<p>According to these rankings:
<a href="http://www.topuniversities.com/institution/university-california-berkeley-ucb/wur%5B/url%5D">http://www.topuniversities.com/institution/university-california-berkeley-ucb/wur</a></p>
<p>Uhh what gives, Cal is a boring 28 in the world, but like 3rd, 4th, and 5th in basically every one of its departments... shouldn't we have a much higher world rank than 28 if our academics are so good? </p>
<p>Maybe they're nailing us for our huge student population again or something</p>
<p>All this methodology jargon is making my English/Philos major brain haemmorhage </p>
<p>If anyone could clarify this apparent discrepancy in ranking methodology I would be grateful and would also give you a slice of this pizza I am currently eating if it wouldn't get all messy in the mail</p>
<p>Mm I shoulda known better than to post this during roommates posting time </p>
<p>Seriously why are these people getting so hyped up about people they’re gonna be practically tied to for a year </p>
<p>…freshmen. (I’m a freshman myself so no hatin’ :P)</p>
<p>This has been a very long and elaborate bump.</p>
<p>3 minute bump, seems a bit unnecessary.</p>
<p>Either way, answer: because the top uni rankings are silly and not really a good measure of a university, since they take into consideration dumb things like international faculty and student accounts, which pretty much puts non-American+British schools at a huge disadvantage, as well as public unis like Berkeley, for obvious reasons.</p>
<p>I find those rankings to be skewed because its basically made in order to lean heavily towards those Ivy League/Oxbridge type schools.</p>
<p>And yeah, school size also plays a role in bringing down the rank: Note how one of the categories is student/faculty ratio.</p>
<p>Also, roommates haven’t been posted. QQ D:</p>
<p>Peer review probably plays quite a part in Cal’s low general ranking and the high ranking of UK universities (it’s easy to skew this data by deliberately selecting a pool of peers that is likely to give certain results). Also I reckon the general ranking, unlike the subject ranking may be including some indicators of undergraduate quality like class sizes etc. which Cal doesn’t do so well on.
Ultimately though I gravely doubt that UCL is the 4th best university in the world, so have never paid too much attention to the QS ranking. :)</p>
<p>Yeah, there’s gotta be money under the table because Cal is #1 :'(</p>
<p>Just kidding, but I agree, I’d assume Cal would be higher especially considering all of the categories shown there are often top #5. And look at that, in 2009 Cal was #39? :S Hmm…</p>
<p>factors like endowment, class size, and perhaps even the masochistic policy of the UCs to report any summer class as an additional semester taken to graduate, thus producing highly misleading stats that appear to show that few can graduate on time, when in fact most graduate in four straight years unless they double/triple major or shift majors very late - even those tend to only stretch 1-2 semesters.</p>
<p>Well keep in mind there are SO many “legitimate” ranking publishers, and they differ greatly.</p>
<p>For example, Times ranks Berkeley 8th in the world overall and 4th in the world by reputation.</p>
<p>It is important to keep in mind that Berkeley’s a public, so it can’t pay off the rankers haha.</p>