<p>I'm looking at schools and I have a preferance for institutions under the "Nationally ranked" category over the "Regionally ranked" category.</p>
<p>Is this necessary or have some sort of truth behind it?</p>
<p>For example: Is a school ranked #87 in the West Region category better than a school ranked #101 in the National University category?</p>
<p>(I'm basing this off of the US Colleges Ranking website)</p>
<p>National Universities are better, that is, a ranking in the National University category means more. The regional rankings have smaller pools, so a worse college could be ranked higher, whereas the national rankings have very large pools. A #101 in the national university category is almost certainly better.</p>
<p>But it depends on the discrepancy, doesn’t it?</p>
<p>Like, let’s say 10 in the regional vs 100 in national?</p>
<p>Only a 1-2 regional schools from each region is reputable enough on the national level. Regional schools are mostly jokes when compared to national universities.</p>
<p>100th in national >>>>>>>> 10th in regional.</p>
<p>These are the 97/101 ranked schools on USNWR 2012.
University of California–Riverside
University of San Diego
Florida State
North Carolina State
University of Dayton
University of Kansas
University of Nebraska
University of New Hampshire
University of Oregon
University of Tennessee</p>
<p>Hell, I would say that any of these schools stomps Creighton/Rollins/Trinity and possibly Villanova in academics, reputation, networking and overall college experience.</p>
<p>You are starting from a fundamentally false assumption - that the rankings tell you ANYTHING about the quality of an institution. The rankings are based on arbitrary criteria, none of which have ever been correlated to any measure of academic effectiveness (although there have been numerous studies that have tried), and on top of that are then arbitrarily weighted. For an individual student, the #100 ranked regional university may be better than the #10 ranked national university. You need to do the hard work of figuring out what your real needs are, then evaluating colleges based on those needs.</p>
<p>“Regional schools are mostly jokes when compared to national universities.”</p>
<p>^^^ lol</p>
<p>That is an absolutely ridiculous, and inaccurate, statement.</p>
<p>I think that in general they are inferior. But often a regional university will have a specific program that is better suited to one’s interests, or will be much cheaper than a national university.</p>
<p>It depends on what you want out of college.</p>
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<p>Evaluated on what criteria? And based on what evidence?</p>
<p>The National Universities and the Regional Universities are different, so it’s like comparing peaches and broccoli - both are schools, but they offer different things. This sort of comparison is not particularly useful.</p>
<p>Butler, Villanova, Drake, Elon are just a few schools that are listed as Regional Universities. They were called Master Universities because they tend to offer more master’s Degree programs rather than PhDs. The distinction would be between a pre-professional focus versus a research university. </p>
<p>Now as for quality of experience, school environment, etc. it is about fit. I would take Butler or Elon over UC Riverside any day since I preferred my learning experiences in a smaller school over my time at a large state school. </p>
<p>A lot of the regional schools have programs like 0-6 pharmacy programs, auto admit physical therapy, physician assistant, and many offer stong business programs. The schools are larger than an intimate LAC but not so large that a student feels swallowed alive.</p>
<p>In general, national schools are more prestigious than regional schools.</p>
<p>This says little about the quality of the education that one can obtain.</p>
<p>National schools are much more well known and oftentimes have stronger academics than regional schools. Honestly though one must look at each individual school to decide how “good” it is. For example, cooper union, suny geneseo (suny honors college), us coast guard academy, tcnj, and other very good “regional” schools could surely be considered as competitive as many top natl universities.</p>
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<p>Oftentimes? Well, I suppose that there is a distribution so that some national schools have stronger academics than some regionals - but some regionals may also have stronger academics than some nationals. After all (as I believe I may have mentioned on these forums before):</p>
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<p>– Ernest T. Pascarella and Patrick T. Terenzini, “How College Affects Students, Volume 2: A Third Decade of Research.” San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 2005, p. 641</p>
<p>I think that you would be accurate more often than inaccurate to say that a national university of a certain rank is better than a similarly ranked (give or take 10 rankings) regional university.</p>
<p>Oftentimes (but not always) national universities will have stronger academics due to having a graduate program, which fosters greater research opportunities and a higher caliber of intellect in professors. Students at the school itself will have typically come from all over the country, which can be an eye-opening experience. Students will typically (but not always) be of a higher intellectual caliber.
These are, of course, generalizations. You really need to give specific college examples for any truly fair comparison.</p>
<p>Of course, some regional universities are well-known and have strong academics (like Villanova).</p>
<p>I think it’s certainly accurate to say that a top regional university is better than a national university with poor academics.</p>
<p>Look folks, in the USNWR ranking system there are arbitrary categories named “National” and “Regional”. If you take the time to dig through what USNWR has published about its criteria for placing institutions in those categories, you will know more. Suffice it to say that SOME institutions are not well known by the general public outside a given geographic region (for example Butler or Drake), while others everyone has “heard of” often because they are sports powerhouses. What matters to you as an applicant are these four things:
<p>Your own best college or university may be one that USNWR doesn’t even rank at all.</p>
<p>^ +1 to happymom.</p>
<p>^ +2 to Happymom</p>
<p>^ +3 to happymom</p>
<p>-10 to post #4</p>
<p>ACT Ranges/OOS %</p>
<p>Univ. of Tennessee
24-29
16 %</p>
<p>Univ of Nebraska
22-28
18%</p>
<p>KU
22-28
27%</p>
<p>Truman State
25-31
23%</p>
<p>Drake
25-29
70%</p>
<p>national universities…better students? Not in theses cases.
Natioal universities…more diversity?not in these cases.</p>
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<p>You don’t even have to compare public vs. private or go interstate; Truman State (“regional university”) has a higher ACT range than any of the three campuses of the University of Missouri (all “national universities”).</p>