<p>^ Yeah, and I even left Berkeley’s and Michigan’s old PA scores in there for ya… ;)</p>
<p>Yeah, I noticed. ;-)</p>
<p>That’s not usnews rankings</p>
<p>idaho, I actually started a thread a while back about the best athletic conference in academics, and I actually used the method you just described to rank them. Averaging out the scores of all of the schools in those three conferences, the result is:</p>
<p>ACC- 48
Big 10- 50
PAC 10- 69</p>
<p>So the PAC 10 actually lags a good deal behind the ACC and Big 10, which are virtually the same. And of course, you could also use the method that UCB posted. So in terms of overall strength, I’d have to give a slight edge to the Big 10 as the best non-Ivy athletic conference (DI, that is). Here’s a link to the thread I’m talking about: <a href=“http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/college-search-selection/722403-best-athletic-conference-academics.html[/url]”>http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/college-search-selection/722403-best-athletic-conference-academics.html</a></p>
<p>^^ It’s USNews peer assessment score…which is easier to compute an average for the conferences… if you went by ordinal rank, some of the lower publics aren’t ranked.</p>
<p>Pure stats to back my claim of ACC > Big Ten… music to my ears</p>
<p>Haha, the difference between them in the rankings (48 and 50) is tiny, and could change from year to year without any problem, so it’s hard to say which is better when they’re THAT close. Because of the Big 10’s ranking average and because of the USNews peer assessment score averages, I’d give the edge to the Big 10… barely. I’ll do another rankings average once the new USNews ranking comes out haha.</p>
<p>ACC is lifted by privates…Big Ten only has one private. USNews rankings are skewed towards privates.</p>
<p>IB you left out FSU… but it is pretty obvious that the ACC is stronger in the middle upper section by a great deal.<br>
UNC > Illinois
Boston College > Penn State
Georgia Tech > Ohio State
U Miami > Minnesota
Maryland > Iowa</p>
<p>Most of those are probably about 10 spot differences.</p>
<p>
I would reverse some of those.</p>
<p>
Private universities included or excluded? If you included privates and use USNWR ranks:</p>
<p>Duke (#8) > Northwestern (#12)
UVA (#23) > Michigan (#26)
Wake Forest (#28) > Wisconsin (#35)
UNC (#30) > Illinois (#40)
Boston College (#34) > Penn State (#47)
Georgia Tech (#35) > Ohio State (#56)
U Miami (#51) > Minnesota (#61)
Maryland (#53) > Iowa (#66)
Clemson (#61) > Purdue (#66)
Virginia Tech (#71) = Indiana (#71)
NC State (#83) < Michigan State (#71)</p>
<p>ACC: 9
Big 10: 1
Tie: 1</p>
<p>Edit: I left out Florida State because the ACC has one more school than the Big 10.</p>
<p>Edit 2: What happened to the post order? This post belongs after post #47. 
</p>
<p>The PA scores clearly benefit Big Ten. Michigan > Duke? Even though I hate Duke, please. Wake Forest and Boston College are also shafted.</p>
<p>^ Heh, those are PA scores from 2007. It was an old thread.</p>
<p>PA scores now have Michigan = Duke = 4.4. Happier now?</p>
<p>PA scores are what they are. They favor Big Ten. On the other hand, selectivity would benefit ACC.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>Perhaps there is a correlation: the PA scorers are the same BCS voters that send THE Ohio State University football team to a beat-down every January. :D</p>
<p>You mean all of those top ranked schools in the ACC with under 25,000 students? Naturally they’re going to be more selective. It doesn’t mean they’re necessarily better. It is kind of depressing UCB. Michigan fell down to Duke’s level in PA.</p>
<p>Of course, but selectivity is selectivity. Regardless of what’s driving that selectivity, ACC schools beat out the Big Ten in selectivity, just as Big Ten beats ACC in PA. Is that fair? Maybe not, but I was just stating the facts.</p>
<p>So tell me all of the programs/disciplines where Duke is rated higher than Michigan? It is not a very long list I can assure you. please.</p>
<p>Aside from less selectivity and size, UT certainly matches what the general public traditionally associate as “Ivy quality”. (For the purposes of this consideration, assume that the term “Ivy” has a meaning beyond just an arbitrary league of historically prestigious privates. I agree with other posters the term Public Ivy is silly.) </p>
<p>Consider that UT has:
- a $7B+ endowment (2nd largest among publics), but that is effectively over $16B since it is the flagship of a larger system that essentially allows it full backing and support to build whatever it wants whenever it wants. UT was also the first public (and still 1 of only 3) that has its bonds rated at the highest level due to its financial resources
- basically every academic program and dept. ranked in the top 20 or higher in fields as diverse as law, engineering, business, natural sciences, arts/music, and other professional programs
- a general academic library that is the 5th or 6th largest in North America
- a $1B+ specialized rare book/manuscript/photography/film research library and archive that only Harvard and Yale can come close to matching and that other schools can’t dream of touching; a library that is mentioned in scores of articles, books, and academic publications as on par with Library of Congress, British Library, NY Public, Piermont Morgan, Huntington, etc.
- a faculty that consists of total NAE members 4th after only MIT, Stanford, and Berkeley, as well as one of the largest concentrations of NAS members for a university without an associated medical school (MIT and Berkeley being extreme outliers, of course!!)</p>
<p>Other random things including:
- the largest art museum on a university campus
- one of the top 2-3 performing arts complexes on a university campus, including a renowed resident quartet
- a dedicated large-scale research campus that includes two of the fastest supercomputers in the world, one of which is currently the fastest one open to general academic research
- one of the largest international student populations
- many other superlatives</p>
<p>Oh yeah, and UT also kicks serious — in varsity athletics.</p>
<p>If this doesn’t qualify as “Public Ivy”, then what does the term really mean?</p>
<p>The reason UT isn’t recognized more ranges from the obvious - it’a a large public school that is not as selective as other privates and top publics, a state law requiring 90+% of undergrads be from in-state (not to be confused with the other bad top 10% law), the lack of a medical school, where real research $ and prestige are generated (again MIT and Berkeley are major outliers in that respect), to more nebulous - perhaps regional and even anti-Texas/Southern bias, elitism from the entrenched “old guard”, and maybe even a tinge of jealousy from universities that can’t match it’s resources, yet are more selective and “prestigious”, and hence are “supposed” to be better…</p>
<p>dude Texas in not ivy status. give it up ahaha</p>