<p>Well, the 2008 rankings have been leaked. As always, the smaller and awesome undergrad ivies get screwed. Penn rises 2 notches and Brown 1. Dartmouth drops 2.</p>
<p>Best National Universities</p>
<li>Princeton University (NJ) </li>
<li>Harvard University (MA)</li>
<li>Yale University (CT)</li>
<li>Stanford University (CA)</li>
<li>California Institute of Technology
University of Pennsylvania </li>
<li>Massachusetts Inst. Of Technology </li>
<li>Duke University (NC)</li>
<li>Columbia University (NY)
University of Chicago</li>
<li>Dartmouth College (NH)</li>
<li>Cornell University (NY)
Washington University in St. Louis</li>
<li>Brown University (RI)
Johns Hopkins University (MD)
Northwestern University (IL)</li>
<li>Emory University (GA)
Rice University (TX)</li>
<li>University of Notre Dame (IN)
Vanderbilt University (TN)</li>
<li>University of California Berkeley </li>
<li>Carnegie Mellon University ¶</li>
<li>Georgetown University (DC)
University of Virginia</li>
<li>University of California Los Angeles
University of Michigan Ann Arbor</li>
</ol>
<p>^^^ I know man. Penn and WUSTL have been working at it for a few years and is finally paying off for Penn. I know is silly but still annoys the hell out of me.</p>
<p>Come on guys, we all know that Dartmouth is the bomb. It's not like people are going to be like, "Gee, I thought that you went to an internationally-known Ivy league school, and I used to respect you. But now you've dropped out of the top 10 in U.S. News rankings...so I think your sister at WUSTL is smarter than you." We're still going to one of the most prestigious universities in the country...and if it's any consolation, Brown's still below us :-)</p>
<p>^^^ Dont' pick on our other half man (lol) People at Brown could not care less about the rankings either, they know that Brown is one of the "in" universities and more selective than a lot of the rest.</p>
<p>You know that the USNWR rankings are complete bs right? They change up their secret little equation (still haven't said how they calculate their rankings) every year so there's something different. Plus, lots of colleges "cheat" in these to make themselves look good (lowering admission rates, etc.). I remember someone telling me once that Middlebury didn't get as high ranked as some other school simply because they had two top-notch professors who lacked doctorates, even though they were without a doubt at the top of their respective fields. It's ludicrous!</p>
<p>Numbers can never tell you how good any school is.</p>
<p>College rankings are an attempt to objectify something that cannot be objectified: education. There's too much subjectivity and bias involved in these rankings. For example, a major category of the USN&WR rankings is an opinion survey. Opinion is not fact. True, people can ignore the college rankings, but unfortunately, most are not aware of the flaws of the rankings. The problem is they believe rankings are fact (which is a mind set these journals count on). Rankings need to be tossed out the window, because they mislead many people to think that a high-ranking college is the best college for everyone. Truth is, a less-known and lower-ranked college may be just as capable of providing a quality education as a high-ranking school.</p>
<p>slipper w. all due respect, you said yourself that going to the highest us news ranked school was smart? (i know you meant relatively speaking, i.e. #5 and 8 are not much different)</p>
<p>However, each school has its own mission and goals. Dartmouth focuses heavily on SAT scores (probably more than Columbia or Brown or Penn). Penn focuses more on the students in the top 10 percent of their class. Dartmouth is less than 1/2 of the size of Penn and is practically even when it comes to selectivity. You have to give Penn credit. Why you can't lump Penn and WUSTL together is that WUSTL gives out a lot of merit money whereas Penn doesn't have that luxury. I agree that Dartmouth should BE RANKED HIGHER. I would swap Chicago and Dartmouth and then I think the ranking would be legit. I'd swap MIT and Penn as well.</p>
<p>Calikid, yeah when I said that I wasn't being literal. I meant "sort of." Individual year ranks are fickle...you have to look at many more factors. Its too bad Dartmouth dropped but honestly its pretty meaningless. For example, I would choose Brown over Penn in a nanosecond based on personal fit, because in my view the schools are total equals.</p>
<p>
[quote]
I highly doubt Penn would be placed so high without Wharton. They're pretty much two separate schools.
[/quote]
</p>
<p>My stupidity sense is tingling. I don't know if you would try to quantify that by using the metrics of the student body in the different schools (in which differences are certainly short of "two separate schools"), in the undergraduate life (in which all 4 schools are inseparably intertwined, and you can't really tell who goes to SAS or Wharton), or in the career prospects after graduation (in which every SAS who majored in econ goes off to the same buckets-o-money jobs as the Wharton kids who are all econ majors by default)...</p>
<p>Take it from someone who actually GOES to Penn--which would be me, as well as not you.</p>
<p>There's a reason why I stayed away from Penn... :)</p>
<p>There's also a reason why Wharton students continually try to distance themselves from the rest of the school. And I've definitely seen this first hand.</p>