<p>So, JHU and Cornell are supposed to be more academically excellent than Duke or Penn? The latter have stronger academic programs so I’m not sure what these provosts are thinking.</p>
<p>I am not sure that Duke and Penn have stronger academic programs than Cornell or JHU. </p>
<p>BIOLOGY:</p>
<h1>5 JHU</h1>
<h1>11 Cornell</h1>
<h1>13 Duke</h1>
<h1>20 Penn</h1>
<p>CHEMISTRY</p>
<h1>10 Cornell</h1>
<h1>19 Penn</h1>
<h1>21 JHU</h1>
<h1>45 Duke</h1>
<p>COMPUTER SCIENCE:</p>
<h1>5 Cornell</h1>
<h1>17 Penn</h1>
<h1>27 Duke</h1>
<h1>28 JHU</h1>
<p>EARTH SCIENCE:</p>
<h1>13 Cornell</h1>
<h1>28 JHU</h1>
<p>Duke and Penn unranked</p>
<p>ECONOMICS:</p>
<h1>9 Penn</h1>
<h1>18 Cornell</h1>
<h1>19 Duke</h1>
<h1>25 JHU</h1>
<p>ENGLISH</p>
<h1>4 Penn</h1>
<h1>7 Cornell</h1>
<h1>10 Duke</h1>
<h1>13 JHU</h1>
<p>HISTORY:</p>
<h1>9 JHU</h1>
<h1>9 Penn</h1>
<h1>12 Cornell</h1>
<h1>14 Duke</h1>
<p>MATHEMATICS:</p>
<h1>13 Cornell</h1>
<h1>18 Penn</h1>
<h1>24 Duke</h1>
<h1>24 JHU</h1>
<p>PHYSICS:</p>
<h1>7 Cornell</h1>
<h1>17 Penn</h1>
<h1>19 JHU</h1>
<h1>30 Duke</h1>
<p>POLITICAL SCIENCE:</p>
<h1>9 Duke</h1>
<h1>20 Cornell</h1>
<h1>28 Penn</h1>
<p>JHU not ranked</p>
<p>PSYCHOLOGY:</p>
<h1>11 Penn</h1>
<h1>17 Cornell</h1>
<h1>23 Duke</h1>
<h1>23 JHU</h1>
<p>If you average those out, according to my calculations, Penn is #12 in the nation, Cornell and Duke are tied at #15 in the nation and JHU is #18 in the nation. In other words, they are all roughly the same. Just for the sake of contrast, Cal is tied with Stanford at #1, while Michigan is sandwitched between Yale and Chicago at #6.</p>
<p>This said, as I pointed out above, the PA is not a measure of raw academic strength. If it were. Cal would have a similar PA as Harvard and Stanford and Michigan would have a similar PA to Chicago, Columbia, Princeton and Yale. </p>
<p>The PA is intended to gauge the reputation of undergraduate academic excellence at universities. A PA score within 0.3 points indicates universities of equal reputation. Which is why I lumped all universities with 4.3-4.7 PAs together.</p>
<p>^ 4.3 is 0.4 points less than 4.7… by your statement, 4.3 schools should not be grouped with 4.7 schools. :)</p>
<p>And 4.7 is closer to 4.9 than 4.4…
Just pointing that out.</p>
<p>Alexandre, the U.S. News Rankings are a pretty inaccurate gauge of how strong some of these programs. The National Research Council’s Survey of Doctoral Programs which takes into account GRE scores, job placement, faculty support, etc. are considered to be the authorities on this matter.</p>
<p>A Princeton alum on their board did a good job of developing a ranking that takes into account all of the different subjects and comes up with an overall “quality” ranking. Here’s what the results were:</p>
<p><a href=“http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/princeton-university/1006939-princeton-2010-national-research-council-nrc-rankings-news-item.html[/url]”>http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/princeton-university/1006939-princeton-2010-national-research-council-nrc-rankings-news-item.html</a></p>
<p>Duke: 38.9
Penn: 36.7</p>
<p>Cornell: 25.3
JHU: <24.2</p>
<p>Duke’s Economics and Computer Science rankings on USNWR for instance are way off the mark. They are clearly top 15 programs according to prospective PhD students in these fields that I have talked to recently. Our English department has gotten a little worse since the last NRC Rankings and should be ranked a bit lower on USNWR but there are about 10 fields where we should be ranked higher.</p>
<p>Maybe the next edition of the USNWR Graduate Edition will be more accurate but if its just based on peer surveys of deans in these departments, there is a clear “time lag” in how they look at these programs and don’t usually change their minds about a program’s quality even if its gotten better or worse.</p>
<p>I am not a big fan of the NRC, but even they do not point to a noticeable difference between Cornell, Duke, JHU and Penn. The gap between Harvard and Stanford is larger than the gap between Cornell and Penn. Arer we to conclude that Harvard has significantly stronger programs than Stanford? Not that it matters. Whether one trusts the USNWR or NRC, Michigan is still among the top 10! </p>
<p>I must, say, with top 10 departments in the Anthropology, Chemical Engineering, Classics, Electrical Engineering, English, French, Genetics, Mathematics, Mechanical Engineering, Philosophy, Political Science, Psychology and Sociology, Michigan is indeed impressive. I was surprised that Michigan was not ranked among the top 10 in History though it came close to the top 10 in most disciplines, including Chemistry, Computer Science, Economics, History and Physics.</p>
<p>This said, the NRC has many glaring oddities. For example, Harvard ranked #3 in Electrical Engineering, ahead of MIT, Cal, UIUC, Michigan, Cornell or CMU, makes no sense. Brown #5 in Mechanical and Yale #5 in Civil are both equally as mind-boggling.</p>
<p>
There are many, many strange results in the new NRC rankings. Syracuse and Penn over Vandy for religion? Duke, UNC, and MIT over NYU for art history? Cincinnati over Penn and Brown or Hopkins over UT Austin for classics? My personal favorites: Wisconsin over UCSD and Maryland-Baltimore over MIT for oceanography? Utterly bizarre results. Of the half dozen or so fields I’m familiar with enough to have an opinion, only ecology seems pretty accurate. </p>
<p>A lot of these odd results come from NRC’s new ranking criteria, many of which have either nothing to do with academic strength or are only loosely linked with it. In fact, a professor at NYU pointed out that only 4 of the 20 criteria are good measures of strength in a philosophy program. I’ve listed some of the criteria and quoted complaints in a previous post:</p>
<p><a href=“http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/12653712-post69.html[/url]”>http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/12653712-post69.html</a></p>
<p>I’m not sure it’s purely a matter of methodology, though…the S-rankings seem more accurate for some fields, whereas the R-rankings are more accurate for others. I have no idea what to make of that.</p>
<p>The NRC Reputational (R Ranking) Score is pretty accurate for a lot of the core subjects like Economics, Computer Science, Political Science, History, Psychology, and Sociology.</p>
<p>This is a fairly ridiculous argument. It’s like a bunch of people standing around a toilet, bickering incessantly about the best way to shove a turd down a toilet.</p>
<p>Can’t we instead celebrate the fact that the United States has some of the BEST universities in the WORLD. Whether it be Emory, University of Michigan, Berkeley, Stanford, or whatever elite institution you choose to glorify, thousands of parents ACROSS THE GLOBE pour all of their resources into an effort to make it a reality that their child makes it to at least ONE of these institutions. Just look around at all the INTERNATIONAL STUDENTS ON YOUR CAMPUS.</p>
<p>To fight among ourselves over which is technically best is just absurd.</p>
<p>Thank you ehz670.</p>