<p>I saw another thread "If all universities are PRIVATE," and I thought it would be interesting if all elite colleges such as HYP, MIT, Duke, and Stanford are public. Would they be in same rank as they are now?</p>
<p>The best way to judge colleges without factors like admissions selectivity, financial resources, etc, and just to judge them based on how they are perceived is through the US News peer assessment rank, IMO. Here's the PA rank for the top 30 schools.</p>
<p>1 Harvard University (MA) 4.9
1 Princeton University (NJ) 4.9
1 Yale University (CT) 4.9
1 Stanford University (CA) 4.9
1 Massachusetts Inst. of Technology 4.9
6 University of California Berkeley* 4.8
7 California Institute of Technology 4.7
7 Columbia University (NY) 4.7
9 Duke University (NC) 4.6
9 Cornell University (NY) 4.6
9 Johns Hopkins University (MD) 4.6
9 University of Chicago 4.6
12 University of Pennsylvania 4.5
12 University of Michigan Ann Arbor* 4.5
14 Dartmouth College (NH) 4.4
14 Northwestern University (IL) 4.4
14 Brown University (RI) 4.4
17 University of Virginia* 4.3
17 Univ. of California Los Angeles* 4.3
19 Carnegie Mellon University (PA) 4.2
19 U. of North Carolina Chapel Hill* 4.2
19 Univ. of Wisconsin Madison* 4.2
22 Washington University in St. Louis 4.1
22 Rice University (TX) 4.1
24 Vanderbilt University (TN) 4
24 Emory University (GA) 4
24 Georgetown University (DC) 4
24 Georgia Institute of Technology* 4
24 U. of Illinois Urbana - Champaign* 4
24 University of Texas Austin* 4</p>
<p>Is peer selectivity how actual academics view each school?</p>
<p>It's on a scale of 1-5, how deans, senior faculty members, etc, rated each school based on it's overall reputation.</p>
<p>Hypothetical situations that will never take place....</p>
<p>Yes, it's hypothetical, however, the Peer Assessment rank is much more telling of a school's prestige than the US News rank (which includes ridiculous calculations like selectivity, alumni giving and financial resources), where many privates are incredibly overrated (ex. Lehigh, Wake Forest, Rochester).</p>
<p>A2Wolves6, I'm afraid I have to disagree. This is not the best way to determine ranking.</p>
<p>I think a better way is to look at student revealed preferences. After all, it's the students themselves who the schools are trying to cater to. After all, if a school really is desirable, then students ought to prefer to go there. If a school is highly ranked according to their peers but students don't really prefer to go there and instead prefer to go elsewhere, then that is indicative of some issues that the school must have. </p>
<p>That doesn't mean they have the best quality, that means they have the best ADVERTISING AND MARKETING. Wash U is great at this. Doesn't make them better than some "lower ranked" schools.</p>
<p>I've got to go with a2wolves on this. Sakky, STUDENTS won't know if a school has the better quality... PROFS AND PEOPLE IN THE FIELD will.</p>
<p>(CAPS for emphasis)</p>
<p>
[quote]
That doesn't mean they have the best quality, that means they have the best ADVERTISING AND MARKETING. Wash U is great at this. Doesn't make them better than some "lower ranked" schools
[/quote]
</p>
<p>I don't know about that. As you can see from the revealed preferences study, WU is actually ranked #62. So I guess they aren't that good at marketing. </p>
<p>
[quote]
I've got to go with a2wolves on this. Sakky, STUDENTS won't know if a school has the better quality... PROFS AND PEOPLE IN THE FIELD will.
