<p>Hello everyone! :)</p>
<p>I'll be studying a major in the field of liberal arts, humanities and social sciences.</p>
<p>I've checked all the ranking tables before. But they are all skewed and inaccurate with rankings of some of the same universities fluctuating wildly from one year to another.</p>
<p>Moreover, most ranking leagues are loosely and mostly based on research done by the graduate programs of the colleges and peer assessment.</p>
<ol>
<li><p>University of Washington-Seattle</p></li>
<li><p>University of Wisconsin-Madison</p></li>
<li><p>University of Illinois at Urbana Champaign</p></li>
<li><p>University of Texas at Austin</p></li>
<li><p>University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill</p></li>
<li><p>University of British Columbia</p></li>
<li><p>The Ohio State University-Columbus</p></li>
<li><p>University of Pittsburgh</p></li>
<li><p>Pennsylvania State University-University Park</p></li>
<li><p>University of Minnesota-Twin Cities</p></li>
<li><p>University of Colorado-Boulder</p></li>
<li><p>University of Maryland-College Park</p></li>
</ol>
<p>How will you rank these aforementioned shortlisted colleges for an undergraduate major in the field of liberal arts, humanities and social sciences?</p>
<p>Pls kindly rank them solely based upon factors such as quality of teaching, quality of education, quality of academics, provision of special opportunities to undergraduates and intellectual environment!</p>
<p>Cost is not a concern.</p>
<p>Thank you very much in advance! :)</p>
<p>Pls kindly help! Thank You! ^^</p>
<ol>
<li>University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill</li>
<li>University of Texas-Austin and the University of Wisconsin-Madison</li>
<li> The rest are all excellent and about equal</li>
</ol>
<p>My kid is a double humanities/social science major at UW Madison (called UW by everyone, but since you have U Washington on your list, just to be clear). He couldn’t ask for more incredible teaching. In his first 2 years, he has had Honors seminars with professors who are “the” leading scholars in their fields, has had meetings with profs about his papers and gotten tremendous feedback and support, and had the support of active advisors who communicate quickly and clearly. As a parent watching from a distance, I couldn’t ask for better undergraduate education. </p>
<p>Most of those schools on your list will have mechanisms for shrinking the academic experience to a more manageable size, especially for the first two years when students are taking a wide-range of classes and meeting distribution requirements etc. You might research the Honors programs at various schools to see what the admission criteria are. A blatant plug for UW – Honors at UW is not stat based but a separate essay-based application after admission to the University. The idea is that all students are capable of doing Honors level work so the program want the students who really want to do it. Through the Honors program, my student has been in 15-20 person discussion seminars with extraordinary faculty who take an interest in his work. Honors programs are structured differently, so worth taking a look at those differences to sort out what might appeal to you.</p>
<p>You can’t really go wrong with any of those schools. Most of them will have some form of rolling admission, so getting apps in early in the fall could get you some early acceptances and relieve the pressure of senior year. There are ranges of out of state students in the undergrad population at those schools, and that affects difficulty of admission for out of state students. I heard IUIC was increasing its out of state population, but it was 90% Illinois/10% out of state when my son applied. </p>
<p>Don’t ignore the essays if the school has them, they do matter. My kid applied to several midwest flagships so could adapt his basic essay “Why Illinois” “Why Wisconsin” but it took some time to make sure he was getting the names of departments and programs right. At UW, it is College of Letters and Sciences; at UIUC, it is called something else. Some schools have minors, UW does not. Make sure you get the lingo correct when talking about why you want to study there. </p>
<p>Is there a reason why Michigan is not on your list? </p>
<p>Good luck. </p>
<p>One thing to check is to see whether any of your desired majors are at capacity at these schools, so that you may need another competitive admission process to enter the major after enrolling as an undeclared frosh (or if direct entry to the major as a frosh needs a higher admission standard than most frosh admission).</p>
<p>For example, many majors at the University of Washington have competitive admission to enter the major:
<a href=“http://www.washington.edu/uaa/advising/majors-and-minors/list-of-undergraduate-majors/”>http://www.washington.edu/uaa/advising/majors-and-minors/list-of-undergraduate-majors/</a></p>
<p>Popular majors like economics and psychology are more likely to have such restrictions. Check each school for specifics.</p>
<p>What is this list? This is a list of state schools. Are you only interested in going to state schools? </p>
<p>“Lliberal arts, humanities and social sciences” is not a major. There is no ranking for “liberal arts, humanities and social sciences”.</p>
<p>You should take a step back and figure out what you would like to study. What do you want to major in? English? History? </p>
<p>You should also be looking at Liberal Arts Colleges if you really want a strong “liberal arts, humanities and social sciences” education. The schools you listed are large state schools that don’t focus on “liberal arts, humanities and social sciences”.</p>
<p>Wait a second – large publics absolutely do “focus on liberal arts, humanities and social sciences.” They also are likely to have extraordinary sciences. Some large publics are better known for their engineering and sciences than their liberal arts departments, for instance, UIUC comes to mind, but even those schools have good liberal arts departments. For instance, at UW, Econ, History, and Poli Sci are all highly ranked departments with great research being done and great opportunities for student involvement. </p>
