<p>Overrated: WUSTL, Tufts, USC, NYU
C'mon; the only top 20 that superscore their ACT so their 25-75th looks nice and neat, but I do commend their awesome effort that resulted a jump of 10 ranks in a decade!
Underrated: Rice, Northwestern, BC, Case</p>
<p>Overrated: USC, Wash U., Brown
Underrated: U Washington, Virginia Tech, Cornell, Rice</p>
<p>Overrated: Berkeley and UCLA undergrad, Boston College, NYU
(BC is highly overrated at my HS. Same thing with NYU. Not sure about other high schools though)</p>
<p>Underrated: Cornell
(Everyone puts them down as the doormat of the Ivy League...)</p>
<p>@aquamarinee</p>
<p>Yea; I agree on Cornell.</p>
<p>OVERRATED: Harvard, Wash U St Louis</p>
<p>UNDERRATED: Berkeley, Chicago</p>
<p>Based on faculty reputation and contribution to the mankind, here are my 2 cents:</p>
<p>Most overated: Notre Dame, Emory, Duke, Yale, Brown, Dartmouth</p>
<p>Most underated: Berkeley, Chicago, Stanford, Cornell.</p>
<p>Notre Dame: a top university with less than 10 faculty members in National Academies (National Academy of Science + National Academy of Engineering+Institute of Engineering)</p>
<p>Emory: What is it known for?</p>
<p>Duke: it should be # 10 to #15. lack of top notched professors. Unable to win any of the top notched prizes (Nobel, national medal of science, Turing award, Wolf prize, Fields medal, etc).</p>
<p>Yale: No way to be top 3. It should be #6 to #10. Only 1 (perhaps 2) current professor is Nobel prize winner. Gets its ass kicked by Harvard, Stanford, Berkeley, MIT, Caltech, and Princeton in science. Its engineering school also lacks luster. Even in its strong fields, humanities and social sciences, it has no advantage over Berkeley, Stanford, Harvard, and Princeton.</p>
<p>Brown and Dartmouth: Yes. They are IVY. But so what? What are they noted for? science? engineering? professional schools? I don't know.</p>
<p>Berkeley: should be top 5. Which field is Berkeley not super strong (top 10)? Almost none. In 1995 ranking done by national research council, Berkeley even beated Stanford and Harvard with most top 10 ph.d programs in USA.</p>
<p>Stanford: should be #2 or tied #1 with Harvard. It is super strong in almost every field. Randomly pick any field in science, engineering, professional schools, humanities, and social science, it is almost surely a top 10 program in the nation, very likely a top 3 program in the nation. Without Stanford, none of you guys can surf the internet. Stanford has dominated the technologies related to internet through the inventions like:
TCP/IP protocol,
YAHOO
GOOGLE
SUN work station
56 K modem
DSL
multiprotocol internet router
Besides, Stanford people have made fundamental contributions to new technologies such as radar, laser, transistor, laser, GPS, microprocessor, and etc. It has 16 Nobel prize winners in its current staff, #1 in the world. It has won 34 national medal of science, #1 in USA. It has 2nd most membership in the national academy of science (only behind Harvard), 2nd most national academy of engineering ( only behind MIT), and 3rd most membership in Institue of medice (only behind zHarvard and UCSF).</p>
<p>Chicago: noted for claiming Nobel prizes, better than the schools like Brown, dartmouth, and Duke. Easily a top 10 school.</p>
<p>Cornell: should be top 10. The most balanced IVY league school. Strong programs cross the board.</p>
<p>Based on faculty reputation and contribution to the mankind, here are my 2 cents:</p>
<p>Most overrated: Notre Dame, Emory, Duke, Yale, Brown, Dartmouth</p>
<p>Most underrated: Berkeley, Chicago, Stanford, Cornell.</p>
<p>Notre Dame: a top university with less than 10 faculty members in National Academies (National Academy of Science + National Academy of Engineering+Institute of Engineering)</p>
<p>Emory: What is it known for?</p>
<p>Duke: it should be # 10 to #15. lack of top notched professors. Unable to win any of the top notched prizes such as Nobel, national medal of science, Turing award, Wolf prize, Fields medal, etc.</p>
<p>Yale: No way to be top 3. It should be #6 to #10. Only 1 (perhaps 2) current professor is Nobel prize winner. Gets its ass kicked by Harvard, Stanford, Berkeley, MIT, Caltech, and Princeton in science. Its engineering school also lacks luster. Even in its strong fields, humanities and social sciences, it has no advantage over Berkeley, Stanford, Harvard, and Princeton.</p>
<p>Brown and Dartmouth: Yes. They are IVY. But so what? What are they noted for? science? engineering? professional schools? I don't know.</p>
<p>Berkeley: should be top 5. Which field is Berkeley not super strong (top 10)? Almost none. In 1995 ranking done by national research council, Berkeley even beated Stanford and Harvard with most top 10 ph.d programs in USA.</p>
<p>Stanford: should be #2 or #1 tied with Harvard. It is super strong in almost every field. Randomly pick any field in science, engineering, professional schools, humanities, and social science, it is almost surely a top 10 program in the nation, very likely a top 3 program in the nation. Without Stanford, none of you guys can surf the internet. Stanford has dominated the technologies related to internet through the inventions such as:
TCP/IP protocol,
YAHOO,
GOOGLE,
SUN workstation,
56 K modem,
DSL,
multiprotocol internet router.
