Math Rankings: is this accurate?

College Search & Selection
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<p>barrons - you are amusing and dead wrong. Are your profs the ones setting the curves that you have to keep up with? Are they the ones with you hundreds of hours during the semester? You think that going to Elite School rather than Podunk U is a far better experience because of the profs? That would be strange since in many cases the first couple of years the courses at Elite School are taught by TA’s. Besdies, I am talking about being challenged overall, not just in one subject. No question a prof can make a huge difference in one subject, as mine did. But it was still the competition and interaction with my peers that was the more significant factor. I am not talking about whether ones peers are interesting socially, that is very off topic. Important, but not in this discussion.</p>

<p>noimagination - It is the amount and type of interaction you have with your peers as compared to the profs that is the reason it is so much more important. The better the peers, the harder they make you work, the more they challenge you, the more interesting (academically at least) they are. barrons is right about one thing, a prof can do that too to a more limited degree and in a more specific way. But they can only do that for so many students at the kind of personal level he is talking about. At a school of, say, 5000 undergrads, there won’t be more than a few hundred that can achieve that kind of situation with a prof, if that many. Profs can be very impactful in many ways, but that can be true whether they are famous or not. Mine certainly wasn’t and he had a huge impact. But I realized how much of the experience revolved aorund my fellow students when I attended some classes at another university. The profs were perfectly fine, certainly none famous, but the other students were significantly less capable than at my undergraduate school. It was very easy to be at the top of the curve, and I was challenged by none of them in class and project discussions. I wound up always leading the way, because quite frankly I was the smartest. Great for the ego, but not useful otherwise. It was certainly not true at my regular school.</p>

<p>So I am certainly not saying that the profs are not impactful, barrons totally distorts my position that way. I am saying that impact is not correlated to their fame, or to how highly rated the department is. I got into every grad school I applied to, including the #2 ranked school. I guess the recommendation of my unfamous prof was good enough. Besides, he says the words “if you are special”. I don’t think you have to be special, I certainly am anything but. But special or not, being surrounded by peers smarter than you is very challenging. Having great smart profs is rewarding and challenging. You also misstate my premise when you say you don’t understand why a prof’s abilities/experience shouldn’t be relevant. Of course it is, but that prof doesn’t have to be a high powered researcher or famous or part of a highly ranked department for that to be true. At the vast majority of schools, most profs have a lot of ability and experience. At the graduate level, where everything I said about time with that prof is far less true, then those credentials of fame and respect in their community for their work is highly relevent to the mission at hand. The undergraduate mission is very different from that. The ability and experience of the lesser known profs can be equally valuable, or even more so because of the time they might have to give an undergrad more attention. I think that what you are missing is the qualitative difference between the graduate experience, where research reputation and ability has a direct impact every day, and undergraduate where it is much more diluted. I am not saying it is just the personality of the prof, but at the undergrad level if a highly competent prof can relate to you and the famous one cannot, which is more effective? There is no correlation between these two things, other than many of the most “driven” people can be difficult, and in any case as I said the most famous ones are often less accessable.</p>

<p>I don’t know how else to explain it. You will just have to experience it for yourself and see if you think I am right.</p>

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<p>If you know much of anything about the better large state schools you might know that math and sciences don’t attract the students from the lower end of the pool. They attract the top quarter which at my school would mean an average SAT well over 1400 and over a 3.9 GPA in HS with rank in the top 5% of the class. And you still can mingle with the generally much hotter education and comm arts women and go to a big-time football or basketball game. Also at my school it was tradition that even the famous profs taught and worked with undergrads as well as grad students. Most advanced undergrad science/math classes were quite small (under 30 with most under 20) and the profs certainly knew you by name and more.</p>

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<p>^I find that hard to believe that the top quartile of Wisconsin had an SAT score over 1400. Proof please? And since when did Wisconsin have big-time football OR basketball?</p>

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<p>lesdia, barrons is talking about math and science majors having the 3.9 and 1400.</p>

<p>and Wisconsin’s football program in the last 15 years has had some very good seasons. For instance they were **26-13 **in the last 3 seasons - considered excellent in view of their tough Big 10 schedule.</p>

<p>more on Wisconsin football:</p>

<p><a href=“http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wisconsin_Badgers[/url]”>http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wisconsin_Badgers&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

<p>Wisconsin’s football program has been among the most successful in the Big Ten since the early 1990s, when Barry Alvarez was hired as head coach. Under Alvarez, the Badgers won three Big Ten Championships and three Rose Bowls. In the 2005 season, Alvarez’s last year as coach, the Badgers defeated the Auburn Tigers 24-10, in the Capital One Bowl. In 2006, Bret Bielema took over as head coach, posting a 12-1 record and defeating Arkansas 17-14, in the Capital One Bowl. The Badgers are 10-10 in bowl games, and have made 14 bowl appearance in the past 15 seasons, including a school record seven straight appearances. [3] The Badger football program has had two Heisman Trophy winners: fullback Alan Ameche in 1954, and running back Ron Dayne in 1999.</p>

