<p>Not taking us news into account cause those rankings are flawed,
brown is ranked quite low for computer science and even medicine! for courses.</p>
<p>It doesn’t make sense, since it is an ivy and has a low accpt. rate of 8.6%.
Furthermore, brown is recognized for its strong courses in cs and med.</p>
<p>those are graduate rankings, Brown is an undergraduate focused school.</p>
<p>so, basically all these rankings are bogus and do not lead to anything.</p>
<p>They’re not entirely useless, but they’re not very helpful in looking at undergrad institutions. It’s much more important overall to find a college that you like than to find one that has been top-ranked in a specific area.</p>
Brown does not have a medical school, so that may affect its “med classes” ranking.
A few years ago a very advanced bio med center was built for research and education
Brown has very good, and rigorous, CS
Yes it does: http://brown.edu/academics/medical/
Like all schools, every Ivy has strengths and weaknesses. The previous poster mentioned that the ratings of departments are about graduate school. That is really incorrect. They are ratings of each individual department-and those that are very productive in terms of research are rated highest. Brown does focus more on undergraduates. It is not the kind of academic powerhouse that a school like Cornell is. People here may disagree with me and point out that Brown is rated higher. Brown is rated higher on dimensions that weigh heavily (or count a lot) reputation. Brown has that old time reputation. In contrast, Cornell is newer and it historically focused on areas that the wealthy didn’t value as much. It’s motto focuses on educating everyone. It is inclusive. It was therefore considered less prestigous compared to those that focused on the classics for the rich and rejected those that aren’t. But nobody who knows about academics would put most of Brown’s departments in the same class as those of Cornell even though Cornell accepts a larger % of its applicants. I’m not saying Cornell is better than Brown. I am saying that it is more of an academic power house. Correcting for size of faculty, it contributes more knowledge to the world. It is making a bigger difference to society. Does it do a better job educating college students? Could n’t say. It is simply different than Brown.
omg, duh, i was thinking law school. face palm
I need to not post after 10:00. I’m getting old!
@lostaccount: you keep banging this drum on CC…both colleges are academic powerhouses. Each school has leading profs in several disciplines. Ever heard of profs donaghue, bartov, weinstein, to name just a few? Both schools attract bright, exceptional students, even if cornell is on the whole easier to get into. From my son’s high school naviance for the class of 2014: Cornell: 23 applied, 11 admitted, 7 attended, gpa average: 93.7, sat average: 1409, sat average 3 sections: 2109, act average: 31. Brown: 13 applied, 2 admitted (both ED), 2 attended, gpa average: 95.8, sat average: 1491, sat average 3 sections: 2246, act average: 32. Just about the same. Where the schools mainly differ is their type of location, size, and vibe. Students should figure out which they prefer. Both my kids preferred an urban/suburban location and a vibe that was equal measure intellectual and creative. Also, they ideally wanted schools around 5,000-7,000 pop.
They are ratings of individual departments but heavily weighted towards things that are much more important for graduate students than undergraduate students.
Brown actually gets underrated on reputation based metrics because of its nontraditional curriculum model. Almost by default other schools have to consider it weaker or it raises the question why they hang onto their models instead of switching.
^excellent point. Look, brown isn’t for everybody. It’s really suited to independent, self-directed ppl who want to craft their own curriculum, take charge of their learning. But man, for that type of student, it’s nirvana. Or at least my son at brown thinks so 
he’s about to graduate in May & tells me not to mention it bc he can’t stand the thought of leaving.
FWIW, naviance does not distinguish between the various colleges at Cornell. which differ in profile and selectivity. Applicants to Brown would most likely be considering Cornell CAS or COE.
For whatever it is worth, Brown is much more difficult to gain admission, and is fifth in the ivies after Harvard, Yale, Columbia, and Princeton. It’s admit rate is only slightly below fourth place Princeton at about 8.8%. The Cornell schools vary from 40% admit rate in ILR to 16% for A&S
@monydad the kids at my son’s public school were applying to CAS and COE, so the naviance data is apples to apples.
I complement you on your detailed knowledge of your son’s public school cohort.
I have no idea what colleges of Cornell all the kids in my children’s classes applied to, except for the few of them that I personally knew. Of those I knew, however, at my son’s public school that used naviance, as many or more of them applied to the various contract & other specialty colleges.
Only 1/3 of Cornell’ students attend CAS, and 1/5 attend COE.
“16% for A&S” ??? is that the most recent??, or a few years old… IIRC It was lower than that last I checked, a couple years ago. My recollection was Brown had lower admit rate, but similar SATs, to the weighted stats for COA+COE . But I could be mistaken and I am too lazy to do any research or arithmetic, any more. (maybe 1,000 posts ago…)
RenaissanceMom,I am not beating any drum and don’t know why you would write that. The OP asked why the ratings for Brown are low, at least from the OP’s standpoint. My answer is an attempt to address the OP’s question. I’d be interested in hearing why you think they are low. Most schools ranked in the top 50 schools have well known faculty members. Both schools attract very strong applicants. Both schools are difficult to get into to. But that isn’t really relevant to the OP’s question. The question is why the ratings for Brown are not high compared to those of other Ivy Schools.
