<p>It seems like UCLA has been raising its position in rankings in recent years. It is essentially the most "applied" college, and even its acceptance rate is much lower than Berkeley.
Just a random thought, does anyone think UCLA will overtake Berkeley someday in terms of ranking?</p>
<p>The acceptance rate has very little to do with the rankings. look at the acceptance rate for university of chicago as a counterexample.</p>
<p>i highly doubt that it ever will, itll be close tho</p>
<p>I’ve said that if things keep going as they are then yes this will happen, but not any time soon. Ucla has a long way to go to equal the output of distinguished contributors to the world, both alumni and faculty. To be honest, there’s the top 25, and then there’s everyone else, not counting specialty schools only a holistic ranking. Beyond the top 25 almost all schools are equal in academics, not to eachother but in the fact that they are not top 25. I seriously don’t know why Berkeley has slipped in rankings. Could be because other specialty schools are taking some of those top spots, and the fact that it’s public does not help when everyone assumes private is better. It’s just wierd how Berkeley has like a dozen departments all ranked in the top 5 in the nation, yet stand at 21 in the nation</p>
<p>who cares dude. ucla is awesome no matter how it compares to other colleges!</p>
<p>Are you guys counting undergrad or grad?</p>
<p>@vintij: I was thinking the same thing, how does UCB have so many dept ranked in the top 5 or 10 and still stand at only 21??</p>
<p>It is because private schools have big advantages with the overall criteria that USNEWS uses to rank the colleges. Maybe the individual departments are ranked differently… maybe in a way that is more fair to Berkeley? Notice, however, that Berkeley is ranked #3 in the World by a ranking organization that uses more practical ranking criteria.</p>
<p>Berkeley i believe will always be the number 1 public school in the country and the top UC because it is the THE California University. UCLA is cool, but Berkeley is Berkeley. However, since both of these schools are excellent, I wouldn’t necessarily pick one over the other because of prestige.</p>
<p>I don’t think it will but I do believe that UCLA could be stuck right below or even with Cal one day! But it would be strange on behalf of the UC system to have one of their colleges exceed their historically top and first. But they could certainly be tied!</p>
<p>Cal is much more than just the #1 public U in the country according to USNews.</p>
<p>The president of Stanford wrote a nasty letter to them basically calling them idiots because they didn’t have Cal and Michigan in the top 10 overall schools in the country.</p>
<p>Cal is also #6 on THIS little list, one spot below Harvard, and one above the University of Paris.
[List</a> of Nobel laureates by university affiliation - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia](<a href=“http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Nobel_laureates_by_university_affiliation]List”>List of Nobel laureates by university affiliation - Wikipedia)</p>
<p>No, but I do think that UCSD will take over UCLA for the second spot.</p>
<p>National Rankings don’t mean much at all. World Rankings mean even less.
Employers don’t give a crap about if your university is ranked 3rd or 5th in the nation, they look at how your PROGRAM is ranked, and your GPA. A Berkeley student graduating from Haas is obviously likely to be more competitive in the job market than a similar student graduating from UCLA. On the other hand, a biochem student from UCLA is probably more competitive in the job market than a similar student from Cal.</p>
<p>Why would a biochem major from UCLA be more competitive? Isn’t Cal’s program higher ranked?</p>
<p>Why don’t usnews modify the way they evaluate the rankings since it is obvious that private instituitions are favored?</p>
<p>Why do we care what a magazine whose editor is a UPENN alumni (bias anyone?) tells us?</p>
<p>@Cali Trumpet
I always thought that UCLA had a stronger bio program (but what do I know about that), I could be wrong. </p>
<p>@Henry
Maybe we should let big businesses come up with a University Rankings list, that should be more helpful.</p>
<p>I agree with Mortimer that UCSD will overtake UCLA.</p>
<p>do you really really think that any of the top 5 ‘ranked’ schools are that much ‘better’ than the other 4? they’re all amazing tier 1 schools each with different strengths and weaknesses. I’d personally never go to cal, but that’s preference. do I think I’m ‘losing’ anything by going to ucla? absolutely not.</p>
<p>@rawful - I’ve never heard of an employer that looks at GPA. Grad schools yes, employers, no.</p>
<p>I’m pretty sure they do for new-grads AMorrison. What else would they hire based on?</p>