<p>^Agreed, that is bull.</p>
<p>Cornell is a great university. It is definitely a top 20 university in my book, and as part of the ivy league, it gains a significant amount of prestige. </p>
<p>However, a problem in CC is that many people presume Cornell is better than Brown, and it is definitely not true. Every single ivy is relatively close in standards, but there is a noticeable gap between the seven other ivies and Cornell. It is ubiquitous to think that Cornell is not the “caboose” here on CC if you catch my drift.</p>
<p>^ I think Cornell is just as good as, if not better than, Brown. Care to explain why that can’t be true? I can tell you that internationally Cornell is more recognized than Brown as an institution. Cornell has world-class engineering departments (i.e. materials science & engineering) and faculty (I mean for godsake THE Hoffman is a teaching faculty in their chemistry department. If you’ve had any organic chemistry, you’d know he’s one of the founding fathers). Cornell is a superb university that carries more recognition abroad than Brown.</p>
<p>^ I agree with Hope2getRice… </p>
<p>WUSTL, now THAT is a overrated school. Gaming the rankings to the extreme. WUSTL was actually a part of the exclusive “top ten club” at one point. Then even the administrators at WashU got skeptical, and they backed off :D</p>
<p>nuklearpakistan is a tool</p>
<p><a href=“I%20mean%20for%20godsake%20THE%20Hoffman%20is%20a%20teaching%20faculty%20in%20their%20chemistry%20department.%20If%20you’ve%20had%20any%20organic%20chemistry,%20you’d%20know%20he’s%20one%20of%20the%20founding%20fathers”>quote=Gd016</a>
[/quote]
</p>
<p>lol, According to Wiki, Hofmann’s rule is named after August Wilhelm von Hofmann, and the Hoffmann you are talking about did stuff with pericyclic reactions and sigmatropic rearrangement. Hoffmann is pretty well accomplished (Nobel prize in Chemistry) so I can’t complain!!1</p>
<p>
[QUOTE=phead128]
wustl, now that is a overrated school. Gaming the rankings to the extreme. Wustl was actually a part of the exclusive “top ten club” at one point. Then even the administrators at washu got skeptical, and they backed off
[/quote]
</p>
<p>I’m not sure if they really do “game the rankings to the extreme.” I’m going to assume that this is referring to the US News ranking of 12. Aside from WUSTL completely making up data and reporting it, I don’t think they can really “game” the system. The most often heard complaint is of overzealous use of the waitlist and marketing to increase their rankings. Okay…so 10% of the “Student selectivity” category is made up of the acceptance rate. That category makes up 15% of the overall rankings. Even though WUSTL might have a larger waitlist than many schools, that doesn’t necessarily mean that it’s all in the name of driving the acceptance rate down. Just a few years ago, the university didn’t even have to turn to the waitlist, so I don’t see how it’s helping all that much. </p>
<p>So, like I said, outside of blatantly providing incorrect data, I don’t get it. But I could be woefully uninformed.</p>
<p>gd016, I believe Cornell is a top 20 school. However, when people think Cornell is better than Chicago, Duke, Berkeley, Northwestern, Michigan, John Hopkins, and other peer schools simply because it’s an Ivy, I look at them strangely. Cornell is excellent in the STEM fields. However, Cornell is not strong in the education, humanities and social sciences circles (my background). I believe Michigan and Berkeley > Cornell. That’s my opinion.</p>
<p>[U.S</a>. News Rankings Through the Years](<a href=“http://chronicle.com/stats/usnews/]U.S”>http://chronicle.com/stats/usnews/)</p>
<p>WashU and UPenn (arguably the worst Ivy league school 20 years ago) has both skyrocketed to national preeminence over the past 2 decades and has saw the largest jumps out of any top university (EXCEPT for UChicago #16 to #9 between 2006-2007)</p>
<p>WashU cares too much about marketing and image. It’s all about selling an image and a brand name. Baylor is investing $300 million dollars into faculty related criteria that can only help boost their status on the contemporary rankings…</p>
<p><a href=“http://chronicle.com/media/flash/v53/i38/usnews/snapshots/[/url]”>http://chronicle.com/media/flash/v53/i38/usnews/snapshots/</a></p>
<p><a href=“http://chronicle.com/free/v53/i38/38a01502.htm#washington[/url]”>http://chronicle.com/free/v53/i38/38a01502.htm#washington</a></p>
<p>
That’s because people misuse the terms on such threads. By “overrated” people generally mean “overranked”…the number of people getting their knickers in a twist about WUStL is a good example. :rolleyes:</p>