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<p>Yeah, I was at that large, better state school. I would love to see proof of that also. I would like to know how one would even know that. I never saw them publish the stats by major. And again you miss my point. Nearly all schools have the profs “teach” undergrads, for the ones with “pull” it is often only a single advanced class a semester. I am glad you had a good experience barrons, many many students do. But it varies from school to school, and in any case none of this changes my point that at the undergrad level it is all rather unrelated to the ranking of the department as a grad school. If people use that reasoning to pick an undergraduate institution, they increase their chances of being disappointed. It simply is not a good measure for what kind of experience one will have at a school, not within the major and certainly not overall.</p>

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<p>I would be more concerned about attending a university where I might have to row to classes everyday from my place with no electricity. Then again the school would be closed down and I’d have to go elsewhere to complete my education.</p>

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<p>rjk - amusing. Not useful or accurate, but amusing.</p>

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<p>According to the US News online edition, the 25th/75th percentile SAT CR+M scores at Wisconsin are 1160-1400. So, doing the math, that means 25% of the entering class reporting SAT scores had scores at or above 1400. Not so hard.</p>

<p>Now in fairness, only 24% of entering freshmen at Wisconsin reported SAT scores. Most—86%—reported ACT scores, with a 75th percentile of 31, which according to the official SAT-ACT concordance corresponds to a 1380 SAT CR+M, just a whisker below 1400. But a 32 ACT corresponds to a 1420 SAT, a little higher than barrons claimed. So I think barrons pretty accurately characterizes the Wisconsin student body when he says the top quartile is 1400+. I don’t know whether he’s right in claiming that most math/science majors are drawn from the top quartile, but if he is then I find it entirely plausible that the “average” math/science major at Wisconsin has SATs (or their ACT equivalent) of “well over 1400.”</p>

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<p>OK, les is obviously some clueless ■■■■■ with absolutely no knowledge of U Wisconsin if he/she is unaware that it has some pretty good sports teams with a strong following. Maybe this will help him/her:</p>

<p>[SI.com</a> - SI on Campus - Best College Sports Towns - Thursday September 11, 2003 10:59AM](<a href=“http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/2003/sioncampus/09/10/top_ten0916/index.html]SI.com”>http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/2003/sioncampus/09/10/top_ten0916/index.html)</p>

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<p>Wisconsin has “pretty good” sports teams sure. When was the last time it won a BCS Bowl game or went to the Final Four in the NCAA?</p>

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<p>Final 4 2000, made NCAA every year since
BCS-Rose Bowl 2000-3 RB wins from 1994-2000 and Heisman winner
Ice Hockey-NCAA finals 2010 NCAA Champs 2006</p>

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<p>And this has so much to do with the thread!</p>

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<p>barrons, lesdia has been “clueless” in just about everything he has posted on this website…</p>

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<p>fallenchemist, this has to do with lesdia again attacking the sports program of another university. This time attacking the great football program at Wisconsin.</p>

<p>Somehow he thinks that because Dook has won a few basketball games, it is the convincing factor for students to attend that school.</p>

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<p>DUKE FOOTBALL - excellence on the field</p>

<p>Since 1994, however, Duke’s football program has declined, with the team lacking a winning season since. From 1999 to 2007, Duke’s football win-loss record was at 13-90;[3] from 2005 to 2007 Duke suffered a 22-game losing streak.[4] In 2008, a judge ruled in favor of Duke after they pulled out of a four-game contract with the University of Louisville; the judge stated that it was up to Louisville to find a suitable replacement as he wrote, in the ruling, that any Division I team would be equivalent or better.[3] Duke’s 2009 season gave them five wins and seven losses, the closest the school has come to bowl eligibility since 1994.[5]</p>

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<p>wow, can you imagine that?</p>

<p>a 22-game losing streak spanning 3 seasons from 2005 to 2007</p>

<p>and a 5-7 season being the best record in the last 16 years</p>

<p>truly truly incredible!</p>

<p>way to go Lesdia</p>

<p>“Duke football - excellence on the field!”</p>

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<p>

You’re saying that professors must merely meet a certain baseline standard of competence and experience, after which their personality and lecture skills become much more important. Am I interpreting that correctly?</p>

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<p>For undergraduate, while I might phrase it a bit differently (for example I wouldn’t say “merely”, these people went to school for a long time to become competent enough to teach at fine universities. Just to repeat myself, competent is not a dirty word, the standard for being competent is quite high in most cases), yes, I would pretty much say that. To me, assuming they have that competence, being a great teacher is more important than being a great researcher to the undergrad. It is, of course, the opposite for grad school.</p>

<p>It’s not a formula, by any means. But for most of the courses, the subject material is well within the grasp of the professor, and so their ability to impart that to you is very important. Knowing whether they can do that or not cannot be determined from departmental rankings, grad or undergrad, which finally gets us back to the point. The other point being that when choosing a school, if you accept what I just said as true, one should focus on the quality of your peers, the size of the school, the resources it has available in general, the location, non-academic activities, so on and so forth.</p>

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<p>^ Let’s see if we can apply the same logic elsewhere:</p>

<p>Student peers must meet a certain baseline standard of competence and experience, after which their personalities and cooperation skills become much more important.</p>

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<p>“Duke football - excellence on the field!” </p>

<p>Buy I guess those guys will do anything to say that they’re just like Columbia…</p>