<p>“In the aggregate, a higher SAT score will lead to higher LSAT, GRE,GMAT, MCAT, DAT, etc scores.”</p>
<p>This isn’t necessarily true. There may be correlation, but not causation. </p>
<p>“Not everyone learns the same way and I have NEVER seen real quantifiabe evidence that smaller class size increases academic quality, even though I search for it. What I do see is a NEGATIVE correllation between tons of money being thrown at academis and the quality of the products (the graduates).”</p>
<p>This is your problem, not our problem. If you can’t see the tangible benefits of discussion based learning, that’s too bad. But if a lecture is just as good (if not better in your description) as a small class, then how is a book not as good as a lecture? Words said by a voice talking to a 500 person class are no different then words printed in a book. So what is the point of ever going to class?</p>
<p>Up close and personal interaction with a faculty member is preferred. I cannot see how it could be successfully argued otherwise. A faculty member working in a personal way with a student may ignite an intellectual fire that can lead to superb results with less connection to high-stakes test scores than would be predicted.</p>
<p>This is what FSU is trying to do.</p>
<p>I think FSU is substantially underrated in at least two ways:</p>
<ol>
<li><p>The peer review. This questionable process attempts to capture what the numbers do not. FSU is underrated here for unknown reasons that I suspect have little or nothing to do with academics and more with how FSU wins national sports competitions and Bobby Bowden’s kindness to underprivileged athletes.</p></li>
<li><p>The failure of U.S. News type ratings to accurately reward schools for the reality of their financial circumstances. For example, US News rewards schools for representing budgets that actually are state agricultural expenditures and nothing that help undergrads through freshman mathematics.</p></li>
</ol>
<p>Both of these effects are magnified as the rankings go higher as the marginal difference between schools decreases. Thus, schools are rewarded for down rating competitors and deliberately poisoning the academic community well against competitors.</p>
<p>Ratings like U.S. News have taken on a life of their own - they now cause professional educators to play ratings games that have serious results for universities in general. The tragedy is that the ratings are really designed to sell magazine subscriptions and make the shareholders a profit, not direct the academic community.</p>
<p>NewMassDAD,
I didn’t obfuscate anything. If you can’t understand my answer, hey- sorry about your reading and reasoning skills. I made the case that based on FSU’s rich history of producing people that contribute to and change society, coupled with it’s much better than average student body, when comparred to the schools in it’s rankng band, that FSU is underrated. You miss something there?</p>
<p>“This is your problem, not our problem. If you can’t see the tangible benefits of discussion based learning, that’s too bad. But if a lecture is just as good (if not better in your description) as a small class, then how is a book not as good as a lecture? Words said by a voice talking to a 500 person class are no different then words printed in a book. So what is the point of ever going to class”</p>
<p>Thanks for picking the very most extreme example and inferring that is what I ment. You are touting the benefits of “small” classes, right? Show me EVIDENCE that classes of 20 make for a signifigantly different academic quality experience than a class of, say 43. Sorry, but I’m not an idiot for challenging what you tout as common sense. You tout it first, without proof and second- with actual evidence that throwing money and reducing class sizes is directly correlated to DECREASING quality.</p>
<p>"“In the aggregate, a higher SAT score will lead to higher LSAT, GRE,GMAT, MCAT, DAT, etc scores.”</p>
<p>This isn’t necessarily true. There may be correlation, but not causation. “”</p>
<p>Yes, it is true- maybe not in an individual basis, but in the AGGREGATE, a population with high SAT scores will have high scores on all standardized test scores. Do you think that any one of the IVY’s will EVER have a lower (fill in the blank) test score than a SUNY? In fact, these test scores have about a 0.80 correlation with eachother, the same that different versions of the IQ exam have with eachother. In fact, the GRE and the SAT are very similar exams in all respects. Sure, someone who went to Eastern Iowa State can score a 163 on their LSAT, but the AVARAGE LSAT score for all Yale applicants is ~164.</p>
<p>“Up close and personal interaction with a faculty member is preferred.”</p>
<p>Preferred by you, but not by everyone. To think so, is hust silly. In a freshman calc 1 class, do you REALLY need debate? No, you need someone who facilitates learning. Period. To push to have chem 1, freshman biology, calc, intro anthropoligy, psychology, etc. th have tiny class sizes is a complete abuse of the tax payers of the state to whom the state university system SHOULD answer to. Now, to have small, intimate very specialized classes that are advanced and narrow in scope, yes- there is an argument to be made. However, big schools like UF, FSU, and whatever already have many of the upper classes capped at low enrolement.</p>
<p>In a couple weeks our schools are going to have a little football game parent2noles… What do you think is going to happen? USF winning would be a pretty big statement but our team is so damn fickle.</p>
<p>You may not need “debate”, but wouldn’t it be nice to be able to ask a question if you are confused rather than have to sit there struggling with one single concept for the entire class?</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>With massive state schools like FSU, we are often not talking about classes of 43, but rather, classes of 300.</p>
<p>Don’t exaggerate class size at FSU. We actually have a very similar faculty to student ratio with U Florida at 20.5 to 1 while they have 20.3 to 1 for the current CDS. Last year, FSU had the better ratio. Honors classes are usually maybe 20 students or less. </p>