<p>
GASP! How DARE a university increase its endowment and become selective?! The horror!!!</p>
<p>I’m not saying they can’t. I only wish WUSTL won’t publish something like THIS [U.S</a>. News Ranks Washington University in Top 10](<a href=“Newsroom - The Source - Washington University in St. Louis”>http://news-info.wustl.edu/news/page/normal/340.html) and be so hardcore about the rankings…</p>
<p>Look, I’m WUSTL. “[I am the] highest-ranked national university in the Midwest!!” We pwn UChicago, Northwestern, Columbia, Johns Hopkins, Dartmouth, Brown, Cornell,…</p>
<p>Chancellor Wrighton (former Dean of MIT?) is fanatical about the rankings btw…</p>
<p>Phead128, YOU KNOW WHY WUSTL IS SO HARDCORE ABOUT THE RANKINGS???</p>
<p>because everytime I post on CC, people don’t look at “the best college for them”, they go to US News and say that one college is better than the other because it’s “ranked” higher, since you people think the rankings mean everything, that’s why colleges have now learned to play to the rankings to improve their own status in the public’s mind.</p>
<p>[Johns</a> Hopkins Gazette | August 20, 2007](<a href=“http://www.jhu.edu/~gazette/2007/20aug07/20briefs.html]Johns”>http://www.jhu.edu/~gazette/2007/20aug07/20briefs.html)</p>
<p>Uh oh.</p>
<p>Edit: Wrighton was the provost at MIT.</p>
<p>Let’s talk about ranking obsession. Official newsletters from each university: GO</p>
<p>JHU: [Johns</a> Hopkins Gazette | August 20, 2007](<a href=“http://www.jhu.edu/~gazette/2007/20aug07/20briefs.html]Johns”>http://www.jhu.edu/~gazette/2007/20aug07/20briefs.html)</p>
<p>WUSTL: [U.S</a>. News Ranks Washington University in Top 10](<a href=“Newsroom - The Source - Washington University in St. Louis”>http://news-info.wustl.edu/news/page/normal/340.html)</p>
<p>UC Berkeley (A little too much?): [8.18.2006</a> - U.S. News picks UC Berkeley as top public school again](<a href=“http://berkeley.edu/news/media/releases/2006/08/18_rankings.shtml]8.18.2006”>8.18.2006 - U.S. News picks UC Berkeley as top public school again) </p>
<p>Notice how the lengthy and drawn out ones are from each school’s “Public Affairs department”. The JHU Gazette is a student run newspaper…</p>
<p>
Precisely. Even Chicago panders to US News.</p>
<p>
[U</a> of C snags no. 9 spot amid U.S. News criticisms - The Chicago Maroon](<a href=“Alcohol bans felt at third of campuses nationwide – Chicago Maroon”>Alcohol bans felt at third of campuses nationwide – Chicago Maroon)</p>
<p>LOL. My friend bragged to me that she got into a “top 10 institution” aka UChicago back in 2007… I was like OH KAY, It was ranked #16th in 2006 okay!!! Real universities do not jump 6 spots in **one year<a href=“and%20become%20top%2010”>/B</a>! USNews is balloney.</p>
<p>Phead,
I would think that a JHU person would be a fan of USNWR as their ranking methodology, and how JHU reports its data, very much favor that school. The 25% weighting given to the PA score works very much to the institution’s benefit and reflects its prominence in the medical arena and the strength of its graduate programs.</p>
<p>Secondarily, JHU’s Financial Resources rank is positively distorted by the inclusion of its research activities and how this affects the spending per student calculations. JHU ranks 3rd nationally in this category despite only having an endowment per capita of $128k which would be good for only 57th among national universities.</p>
<p>Also, I think you will find that JHU does not include its conservatory students in its presentation of selectivity data for JHU undergraduate students. The obvious effect of this is to boost the perceived selectivity of the JHU student body. </p>
<p>Look, I think JHU is a fine school and is a great college selection for many students like you, but I would advise against stoning a fine school like Wash U…particularly if you live in a glass house.</p>
<p>Good one, tallsaint.</p>
<p>Gee, I wonder if JHU would have tooted its own horn a bit had the news in 2007 been that it had landed in the top 10 instead of “tied for 14?” Think it would have been mentioned in a brief? Doubt it.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>Interesting, hawkette. But I’m sure that the JHU administration is pristinely unaware of the advantage this gives them in the USNWR ranking system. They would be too pure of heart to give it a thought.</p>
<p>
JHU includes expenditures at its Applied Physics Laboratory. (Not to mention medical school expenditures)</p>