<p>silmpn you are frpm West, so you should worship regional like UC at Palo alto aka SFord.</p>
<p>Stanford's real name is actually Leland Stanford Junior University.</p>
<p>(Though most people probably knew that, and were making a joke based off that?)</p>
<p>I'm not sure anyone can make a valid assessment about the mentioned schools unless you have attended all of the instituions (and I don't mean visiting it in one afternoon).</p>
<p>It's impossible to say which school is "better", for obvious reasons. Penn is an amazing school, but I personally consider MIT and Stanford to be better. That's just a personal preference. I know plenty of people who agree with me, and plenty who don't.</p>
<p>How can Penn possibly go up to 3? (not that I would complain)</p>
<p>Well it can get tied with Yale and by alphabetical order it will be named first.</p>
<p>The most likely reasons for a Penn rise to #3 would be</p>
<p>1) increase in "Financial resources"
2) increase in "peer assessment"
3) increase in "faculty resources"</p>
<p>Peer assessment, which counts for 25% is basically a crap shoot depending on who returns the surveys. USNews gets about a 60% return rate so in any given year it can have a disproportional impact. </p>
<p>The two resource items, particularly our endowment size, have trailed the the other top universities so a couple of points there could move us up a notch. Penn used to be one of the poorest Ivies but Rodin made the endowment her priority and by 2000 we'd moved from 0.8 billion to 3.2 billion. We're now over 4 billion and closing in on Columbia (4.3 billion). If we pass them, that alone could boost us into #3 overall.</p>
<p>And again, at the risk of belaboring the obvious, the USNews criteria have almost no direct relevance to the quality of undergraduate education you're going to get at a given university. Look at 'em again:</p>
<p>Peer assessment 25%
Student selectivity 15%
Faculty resources 20%
Graduation and retention rate 20%
Financial resources 10%
Alumni giving 5%
Graduation rate performance 5%</p>
<p>There's nothing there about teaching quality, class size, opportunities for undergraduate research, etc. Unless you're going for a vocational degree (i.e. your BA/BS/BSE is the credential you need for a job) you're going to be much better off looking for a school that is tops in your major. Believe me, grad school adcoms, since they are made up of profs in the department you're applying to, know very well where the best prospects are coming from.</p>
<p>I think that Penn's peer assessment ranking has been going up in recent years I think it went from a 4.5 to a 4.6 from 2004 to 2005 for example and this category is weighted pretty heavily...</p>
<p>Also to correct endowment figures, Penn is currently at $4.2-3 billion while Columbia is $4.5 billion.</p>
<p>Penn is in the midst of launching another one of those massive 'capital campaigns,' I heard it from the SAS Dean herself</p>
<p>Penn is prestigious with folks who are "in-the-know". It may not have as big of brand name as Harvard/Yale/Stanford to the common-folk, but you can appear to be that much more sophisticated because you (or I) go to Penn because we know how good it is...and WE ARE "In-the-know"...lol</p>
<p>forgive this statement if its incredibly obvious, but penn has gained a lot of prestige and desirability "recently" (yea, yea i know its been in th etop five since 2001 or whatever) because the economy and shift towards urban campuses. cities are also cleaning up a lot making these campuses safer and cooler places to be (columbia and chicago)</p>
<p>Yeah, but Penn was struggling to stay in the top 25 in the '80s. The school has truly come a long way in terms of academic intensity and research development. However, I personally dont believe that Penn can hold MIT/Stanford's jock at this point. HYPMS are pretty much in a league of their own in my opinion. I say Penn is around Columbia/Duke/Dartmouth in terms of overall respect. So, Penn is not in bad company, eh? lol</p>
<p>Whatevooo, good schools wherever you go</p>
<p>Noone should concern themselves as to where a school was ranked 20-25 years ago. It matters where it is today and where it is going in the future.</p>
<p>Very good point. So, let's settle with the fact that Penn is amazing, shall we? Let all the haters relish your Quaker heritage. Cheers.</p>
<p>"Here's a toast to dear old Penn! "</p>
<p>Right On GD!</p>
<p>And lest anyone doubt our engineering prowess, we are the only university anywhere with a Toastzoni.</p>
<p>Wouldn't it be a toastboni?</p>
<p>i wwas wondering the same thing</p>
<p>As Devil will say like 100000000 times on this board, it is as good as Duke and Columbia. Done deal! lol</p>