p>

<p>Trust me hawkette knows this. She just loves to put anything online that shows Michigan in a mediocre light.</p>

11

<p>

Should read:</p>

<p>For most prospective undergrads, I would argue that this grading is a better indicator of what you will experience on the college’s campus than what you’ll learn from the PA scores, because it reinforces my subjective opinion on this subject.</p>

12

<p>

I have an issue with this being called an “ACADEMICS” grade…“Care and Feeding Grade” may be more appropriate.</p>

13

<p>^ lol @ #11 Ditto!</p>

14

<p>The title said it all. Although students dont know verything, but students don’t have hidden agendas, students don’t care behind the scene editors, bosses, and investors, so their responses reflect their thoughts</p>

15

<p>If CC calculated the average column-inch of the posts by all its participants, Hawkette would not only win, she’d double or triple whichever one of us is in second place! :)</p>

16

<p>The OP dismisses PA as “subjective,” but this isn’t???</p>

17

<p>I think the academics at the top 100-120 are pretty strong. I think the academics are strong in many/most programs at schools like Marquette #84; Iowa St #88; Florida State #102; UNebraska #98; UMass-Amherst #106; and University of Oregon #115. </p>

<p>What professions require an education from a top 75 national U? I can’t think of any. There are a few professions that prefer an education from a top 20, but are there any that require an education from a top 75, rather than a top 120?</p>

18

<p>I disagree with Clemson’s rating of a B- for academics, I think it should at least be in the B/B+ range.</p>

19

<p>Please note that these grades are not mine; they were awarded by CP based on 68,000+ student reviews. </p>

<p>Alex,
My interpretation of what CP has done is that they are asking about the classroom experience and NOT the faculty’s reputation within academia. Both the CP grades and the USNWR PA scores can be “right,” but it reads to me like they measure different things. </p>

<p>CP’s grades reflect what the students experience (quality of teaching, class size, knowledge level and accessibility of the professors, etc.) while USNWR PA reflects (we think) the research-driven, faculty reputation within the academic world. </p>

<p>This is an important distinction and how one views it determines if the priority in the college search is on the prestige of the college or on the nature/quality of the student’s experience. </p>

<p>Obviously, the best schools should have both-an excellent student experience and highly regarded faculty. IMO, CP’s grades do a very good job of reflecting this, eg, 7 or the 8 Ivies got an A or an A- and also only one school (U Rochester) graded A or A- by CP is ranked outside of USNWR’s Top 25. </p>

<p>ucb,
You’re correct that CP’s ACADEMICS grading is more in tune with my thinking about what students will get at various undergraduate colleges in the USA. That doesn’t make it wrong…and there are other sources as well that produce similar results. Again, my interest is in what the students will be getting when they arrive on campus. </p>

<p>gadad,
Do I win anything?? A trip to Cancun or something? ….something?..anything???</p>

<p>i-guy,
This is subjective. No one ever claimed otherwise. CP asked 68,000+ students for their opinions. </p>

<p>mom2,
I’m sorry, but my data collection ends at # 75 as there is a limit to how much time and energy I have. </p>

<p>I think you make a good point and there is nothing magical about the Top 75 vs the Top 80 or the Top 100 or whatever. If you want to look up and post the grades for the other colleges, that would be appreciated.</p>

20

<p>

Student satisfaction is obviously important. However, college students typically have experience with one campus. </p>

<p>How were these surveys conducted? </p>

<p>Hawkette, out of your true favorites, only one campus scored A+.</p>