<p>Forgot Rice…about right to slightly underrated.</p>
<p>These are entertaining :D</p>
<p>You don’t think Tufts is at all underrated, finalchild? Do you think Tufts is overrated?</p>
<p>I think Mich and Cal are both underrated, but probably not as much as some people claim. I would put Cal in the 12-15 range, and Mich in the 18-20 range.</p>
<p>I also think Northeastern is somewhat underrated. Northeastern is at least as good as BU I think, but BU gets much more recognition. </p>
<p>Stanford is also underrated. I think it should be ahead of Columbia and Uchicago. </p>
<p>In the coming years, do you guys see at any colleges that you predict may make some massive strides and rise quite significantly in the rankings? Do you see any colleges that may lose a fair bit of ground in the rankings in the coming years?</p>
<p>I think Tufts is a little overrated but then again I don’t really get Tufts so I’m not reliable there.</p>
<p>Agree that Northeastern is underrated. BU better known nationally but NEU I think has surpassed locally.</p>
<p>NYU also hard to place. Same with GWU.</p>
<p>I don’t see a lot of change coming. Very hard to crack inside the top 15. Once you get to Johns Hopkins and even further up the ladder hard to see any slipping. And if you’re further down the list how do you get by Vandy, Rice, etc who also have momentum. I see this with Rochester, a school I believe deserves to be higher, but over who???</p>
<p>Well I’m interested to see where GWU lands this year on the new USNWR, considering they are currently unranked for fraudulently reporting. GW is a good school though, arguably top 40 material. </p>
<p>I think NYU is somewhat underrated. It is very well known nationally and regionally, is very selective, and also boasts an array of consistently strong academics. I would put NYU at least in the top 30. </p>
<p>As for the coming years, I could see Wake Forest slipping. I think it is overrated on USNWR and it doesn’t have the same merit of most the schools around it do. I could also see the University of Miami improving on USNWR. Umiami has risen more than any other school in the top 50 in the last 5-10 years, and apparently they are doing another huge momentum campaign fundraiser. Currently I think Umiami is like #42, but I wouldn’t be surprised to see it in the mid 30s in a few years.</p>
<p>As for rochester, I could see it being higher than Wake Forest, Boston College, and Brandeis.</p>
<p>
What about academic reputation by the people who matter most - academics? There are clear differences in faculty strength.</p>
<p>Michigan should be in the top 25.
Berkeley should be in the top 15.
MIT and Stanford should be above Columbia and Uchicago.
Vandy is slightly underrated.
Georgetown is overrated.</p>
<p>I think in the next few years NYU will break the top 30. Umiami will break the top 35. Vandy and rice will both break the top 15.</p>
<p>There is no way of ranking universities. There are just too many to rank. I believe in grouping universities. Cal definitely belongs among the top 10 undergraduate institutions (not including LACs) and Michigan among the top 15. I am not talking about the USNWR, which is flawed beyond credibility and will exposed for the fraud that it is in the coming years. I am talking about what academe, the intelectual elite and corporate America know and think.</p>
<p>There is not a single statistical measure besides Peer Assessment where Cal performs as well as Dartmouth with regards to undergraduate education. If Berkeley can increase its student body’s SAT scores by 100-150 points on each section, improve its class sizes, become a lot wealthier as an institution (maybe add 10 Billion to its endowment), improve student retention, and strengthen its alumni network, then MAYBE it could be mentioned in the same breadth as Dartmouth.</p>
<p>Of couse, at the graduate level, there is no comparison between these two schools. Perhaps that’s all that UCB cares about and that its main focus: departmental rankings and international reputation. Dartmouth will just take care of its undergraduates.</p>
<p>allcapella, again the spirit of pure time wasting…</p>
<p>I think NYU is both overrated and underrated if that makes sense.</p>
<p>Agree with you about Wake.</p>
<p>There just isn’t a lot of room at the top…I’m not gonna argue about which sport each school in the top 10 should be. Regardless of some ranking number, I don’t Chicago is overrated. I think it has caught up to what it is.</p>
<p>Miami? Again, who do you jump over? Maybe something like RPI? Lehigh?</p>
<p>I think Case Western is underrated because of past admissions rates.</p>
