<p>I saw that Rice has a peer assessment at 4.1. How is this humanly possible. It is such a phenomenal school. How can it have such a low peer rating. This is troublesome. I am at Cornell and I have applied to Rice as a transfer and I am truly considering transfering (I was also accepted as a freshman). What you guys think?</p>
<p>Cornell is overall the better school, but perhaps the specific program you are interested in is phenomenal at Rice and abysmal at Cornell...what are your plans?</p>
<p>(And take US News with a grain of salt...)</p>
<p>4.1 is not that low at all.</p>
<p>bball - Cornell to Rice is a lateral move, none is really better than the other. USNEWS peer assessment is tilted towards academics - not real world prestige or recruiting value, etc. Michigan has a better peer score than Brown, it doesn;t make it better than Brown. It is better than Brown in that area. As a undergrad focused school Rice is at a disadvantage, and to still pull off a 4.1 without the bigtime research is pretty good.</p>
<p>I don't think it's troublesome at all.</p>
<p>First of all, it's not a shabby score. Only around 30 schools on the National Universities list cracked the 4.0 mark. Second of all, I think slipper is right--the peer thing tends to favor schools that are research-oriented (probably because it's on provost's/president's minds who is luring away their research stars!) So schools like Wm & Mary & Rice suffer a little.</p>
<p>For undergrad, I think Cornell might be better in academics/education but a 4.1 is not bad at all.</p>
<p>bball87- What's your major? Rice is a great school. I think it was only founded about 100 years ago...relatively new. That might be part of the reason why the rep hasn't caught up to reality. It is in a great part of Houston. Rice definitely has a good rep for research in the engineering school. They are ranked 18th by US News for their PhD program in electrical engineering. They are 24th in NRC rankings.</p>
<p>sorry...double posted</p>
<p>are schools like UNC and wisconsin with a 4.2 more prestigious? G-town and Emory at a 4.0 is low too. Boston college at a 3.5 i think is low because I always thought it would be better than Indiana, PSU, UMD, and Minnisota with 3.7-3.8s. Wierd. </p>
<p>Rank wise most private schools get bumped up rank spots and publics get bumped down a few.</p>
<p>my major is Political Science, and Rice isn't so great for that, in fact, they are very so-so</p>
<p>Its not public vs. private - its research institution (whether its Michigan or Cornell) vs. primarily undergraduate schools. I would trust a Penn State cancer researcher more than a Boston College one with my homework for example, that is the thinking of the people who asses these ratings. The truth is for undergrad it its totally the opposite. Selectivity, graduate placement, professor attention, alumni loyalty, etc is what matters. </p>
<p>In every category the non research schools get the biggest hits. That doesn't mean they are worse, it just means USNEWS is asking the worng questions. They should be asking top graduate admissions officers what they think of students from particular undergraduate schools. THAT is a real ranking.</p>
<p>I would actually say that many of the so-called "research universities" are closer to being LAC's, and should therefore treated as LAC's. Dartmouth and Brown, for example, are basically LAC's. They should be put in the LAC category and compared to other LAC's. After all, let's face it, Dartmouth and Brown share far more in common with, say, Williams or Amherst, than they do with, say, Michigan or Berkeley. Rice too is basically a LAC. One could even say that Princeton is really a LAC, at least in terms of the undergraduate focus of the school.</p>
<p>In the quasi-LAC category-</p>
<p>Dartmouth
Brown
Princeton
Rice
Wake Forest
Boston College
there are others...</p>