and a few things stand out: 1) We underrate Berkeley and Michigan as major academic powerhouses; 2) Tech rules – see Cal tech and MIT; 3) Stanford is edging our Harvard; 4) UChicago is top 5/6 in both rankings. If you take out the tech schools. MIT and Cal tech, UChicago is top 3/4, ahead of all ivies except Harvard (and Princeton by one spot in one ranking.)
These last two rankings maybe even worse than WSJ and US News, San Diego over Brown? No Vanderbilt, Georgetown, no LACs, - San Diego is a safety school for people applying to Brown and Pomona, of all the people I know that got into both Brown and SD, they all went to Brown, similar for Pomona. San Diego is a good school, it’s not Brown.
Actually – UCSD is a world leader in all life sciences, has a major reputation political science and economics. Vanderbilt is a no name institution internationally. LAC are not ranked at all in these; these are for major universities. Brown clearly trumps for undergrad, , but as a university of global standing, it is not generally on the radar.
Here is the “Shanghai Ranking” (just US universities) mentioned in post #119:
http://www.shanghairanking.com/ARWU2016.html
1 Harvard University
2 Stanford University
3 University of California, Berkeley
4 Massachusetts Institute of Technology
5 Princeton University
6 California Institute of Technology
7 Columbia University
8 University of Chicago
9 Yale University
10 University of California, Los Angeles
11 Cornell University
12 University of California, San Diego
13 University of Washington
14 Johns Hopkins University
15 University of Pennsylvania
16 University of California, San Francisco
17 University of Michigan-Ann Arbor
18 Washington University in St. Louis
19 Duke University
20 Northwestern University
(The QS Rankings are published by Quacquarelli Symonds, a British company specializing in education and study abroad.)
Well, UCSF isn’t even an undergraduate school. I’m a big fan, but Cal at #3?
@sushiritto Berkeley has top graduate departments in numerous areas from English to many sciences. The sciences tend to be over-weighted by Chinese rankings. But I agree with you. It should not be 3. I think Chinese rankings tend also to overrate CA schools a due to geography and familiarity arising therefrom.
As I’ve mentioned elsewhere, I have a ton of relatives and friends that are Cal alums and a relative that currently attends. I have relatives that live in Berkeley and I’m there often, on campus. Big fan of Cal as I said, but #3, sticks out like a sore thumb to me. But I get it.
Big difference between overall departments including graduate experience and the undergraduate world. I personally would place it somewhere between 11-15 with Michigan.
Maybe so, but can anyone point to specific, measurable factors that WSJ/THE is missing, which would drive up public university ranks if included? Can you point to included factors that shouldn’t be included, which would change the public university standings if dropped?
I kinda like the WSJ breakdown of 4 key areas (resources, engagement, outcomes, environment).
I’m skeptical about some of their specific measurements.
For “engagement”, they use student surveys that appear to elicit very subjective responses.
Example: “to what extent does the student’s college or university support critical thinking?”
How do we know that students at Dordt College (#1 at 18.3 pts for “engagement”) apply the same standards, in answering a question like that, as students at UChicago (ranked much lower with only 15.3 pts for “engagement”)?
The National Survey of Student Engagement may be using more rigorous, detailed, and objective survey instruments.
Example question:
*During the current school year, about how many papers, reports, or other writing task of the following lengths have you been assigned?/i
There is little opportunity for the response numbers to mean something very different from college to college (although I suppose the assumed “pages” definition could vary).
Outcomes alway drive down public universities, because of many non science/engineering majors and requirements for admitting state residents. It drives up science/engineering oriented private schools. So again what are you looking for here? WSJ says become an engineer at a private school for best outcome. Duh.
Regarding UCSD over Brown, UCSD is a research powerhouse particularly in life sciences and Brown is not. I know that from a research view. If I met BAs from Brown UCSD and had to pick which one I think is likely to be smarter and better educated, I’d pick the Brown grad. Therein lies the difficulty with these rating schemes. I always think within the specific context.
^^^There in lies a big flaw in college rankings. Give me a CMU CS grad over virtually any other overall higher ranked university even though CMU it’s ranked around #24. Same goes for UPENN M&T program.
Actually I’d take a Cal Berkeley CS over most.
WSJ/Times describes its methodology here:
https://www.timeshighereducation.com/world-university-rankings/wall-street-journal-times-higher-education-college-rankings-methodology
So if their model works as described, the percentage of STEM majors should not directly affect the “outcome” scores.