<p>The difference between liberal arts colleges and universities is not whether they focus on liberal arts, it is whether they offer graduate degrees across multiple colleges within the university. Students should consider how comfortable they are navigating large lecture classes for intro level courses at the university level vs. smaller courses at LACs for the first two years of college life. If a student is comfortable navigating the large university environment, then at a top flagship like some of the ones on the OPs list, you will get an extraordinary education. If the student is more comfortable with the extra attention that a LAC involves, then that is the better choice. </p>
<p>For UW_Madison L&S is the largest college with 55% of UG student majors so yes it does focus on that area over engineering, business, education and ag. Engineering is the next largest with just 15%. The 5 most popular majors are bio, econ, poli sci, psychology and history…</p>
<p>The liberal arts includes math and the natural and physical sciences, just so you know.</p>
<p>I’m going to hazard a guess and say that no one on CC has attended all of these institutions, and few of us work in the business. Thus, we don’t really have enough information to rank these universities. Furthermore, there’s no really objective way to to do so - even if we all worked in the business, we’d probably all rank them very differently based upon our own biases.</p>
<p>I will say, though, that the quality of teaching, education, and academics is probably roughly similar at all of these large universities as they are all similar to each other - very large flagship public research universities. I could group some into a “high group” and a “low group” in a somewhat arbitrary way, but the difference between them is negligible IMO. So I think you should make your own ranking list that’s based upon what’s important to you. For example, UIUC and Penn State are both in college towns where the entire town is dominated by, well, the college. On the other hand, Pittsburgh and Minnesota are both in large cities.</p>
<p>Also note that public universities do not give OOS students much financial aid.</p>
<p>Yes, rankings are always skewed and can fluctuate wildly. What makes you think that the small number of respondents you will get from here are going to give you any more definitive info? </p>
<p>Actually most of the widely accepted rankings do not fluctuate wildly and those that do are highly suspect. In reality colleges do not change that much or that fast. A decade is nothing.</p>
<p>My answer:</p>
<ol>
<li>University of Washington-Seattle</li>
</ol>
<p>1… University of Wisconsin-Madison</p>
<p>3… University of Illinois at Urbana Champaign</p>
<ol>
<li>University of Texas at Austin</li>
</ol>
<p>1… University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill</p>
<p>9… University of British Columbia</p>
<p>8… The Ohio State University-Columbus</p>
<ol>
<li><p>University of Pittsburgh</p></li>
<li><p>Pennsylvania State University-University Park</p></li>
</ol>
<p>7… University of Minnesota-Twin Cities</p>
<ol>
<li>University of Colorado-Boulder</li>
</ol>
<p>5… University of Maryland-College Park</p>
<p>You should also be comparing your costs as an OOS student vs if one of these are instate for you. </p>
<p>As you have noted, there isn’t really any official rankings of colleges. Certainly not of undergraduate departments. Any rankings are usually done by ‘for profit’ corporations and depend on certain metrics that may or may not be of interest to you personally. If I were to rank them, I’d weight them a bit for my personal preference for location.</p>
<p>Thank You Alexandre!</p>
<p>Thank You Very Much Midwestmomofboys!</p>
<p>Well, because paying an additional $10K per year for Michigan, which is also a public uni, does not seem to be justified.</p>
<p>That sum of money can be saved for graduate school.</p>
<p>Thank You ucbalumnus!</p>
<p>I had already checked beforehand that all my desired majors avail at these shortlisted universities.</p>
<p>Fret not.</p>
<p>My prospective majors are rather unpopular.</p>
<p>Thank You informative!</p>
<p>Pls kindly take note that I had stated I’ll be studying a major in the field of liberal arts, humanities and social sciences.</p>
<p>Its a major in the field and not any major called “liberal arts, humanities and social sciences”.</p>
<p>I’m absolutely aware that there is no ranking for “liberal arts, humanities and social sciences”.</p>
<p>I prefer top flagship unis over lacs due to several reasons.</p>
<p>Thank You Very Much barrons!</p>
<p>Why do you think UIUC and UMD-CP are better than UTA?</p>
<p>Why do you think TOSU-C and UPitt are better than UBC?</p>
<p>Why do you think UMN-TC is better than TOSU-C?</p>
<p>Thank You julliet!</p>
<p>Yea, I am absolutely clear that the liberal arts includes math and the natural and physical sciences.</p>
<p>But I do prefer arts, humanities and social sciences more though.</p>
<p>There are many people who have visited, studied and/or worked at most, if not all, of these aforementioned shortlisted colleges though.</p>
<p>Location does not matter much to me, if at all.</p>
<p>I am aware that public universities do not give OOS students much financial aid.</p>
<p>How will you group some into a “high group” and a “low group” like what you have said?</p>
<p>Thank You cptofthehouse!</p>
<p>Because There are many people who have visited, studied and/or worked at most, if not all, of these aforementioned shortlisted colleges though. There are many others who have contemplated applying to most, if not all, of these unis too. So they may be able to relate from real experiences and researches.</p>