<p><a href=“http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/college-search-selection/1122651-new-university-prestige-rankings.html[/url]”>http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/college-search-selection/1122651-new-university-prestige-rankings.html</a></p>
<p>This thread gives a look at the 2011 PA, GC, and selectivity scores. HYPSM (or rather, HMPYS) solidly take the top five spots.</p>
<p>
I’m not so sure. Columbia and Chicago are great universities. Maybe even top 5. But at Stanford’s level?</p>
<p>US News rankings</p>
<p>Engineering #2 Stanford > #20 Columbia
Biology #1 Stanford > #13 Chicago, #15 Columbia
Chemistry #4 Stanford > #10 Columbia, #13 Chicago
Computer Science #1 Stanford > #17 Columbia, #35 Chicago
Earth Science #4 Stanford > #5 Columbia, #17 Chicago
Math #2 Stanford > #6 Chicago, #10 Columbia
Physics #5 Stanford > #7 Chicago, #11 Columbia
Statistics #1 Stanford > #6 Chicago, #22 Columbia
Economics #1 Chicago > #5 Stanford, #10 Columbia
English #2 Stanford > #4 Columbia, #7 Chicago
History #1 Stanford > #5 Chicago, #7 Columbia
Political Science #1 Stanford > #7 Columbia, #11 Chicago
Psychology #1 Stanford > #17 Columbia, #23 Chicago</p>
<p>Business #1 Stanford > #4 Chicago, #8 Columbia
Law #2 Stanford > #4 Columbia, #5 Chicago
Medicine #4 Stanford > #8 Columbia, #10 Chicago</p>
<p>Every single program at Stanford is ranked in the top 5. Some programs at Chicago and Columbia aren’t in the top 10 or even top 20.</p>
<p>**National Research Council rankings **</p>
<p>Programs in top 20: 27 Stanford > 24 Columbia, 18 Chicago
Programs in top 10: 22 Stanford > 14 Columbia, 11 Chicago
Programs in top 5: 12 Stanford > 7 Columbia, 6 Chicago
Programs in top 2: 7 Stanford > 2 Columbia, 2 Chicago</p>
<p><a href=“http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/princeton-university/1006939-princeton-2010-national-research-council-nrc-rankings-news-item.html[/url]”>http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/princeton-university/1006939-princeton-2010-national-research-council-nrc-rankings-news-item.html</a></p>
<p>Peer Assessment</p>
<p>4.9 Stanford > 4.6 Columbia, 4.6 Chicago</p>
<p>National Academies</p>
<p>AAAS (2003-2012) 244 Stanford > 154 Chicago, 132 Columbia
NAE 90 Stanford > 17 Columbia
NAS 133 Stanford > 49 Columbia, 41 Chicago</p>
<p>**Graduate placement **</p>
<p>Yale Law 34 Stanford > 15 Columbia, 13 Chicago
JHU Med 24 Stanford > 12 Chicago, 8 Columbia
PhD programs #6 Stanford > #7 Chicago, #15 Columbia</p>
<p>[Yale</a> University Bulletin | Yale Law School 2012?2013 | Law School Students](<a href=“Welcome | Office of the University Printer”>Welcome | Office of the University Printer)
<a href=“http://www.hopkinsmedicine.org/som/students/academics/catalog/SOMCtlg1011.pdf[/url]”>http://www.hopkinsmedicine.org/som/students/academics/catalog/SOMCtlg1011.pdf</a>
[National</a> University Rankings 2012 | Washington Monthly](<a href=“http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/college_guide/rankings_2012/national_university_rank.php]National”>http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/college_guide/rankings_2012/national_university_rank.php)</p>
<p>Awards production</p>
<p>Rhodes (2003-2012) 21 Stanford > 13 Chicago, 7 Columbia
Marshall (1954-2012) 87 Stanford > 30 Columbia, 23 Chicago
Marshall (2003-2012) 27 Stanford > 7 Chicago, 5 Columbia
Truman (1977-2012) 61 Stanford > 27 Chicago, 26 Columbia
Truman (2003-2012) 14 Stanford > 10 Chicago, 4 Columbia
Fulbright (2005-2012) 148 Chicago > 142 Stanford, 138 Columbia
NSF (2001-2010) 320 Stanford > 124 Chicago, 94 Columbia</p>
<p>[Northwestern</a> Data Book: *Administration and Planning - Northwestern University](<a href=“http://www.adminplan.northwestern.edu/ir/data-book/index.htm]Northwestern”>http://www.adminplan.northwestern.edu/ir/data-book/index.htm)</p>
<p>Studious, you claim that you are a “prospective” student…and I see that you don’t think much of Columbia or Chicago…I wish you all the “luck” in getting into the “other” schools that you so prize. I hope your insincerity is kept in check during your interviews…let alone your essays. You never know how many college interviewers lurk on CC.</p>
<p>^ Baseless disparaging is your response to someone who only asserted facts? How lovely.</p>
<p>gravitas, where did I claim such a thing? I’m a junior this year–not even applying to college. So I haven’t been admitted anywhere. In addition, I have no vendetta against Columbia or Chicago; in fact, I currently plan on applying to both. Again with the inferences, guys.</p>