Besides, Stanford people have made fundamental contributions to new technologies such as radar, laser, transistor, GPS, microprocessor, artificial intelligience, biotechnology, and etc. It has 16 Nobel prize winners in its current staff, #1 in the world. It has won 34 national medal of science, #1 in USA. It has 2nd most membership in the national academy of science (only behind Harvard), 2nd most membership in national academy of engineering ( only behind MIT), and 3rd most membership in Institue of medice (only behind zHarvard and UCSF). </p>
<p>Chicago: noted for claiming Nobel prizes, better than the schools like Brown, dartmouth, and Duke. Easily a top 10 school.</p>
<p>Cornell: should be top 10. The most balanced IVY league school. Strong programs cross the board.</p>
<p>datalook,</p>
<p>I agree with almost everything that you said especially about Berkeley, Stanford, Cornell and Chicago being underrated schools by many undergraduate students in the US when they should be held with the highest respect due to their vast and immeasurable contributions to success of the United States. But I think Yale is a top school and has contributed immensely in the filed of Law to the American society. </p>
<p>Notre Dame, Emory, Duke and some ivies are so overrated though.</p>
<p>powergrid1990,</p>
<p>I admit Yale is a top school. But definitely not a top 3. Yale contruted a lot in US law, politics, and humanities. I don't want to argue about it. But a top 3 school should be super strong in many fields, like Berkeley, Stanford, and Harvard.</p>
<p>Before I respond to your post, kudos to you- at least you backed up your assertions, which is more than most posters have done.</p>
<p>
[quote]
No way to be top 3. It should be #6 to #10.
[/quote]
Feeder school status- #2 (behind Harvard) <a href="http://wsjclassroom.com/pdfs/wsj_college_092503.pdf%5B/url%5D">http://wsjclassroom.com/pdfs/wsj_college_092503.pdf</a></p>
<p>Endowment- #2 overall (behind Harvard) and #3 per capita (behind Princeton and Harvard)</p>
<p>Rhodes produced- #2 (behind Harvard)
Only HYP have produced 200+ Rhodes Scholars. The next college, USMA, has only produced ~75. Berkeley has produced two in the last ~20 years!</p>
<p>Goldwater Scholars produced- #16 (only slightly below Cornell and ahead of MIT)</p>
<p>
[quote]
In 1995 ranking done by national research council, Berkeley even beated [sic] Stanford and Harvard with most top 10 ph.d programs in USA.
[/quote]
Yes, but it was beaten out by Stanford in the average of all 41 programs. The new rankings will be out next year. It should be interesting to see how Berkeley fares. </p>
<p>
[quote]
Brown and Dartmouth: Yes. They are IVY. But so what? What are they noted for?
[/quote]
A cozy undergraduate experience and superb career/grad school placement.</p>
<p>Overrated : BC, NYU, USC, WUSTL
Underrated: Tufts, Rice, Cornell, Berkeley</p>
<p>datalook, </p>
<p>There's actually no such thing as top 3 in American academia. At least, that's the way I see it. However, there's such a thing as top schools and these are HYPSM+Caltech, Berkeley, NU, Chicago, rest of the ives, Duke, Michigan, UVa, Rice and Georgetown. The quality of education one can get from Harvard (perceived to be the top school by the genreral public) is just the same as the quality of education one can get from Rice or UVa or Georgetown. </p>
<p>Rhodes is not a reliable indicator. First of all, Rhodes awards scholarship to a very, very few students. Second, if you look at the schools where the winners have come from, we can see that the kind of schools vary. A small school with no name have shown us over the past years that they can also educate students that can win Rhodes. If the school has the orientation to win the Rhodes, such that the school help out their students to win it, their chances would dramatically increase. But only very, very few students choose a school to attend based on the number of Rhode winners.</p>
<p>
[quote]
Berkeley has produced two in the last ~20 years!
[/quote]
</p>
<p>Berkeley just had a Rhodes scholar announced this year. Has it been that much of a gap? </p>
<p>Can you provide a link for your claim?</p>
<p>
[quote]
Ankur Luthra, Berkeley's most recent Rhodes Scholar, is also the campus's first in 14 years. Though Berkeley had Rhodes winners in both 1989 and 1988, prior to that there had been none since 1964.
[/quote]
02.19.2003</a> - Berkeley to Oxford: the Rhodes not often taken</p>
<p>Technically they've had four in the last 20 years, so my post was a bit off. My point still stands, though. Although other schools may have equal (or greater) numbers of talented students and faculty, HYP have the best track record for placement.</p>
<p>^ Thanks.</p>
<p>Here's a more recent Berkeley Rhodes scholar:
UC</a> Berkeley In The News</p>
<p>How about this? Most underrated? Anyone not in the top30.</p>
<p>^^^^^ I'd go even further, anything not in top 50.</p>
<p>Datalook continues ranking schools basically based on faculty research, which is often not what students are looking for when picking a university.</p>
<p>Professors research ability has very little to do with their teaching ability; it is, in fact, sometimes a conflict of available time.</p>
<p>If anything, students learn the most from an environment filled with competent, driven students -- so maybe these rankings should be based on student SAT/GPA alone. In that case, Yale is going to be very high ranked, Berkeley is going to drop, and Duke is going to be solidly in the top ten.</p>
<p>I don't know, but I think most public universities are overrated. Because I don't care how great they're supposed to be, the people with money aren't going to hope they get into a public university, and they still fall prey to some of the same pratfalls ALL public universities have. You get a lot of grades from Grad students, you're still there with people you went to high school with, there's usually a big sports scene, and a lot of drinking and partying. Because these kids are paying relatively cheap to go, and their parents aren't footing five-figure price tags per semester for tuition alone.</p>
<p>^^^ Not too different from a lot of private schools</p>