[/quote]
</p>
<p>Yeah, but the question is are profs and 'people in the field' your target audience? For some people, yes, for others, no. Specifically, most people will not become academics. Hence, impressing profs doesn't really help them very much. And most people will not actually work in the field in which they majored in. Think about it. How many history majors get jobs as historians? How many poli-sci majors actually work as political scientists? How many sociology majors actually work as sociologists? Let's face it. Most people will end up in jobs that have little to do with what they actually majored in, and that's where overall prestige and brand-name matters. Who cares if you attend a highly ranked program in Art History unless you are actually going to be an Art Historian (which most art history majors will not be)?</p>
<p>Sakky, why do you fear the peer assessment score? Nobody knows more about overall academic quality than professors at top universities. The revealed preferences ranking is a poll of 16-17 year old opinions. The peer assessment score is a ranking according to academics with decades of tirtiary level education experience at multiple institutions. You tell me which of those two is more "revealing"!</p>
<p>I agree with Sakky that different rankings mean different things. The peer assessment score matters only for those who intend to go to graduate school someday, be it for LAW, Medicine, Business, Engineering or a doctorate in a traditional field. But Sakky, that's if you look at education as an investment. Some people view education as an opportunity to learn and better themselves, regardless of the outcome. For those individuals, the peer assessment score is also ideal because it pretty much lays out a relatively accurate picture of the best universities. </p>
<p>It is too bad nobody has come up with a recruiters assessment score yet. One that captures the collective opinion of industry with regards to the overall quality of undergraduate instititutions.</p>
<p>i dont buy the preference rankings</p>
<p>i don't think that notre dame is beating out Duke or that Duke is losing to a place like rice...</p>
<p>sakky, I wonder something about your rankings. How do students know what school is better? They don't know all the strengths and weaknesses of every school, and don't have the knowledge of a dean when it comes to a school's quality. They go and look online, at the acceptance rates, at the rankings, at the SAT scores, etc, and make judgements based on that data. So then we get back to the old "this school is harder to get into than this one so it's better" point. That's why I like the PA ranking. It's all about overall prestige and doesn't discriminate at all.</p>
<p>usnews sends a survey to presidents/provosts/deans at universities asking for peer assessment information, but for some strange reason i doubt these people are the ones filling in the numbers. theyve got significantly better things to be doing with their time, much like the college 'coaches' polls that sports information directors and graduate assistants fill out.</p>
<p>regardless, i think these numbers have relatively little to do with the quality of education rendered at the undergraduate level. what i think they do measure is a combination of a schools national 'name' value and the academic quality of its faculty (very different from teaching quality). these are certainly not unimportant factors, but taken alone they tend to overrate top national research universities, something i feel can clearly be seen in the list above.</p>
<p>
[quote]
Sakky, why do you fear the peer assessment score? Nobody knows more about overall academic quality than professors at top universities. The revealed preferences ranking is a poll of 16-17 year old opinions. The peer assessment score is a ranking according to academics with decades of tirtiary level education experience at multiple institutions. You tell me which of those two is more "revealing"!
[/quote]
</p>
<p>I don't "fear" the peer assessments. I just happen to think they are incomplete. For example, I have always believed that WashingtonU is highly overrated, something that is clearly demonstrated by the revealed preference study. </p>
<p>
[quote]
I agree with Sakky that different rankings mean different things. The peer assessment score matters only for those who intend to go to graduate school someday, be it for LAW, Medicine, Business, Engineering or a doctorate in a traditional field.
[/quote]
</p>
<p>I disagree with this also. Specifically, when it comes to law, medicine, or business, I think the revealed preference ranking matches the success rates of those schools rather closely. For example, let's talk about business school. At the MIT Sloan MBA program, there are actually more students who did undergrad at Brown than at Berkeley or Michigan. Now, some of that has to do with simple geographic preference (i.e. Brown grads tend to stay in the Northeast and will therefore tend to want to go to grad-school in the Northeast), but I can't imagine that that would overcome the fact that Michigan and Berkeley have many times more undergrads than Brown does. Compared to the 25000 undergrads at Michigan and the 23000 undergrads at Berkeley vs. less than 6000 at Brown, it's hard for me to imagine that geographic preference could explain all of the discrepancy. I think a far more plausible explanation is that the better students prefer to attend Brown, for whatever reason. Maybe they are being stupid in doing so, but at the end of the day, for some reason, they prefer to attend Brown. </p>
<p>The same could be said for law schools, med-schools etc. Look at the lists of the matriculating students at the top law schools and you will notice how many of them came from the more 'preferred' schools.</p>
<p>In fact, I once examined the undergrad alma maters of people who completed their PhDs at Caltech, using Caltech commencement data. You can search for my old posts on this subject. I showed that in most years, more people who finished their PhD's at Caltech had come from one of the elite LAC's such as Williams, Amherst or Swarthmore or one of the 'lower' Ivies, than from, say, Berkeley or Michigan despite their large size and better peer assessment. In fact, in many years, nobody who did undergrad at Berkeley or Michigan obtained their PhD from Caltech. Obviously to get a PhD from Caltech means that you have to have been admitted to Caltech in the first place. What that means is that it seems as if PhD programs track more closely with the revealed preferences ranking than with a 'peer assessment ranking'. After all, if peer assessment was more important than revealed preferences, then why aren't the Caltech PhD programs admitting more students from Berkeley or Michigan? Given the large sizes and strong peer assessments of these programs, Berkeley and Michigan should be completely dominating the ranks of Caltech PhD graduates. But that's not really happening. </p>
<p>What I think that means is that it is highly questionable as to whether a strong peer assessment really translates into strong graduate school placement. Again, if that were true, then given Berkeley's sheer size of its undergrad program and its strong peer assessment, I would expect Berkeley grads to be dominating most of the top graduate schools. Is that really happening? Not as far as I can tell. For personal reasons, I wish Berkeley undergrads would dominate the top graduate schools. But, sadly, that's not happening. </p>
<p>
[quote]
Some people view education as an opportunity to learn and better themselves, regardless of the outcome. For those individuals, the peer assessment score is also ideal because it pretty much lays out a relatively accurate picture of the best universities
[/quote]
</p>
<p>I disagree with this also. I think it has far more to do with personal fit. Many highly prestigious schools are nonetheless not particularly good at teaching.</p>
<p>
[quote]
It is too bad nobody has come up with a recruiters assessment score yet. One that captures the collective opinion of industry with regards to the overall quality of undergraduate instititutions.