<p>Some of the factors determining Stanford and MIT’s drops this year include several factors that are very important to USNWR’s ranking methodology: faculty resources, for one, is crucial. Chicago and Columbia are #2 and #3. Stanford and MIT rank much lower. Six year-graduation rates are tabulated, where Columbia comes out strongest; another is freshman retention rate, where Columbia comes out strongest. There are indeed many factors that contribute to rankings, including where universities choose to allocate their resources. For Chicago and Columbia, with their rigorous, discussion-based Core Curriculum requirements, resources are allocated to ensure small class size and dramatically higher resources for faculty. You cannot discount these internal measures of institutional improvement and how such carry weight in the rise and/or drops in rankings.</p>
<p>It is surprising the vitriol with which the ranking displacement of Stanford and MIT engender. Columbia has been in 4th place for several years and has bested both Stanford and MIT for several years. This is not news. What is news is Chicago’s rise because to those who are clearly uninformed, if Chicago is not considered to be prestigeous on this board, it can’t be great. People who don’t think for themselves, who haven’t critical faculties of discernment, assume that that which is most popular must be best. Our greatest 19th century American novelist Herman Melville could not sell any books in his lifetime. Moby Dick was a failure. Whatever the mass of Americans may think, it is ranked at or near the top of greatest American novels ever written. You associate mere fame with assumptions of “best-ness.” </p>
<p>What you overlook is the fact of historical change over time. It has rightly been pointed out that in the 1980s Chicago and Columbia were ranked much lower. Chicago was a low-ranked, but highly respected niche school for nerdy intellectuals. Our admit rate was over 30%. Columbia spent several decades recovering from the student unrest that demoralized the campus in the late 60s and the urban blight of New York that affected the whole metropolis. It was in a crime ridden area, considered unsafe.</p>
<p>In the past thirty years both institutions have been in the process of major reforms which have borne fruit. Columbia and Chicago did not buy their rankings, they spent over thirty years EARNING them. They didn’t displace Stanford and MIT overnight with a few dollars paid to USNWR. As institutions grow when troubled, institutions can very subtly decline over time as well, and measures of institutional retrenchment can be measured, for example, in things like faculty resources. Maybe Stanford isn’t allocating resources as it used to. Maybe its students aren’t as statistically qualified. In point of fact, Chicago and Columbia both have higher median SATS that Stanford. </p>
<p>Colleges can grow and improve, and there can also be changes that are not for the better. Reputational lag is not contemporary, always, with institutional changes that can be costly later.</p>
<p>You seem to be under the delusion that reputation and quality are static fixtures that are impervious to change. Because Chicago and Columbia were lower ranked thirty years ago, it makes no sense to you that over thirty years they have actually improved and may, in some categories, may have finally outstripped some of their peer schools on measures that have rankings consequences. Conversely, because Stanford and MIT have always had such prestigious reputations, it is inconceivable to you that institutional change subtly downward, is possible. You don’t understand history. You believe that what once was, must always be.</p>
<p>Here is another little history lesson for you. In surveys of academics in 1900 and 1925, the top four schools over that 25 year period were: Harvard, Columbia, UChicago, and Yale. Yale was always fourth place in these polls. Princeton was far down on the list, as hard as it may be for you to believe. Indeed, Princeton as you know it was not THIS Princeton until well into the twentieth century, its reputation burnished by such luminaries as Einstein. Until that time it was just a preppy little school for the rich. In the course of thirty years Princeton changed from being an educational also ran, to the academic powerhouse you know today. HISTORY matters.</p>
<p>I love the irony. One hundred years ago the top schools were recognized to be Harvard, Columbia, Chicago, and Yale. Today they are four of the top five schools in this ranking, with former also-ran Princeton rounding out the five. Rather than being usurpers of the ordained places of Stanford and MIT, I would say that, ironically and deservedly, Chicago and Columbia have reclaimed their historical places.</p>
<p>Swingtime, we must have studied the same American educational history. Excellent summation.</p>
<p>Swingtime, that is the best post I have read on this forum in a very long time. Thanks for such a thoughtful, well-articulated piece.</p>
