<p>Thank you for the napkin, UCB. I'll find a good use for it but probably not for the egg on my face.</p>
<p>You'll find the answer to your questions by reading my replies within their original context.</p>
<p>"Hmmm...why do you assume that LACs and National Universities Peer Assessment Numbers are compared together? Yes, Berkeley has a 4.8, Harvey Mudd has 4.5 (?)...I don't think you can look at those numbers and say, "Oh, Berkeley's better than Harvey Mudd." The LACs are in a separate category from National Universities...as they should be. Also, I don't think National University academics are rating LACs and vice versa...I could be wrong...in this case it would be nice to see the data.
"</p>
<p>I was actually just interviewed (in person) by a representative of USNWR today. Along the way (when showing him my research) he said, "so it appears that students at Mudd are doing graduate-level work in an undergraduate program." I smiled.</p>
<p>True story.</p>
<p>It seems to me that Mudd and the like should be ranked against other undergraduate engineering programs at Stanford, MIT, Caltech, Berkeley. Right now there is this great divide... it seems illogical to group a school's grad program with it's undergrad program and make a ranking such that it is incompatible with undergrad schools.</p>