[/quote]
</p>
<p>This I profoundly disagree with, for reasons that I stated in other threads. Let's face it. Recruiters don't really want the best people. Not really. What they really want is somebody who can not only do good work, but will also not ask for a high salary and make few other demands. In fact, ideally, what recruiters would really want are people who can do brilliant work while being satisfied with making minimum wage with no benefits without complaining. </p>
<p>I'll give you a prime example. Take Harvard Business School. Recruiters have complained, time and time again, about the arrogance of HBS grads, and how hard it is to recruit at HBS. But that's not a bad thing. I think that's a good thing, for the HBS students. The reason why HBS students are arrogant is, frankly, because they're good. And they know that they're good. They know that they can get prime job offers. That's why they're arrogant. They know that they can ask for a lot of money and a lot of power, and if one company doesn't want to give it to them, they'll get it from some other company. This fact ticks off a lot of recruiters. A lot of recruiters are annoyed at HBS grads because they ask for too much money and are too hard to hire. Hence, from a pure recruiting standpoint, HBS is often times marked down, because the recruiters are frustrated in trying to hire HBS grads. But that's not a bad thing, that's actually a good thing, at least for the students. As a student, you want to go to a school where you know you will have a lot of options coming out, and whether that fact ticks off the recruiters should not be a concern of yours. Students having lots of good options is obviously bad for recruiters, but is good for the students. </p>
<p>That's why, when it comes to things like the WSJ B-school rankings, HBS does not do well. That's because the WSJ rankings are pure recruiter rankings. Of course HBS doesn't do well in the WSJ. If I was a recruiter, I probably wouldn't like HBS either. I don't want the people I recruit to have lots of other good job alternatives. In fact, as a recruiter I ideally want the people I recruit to have no alternatives. </p>
<p>
[quote]
i dont buy the preference rankings</p>
<p>i don't think that notre dame is beating out Duke or that Duke is losing to a place like rice...
[/quote]
</p>
<p>The question is not whether the preference ranking is perfect. There is no perfect ranking.</p>
<p>The question is whether you buy the preference ranking more than you buy the simple peer assessment ranking. For example, as much as I would like to believe otherwise, I don't think Berkeley wins the cross-admit battle at the undergraduate level with, say, Columbia or Caltech. </p>
<p>
[quote]
sakky, I wonder something about your rankings
[/quote]
</p>
<p>First off, they aren't "my" rankings, just like I don't say that the USNews peer assessment rankings are 'your' rankings. The rankings are published by 3rd parties. I didn't force anybody to publish the revealed preference ranking, just like I know you didn't force USNews to publish the peer-assessment ranking. </p>
<p>
[quote]
They don't know all the strengths and weaknesses of every school, and don't have the knowledge of a dean when it comes to a school's quality. They go and look online, at the acceptance rates, at the rankings, at the SAT scores, etc, and make judgements based on that data. So then we get back to the old "this school is harder to get into than this one so it's better" point. That's why I like the PA ranking. It's all about overall prestige and doesn't discriminate at all.
