<p>I didn't know that.</p>
<p>I am tempted to bump up UC-Berkeley's selectivity ranking based solely on academic factors a little bit- I agree that the 'academic quality' of an applicant is not only based on SAT scores. </p>
<p>UC-Berkeley actually goes well into the Top 40 for quality of undergrad program but I made its selectivity ranking #50.</p>
<p>Do you know that
- UCB does not superscore and their absolute average is 2034/2400?
- UCB have more 2300+/2400 students than HYPSM?
- UNDERGRADUATE ranking for any available majors put UCB in the top 5</p>
<p>If you talk about "Academic Strength" it's stronger than most of the school listed.</p>
<p>^^^: UCB no doubt the best public university in the world. But I thought OP is only trying to compare between the private universities and LACs.</p>
<p>You can still compare some of the private universities with LACs but not with UCB.</p>
<p>I don't think anyone can undermine the academic strength of UCB undergraduate.</p>
<p>i'm sorry, middsmith, but that UNDERGRADUATE ranking of available majors is, what? Gourman's?</p>
<p>Academics, by quality and rate, in no particular order:</p>
<p>First -
Amherst, Pomona, Williams, Swarthmore, Princeton, Yale, Dartmouth, Brown, Chicago</p>
<p>Second -
MIT, Harvard, Harvey Mudd, Stanford, Duke, Columbia, Rice, UPenn, Carleton, Claremont McKenna, Johns Hopkins, Wellesley, Bowdoin, Wesleyan, Georgetown, Cornell, Notre Dame, Carnegie Mellon, Haverford, Middlebury, Northwestern</p>
<p>Third -
Caltech, WUSTL, Vassar, Emory, Grinnell, Washington & Lee, Reed, Vanderbilt, Barnard, Tufts</p>
<p>It's too late to change my initial post but I'm willing to give UC-Berkeley a giant boost in selectivity along with UVA & Michigan. Irrelevant to undergrad, but I'm looking at law schools now and would be extremely happy to attend one of these law schools (especially Boalt).</p>
<p>It would be enough to have UC-Berkeley tie with Emory & Cornell (all schools) and to have UVA/Michigan tie with Vanderbilt and Barnard- not enough to bring Chapel Hill up to the level (somewhat below the other three top publics). </p>
<p>William & Mary was always one step behind Vanderbilt/Barnard anyway along with Davidson, Colgate, USC, and Scripps.</p>
<p>kwu: Given Caltech's small class size and low teacher:student ratio, I would put Caltech in Tier 1. It is a great place for an undergraduate education for math/science.. in my opinion, better than MIT and one of the best places for an undergraduate to be in the nation.</p>
<p>What? Where did these state schools come from?
They weren't even being discussed: who brought them in?</p>
<p>We're working with the small list the OP has provided.</p>
<p>Mondo--I'm waiting for your answer re Middlebury.</p>
<p>and may i ask the OP: what do you do for a living? I'm going to guess it's not ranking colleges. There's no methodology behind this, worst ranking ever.</p>
<p>@Mondo:</p>
<p>Princeton Review, on the Best Colleges, CIT:</p>
<h1>3 Professors Get Low Marks</h1>
<h1>3 Class Discussions Rare</h1>
<h1>10 The Toughest to Get Into</h1>
<h1>3 Their Students Never Stop Studying</h1>
<p>Princeton Review, on the Best Colleges, Middlebury:</p>
<h1>3 Professors Get High Marks</h1>
<h1>6 Best Classroom Experience</h1>
<h1>16 The Toughest to Get Into</h1>
<h1>10 Their Students Never Stop Studying</h1>
<p>+</p>
<h1>3 School Runs Like Butter</h1>
<h1>13 Best Quality of Life</h1>
<h1>13 Best Campus Food</h1>
<p>Middlebury, as I understand, has a lower test score average than the other schools you mentioned. It's one of the only reasons, to be honest- from there, I would guess that despite the fact Middlebury has a sky-high ranking in US News that it isn't necessarily as selective.</p>
<p>Oh yes keefer.
I get paid 100K a year to rank colleges, :p</p>
<p>Selectivity is irrelevant when you have a school as excellent as Middlebury.</p>
<p>Pools for the best liberal arts colleges are self-selecting, and students who apply to schools such as Middlebury are arguably more intellectual.</p>
<p>
[quote]
i'm sorry, middsmith, but that UNDERGRADUATE ranking of available majors is, what? Gourman's?
[/quote]
From US News.
For Engineering, it's ranked 2nd.
For Business, it's ranked 3rd.</p>
<p>
If OP only tried to compare privates and LACs, I wouldn't care. But class of 2009 might read too much into this and favor schools like ND or WashU or Vandy or Wesleyan (this is for you, johnwesley) over UCB.</p>
<p> [quote=johnwesley] sf606508 has been taken aside several times for similar remarks. I was actually kind of hoping Amherst would take him. OTOH, you guys have middsmith to contend with.
If this is a cheap attempt to crack a joke at my expense, boy, you are now my least favorite person from Wesleyan. Michael Bay is pardoned.</p>
<p>Uh..... datadatadatadatadata??</p>
<p>Geez, Mondo, unless every single undergraduate at every single university you are ranking has conversed with you at length about his/her feelings of his/her program, I have no idea where this list even comes from. Same goes for other posters, but I'm picking on you because you started this thread to begin with.</p>
<p>I'm also highly amused that Chicago is ranked pretty high and Harvard low, relative to the gold standard of USNWR. That's probably because CC hearsay rates Chicago as a "good," borderline "intimidatingly good" school, while Harvard (and Cornell) get mercilessly ripped on CC.</p>
<p>I've already mentioned how I think it's impossible to do a ranking based on academic rigor, because every student goes in with a different work ethic and comes out with something different to show for it.</p>
<p>WUSTL and Tufts = w t f...seriously</p>
<p>unalove is right; no matter which one of these schools you choose to go to, your intelligence/knowledge level will not be significantly affected as long as you are passionate about what you are studying.</p>
<p>"I'm also highly amused that Chicago is ranked pretty high and Harvard low, relative to the gold standard of USNWR. That's probably because CC hearsay rates Chicago as a "good," borderline "intimidatingly good" school, while Harvard (and Cornell) get mercilessly ripped on CC."</p>
<p>Someone adheres to the USnews ranking standard way too much, me thinks. Perhaps Chicago is rated higher because it is? But no, Harvard is the holy grail, it must always be best.</p>
<p>Anyway, Mondo, it seems that you are coming up with your rankings subjectively, which is fair; however, you convey that you are basing it on concrete data, which now makes your ranking unfair and distorted, open to the scrutiny of all of CC who thinks differently than you.</p>
<p>Agent, my point is that we have no way of knowing whether Chicago is better than Harvard. Sure, part of me gets a kick out of thinking that maroon is a more becoming color than crimson (it is!) but I'm the last person to argue that Chicago is the best school, the hardest school, the anything-est school, or rather that it is ranked above or below other schools I don't know about while pretending that I know lots about them.</p>
<p>For people who are very smart, CCers are idiots when it comes to realizing that there's lots of stuff they simply don't know. There's no way for Mondo to know enough about all the schools he is ranking to portray a reliable "rank."</p>
<p>Personally, I think Chicago is a really awesome school, just like other schools are also really awesome schools, and while I think Chicago is the best school for me and what I want out of college, I'm sure I would have been able to appropriate other schools to fit my needs pretty easily.</p>