<p>UCSB, UCIrvine (major commuter school) and UCDavis ranked AHEAD of UT and UF.</p>
<p>Let's not forget that Texas and Florida are the second and fourth most populated states in the country and also that California has one of the worst public high school system in the entire country... </p>
<p>So basically the best students in Texas and Florida according to USNews are not on the level of some random UC commuter school like Irvine?!? </p>
<p>Now that's funny!!! If that's the case I want to start seeing UT-Dallas, UTEP, UTSA, and UT-Arlington be given credit where credit is due. lol</p>
<p>BTW, I dare anybody to try to find one undergrad or grad program at those random UC secondary schools which is more competitive than the one offered at UT or UF.</p>
<p>what does liberal bias have to do with this?
and i agree that ut is underrated, because of the top 10% rule, but don’t you think you are being a bit regionally biased by throwing in all the texas schools in here?</p>
<p>I was being sarcastic about the UT regional schools. But they are indeed peers of the UC secondary schools that USNews rank ahead of UT-Austin. ROTFLMAO</p>
<p>By liberal bias I mean exactly those idiots who live on the coasts (who probably write the rankings) that think that anything in the middle is inferior. Especially they hate Texas and Florida because they are the two states where most people in recent years have been moving to.</p>
<p>What do UF, UT, Penn State, UGa, UMiami, Tulane, Minnesota, Indiana, Texas A&M, George Washington, Maryland, Ohio State, and Boston University have in common? Yup, they’re all ranked below UC-Davis, Irvine, and Santa Barbara. Which, in my opinion, is complete bull****. You’re trying to say that those three schools are really better than those major universities that I mentioned above? To me, there isn’t really an anti-southern or liberal bias, but it’s more like a California fetish. UC-San Diego is also overrated, IMO (although not as badly as the other three). Also, UC-Riverside and UC-Santa Cruz are ranked with or above schools like U of Arizona, U Kansas, OU, and FSU. Once again, bull. I mean, what UC school isn’t listed on the top tier of USNews? </p>
<p>California has some great schools (even some of the overrated ones), but for the love of God, the pro-Cal bias on there makes me want to puke sometimes.</p>
<p>UCSD is a commuter school for the love of God, and UC-Riverside and UCSC are high schools on steroids with the worst students graduating from the horrible California public high school system. They are no way in the same league of flagship state schools like Kansas.</p>
<p>I’m a student from the “overrated” UC Irvine.</p>
<p>First, can I ask you, do you know what a methodology is? Believe it or not, the rankings are actually based on objective numbers. It’s not like US News ranks each school based on how cool its editors think it is.</p>
<p>But, you’re right. It’s quite clear that US News has a huge bias against the South. Just take a look at how Duke, Emory, Vanderbilt, and Rice (which is in TEXAS!) are ranked.</p>
<p>Finally, I get the impression that you’ve never set foot on a UC campus, and really have no idea what you’re talking about. They’re some of the best universities in the world. They’re not random state schools. UC Irvine is hardly a commuter school.</p>
<p>Btw, this is kind of funny (you should really do some research)</p>
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</p>
<p>% Students living on campus: UC Irvine ( 37%) , UT Austin (20%), UF (22%)</p>
<p>% Freshman living on campus: UC Irvine (80%), UT Austin (57%), UF (77%)</p>
<p>Florida is on the East coast. California is also one of the top states in population growth. By percentage it’s not far behind Texas and Florida (and a few others); in terms of actual people moving in it’s first by a wide margin. If you’re going to criticize the rankings, make sure your reasoning is logically consistent.</p>
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<p>UC Merced (the new campus) isn’t up there. The reality, though, is that the UC System is easily the best system of public colleges. Most of the state flagships you named have similar selectivity to the middle tier UC’s (FYI - the UC order is basically: Berkeley, UCLA, UCSD, UCI, UCD, UCSB, UCSC, UCR, UCM). If you look at actual programs, the schools are all near the top.</p>
<p>Using those rankings, there are 6 UC’s in the top 21 (Publics). Only 5 of the 13 you listed fit in there, and all are below the top 3 UC’s. Irvine, Davis, and Santa Barbara lack the all around strength of the top 3, but they are all very strong in particular areas.</p>
<p>Bad students from California High Schools don’t go to UC’s, they drop out. Middling students from California High Schools don’t go to UC’s, they find work after graduating or go to a CC. Solid students from California High Schools don’t go to UC’s, they go to Cal States. Only good students end up at the top 6 UC’s. The top 6 all had average High School GPA’s over 3.9 in 2008, and the average SAT score was over 1830 for each.</p>
Hmm…it’s very interesting that you said that, but there are lies, damned lies and statistics =)</p>
<p>
I really don’t know if I would call them “good students” considering how ridiculously easy it is to get a 3.9 at California’s public high schools. I mean look at UCSC, 96% of the students there graduated at the top 10% of their class. For Stanford, the best university in the state bar none, we can only boast 92%. As you can tell, that statistic does not mean much under heavy scrutiny. Also, I’m not so sure about the 1830 statistic (I think the latter two are definitely below that-but not by much) and that’s besides the point-1830 is more of a “solid student” not a good one.