Yale, Princeton, Stanford and Duke all have higher outcome scores than MIT or Caltech. UChicago (with virtually no engineering) has almost the same outcome score as MIT. ~16% of Michigan students major in engineering, much higher than the percentage at Harvard, Yale, Columbia, Penn, or Dartmouth. Yet those 5 Ivies all have higher outcome scores than Michigan (apparently after adjusting for admission selectivity as well as major choice.) The “public Ivies” do tend to have higher outcome scores than the most selective LACs (although Amherst and Williams have higher outcome scores than GaTech, VaTech, or Colorado Mines … again, apparently even after adjusting for admission selectivity).
I do see many public universities with rather high WSJ/THE outcome scores. None are as high as 7 of the 8 Ivies; 3 (Michigan’s, UNC’s, UCLA’s) are higher than Brown’s. UNC has no engineering.
It appears to me that where the top public universities lag isn’t in WSJ/THE outcomes, it’s in “resources”.
Some of the top private universities spend several times as much on instruction per student than the top public universities. But if they’re competitive on outcomes despite relatively low “resources” (and sticker prices), that speaks well of the top publics, right? If instead of aggregating outcomes and resources you measured outcomes per resources (ROI), maybe public universities would actually pull ahead. If you then normalized by the Pompous Gasbag Density, hey who knows, maybe they’d all outrank Lofty Harvard.
@CU123 Totally missed the point. MIT, UCB, CMU and Stanford are on equal terms. The statement said “virtually any other…” So Harvard, Princeton, Yale, Duke etc…all ranked higher over all but nowhere near as good in CS. The example was to show the discrepancy between a much lower ranked CMU #24 and the others where as UCB, MIT and Stanford are much higher to start with.
The first thing to do when looking at rankings is to figure out what exactly they are ranking.
Overall university rep?
Grad quality/research output?
Undergraduate quality?
Those things are related somewhat, but separate.
Princeton is #1 among universities in terms of undergraduate quality, according to USNews. It is undergrad-focused, it is the richest per student, it has a very good academic rep, it offers relatively small classes, it has a great faculty, it is very selective and its graduates are mostly successful and show their love of the school by giving back.
But its (relative) lack of grad and professional schools, including the Big Three (med, law, biz), hurts it in overall and grad/PhD prestige rankings; and grad/PhD are where Harvard, MIT and Stanford keep on truckin’.
Caltech could be #1 if someone felt STEM, and only STEM, was important. That’s how I read that particular ranking…
So comparing different rankings, if we’re not careful we end up comparing apples and oranges.
The above discussion illustrates the problem. Rankings need to be subject area specific to be of any actionable use. Example:(leaders in no particular order in each group):
CS and applied science/ engineering – MIT, Cal Tech, Berkeley and Stanford
Social Sciences (economics, politics, sociology, anthropology) – Harvard, UChicago, Columbia, Princeton
Physical sciences and math – Stanford, Harvard, Berkeley, UChicago, MIT and Princeton
Life Sciences – Stanford, MIT, Harvard, JHU, Penn
Humanities – (English, History, philosophy, languages, area studies) Berkeley. UChicago., Harvard, Yale, Princeton, Columbia
"Using a value added approach means that that the ranking does not simply reward the colleges that cream off all the very best students, and shepherd them into the jobs that provide the highest salaries in absolute terms. Instead it looks at the success of the college in transforming people’s life chances, in “adding value” to their likelihood of success. The THE data team uses statistical modeling to create an expected graduate salary and loan repayment rate for each college based on a wide range of factors, such as the make-up of its students and the characteristics of the institution. The ranking looks at how far the college either exceeds expectations in getting students higher average salaries than one would predict based on its students and its characteristics, or falls below what is expected.
This is going to be highly subjective and variable due to its complexity and assumptions that have to be made, nor is it explicit at all so I can’t tell what it really is ranking here.
@Chrchill There you go, now your getting somewhere. USNWR doesn’t break it down into those categories, but it does further break its rankings down into engineering and business. Also, it completely differentiates LAC’s from National Universities. So all of these other rankings have there own flavors and try to mix apple and oranges, USNWR clearly elucidates its criteria (WSJ for example, does not), and further breaks down its colleges into rational subsets. All that being said use them for what you want.
Chrchill, I like the idea of breaking universities into speciality/academic clusters.
A note regarding that. Cal and Michigan are extremely strong in the Social Sciences and Michigan is also extremely strong in the Humanities.