<p>final child- Sorry, I’m not entirely sure what you mean when you say it is both overrated and underrated. Could you elaborate on that?</p>
<p>As for Chicago, I don’t think it is overrated necessarily. I just think it is hard to see a ranking where it fares better than MIT and Stanford. At the very least I think MIT and Stanford should be ranked equal to Chicago. </p>
<p>I think Miami could jump over the several publics that are in its proximity on the list, as well as RPI and Lehigh. I think there is much more movement possible in the 30-50 range, than there is in the sub 30 range. </p>
<p>I agree that Case Western is underrated. It’s ranked in the mid 30s and it is a strong school that offers students a nice variety of academics, but it seems to rarely make any headlines, and most people haven’t heard of it.</p>
<p>Elaborating on Goldenboy’s post, I agree for the most part. I too think it would be hard to say Berkeley bests Dartmouth or Duke purely at the undergraduate level. Just like I think its tough to say that Michigan belongs in the top 10-15 at the purely undergraduate level. Michigan and Berkeley are excellent all around and have a huge presence globally, but I’m not sure on a national ranking solely measuring undergraduate schools they belong in the top 10, and top 15 respectively. I do think they are under-ranked on USNWR, but again I would say Berkeley belongs more in the 12-15 range, and Michigan in the 17-20 range.</p>
<p>“If Berkeley can increase its student body’s SAT scores by 100-150 points on each section”</p>
<p>Goldenboy, really? if you increased Cal’s SAT by 125 points (the midpoint between 100 and 150 points as you suggested) on each section, you would have the following:</p>
<p>CR 785 (it currently stands at 660)
M 835 (it currently stands at 710)
W 805 (it currently stands at 680)</p>
<p>So, Cal’s average SAT would be 2425! WOW!!! You really are funny. You have no clue what you are talking about. Cal’s Math average on the SAT is only 20-40 points lower than that of most Ivies. Its CR is about 50-70 points lower, and its WR is 40-60 points lower. If you adjust for the super scoring that Ivies do, I would say Cal’s Math score is toughly identical to that of the Ivies (maybe 20 or so points lower than HYP), while its CR and W sections would be 20-50 points lower per section. I have no idea where you got your 100-150 points per section comment, but it is truly outrageous. </p>
<p>“If Berkeley can improve its class sizes”</p>
<p>Class sizes at Cal may be larger than those at Dartmouth in some majors, but in most majors, they are roughly the same. I know a husband and wife who dated through college, he at Cal and his wife at Columbia. Both majored in Electrical Engineering. According to them, their classes were equal in size. I compared notes with Econ majors at Northwestern and Penn and several other major private universities, and again, class sizes were almost identical. Class size is a myth. If you look at S:F ratios and class sizes in the mid 1990s, they were only slightly better at top privates than at top publics. I remember most private universities had S:F ratios in the 12:1 to 14:1 range back in those days. In a short 5 years, they somehow went from 14:1 to 7:1. Wow! They actually doubled their faculty or halved their undergraduate student populations in a short 5 years.</p>
<p>“If Berkeley can become a lot wealthier as an institution (maybe add 10 Billion to its endowment)”</p>
<p>Why would it have to do that? Its endowment currently stands at $3 billion. It receives $350 million from the state, which amounts to an additional $7 billion worth of endowment. Cal operates as a private university with an endowment of $10 billion. That may not be as wealthy as Dartmouth, but when you factor in the fact that Dartmouth has a medical school and Cal does not, it equalizes things a little. And while Cal may still not be as wealthy as Dartmouth on a per/student basis, it is as wealthy as Brown, Columbia, Cornell and Penn.</p>
<p>“If Berkeley can improve student retention”</p>
<p>Freshman retention is 97%. I think that’s as high as it gets. Graduation rate is 90%, which is also fairly high.</p>
<p>“If Berkeley can strengthen its alumni network.”</p>
<p>Agreed in this one. I always say that this is one of Cal’s weaknesses.</p>
<p>“There is not a single statistical measure besides Peer Assessment where Cal performs as well as Dartmouth with regards to undergraduate education.”</p>
<p>This is quite possibly the most telling statement you constantly make. First of all, the statistics you throw out are often flawed/incorrect and, even if they aren’t, irrelevant in determining the quality of a university. I personally do not believe you can quantify the quality of a university. Gerhard Casper said it best:</p>
