<p>Like I said early, I think you should not be citing overall statistics on the schools, but rather focusing just on the business schools.</p>
<p>What schools do you think are strongest at Indiana University that makes their ratings as high as they are?</p>
<p>The answer is that their three strongest schools are Music (about top 8 nationwide), Foreign Language (where they are ranked #1 by many surveys), and Business (where they are ranked in the top 11 to 16, depending upon the group doing the ranking).</p>
<p>What does Penn State rank highly in?
Geography #1, Psychology (top 10), Kinesiology, and Architectural Engineering (nowhere can you find anybody that ranks it in the top 30 for business schools).</p>
<p>What does Purdue rank highly in?
Mechanical Engineering, Civil Engineering, and Process Engineering (in the top 5 in all 3 categories per USNW). Now their business school does also rank fairly high at the graduate level (around the top 25), but nobody ranks it in the top 40 among undergraduate business schools. And only two of their department are ranked in the top 10 by USNW in the business rankings--which is quantitative methods (#2) and management overall (about #9).</p>
<p>What does Boston University rank highly in?
Communications, Biochemistry, Law, Philosophy, History, Pre-Med. Once again, their business school is not highly ranked. P.S. Don't confuse them with Boston College, which does have a good business school (top 15 or so).</p>
<p>In my view, and as I said earlier, once a student figures out that a high overall ranking has nothing to do with the individual departments (especially once they get past schools like Harvard, Stanford, Yale, etc.), the better off they will be.</p>
<p>P.S. Some other "minor" schools that are rank relatively low overall have great departments in certain areas. I already listed three of these above. Some others that come quickly to mind are: University of Missouri (top journalism program in the country), and Syracuse (one of the top political science programs and one of the top creative writing programs).</p>
<p>And yes, I will agree with you that many people can't get past the "prestige" factor (overall ranking or name recognition) in choosing their schools, but that's really too bad for them, because, as a result, they are missing the opportunity to be in much stronger programs for their major. For someone who doesn't know what they are going to major in, then I would suggest they take your advice--but that's not the OP's situation.</p>