That being said, I wouldn’t say that USNews has a liberal bias-there are all sorts of screwy things going on with their rankings.</p>
<p>I got the 1830 statistic from the UC website directly. The lowest mean is 1834. As for whether that’s “good” or “solid” that really comes down to personal standards. The point is that when you’re talking about crappy California public schools, the impression is of gang-ridden inner city schools. But the people that end up at UC’s are the ones taking AP classes and working hard (or the ones that can easily pull off high test scores without working at all :)).</p>
<p>The 10% statistic is an interesting one. When I said top 6, that doesn’t really include UCSC. I guess it ends up as a dumping ground for under qualified students with ELC status, whereas Stanford gets more from schools with well over 10% qualified for top colleges.</p>
<p>I agree that the top 10% stat is misleading. Although you would have to take into account your recruited athletes, and the fact that Stanford admissions is way less stat-oriented than the UC system. They like quirky people there.</p>
<p>Texas is almost as populated as California and very similar in terms of immigration so a comparison between schools is easy.</p>
<p>These would be the REAL equivalents, and this should be reflected by rankings:</p>
<p>Rice and Stanford (most selective and nerdy)
UT-Austin and Berkeley (public ivys)
SMU and USC (rich kids schools)
Texas A&M and UCLA (second best public)
Texas Tech and UCSB (party schools)
Baylor and Santa Clara (decent christian schools)
UT-Dallas and UCSD (decent commuter schools)
UT-Arlington and UCI (average commuter schools)
UTEP and UCDavis (average state schools)
UTSA and UCRiverside (below average commuter schools)
U of H and San Jose State (very similar minority filled schools)
Texas State and Chico State (major party schools)
SFA and SFSU (no selectivity at all schools)</p>
<p>Those sound like red herrings in any discussion intent on a fair ranking of universities.</p>
<p>Post #6, first couple of paragraphs, pretty much nails the problem with the OP’s emotional arguments. The USNWR rankings are based on published criteria. From USNWR’s perspective the criteria rest on “objective” metrics, although they do depend heavily on peer assessments. Those assessments may be open to considerable bias, not necessarily political or regional bias, but possibly a “halo effect” bias driven by the long-established reputations of certain schools.</p>
<p>But, even if you remove peer assessment from the ranking factors, the same national universities still tend to bubble up to the top 10 or 20 based on any number of objective criteria (SAT scores, faculty awards, number of bibliographic citations per capita, faculty salaries, etc.) To see what I mean, look at stateuniversity.com’s ranking by SAT scores. Only 2 of the top 20 are southern schools. Or look at its ranking by faculty salary and delete the law and medical schools; in that case, 0 of the top 20 are southern schools. </p>
<p>You probably could contrive some set of criteria (emphasizing library size for example, or endowment unadjusted per capita) to push a few southern schools up in the rankings. However, I think it’s unlikely those factors would have been systematically omitted from any major ranking just to drive down one region’s schools as a class.</p>
<p>This would not be an easy issue (bias against southern schools) to assess accurately without looking more at a general bias against things southern. I’d suggest the current rankings favor northern schools as a result of thousands of incremental acts over years and decades rooted originally in what was a difference between societies, with one based in agriculture supported by slavery and the other geared more towards industrialization.</p>
<p>The move towards technology has lessened this bias, but foundational thinking still tends to support the north. Ultimately, I suggest it has to do with those who are forced inside due to miserable weather. They think they are smarter. Are they really?</p>
<p>Schools that people think are better get even better, because better students and faculty want to go there. This is how schools like WashU can use PR not only to appear better, but to actually get better.</p>
<p>As someone who lives in the Northeast, but grew up in the South (and who has come in for my share of South-bashing), and who thinks the UCs get a ridiculous amount of hype in some quarters…you’re just kind of babbling. Frankly, you’re coming off a bit tinfoil-hat-ish.</p>
<p>It’s a formula, just like every other ranking. They pick the factors they care about, and use them to compute a score for each school. You’re free to disagree with the formula (I certainly do in some ways). It has nothing to do with liberal bias. While your fantasy about eeeevil USNews libruls sitting around a table in some back room talking about how much they hate Southern states with high population growth, is amusing, I find it rather dubious. A lot of other people have pointed out how it doesn’t really make sense.</p>
<p>Interesting. Nobody accepts bias in the USNWR rankings, yet the WSJ feeder ranking is always immediately shot down as “biased” and “it favors the East coast.” What gives?</p>
As someone said before, that’s how the formula works out. I certainly don’t agree with the formula behind the Shanghai Jiao Tong rankings, but I don’t dispute the results, since they’re accurate for what they’re measuring.</p>
<p>I don’t think anyone would deny that academically UT Austin blows virtually every UC except Berkeley and perhaps UCLA out of the water. Perhaps a better point would be that USNWR rankings are not a trustworthy ranking of academic quality…which I think most posters would agree with.</p>