<p>The Peer Assessment score is purely for undergraduate education. According to the USNWR, it is defined as follows:</p>
<p>“The US News ranking formula gives greatest weight to the OPINIONS of those in a position to judge a school’s UNDERGRADUATE academic excellence. The peer assessment survey allows the top academics we consult-presidents, provosts, and deans of admission-to account for intangibles such as faculty dedication to teaching. Each individual is asked to rate peer schools’ academic programs on a scale from 1 (marginal) to 5 (distinguished). Those who don’t know enough about a school to evaluate it fairly are asked to mark “don’t know”. Synovate, an opinion-research firm based near Chicago, collected the data; of the 4,269 people who were sent questionnaires, 51% responded.”</p>
<p>Of course, Alexandre, graduate prestige could also provide a biasing factor. I think this may be why Berkeley could receive a 4.9. I think Berkeley’s a quality education, but I don’t think it’s up there in terms of undergraduate education like it is in terms of graduate education.</p>
<p>You’re putting words in my mouth. U of C is my Alma Mater, so believe me, the point of my statement is not to undermine my own school. What I mean to say is that schools with a concentrated area of specialty will most likely place higher on the PA spectrum compared to schools that are solid in widespread/multiple areas, and there is, no doubt, that UC is known best both nationally and internationally for the Nobel laureates in our econ department. In terms of recognition, this gives us a huge advantage over our undegraduate academic peers that have a good number of solid departments but rarely receive the media’s spotlight in a specific area.</p>
<p>If you’re really questioning my statement, and not just fervently defending every statement that potentially undermines our Alma Mater, you should address Hopkins as well. Tell me their med school has nothing to do with their exceptionally high PA score.</p>
<p>Calm yourself. And yes, MIT is up there because of its engineering, you would not go there to study comparative English lit, sociology or poli sci, if any of those things are even offered there.</p>
<p>phuriku, first of all, the OP asked for prestige in academic circles. Whether it is gor undergraduate or graduate wasn’t the issue. Academe has its own way of seeing things. I don’t think they are as focused on the who undergraduate vs graduate debate as we are. Besides, I think deans of undergraduate admissions and university presidents are capable of differentiating between undergraduate education and graduate education. </p>
<p>Of course, universities with excellent graduate programs will generally benefit from a boost in their peer assessment score, but why focus purely on Cal? Schools like Chicago, Columbia, Harvard, MIT, Stanford etc… are just as committed to graduate programs and research.</p>
<p>For the record, Berkeley’s PA score is 4.8. A 4.9 would put it on the HPSM level…Berkeley is more on the Yale level (since Yale also has a 4.8 PA score)</p>
<p>I don’t understand why some of you placed JHU so high; I don’t understand why its PA score is the same as UChicago either. Chicago is known to be a very academic school. In graduate rankings, Chicago > JHU which is about the same as NU. It’s odd to me they somehow gave JHU a PA score of 4.6, the same score for Chicago.</p>
<p>JHU is better in bio and slightly better in humanities than NU. NU is slightly better in engineering and social sciences. They are about the same in physical sciences/math. JHU has better med school but NU has better business/law schools. Does med school really make such a big deal in overall “academic” prestige?</p>
<p>^ Well Sam, all I can say is go argue with the 2,000 academics that did the survey…;)</p>
<p>I would say JHU has more “distinguished” academic programs than NU. Keep in mind that JHU is a science research powerhouse (moreso than NU) that elevates it in academic minds.</p>
<p>By “science”, I think you meant bio/med. I am pretty sure NU has better chem.<br>
It’s interesting how in the old days, bio took a back seat among the sciences and now it’s the most sexy one. Physics seems to be only for nerds these days.</p>
<p>This is fairly obvious. My criteria though includes placement at top graduate schools, on-campus recruitment job placement, success of alumni, and selectivity (in addition to pure prestige in academic circles). </p>
<ol>
<li>Cornell</li>
<li>Georgetown</li>
<li>Northwestern</li>
<li>U Chicago</li>
<li>Johns Hopkins</li>
<li>Washington U in St. Louis</li>
</ol>
<p>I think it depends on what you want to do. If you want to be a broke grad student in Anthropology praying for a least a post-doc at Wichita State than I would say U Chicago should be at the top of your list. If you want to dominate Wall Street Cornell should be number one, if you want to get internships in D.C. Georgetown should be number one, if you are pre-med it should be WUSTL, and for journalism Medill at Northwestern, etc., etc., but I still stand by my list.</p>
<p>If by “academic circles” you mean professors and college faculty, U Chicago would be number one (followed by Johns Hopkins/Cornell), but if you are talking about the opinion of graduates of other elite colleges that are successful than U Chicago would not belong at the top.</p>
<p>I think it does. Med schools produce many progressive research outputs and thus are closely related to academic endeavors, while law and mba programs are purely professional and thus wouldn’t score that high in the minds of the academics…besides, JHU has the best medical school on the planet while NU doesn’t have ‘the best’ program in any of its academic principles, even including law and mba.</p>
<p>Northwestern’s Kellogg School of Management has ranked #1 quite a few times in Executive MBA programs, if I recall correct.</p>
<p>But patlees88 mentions a good point; Hopkins is a good school overall, but it’s lead in academic medicine distinguishes its recognition. While a school like Northwestern has a top 3 ranking business school, a top 10 ranking law school, a top 20 ranking medical school, arguably the best journalism school in the nation and a leading top 2 material science department in nanotech, purely in terms of prestige, the recognition Hopkins gets in the field of academic medicine and research easily trumps these achievements and puts Hopkins above Northwestern on the PA spectrum.</p>
<p>Carnegie Mellon is another example of a school that enjoys the benefits of recognition from a very specific and distinguished area of academic concentration: computer science. This easily gives it an edge in name recognition in academe over most of its peer schools like Emory or Notre Dame.</p>
<p>PA scores, in that sense, can be misleading when gauging the overall academic quality at top universities.</p>