<p>Hippo you have been on both the Chicago and Columbia sites bashing the schools and trying to PROVE Stanford’s superiority. USNWR isn’t measuring individual departmental performance or post-grad fellowships, it is ranking the undergraduate education of each school as a totality made up of numerous factors, only one of which you cite.</p>
<p>If we are going to go there, Chicago and Columbia, along with Harvard are the three American universities with the historically highest number of Nobel Prize winners.</p>
<p>Why are you SO emotionally invested in"proving" that Columbia and Chicago are inferior to Stanford. If you are secure with Stanford’s reputation, it shouldn’t matter. Clearly you are not.</p>
<p>Things change over time. Institutions and reputations are not static. There is NO Law written, that I know of, that says institutions cannot improve over time, or that on some measures institutions cannot decline. That is the nature of history. The nature of life.</p>
<p><em>Cue John Lennon’s Imagine</em> Ideally, what will happen is that some day, hopefully soon, the differences in quality between all these schools and more will be so negligible, that ranking sites will have no choice but to rank in general tiers and instead focus on the characteristics that make each unique :). </p>
<p>On a more serious note, great posts swingtime, I too don’t understand how some people are citing traditional prestige and rankings from the 90’s (this was on another board) as unequivical proof of these schools’ inherent and (apparently) infinite superiority.</p>
<p>
Rather than casting aspersions on my character, it might behoove you to actually address the points in my post. I can only hope Chicago students are taught to argue more effectively than that! To put things in Aristotelian terms, it is better to stick to logos rather than pathos or ethos. As for my motives, suffice it to say that I am genuinely puzzled. Many people would place Stanford second only to Harvard at the undergraduate level. </p>
<p>Rankings from 100 years ago are all well and good, but they’re hardly relevant to the discussion at hand. Certainly less so than even the rankings from the 90s you scorn! Sure, go back to 1920, and Stanford wasn’t as good. Go back to 1860, and Chicago didn’t even exist. At one point Yale and Amherst were the largest colleges in the US. Who cares? What matters is that in 2012 Stanford is outperforming Columbia and Chicago in almost every measure of academic heft. </p>
<p>I’d like to see something other than Nobels or the core trotted out yet again…they’re not particularly convincing.</p>
<p>No, what matters is that a certain magazine didn’t say “Stanford is performing better than Chicago or Columbia.” If Stanford hadn’t been ranked lower, you would not be in “hostile territory” – the Chicago and Columbia boards – attempting to convince us of Stanford’s superiority. So, what matters is clearly the ranking, which is rankling. Whatever statistics you trot out are irrelevant to the USNWR judgment, which judgment you are attempting to “appeal” on boards that are not particularly sympathetic to your case. </p>
<p>Is Stanford measurably better? How do you define better, and for whom? Statistics are meaningless if the goal of a college search is to find a school that fits ones needs, inclinations, and bent of talent. Hoorah for Stanford on all these measures you cite. Stanford is also known to be less intellectual and more pre-professional than either Chicago or Columbia, and without a rigorous core. Intellectualism and a core were two factors that determined MY college choice. Chicago was BETTER for me because of who I am, your Stanford statistics and measurements be damned. Columbia was just named by Newsweek the most rigorous college in America, and for a certain kind of intellectual student it is BETTER than would be Stanford. Your statistics do not PROVE that Stanford IS BETTER for every student, that it is a cookie-cutter for all sizes and shapes of intellect and talent. </p>
<p>And manners do count, sir. No one from Chicago or Columbia, as far as I know, has gone to the Stanford or MIT boards to “gloat” or to prove that these two schools are deserving of their rankings, so screw Stanford and MIT. We were just enjoying the results among “family,” shall I say, and it seems particularly ill-mannered and, really, boorish of you to come to these boards to insult schools to which you have no connection, just because the rankings in this magazine aren’t the rankings you prefer.</p>
<p>I am not going to bother to refute you because, really, this is an argument that is not necessary on THESE particular boards. The rankings are what they are. Better luck next year.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>Actually Columbia outperforms Stanford in almost every field in 2012.</p>
<p>US Government
<p>3) In 2012, the richest Columbia graduate (Warren Buffet) is richer than the richest Stanford graduate. </p>
<p>In Academic field
4) Columbia produced more Nobel laureates than Stanford.
