<p>WUSTL and Duke deserve their "bashing."</p>
<p>nyccard, how does WUSTL deserve a "bashing"?? that school is amazing!</p>
<p>I disrespect any school that so obviously games the rankings.</p>
<p>what do you mean "game the rankings"?</p>
<p>WUSTL is a very strong college academically, it deserves to be in the top 12 and more respect than to be bashed by all the ivy loving CC'ers</p>
<p>All the rankings are a game. I think pretty much every college is seen as underrated when it is considered vastly inferior to the Top 10-15 colleges. Yeah, number 300 isn't as good as 24 in terms of academic quality probably, but I don't see much reason to differentiate between 17 and 35. Who cares? The only reason those rankings exist is to sell magazines for US News. You can use them some, but I wouldn't look at them as quantitative measures of a school's quality.</p>
<p>IrishThunder, I wish everybody on CC would see your point the same way!
I'm so frustrated by people telling me that for example Penn State is better than Pitt just because it's ranked 10 spots or whatever higher, it's up to the individual and what is the best fit for them.</p>
<p>But regardless, I think Washington University In St. Louis is a good school</p>
<p>The University of Kansas, The University of Missouri, and Kansas State are all really good schools that rarely get talked about.</p>
<p>Underrated/Under-discussed</p>
<p>University of Minnesota
Gonzaga
Bradley
Miami (OH)
Loyola (IL)
Creighton
University of Missouri (as shown above lol)
Butler</p>
<p>Dayton is a pretty good school, not elite, but it does not even have a sub-forum on these boards.</p>
<p>**Looking at the conference rankings thread, it looks
like INDIANA UNIVERSITY is SEVERELY underrated. It's
almost disgusting to see what the general USNWR rankings
do to warped HS student perceptions. Indiana has
one of the top business programs in the country, a top
3-4 nonprofit/environmental program, and a world class
music program that attracts a lot of recruiters.</p>
<p>It's also top 20 in journalism and political science too. </p>
<p>So with all of these great programs, WHY IS INDIANA RANKED SO LOW?!?!?!?!!</p>
<p>Answer from another poster, calcruzer...</p>
<p>
[quote]
Back at the beginning (early 1800s), it was decided that Indiana should fund two separate universities--one more dedicated to the technical side of academics (Purdue) and one more dedicated to the liberal arts side (Indiana University at Bloomington).</p>
<p>As the universities expanded, they both added business schools, IUB added an optometry program and a law program while Purdue added an aviation school and a nursing program and more liberal arts majors. Nowadays the two schools (Purdue and Indiana) are essentially equivalent academically with the exception that Indiana has no engineering programs and Purdue's theatre and journalism and music programs are all lumped into the college of arts and sciences there--and accordingly, are much weaker than Indiana's.</p>
<p>In my opinion, if the original plan had been to put everything on a single campus, instead of two separate ones (think of the academic level of a school that combines the best of IUB and Purdue), you'd probably find that the Indiana university campus would be challenging UC Berkeley, the University of Virginia, the University of Texas, the University of North Carolina, and the University of Michigan for the top spots among public universities. (It would probably come in 2nd, just behind UC Berkeley).</p>
<p>However, because Indiana has no engineering program, and Purdue's fine arts programs are relatively weak, IUB and Purdue keep getting ranked much further down the USNW list than they would rank as a combined institution.
[/quote]
</p>
<p>Just my .02**</p>
<p>I agree that University of Maryland is underrated. It is the 12th most selective flagship public university with a very nice campus in an exciting area (DC/Baltimore) with some oustanding academic programs, such as engineering.</p>
<p>Syracuse deserves more credit for its academics. It has a great biology program, business school, communications, English, and more. I think it suffers somewhat by association with Syracuse, NY but the city of Syracuse actually has its charms.</p>
<p>University of Rochester has excellent academics and some stellar programs in biological sciences and physics. Poly Sci and English are strong. It is actually pretty strong academically across the board except that they have failed to maintain the quality of the engineering program there and have let it decline. Too bad because U of R has great physical sciences programs. Rochester is actually a pretty cool city.</p>
<p>
Occidental has a pretty dead forum. Well any uni that has an acceptance rate above 40% is seen as crap on CC lol. Tufts seems to get the most crap though.
</p>
<p>Are you serious? Wisconsin gets a lot of love with a 65% acceptance rate and Michigan was ranked by some over Cal and Virginia, yet it accepts over half its applicants. Acceptance rate is NOT a good measure of quality, and it seems that most CCers know this.</p>
<p>Michigan's acceptance rate last year was approximately 42%. It has dropped precipitously over the past few years. Most people on CC look at old data and assume things haven't changed.</p>
<p>So, I guess College Board is dated?
College</a> Search - University of Michigan - U of M - At a Glance</p>
<p>
As a matter of fact, yes. College Board gets its data from the Common Data Sets, which are usually a year or two behind.</p>
<p>
[quote]
Are you serious? Wisconsin gets a lot of love with a 65% acceptance rate and Michigan was ranked by some over Cal and Virginia, yet it accepts over half its applicants. Acceptance rate is NOT a good measure of quality, and it seems that most CCers know this.
[/quote]
Well there are a helluva lot more schools with an acceptance rate above 40% that are underrated on CC than ones that are given their fair share of respect. Examples would be U of Oregon, University of Denver, Loyola University Chicago, lots of people insult Drexel, Miami University, and the list goes on</p>
<p>IBclass, USNWR has the 50-51% mark too. Where are you getting 42% from?</p>
<p>Directly from the Michigan website. Michigan had 29,105 applicants and 11,953 were offered admission for 2008. Acceptance rates can be jobbed as well. UC schools use a common application that allows a student to apply to a number of schools with a simple check of a box. In a state with over 30 million people in it, that needs to be taken into account.</p>
<p>Here's a link to it Office</a> of Undergraduate Admissions: About Michigan and it's 41% :P</p>
<p>
It's always best to consult the primary source. When looking for Michigan's acceptance rate, why consult College Board and US News first? :rolleyes:</p>