<p>On that point Kalidescope, you and I are in complete agreement. There is very little that separates universities in terms of real quality. One must go to a school that best fits one's needs.</p>
<p>Well said Kaled. & Alexandre, Now where is this Libya times ranking list????</p>
<p>To answer the original question, yes, usnews ranking is complete bunk and here is a link to prove it...
<a href="http://www.nspe.org/etweb/13-03collegerankings.asp%5B/url%5D">http://www.nspe.org/etweb/13-03collegerankings.asp</a></p>
<p>Well I'm going to Penn so I guess I feel the need to defend it. But honestly Alexandre is pretty much right. I mean once you're in the top 20 or so, is there really that much difference in academic quality?</p>
<p>US News has almost no competition for their rankings systems, which is an outrage. They can change the prestige of a school by simply putting them higher on the list than they should be, like a previous poster suggested. IMO that's wrong, and there should be more private companies trying to come up with their own rankings. Why doesn't Collegeboard give rankings? It would be perfect for their site, especially because they already draw such a crowd.</p>
<p>Princeton Review too. Maybe these companies have their own rankings already, they just aren't as publicized or something, but there is a definite need for more rankings being offered to prospective students.</p>
<p>"good luck on becoming in an engineer when you graduate from mit or caltech. maybe ill hire you after i become CEO upon completion of Wharton
xokandykyssesox, that comment is just immature, and wharton might not be so great after all."</p>
<p>If you think people from caltech or mit will be less successful/intelligent than those of wharton, you should kick yourself
If you think graduating from wharton would make u a CEO, you should kick yourself again.
If you think all graduates from MIT and Caltech are engineers, kick yourself in the crotch. You are from Wharton, so you are probably smart enough to figure out how to do that.</p>
<p>i was being sarcastic</p>
<p>Doesn't anyone read the captions or does everyone just looks at the pictures?</p>
<p>from 2002 Edition, US News & World Report, Americas Best Colleges, How we rank schools, by Morse, dir of research; and Flanigan, research anaylst. pg 67.</p>
<p>(I am practicing my typing skills by typing this without looking at the keyboard)</p>
<p>
[quote]
In studying the tables it's important to remember that their best use is for comparing colleges within a category; you don't want simply to focus on the top-ranked schools. Indeed, since we may change our methodology from year to year, we do not invite readers to track colleges' annual moves in the rankings....
In late 2000, the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching released an updated version of its Carnegie Classification of Institutions of Higher Educations, a grouping system that US News uses as the basis for its ranking categories.
[/quote]
</p>
<p>it concludes in an highlighted box
[quote]
Study the data. Use the rankings wisely...
[/quote]
</p>
<p>Well, I guess my copy of US News is out of date and US News probably didn't put in their disclaimer this year. </p>
<p>not too many mistakes.</p>
<p>You guys are probably pretty intelligent... "Statistics (or numbers) don't lie, people lie." is perhaps too harsh but the meaning is there for you interpolate and later to extrapolate.</p>
<p>Yes. US News is complete bunk. Any magazine that rates WashU as the country's 11th-best university is complete bunk.</p>
<p>USNews is somewhat bunk, but not entirely.</p>
<p>I disagree with the rankings of Penn, Duke Cal Tech and Columbia. Penn is rated highly in USNews because the editor-in-chief is a Wharton grad. Besides Wharton, Columbia College and Columbia SEAS is better than the other Penn undergrad schools. Columbia should be rated about 7.</p>
<p>Cal Tech should be 6, Penn should be around 9 and Duke around 10.</p>
<p>Again, just my opinion, but I think people need to focus far less on the rankings and more so on what you want out of a college. Whichever one has the personality that fits you is where you should be attending.</p>
<p>I think US News is bunk, too, but they're laughin' all the way to the bank.</p>
<p>Somewhere there was a post about John McEnroe going to Stanford, and he majored in underwater basket weaving. </p>
<p>Have you ever tried 'underwater basket weaving' ? </p>
<p>Stanford should be #1.</p>
<p>Squirrel - good post.</p>
<p>As for the USNEWS peer assessment vs. general rankings I would give the former a slight nod. And I would agree with Alexandre that if you are going to use any single measure or the combined measure as a guide to school selection the peer assessment is the most useful. It has many problems, including regional biases, the halo effect of top departments and a reliance on general reputation rather than detailed investigation, but at least it is a reasonable and singular measurement, rather than the jerry-built mess of the USNEWS ranking formula.</p>
<p>And for a student pursuing popular, basic academic programs, I do buy the following equivilances. . .</p>
<p>Texas#46=WUSL#11, Vanderbilt#18
Indiana#71=William & Mary#31, NYU#32, UCSD#35
Minnesota#66=William & Mary#31, NYU#32, UCSD#35</p>