5) Columbia ranked higher than Stanford UN News ranking.
6) Columbia university is also ranked higher in QS World University Ranking.
7) Columbia is the most rigorous school ( newsweek)</p>
<p>8)Financial industry is dominated by Columbia graduates, e.g. Morgan Stanley CEO, Citibank CEO, Goldman Sach’s largest shareholder are all Columbia graduates.</p>
<p>Wow, well done swingtime. You do UChicago proud!</p>
<p>Swingtime,
I enjoy reading your argument, you wrote wonderful articles.
Also like to read those statistics and facts from some other folks. They are all great universities, Stanford, Chicago, Columbia, MIT, etc…</p>
<p>Everyone must realize that people discount undergraduate education far too often and consider mostly graduate reputation when deciding which schools are most prestigious. Because of this, Stanford and MIT will always be considered more prestigious in the eyes of laymen than C & C (although MIT only has a business school to boast in terms of the big 3 grad programs). When we look at almost all rankings for graduate programs (big 3 and specialty programs included) Stanford & MIT trumps Columbia & Chicago. </p>
<p>I really am dubious about Chicago’s ranking (although I believe it’s PA score should be higher) but I believe Columbia’s ranking as 4th is justified.</p>
<p>US NEWS National University Rankings</p>
<p>1 Harvard University
1 Princeton University
3 Yale University
4 Columbia University
4 University of Chicago
6 Stanford University
6 Massachusetts Institute of Technology
8 Duke University
8 University of Pennsylvania
10 California Institute of Technology (Caltech)
10 Dartmouth</p>
<p>QS World University Rankings 2012 (US only)</p>
<p>1 Massachusetts Institute of Technology
2 Harvard University
3 Yale University
4 University of Chicago
5 Princeton University
6 California Institute of Technology (Caltech)
7 Columbia University
8 University of Pennsylvania
9 Cornell University
10 Stanford University
11 Johns Hopkins University
12 University of Michigan
13 Duke University</p>
<p>Forbes America’s Top College</p>
<p>1 Princeton University
2 Williams College
3 Stanford University
4 University of Chicago
5 Yale University
6 Harvard University
7 United States Military Academy
8 Columbia University
9 Pomona College
10 Swarthmore College
11 Massachusetts Institute of Technology
12 University of Notre Dame
13 Amherst College
14 Bowdoin College
15 Washington and Lee University
16 Wellesley College
17 University of Pennsylvania
18 California Institute of Technology
19 Brown University
20 Vassar College</p>
<p>dubious about Chicago’s ranking? hmm…</p>
<p>Remember guys, these college rankings are like college basketball, not football.</p>
<p>“I realize Columbia has a long tradition of success, but why did that waver to 15th place at the time of the 1983 rankings?”</p>
<p>I take it you didn’t live in NYC during the 1980s.</p>
<p>By objective academic criteria, neither Columbia nor Chicago matches up to MIT or Stanford’s level. In my opinion, UCB, UCLA or U of Washington are extremely formidable, probably better in terms of research capacity than both Chicago and Columbia. But the US news is for undergraduate college. It introduces a lot of insignificant factors into the ranking, which universities or professors won’t care about.</p>
<p>hhttp://ranking.heeact.edu.tw/en-us/2011/TOP/100ttp://<a href=“http://www.shanghairanking.com/ARWU2012.html”>www.shanghairanking.com/ARWU2012.html</a></p>