<p>“I am extremely skeptical that the quality of a university - any more than the quality of a magazine - can be measured statistically. However, even if it can, the producers of the U.S. News rankings remain far from discovering the method. Let me offer as prima facie evidence two great public universities: the University of Michigan-Ann Arbor and the University of California-Berkeley. These clearly are among the very best universities in America - one could make a strong argument for either in the top half-dozen. Yet, in the last three years, the U.S. News formula has assigned them ranks that lead many readers to infer that they are second rate: Michigan 21-24-24, and Berkeley 23-26-27.”</p>
<p>Keep in mind that this letter was in response to the USNWR undergraduate rankings, and was written in that context. As president of Stanford from 1992-2002, Gerhard Casper ran one of the World’s top 2 universities for 10 years. He knows better than any of us (by a huge margin) what makes an undergraduate institution strong. I will take his word for it. The fact that he mentions Cal and Michigan so prominently in order to make his point tells you what he things of those two universities. I can assure you, he is not alone in his belief. </p>
<p>Casper’s problem with using statistics to rank university isn’t restricted just to the fact that education cannot be quantified, but also because universities are clearly manipulating data. For example, in 1995, Chicago’s S:F ratio dropped from 13:1 to 7:1. Penn’s improved from 11:1 to 7:1. Did Chicago double the size of its faculty overnight?</p>
<p>[Criticism</a> of College Rankings - September 23, 1996](<a href=“http://www.stanford.edu/dept/pres-provost/president/speeches/961206gcfallow.html]Criticism”>Criticism of College Rankings - September 23, 1996)</p>
<p>^This is unrelated but its kind of insulting that he suggests people infer that universities ranked in the 20-30 range are “second rate” lol.</p>
<p>allcapella, while I agree that universities ranked in the 20-30 range are not “second rate”, relatively speaking, ranking Cal and Michigan between #20 and #30 would be akin to ranking Harvard or Stanford or Princeton between #10 and #20. Let us be honest, many kids on CC assume that a university ranked #10 must be much better than a university ranked #30. That’s it not the case of course, but it is a perception nonetheless.</p>
<p>
<a href=“http://professionals.collegeboard.com/profdownload/sat-score-use-practices-list.pdf[/url]”>Higher Education Professionals | College Board;
<p>At least as of August 31st of last year, nearly every well known school including Cal and Michigan superscore the SAT. Your age-old argument about Ivies superscoring is totally irrelevant and specious. I may have misspoke about the SAT score difference between Cal and Dartmouth but it is still 100-150 points overall which is tremendous when looked at across an entire student body.</p>
<p>
Anecdotes mean nothing to me Alexandre when they are all based on your undergraduate experiences that are now two decades old. I have 2011-2012 Common Data Sets at my disposal that allow me to compare Student to Faculty ratios and Class Sizes. Dartmouth has a lot more classes that are under 20 students and far fewer lectures that are over a 100 pupils compared to Cal. This affects the quality of undergraduate education since smaller seminars and lectures are more conducive to Socratic learning, discussion, and dialogue rather than 500 person lecture halls that plague Berkeley.</p>
<p>
Ok, if we can’t quantify the quality of a university, then I guess all schools are the same and West Virginia U. is as good as Harvard. I guess we’re all superstars in the end.</p>
<p>By your logic here, there is no difference between the #1 Physics program in the country and the #100 Physics porgram in the country since its impossible to quantitatively judge these departments since what we are trying to accomplish is qualitative by nature.</p>
<p>“At least as of August 31st of last year, nearly every well known school including Cal and Michigan superscore the SAT. Your age-old argument about Ivies superscoring is totally irrelevant and specious.”</p>
<p>That link is incorrect. Feel free to contact the Michigan admissions office and ask. They will tell you that Michigan only considers the highest score in a single sitting.</p>
<p>“I may have misspoke about the SAT score difference between Cal and Dartmouth”</p>
<p>Ya think? You “may” have misspoke? You do not see the difference between 400 points and 100 points? LOL! </p>
