<p>It seems that whenever people talk about public ivies or top public school on CC, there are always UNC, W&M, UM, UVa, UCB, and UCLA, which is reasonable to me because they are certainly the best out there. However, what I don't understand is when everyone try to figure out the rest of the list, how come UW-Seattle never get as much attention as UW-madison, UIUC, UT-Austin...etc? </p>
<p>On many credible college ranking websites, especially world college ranking, UW-Seattle ranked much higher than most of the public schools, sometimes can even compare to few Ivy-level schools, but I feel like they are still not as prestigious as they should be. Does anyone know why?</p>
<p>I don’t know if U Washington is underrated, but it’s definitely not on the radar to the extent it should be. Few other universities offer a similar breadth and depth of programs across academic disciplines and professional fields. There are probably several reasons for this: Its many strengths are not evenly distributed across all fields; while it ranks quite high in many fields, in other key fields it drops below the top ranks compared to other universities (though still quite respectable). Also, I think apart from people on the West coast, a lot of people in other regions haven’t been to the Northwest and it’s not on the main east-west travel routes. (I think some other schools suffer from not being on the main east-west routes, too, e.g., Minnesota, Indiana). Finally, as a public university, it probably doesn’t offer much FA to OSS and it’s distance from many regions of the country adds to the COA.</p>
<p>It’s somewhat surprising that it’s not at least on the radar for certain fields, however, compared to some other schools. For example, it’s strong in computer sciences and Seattle is the headquarters of Microsoft, yet it’s rarely mentioned as a destination for CS. As another example, it’s strong in neurosciences and its medical facilities offer great research opportunities, yet it’s also not mentioned as a hot school for neuroscience, whereas, a school like U Pittsburg owes much of its appearance on the CC radar due to that field (imho). As still other examples, its strong in fields such as East Asian Studies and environmental studies, yet it’s seldom on the radar for these fields, either. One of its more surprising off-the-radar programs is the Jackson School of International Studies. It’s easily better than some relatively mediocre IR schools that some people drool over, (but, perhaps, it’s not located in the right Washington.)</p>
<p>Until recently Udub took very few OOS students nor did it get many OOS apps. Now both have changed with a target of around 25% OOS in a few years. All about the $$$$$. Udub is getting about a 20% budget cut next budget.</p>