<ol>
<li>Caltech is one of the top schools in the nation, and almost everyone would consider it to be in your category “ivies+UC+MIT+Stanford”</li>
<li>You have Caltech ranked considerably lower, in the tier below the “secondary ivies”</li>
<li>You were under the assumption that Caltech was a state school</li>
<li>This assumption led you to rank Caltech, not with the “ivies+UC+MIT+Stanford”, but rather with the “powerhouse state schools”</li>
<li>With the knowledge that Caltech isn’t a state school, you would surely move it up in your rankings to the “ivies+UC+MIT+Stanford” or the “secondary ivy” level.</li>
<li>By doing this, you are moving Caltech up considerably in your rankings.</li>
<li>The only thing that changes from when you have Caltech low in the rankings to when you have Caltech higher is your knowledge that it is, in fact, not a state school.</li>
<li>The label of being a state school, all other things equal (which they were), makes a school worse in your view.</li>
<li>Therefore, you have a bias against state schools. QED</li>
</ol>
<p>READ THIS: Forget this entire post, it seems you don’t know much about Caltech, and I wrote it before I saw your post right above. But, that was pretty much my logic I used, proving I’m not some crazy nut.</p>
<p>not underrated, it’s often considered one of the best Universities in the world period. On this CC board however, many people have misconceptions about the selectivity and class sizes of UC Berkeley at the undergraduate level.</p>
<p>osucowboys. The top five public schools are Berkeley, Michigan, UCLA, UVA, and UNC-CH. None of them are in Texas, sorry. The rest of your comments are so rambling as to be almost incoherent in thought. Certainly no one would mention U-T Austin as an ivy caliber school, but many would consider UCB as one.</p>
<p>In the book The Public Ivies: America’s Flagship Undergraduate Colleges by Richard Moll, he identified 8 schools… William & Mary, Miami (OH), UCB, Michigan, UNC, UT, UVA, and Vermont. This is the book that coined the term, “Public Ivies” in the late 80’s. Then in 2001 Howard Greene wrote The Public Ivies: America’s Flagship Public Universities where he simply added a few more schools to the list: Indiana, Ohio St, Penn St, Rutgers, SUNY, Colorado, Florida, Illinois, Washington, and Wisconsin.</p>
<p>These are the public flagships that are considered to make up the most exclusive group of public schools. Period. If you disagree and have your own impressions, then get published.</p>
<p>haha, i wouldn’t trust two books titled “public ivies” when neither of them even mention UCLA, which easily trumpts UNC, UT, UVA, Vermont, Indiana, Ohio, penn, Rutgers, SUNY, Colorado, Florida, illinois, washington, and wisconsin in nearly every category.</p>
<p>It sounds like the “public ivies” are just big enough to play host to upper end of the expected disparity in performance. BIG state schools are just like high school. There are a lot of average students, party kids, uninvolved kids going through the motions, and excellent students at the top. </p>
<p>Penn State, where I have some experience, is really good at graduating football fans, not students. I would say 95% of Penn State alums spent more time in a room with a keg than with John Stuart Mill, consent theory, The Iliad, Das Kapital, a musical instrument, a calculus book, a telescope, Whitman, Hawthorne, or the periodic table. </p>
<p>PSU, and other big state schools, are lucky to have the gigantenoromous alumni associations that they do. Otherwise, people would pretty quickly come to understand that crushing beer cans against one’s forehead doesn’t lend to any practical life experience, nor does it allow for someone to critically analyze any situation in any workplace. </p>
<p>That being said, the top 5% at state schools are usually the students who gain access to the Nobel laureates - these are, after all, big research schools. They excel because the alumni go to football games, buy beers and t-shirts, and indirectly invest back into the school. You really couldn’t hand-make a better system for ensuring the longevity of that 5%.</p>
<p>So what that it’s 15 among publics? UCB is #1 among publics, yet it’s not HYPS or M. Penn State is not a top 5 public. I never said it wasn’t a good school. It’s a very good school, just not atop the very best public universities in this country.</p>
<p>rjk, I think we agree but just differ on the meaning of the word “top.” I use that word to include most of the USNWR top 50-100 universities, whereas you seem to have a much stricter definition. I use “elite” to differentiate between top schools and the very top. In my book, Penn State is a top but not elite public university.</p>
<p>rjk-- you fight some dumb fights on this forum. USNWR =/= “rating” by most people’s standards. It’s something that some people use and it’s a simple approximation, but we’ve all discussed ad nauseum all of the problems not just with USNWR, but with any ranking with individual spots.</p>
<p>Academics don’t underrate UCB, employers don’t, and neither do applicants. Just because you don’t agree with one magazine’s list which differentiates substantially between say, UCB and Duke (13 spots to Duke’s favor) doesn’t mean the institution is underrated.</p>
<p>Sure modestmelody. If Brown were listed where Berkeley is at USNWR, you wouldn’t be making any comments about it being underrated? However, I see your point if you don’t put much faith in USNWR. So then you agree with me that Brown and UCB are peers, albeit quite different in size and scope.</p>