<p>Middlebury College is a tiny LAC by comparison with ~2350 undergrads. I noticed you dropped that linkage from your profile. I’m sure it’s a great school in Vermont…but you’d have to want a tiny LAC in a very cold place. </p>
<p>Curiously enough, when I glance through some of the more significant science graduate programs rankings of US News, I am not finding Middlebury College, despite Middlebury’s “Quick facts” claiming “Strong programs and world-class facilities in the sciences”. Is this an exaggeration? See: [Quick</a> Facts](<a href=“http://www.middlebury.edu/about/quickfacts/]Quick”>http://www.middlebury.edu/about/quickfacts/)</p>
<p>I suppose we should note that FSU has a national laboratory (there is no peer in the United States) - the [National</a> High Magnetic Field Laboratory](<a href=“http://www.magnet.fsu.edu/]National”>http://www.magnet.fsu.edu/) to which my daughter had access to as an undergraduate, when she performed her undergraduate research with a faculty member…and later presented her work at UWisc-Madison. Perhaps this could compensate for the lack of snow all winter?</p>
<p>“You may not need “debate”, but wouldn’t it be nice to be able to ask a question if you are confused rather than have to sit there struggling with one single concept for the entire class?”</p>
<p>Dude, learn to raise your hand. I have been to 3 colleges, earned 3 degrees and NEVER had a prof who wouldn’t answer a question AND invite students to office hours or to communicate over email if a student was confused.</p>
<p>Small, “intimate” classes in intro classes at a sate school is a raping of the tax payers. Period. Setting up a ranking that calculates s/f ratio and interpreting the data as USNEWS does shows dubious intentions at best.</p>
<p>You don’t suppose Middlebury’s absence from the grad program rankings has anything to do with the fact that Middlebury does not have any grad programs in the sciences?</p>
<p>Pardon me for wondering about the wisdom of your comparison. </p>
<p>Lets use one a bit more relevant: State U to State U. </p>
<p>Physics FSU-48 U. Wisc.-16 UCSB-10</p>
<p>Chemistry FSU-48 U. Wisc-7 UCSB-26</p>
<p>Bio FSU-89 U. Wisc-15 UCSB-58</p>
<p>Interesting showing. Even with the National Magnet lab, great Florida weather and such, the best FSU can do in physics is 48th? UCSB, a second tier place in terms of state support and general prestige in California (yes, thought to be much more of a party school than an academic place - beach effect?) ranks in the top 10 in physics!</p>
<p>Now, this is not to say FSU does not do a good job educating undergrads. By many measures it seems to be doing a great job, especially when you consider that there is little evidence that grad program quality has any relationship to undergrad teaching quality.</p>
<p>Truth is, even the grad program rankings are not of much use. What really matters is the reputation and connection of one’s grad school adviser. You could have a well known, well connected thesis adviser at a middle ranked program. Or, more commonly, you could have a so-so thesis adviser at a top program. I know of quite a few Harvard PhDs, for instance, who have not gone anywhere exciting after they got their degrees, certainly no further than I went after my much lower ranked program.</p>
<p>That’s not as true anymore… Santa Barbara’s location has been attracting incredibly faculty recently, and admissions have become significantly more competitive in recent years, and the US News ranking in 2010 was the highest ever for the school (42nd nationally, 11th public).</p>
<p>EDIT: Actually I think I remember you saying a while back you went to UCSB so maybe you know more about the school than even me, a recent grad, heh. I’d love to hear what Isla Vista was like back in the day…</p>
<p>My best memory of UCSB was Tom Bruice, a chemistry prof and National Academy of Sciences member, walking through the campus with two high school kids (well, they looked like that…) in a wetsuit carrying his surfboard. That and his red Corvette convertable.</p>
<p>Oh yea, when I TA’d genetics, there were lots of boards in the back of the classroom.</p>
<p>IV back then was pretty wild, with virtually no non-UCSB types living there.</p>
<p>Of course, now the campus has traffic lights on the bike paths. It was more bike vs car in my day. </p>
<p>UCSB is a good example of strategic faculty hires, and a focus on specific departments. In these, I suspect it has much in common with FSU. </p>
<p>I also tend to agree with some earlier posters about FSU being under-appreciated by those doing the rankings. I think that’s a common problem among southern universities, who have a hard time getting respect outside the south. And so many of the rankers are from the north (and northeast) where they can’t imagine anything good can take place where it’s warm?</p>
<p>I don’t know why the attitude, other than the fact that there’s a big cultural gap between yankee country and the south. And the north can be rather condescending. </p>
<p>I grew up and went to college in the midwest, which tends to be pretty tolerant of everyone, went to grad school on the west coast, and lived in Boston for many years, raising our D there. When she decided to attend college in Chicago, friends thought we’d lost our minds for permitting that, and to this day still can’t admit that good education is found in the midwest, much less the south (save that odd kid that heads to Tulane or Emory, which for some odd reason seem “acceptable”, but not Duke!)</p>
<p>Now that I live in Wash DC, I am daily reminded about the excellent schools in the south that get no recognition up north - places like Clemson, Wake Forest, U. Georgia etc. </p>
<p>Truth is, it is in relatively recent times (if you consider 30-40 years recent? In academe it is…) that the south has valued higher ed, arguably much more than the north, and especially public higher ed. Just compare U. Mass (or VT, or URI or Rutgers) to FSU, U. Florida, UG, UNC etc. and you can see my point. </p>
<p>But all too many “opinion leaders” aka department chairs that do these ratings trained in the northeast, so the ratings tend to self perpetuate.</p>