<p>In your opinion, as well as the general consensus.</p>
<p>Thanks!</p>
<p>With 3 billion endowment, less than 20% acceptance rate, average SAT of 2200(average ACT 33) and a graduation rate of 87%, its definitely an elite private school overall. It should be under top 15.</p>
<p>Vanderbilt is a great school. But I personally wouldn’t get hung up in rankings considering how schools are “ranked”</p>
<p>Yes</p>
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<p>Yes, most people would consider Vanderbilt to be a top 20 American university. It’s faculty and professional schools are a little weak in some areas but its high selectivity, extensive financial resources, and small class sizes help make up for that.</p>
<p>The only schools clearly better than Vandy are the 8 Ivies, Stanford, MIT, Duke Columbia, University of Chicago, Cal Tech, and Northwestern.</p>
<p>^ Columbia is one of the 8 Ivies BTW</p>
<p>If Vanderbilt isn’t in the top 20, it’s certainly close or equivalent to several of those that are.</p>
<p>Vanderbilt thinks so - [Vanderbilt</a> Rankings | Facts | Undergraduate Admissions | Vanderbilt University](<a href=“http://admissions.vanderbilt.edu/facts/rankings.php]Vanderbilt”>Vanderbilt At A Glance | Undergraduate Admissions | Vanderbilt University)</p>
<p>It’s a very important question, because only losers go to school #21.</p>
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<p>Uh oh…</p>
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<p>WAIT A MINUTE!</p>
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<p>Of course, that’s what happens when Patrick Ewing, and Allen Iverson play for your school.</p>
<p>I agree with the others. It’s the #21 school in the country…so…in other words, a degree from Vanderbilt can make for an excellent stash of backup toilet paper. </p>
<p>In all seriousness…does it really matter? There is no objective way to “rank” colleges. What are we ranking them on? Rigor? Student satisfaction? Retention rate? The quality of the food? The dorm environments? Student organizations?</p>
<p>There are WAAAAAAY too many factors to have anything even remotely resembling a “ranking” of every college in the country. The #1 school in the country according to US News might is a horrible match for many people.</p>
<p>Vandy is a top school — don’t get caught up in the ratings.</p>
<p>Vanderbilt is exactly five colleges worse than Duke and for colleges better than Wellesley. See how silly that is? It’s a great school.</p>
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<p>Please. Get out of the Conference USA first and then maybe we can have a chat ;).</p>
<p>Few universities can non-contextually be ‘top-x.’ Are we talking about undergraduate education, graduate programs, professional schools, research expenditures, etc, etc. If you’re talking undergraduate education, then yes, Vanderbilt is certainly a top-20 university, and you’d certainly get an excellent education there.</p>
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Vandy is actually #17, he was talking about Georgetown.</p>
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At least we are D1 in 3 of the Big 4 sports :p</p>
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<p>I was being incredibly sarcastic in that post. ;)</p>
<p>I was addressing the fact that posts like this imply an “if a school isn’t in the top-x, then it must not be a good school” type of mentality. As though there’s some significant difference between number 20 and number 21. Or a significant difference between number 1 and number 10 for that matter.</p>
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<p>There are many objective ways to rank colleges.
As far as I know, no major ranking considers the quality of the food, the dorm environments, or student organizations. These would be hard to measure objectively.
Forbes considers student satisfaction based on survey data. USNWR considers graduation and retention rates. The National Survey of Student Engagement considers rigor based on factors such as reading loads and the number/length of writing assignments. </p>
<p>I think what you are saying is that there is no objective way to decide which objective measurements are most important. It’s a matter of judgement. However, you can pick a variety of criteria more-or-less closely related to academic quality, weight them however you like, and a school like Vanderbilt still is likely to come out pretty high (in the top ~1% or ~2%.) Vanderbilt is a rich school, which allows it to pay for a lot of good stuff (faculty salaries, scholarships, facilities etc.) If you sort schools by endowment per student (a perfectly objective way to rank them), near the top of the list are many of the same schools that do well by USNWR, Forbes, Kiplinger’s, etc. … even though those rankings may not directly consider EPS as a factor.</p>
<p>[url=<a href=“http://www.ordoludus.com/quality.php?sort=ES&dir=down#data]College”>http://www.ordoludus.com/quality.php?sort=ES&dir=down#data]College</a> Rankings - Home<a href=“click-sort%20on%20E/S”>/url</a></p>
<p>Rankings are a joke and are used to increase magazine sales. Period. Most people would love to date the number 15 or 25 or 50 Miss America contestant. Same thing with rankings. There are about 50 schools that are peers of each other. Vanderbilt is definitely one of these schools.</p>
<p>Oh please, let’s not even discuss the poor troglodytes in #22-#50 schools. I cry for them.</p>
<p>Top 20, man, that’s where it’s at!</p>