[/quote]
</p>
<p>I was going to respond to this, but I think ericatbucknell summed it up nicely. Basically, like she said, the peer rankings have much to do with the research prowess of a particular school, yet that has little impact on the teaching of that school. </p>
<p>But besides, you have to think about it this way. If the peer assessments really were measuring overall prestige, then why is it that the revealed preference ranking shows that students will often times prefer the school with "less" prestige? Somebody else said that students don't really know the quality of various schools, all they know is overall prestige. Yet you are saying that the peer asssements are measuring prestige, yet the students evidently don't follow those assessments. Is it because these students are dumb?</p>
<p>well...how recent is the revelaed preference rankings???</p>
<p>i will provide u w. a link off Wash U's board, showing what the kids are turning down to go there these days....u will be certaintly shocked</p>
<p>also...off collegeboard.com, Wash U's profile...19 percent admitted, sat range 1360-1520...impressive 1440 median</p>
<p>Sure, it's not that recent. If they did the ranking again, I'm sure that WU would be higher than 60-something. </p>
<p>But look, the revealed preference ranking does not mean that EVERYBODY chooses the highest preference, just like when people say that smoking is bad for you doesn't mean that EVERYBODY who smokes suffers from bad health. Rather, it's where the BULK of the data points are For example, I know a guy who turned down Harvard and Yale for a no-name state school, mostly because he wanted to be close to his family and run the family business. But clearly that doesn't mean that the majority of students would do the same. In fact, I think he was the only student in his whole school who ended up turning down Harvard or Yale for that school in that year. Similarly, my grandfather smoked a pack a day since he was a teenager and still lived to be 91, but that doesn't mean that smoking is safe. In fact, even he freely admitted that his smoking habit was not healthy, and he told his grandchildren not to smoke.</p>
<p>First of all, this thread should be named "If all schools were public..."</p>
<p>(I'm sure no one cares though)</p>
<p>Secondly, what difference would it make? Maybe in a few years, or a few decades, but probably nothing much would change now.</p>
<p>I'm always curious when people say "public schools are underrated in US News because of endowment. If the school were private the alumni donations would be much higher." I never could figure out why, if a school turns private, that all of a sudden alumni donations would skyrocket. So, the college you attended years and years ago becomes private, and all of a sudden you have this urge to donate hundreds of thousands of dollars? I think the reason that Harvard has about $26 billion in endowment goes beyond the fact that it's a private school.</p>
<p>I agree with vicissitudes and I would furthermore point out that there are a LOT Of private schools out there who are basically destitute. Just being a private school doesn't automatically mean that you will have a lot of money. Heck, there was a time when MIT almost went bankrupt and nearly ended up merging with Harvard in order to become financially solvent. For nearly half of its existence, Stanford struggled with financial difficulties. In fact, some of the early Stanford administrators openly despaired at how Stanford would ever be able to compete financially against the (at the time) extremely wealthy and powerful rival school across the Bay, UCBerkeley. Nowadays, of course, Stanford has far more money than Berkeley does, and is in fact the richest school outside of the Northeast. But it wasn't always like that. </p>
<p>The point is, there are some private schools that are extremely wealthy, like Harvard. There are many other private schools that are very poor. There is certainly no guarantee that just because a public school were to become private, that it would become rich.</p>
<p>Sakky, there are far more MBA students who completed their undergraduate studies at Michigan who attend top 10 MBA programs than students who completed their undergraduate studies at Brown. FAR more. I am alking about 3 or 4 times more. Maybe at MIT, there are more Brown alums, but at Ross, Kellogg and CBS, Michigan alums outnumber Brown alims 6 to 1. Last time I checked, there were over 30 Michigan alums crrently at Wharton, compared to roughly 15 Brown alums...and there is definitely a regional preference for Brown alums at Wharton.</p>
<p>Sakky, you and I both know, and I am not sure why you don't defend Michigan on this one, that Michigan palces as high a percentage f its students into elite graduate programs as the likes of Cornell, Penn, Chicago, Northwestern, Johns Hopkins etc... Obviously, tiny LACs have a different approach to life and as such should not be compared to research universities.</p>
<p>Overall, I guess we can both agree that Brown and Michigan are not comparable. They are equal, but completely different.</p>
<p>I stand by my comment. The peer assesment score is the most accurate indicator of academic excellence and of academe's opinion of undergraduate education.</p>
<p>I agree with Sakky. The peer assessment score is pointless. Who cares if professors at other schools think highly of your school? You're not out to impress them. You won't coast by just on your school's 5.0 peer assessment rating. You have to prove yourself.</p>
<p>I suppose here is where I digress from most of CC, though. I don't believe college should be about getting the best job or going to the best grad school. Unlike a good deal of CC, I have no idea what I want to do with my life. I'm interested in everything from creative writing to medicine to law to art history. So it made no sense for me to pick based on some arbitary judgement of "quality" in any one particular field--nor would I have, even if I knew what I wanted to do. Like sakky said, what you major in is largely unrelated to what you actually end up doing, because the reality is most 17 and 18 year olds DON'T know what they want, or will change their minds. </p>
<p>For me, choosing the right college was all about fit. I believe anyone can get a great job anywhere if they are a sincere, hard-working, and determined person who does well wherever they go. And studies have shown, people perform better where they are happy. I chose to go to a (marginally) less prestigious school than others I could have attended because this was the one I wanted to go to. I know I'm smart enough to do well and get a good job and do what I want with my life. As the great intellectual Eric Cartman once said, "WHATEVAH, WHATEVAH, I DO WHAT I WANT."</p>