<p>"…but it is still 100-150 points overall which is tremendous when looked at across an entire student body."</p>
<p>Not when you consider that Cal does not value SAT scores. If Cal wanted to raise its average SAT score by 100 points, it could do so instantly. All it will have to do is alter its admissions philosophy. </p>
<p>“Anecdotes mean nothing to me Alexandre when they are all based on your undergraduate experiences that are now two decades old.”</p>
<p>And stats released by private universities mean nothing to me goldenboy, not when private universities have a proven track record of lying. They all lie about the F:S. Chicago went from a 13:1 ratio to a 7:1 ratio in 12 months! LOL! If they lie about their S:F ratios, who is to say that they aren’t lying about class size? </p>
<p>“I have 2011-2012 Common Data Sets at my disposal that allow me to compare Student to Faculty ratios and Class Sizes.”</p>
<p>You mean the CDS where private universities decide to leave out the thousands of graduate students from their S:F ratios? Those CDS? </p>
<p>“Dartmouth has a lot more classes that are under 20 students and far fewer lectures that are over a 100 pupils compared to Cal.”</p>
<p>Sure it does. Dartmouth is more like a LAC. But if you compare Cal or Cornell or Columbia or Penn or NU, the difference would be non-existant. </p>
<p>“This affects the quality of undergraduate education since smaller seminars and lectures are more conducive to Socratic learning, discussion, and dialogue rather than 500 person lecture halls that plague Berkeley.”</p>
<p>Classes that enroll 500 students at Cal will likely enroll more than 300 students at any major private research university. There will not be much discussion in the Socratic method in such classes anyway. Like I said, when comparing similar classes for size, you will not see much of a difference between Cal and most private research universities. Dartmouth is a poor example, as it is more of a LAC than a research university. I would much rather compare Cal with private peers such as Cornell, Columbia, Penn or NU.</p>
<p>"Ok, if we can’t quantify the quality of a university, then I guess all schools are the same and West Virginia U. is as good as Harvard. I guess we’re all superstars in the end.</p>
<p>By your logic here, there is no difference between the #1 Physics program in the country and the #100 Physics porgram in the country since its impossible to quantitatively judge these departments since what we are trying to accomplish is qualitative by nature."</p>
<p>There are many ways to gauge the quality of an institution or department. Peer assessment scores, faculty awards, department rankings, size of endowment/state funding, quality of facilities, alumni accomplishments, campus recruiting, graduate school placement etc… But to rank universities according to flawed, inconsistent, irrelevant data makes no sense whatsoever, especially when the data is not taken into context, and when some universities choose to report faulty, incomplete or misleading data.</p>
<p>In my mind, Chicago is overrated (was perfect at 11), Brown is very marginally underrated, and Michigan and Berkeley are moderately underrated.</p>
<p>I think Chicago is slighty underrated, not to the tune of 7 spots though. I would put it at like #6, only a small notch behind Stanford and MIT. </p>
<p>I think Northwestern is slightly underrated and should be about #10 as opposed to #12. </p>
<p>Michigan and Berkeley are both underrated somewhat. Michigan should be 17-20, Berkeley should be 11-15.</p>
<p>^Gail, I agree that Brown is slightly underrated. It seems to get the least amount of love of any of the ivies. </p>
<p>A lot of people think Chicago is overrated now because it’s etched past some really high caliber schools (Stanford, MIT) but personally I think its rank is pretty accurately reflective of what Uchicago has become; a research powerhouse that is the most intellectual college in the US with brilliant professors and a really strong study body. </p>
<p>Northwestern has become really selective and even stronger in the last few years, but I think #12 is fairly accurate for the time being. </p>
<p>Michigan should be late teens to early 20s, it is somewhat underrated. Berkeley mid teens. </p>
<p>Personally I think NYU is quite underrated, and should have a place in the 25-30 range, too. </p>
<p>Interesting discussion though.</p>
<p>Jakey, if fairly assessed, Michigan would be ranked between #6 and #17. It does not belong out of the mid teens. There just aren’t more than a handful of universities that are better, and only a dozen or so others that can match it.</p>