<p>Be it as it may Hawkette, the "Faculty dedication to teaching" has the similar flaws to the PA.</p>
<p>Swish, Caltech's mean SAT score is 100 points higher than Stanford's. That does not mean Caltech is much better than Stanford. The PA is does not measure quality of student bodies, it measures academic reputation.</p>
<p>WF has two NAS members and the faculty won 5 major awards in the last cycle</p>
<p>Tufts has 5 NAS members and won 6 awards</p>
<p>W&M 0 NAS members and 4 awards</p>
<p>PSU 28 NAS members abd 23 awards</p>
<p>So not they are not in the same academic universe.</p>
<p>Barrons- you illustrate my point with your myopia. The above mentioned colleges are teaching colleges and PSU is a research U. Ill bet you those award winning faculty members were attracted by low teaching loads. Also since PSU is 5 times larger, if you multiply the awards out you come to roughly the same ratio. But if you compare student bodies, there are thousands upon thousands of Penn State students that wouldnt have any chance at the other schools. If PA, is used to rate undergraduate quality, then it is a miserable failure.</p>
<p>There arent many kids looking at Penn State that are also looking at Tufts. Yet PA would tell them that they should. It is a useless metric yet kids that are deciding on colleges are using it as a quality measure. This is ridiculous.</p>
<p>If they wanted to study business, engineering, atmospheric sciences and probably a host of other areas I don't know about they would easily be as well or better served at PSU. Real myopia is looking only at SAT scores and concluding that the school with higher average scores is better. Also the Honors College at PSU can compete with any of those schools for average SAT numbers if that is so important.</p>
<p>Granted, if they want to be the next Al Roker, Penn State is prob the best. I cant believe kids college list on CC arent Tufts, Colgate, Brown, Dartmouth, and Penn State. Thank you for opening up everyones eyes.</p>
<p>Maybe this will open them.</p>
<p>And your little shot at Al Roker shows how little you know about the actual study of atmospheric science. It is very difficult.</p>
<p>Good one Swish! I cant believe the defenders of PA are so stubborn as to state Penn State = Tufts. They could lose their Logic License for this. Its already restricted.</p>
<p>Other than it's Boston area location and Ivy Safety "status" what is so great about Tufts? I guarantee if you say Tufts west of Pennsy you get a blank stare from 99% of the people. Put Tufts in St. Louis and you have a poor man's WUSTL.</p>
<p>A poor man WUSTL is still light years better than Penn State. I think people get so wrapped up in statistics and figures that they forget these are living breathing places. That is what makes these places so different and makes Tufts, Rice et al so much better than the Penn States of the world. </p>
<p>To rank these huge state schools ahead of smaller, smarter schools is absurd. Yet that is what US News has done which is the whole point of this thread. And for one brief moment in 1995, they had a moment of truth and admitted it. I wish those days would return and actually be helpful instead of the misleading info that is presented currently.</p>
<p>You dont have to be an Atmospheric Scientist to understand that.</p>
<p>Ouch! Nice slam.</p>
<p>I looked recently at the class size data published in the 2008 USNWR survey and ranked the top 50 national universities according to those that did best in the class size measurements for % of classes with less than 20 students and % of classes with more than 50 students. </p>
<p>As you might expect, there was a very high correlation between those colleges that were recognized for their great classroom teaching excellence (albeit in a survey done more than a decade ago) and how they stacked up in the class size measurements. </p>
<p>In the measurement for nat'l unis with best (highest) % of classes with fewer than 20 students, 13 of the first 15 were also ranked in the excellent teaching ranking.</p>
<p>In the measurement for nat'l unis with best (lowest) % of classes with 50 or more students, 12 of the first 15 were also ranked in the excellent teaching ranking. </p>
<p>Great classroom teaching is an essential positive of a great undergraduate education and class sizes can have an important impact on both the teacher's abilty to communicate ideas/concepts and the student's ability to receive/process information and engage in discussion/debate about these ideas.</p>
<p>
[quote]
If PA is meant to rate according to "overall undergraduate quality" then explain</p>
<p>Penn State 3.8 SAT 1080-1280 Top 10% Freshman 37%</p>
<p>W&M 3.7 SAT 1240-1440 10% Freshman 80%
Tufts 3.6 SAT 1340-1480 83%
Wake Forest 3.5 SAT 1240-1400 63%</p>
<p>Would anyone even dare put these schools in the same universe? Yet according to PA (undergraduate quality) Penn State is better
[/quote]
</p>
<p>This is exactly why the USNWR ranking irks me so much. Tufts' quality of teaching is ranked so high (added to an enviable LAC-sized faculty:student ratio); the students' accomplishments are stellar (average SATs higher than half the Ivies, believe it or not!); it's ranked among the top 10 schools were students "are happiest"; spectacular grad/professional school placement; and yet the clearly uninformed PA score brings the whole school down.</p>
<p>It's a good thing that even though people on these CC boards make that pithy ranking seem so important, it really isn't.</p>
<p>Amen sister! I wonder what an updated ranking of top teaching schools would look like. If there would be any changes at all?</p>
<p>Isn't great classroom teaching THE essential element of quality in undergraduate education? I know this is anecdotal, but looking back on my own undergraduate education, the excellence of the teacher was the primary factor in promoting my interest in the subject. I had a few famous teachers who were, nonetheless, not very good in the classroom.
The 1995 list is interesting because it makes you wonder why top academics would produce such very different ratings when asked to rate excellence of classroom teaching and "overall" excellence. If overall excellence includes research productivity, why should the prospective undergraduate care about this? Also, anecdotal, but I can well remember the hoo-ha at my college when one of the top classroom teachers didn't get tenure--I mean, this guy was one of the best lecturers you ever heard, and people flocked to his class--Political Philosophy. My understanding is that this sort of thing isn't unusual.</p>
<p>As Deep Throat said, "follow the money". The amount that comes into the University from research grants is staggering. As schools got addicted to this revenue stream, its very difficult to give it up. </p>
<p>Common sense would dictate that teaching would be the primary driver in undergraduate excellence. Unfortunately, $ talks and common sense walks.</p>
<p>If one were to update this poll, how would it change? </p>
<p>1 Dartmouth
2 Brown
3 William & Mary
4 Rice
5 Princeton</p>
<p>Would you change the top five at all?</p>