By “academic power house” I mean it is a leader among the schools producing and disseminating a significant amount of new knowledge that has a high impact on the field of study. Such schools have highly productive researchers conducting important funded studies. Typically labs in such schools provide both graduate and undergraduate stipends and research experience. Both Brown and Cornell are national research institutions. Cornell tends to be rated higher than Brown on these dimensions. That is not to say that Brown is not a wonderful university or that Cornell is a better place to go to college.
In the 2011 report of the Center for measuring university performance which ranks the Top (150) American Research Universities, Cornell’s overall rank is listed as 41 with 3 measures in the top 25; 5 measures between 26-50; Brown is ranked overall at 85 with 1 measure in the top 25 and 2 more between 26-50.
On USNWR, Brown is rated as 16; Cornell 15. Cornell earns high ratings for Best Undergrad business program (11), and within business accounting (25), finance (13), Management (11) Production 914) and Quant an (10) and best undergrad engineering program (10) with 9 areas under undergrad engineering rated 11 or better. In contrast, Brown’s undergraduate engineering is rated at 41 with none of the subareas rated especially highly. High school counselor ratings are identical for the two schools. Brown is rated 6 for best undergraduate teaching whereas Cornell isn’t rated especially highly. Cornell is rated as 23 on Best Global Universities compared to Brown at 106. Overall Cornell’s departments are higher rated than Brown’s. It produces more high impact research. Brown gets better marks for teaching. Being an academic powerhouse does not necessarily mean that undergraduates have a better experience there. Yet anyone in the academic world would rate Cornell higher than Brown in terms of being an academic powerhouse.
Considering that there are 3000+ colleges and universities in the US, I do not understand how anyone can be rational and make a claim that Brown is “ranked low.” Brown is ranked in the top .5 percent of colleges. How on earth can you define that as “low”?
How many angels can dance on the head of a pin? Or, as wikipedia puts it, you are “wasting time debating topics of no practical value, or questions whose answers hold no intellectual consequence.”
Brown and Cornell are different. They are both excellent universities, but they have different strengths and weaknesses. Brown is an academic powerhouse, too, just in a different way from Cornell. lostaccount, coming onto the Brown forum and insisting that Cornell is more of an academic powerhouse is a little insulting to us Brown fans.
There have been many discussions here on why Brown falls slightly lower in the rankings than other Ivies. This year, Brown admitted that it messed up the questionnaire: http://www.browndailyherald.com/2014/09/09/brown-slips-two-spots-u-s-news-rankings/. Message to all those high school students out there – in almost all situations, your professional life will not be dramatically different if you go to a school that is ranked first, ninth, fifteenth or twentieth. And even more important, it is what you DO with your education that is more important than what the rank is.
You did not give us a citation for the 2011 Report of the Center for Measuring University Performance, but maybe this is a link to the 2012 Report.
http://mup.asu.edu/research2012.pdf
In particular, on page 15 it is stated,
So if I understand correctly, size matters here right? Size of research, size of endowment, size of annual giving, size of doctoral class, size of National Academy membership, etc.
Seems that schools with larger sizes of student numbers, faculty numbers, and endowments for example, will have a sizable advantage over smaller schools in being labeled, in your words, “leaders…producing and disseminating a significant amount of new knowledge that has a high impact on the field of study”. If Brown doubles its class size, it would automatically go up in this ranking? Do I have that right?
Oh, and you can come here any time. We are always up for a good debate.
Brown is an excellent school. Historically it has been rated very high on ranking lists of colleges. In terms of research productivity given its endowment and resources, it simply is not in the same category as many other universities with similar overall rankings. In other words, the departments themselves are less strong than some other schools which have similar overall rankings. That is not a put down or an insult. It is ranked higher in undergraduate teaching. As people have pointed out, undergraduates probably get more attention at Brown than undergraduates at other highly ranked schools. As I said, schools have pros and cons. Brown isn’t best at everything. My post isn’t about how students will do or how they may or may not like Brown or Cornell. The OP wanted to know about why Brown’s rankings are not as high as you would think. And I agree that the department rankings on USN&WR and on some other rating scales that consider variables like # publications, impact, grant funding, etc, tend to rank Brown considerably lower than other Ivy’s and some other schools that have lower ratings overall. As Cornell is an Ivy, it serves as a good comparison. Brown is stronger on other dimensions. By the way, I am referring to what I view as a mismatch between the overall rank, say on USN& WR and the rankings of the various departments-with overall being very high and departments surprisingly not.
And to my point, this is much more important for graduate students than undergraduate students.