<p>Do many Caltech students win Rhodes? Not as much as Yale grad do, I guess. But is Yale a better school than is Caltech? I seriously doubt it. Thus Rhodes is not a good measure of a school's academic standard. Unless, all American schools would channel their efforts into making their students win the Rhodes. </p>
<p>If I have to make my assessment of schools based scholarships I would rather use the Fulbright. </p>
<p>Now, can someone post the Fulbright data here please?</p>
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Datalook continues ranking schools basically based on faculty research, which is often not what students are looking for when picking a university
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</p>
<p>Well, on the other hand, the prestige of the university relies heavily on the research output of the school. MIT became a great school solely because it had an amazing research output. Stanford, Berkeley and Caltech have probably had the same reasons for achieving high status in the academic world. CMU, an up-and-coming powerhouse in sciences, engineering and technology will join the ranks of the American elite universities in due time. Cornell, Michigan, Illionois and Texas are already considered prestigious. The latter three have became so due to their strong research output with global significance. Maybe these 4 schools are not yet in the level of MIT/Stan/Berkeley/Caltech but are surely heading towrads that direction nd sooner or later, they will reap the rewards. Even Harvard is infusing money in sciences and engineering because the school has seen that the trends in global academe is heading towards those fields.</p>
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Why would Fulbright's be better than Rhodes?
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<p>Why not? And why is Rhodes a better measure than is fulbright? </p>
<p>My point is this: NONE is actually a good measure for ranking schools. But should one insist that scholarship grants must be factored in the criteria, then I would rather include Fulbright. Aferall, Fulbright awards more students than Rhodes does. </p>
<p>Imagine, only 34 students will win the Rhodes. Are you saying there are only 34 brilliant students across America? And can we really say that those who won the Rhodes are better than those who did not win, let alone those who did not apply because they're not interested in the first place?</p>
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students learn the most from an environment filled with competent, driven students -- so maybe these rankings should be based on student SAT/GPA alone.
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Berkeley is going to drop
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<p>Berkeley is ranked #21. </p>
<p>Berkeley:
High School GPA: 4.17
SAT I (25th - 75th):1200-1450
Top 10% of high school class: 99%</p>
<p>Duke:
SAT score (25/75 percentile) 1350-1540
Top 10% of high school class: 87%</p>
<p>Gee, I can go to a SAT test prep center and increase my SAT score by 100 points...:rolleyes:</p>
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And why is Rhodes a better measure than is fulbright?
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Several reasons. Most importantly,
1. Fulbrights are open to undergrads, grads, and faculty and hence favor universities.
2. Fulbright selectivity varies depending on country, so numbers are meaningless out of context.</p>
<p>Nevertheless, here's the list. Note that Yale is #2 in Fulbrights too. </p>
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Well, on the other hand, the prestige of the university relies heavily on the research output of the school.
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Depends on who you ask. This is true in my extended family -- which is composed entirely of Chinese immigrants -- but it's not very true among the other people I know.</p>
<p>Is Williams less prestigious than Illinois? Sure, if you ask my grandmother, but then again she's likely to tell you that Penn is very good "for a public school."</p>
<p>Many people I know base their perceptions on sports. Or geography. Or tuition.</p>
<p>Me? I'm going to continue to think of it by student selectivity and the proportion of faculty attention that students get. That's how I see "excellence" and "prestige", and if you want to impress an audience of me, that's how you do it.</p>
<p><em>shrugs</em> So Berkeley and Duke are excellent schools.</p>
<p>With that said:
--Acceptance rate is not a good measure of selectivity, since it is of course a consequence of who you have applying
--Neither is HSGPA (which varies from school to school) or class rank (because you can easily just recruit from inferior high schools)</p>
<p>So we're left with standardized measures -- in this case, the SAT. Alternatively, a revealed preference ranking might help, too, but the only one I've seen is from 1997 data.</p>
<p>Class size is also imperfect, but I think it's pretty solid -- depending on how many of these courses are taught by TA's, of course.</p>
<p>"The day after the announcement of the Nobel Prize in Physic, George F. Smoot was back in the classroom, teaching his Physics 7B undergraduates."</p>
<p>Some of the comparisons made on this thread are ridiculous. Firstly, the vast majority of you are in no position to evaluate more than one university (your own, and that's predicated on the doubtful assumption that most of you have even graduated high school). Secondly, how could someone say that some "top-50" school is overrated while some other "top-50" isn't: There are several hundred+ (over a thousand?) 4-year institutions in this country and you guys are in essence arguing whether Cornell should be in the hypothetical 98th percentile ("overrated") or the hypothetical 97th percentile ("underrated") of 4-year schools. Who cares?</p>
<p>Do you honestly think that a large quality difference exists between USNEWS#5 (~99th percentile) Stanford and USNEWS#21 (~98th percentile) Berkeley? In fact, if you tried to convince me that Stanford is a "better" school than Berkeley, I'd laugh in your face. Both had their good and bad points, but overall I was very satisfied with both schools. </p>
<p>If we're tallying up the ones we've found who teach undergrads, so far Berkeley is winning by one.</p>
<p>The argument structure is going thusly:</p>
<p>1.) Research is not a particularly important factor in teaching undergrads, and therefore Nobel Prize winners don't really matter.</p>
<p>2.) Even if you do think they matter, so far we've only found one at Berkeley who teaches undergrads, so the margin here is pretty slim.</p>
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<p>Again -- there are 2500 universities in the US. If you're arguing that the difference between schools #8 and #21 is basically undetectable except in some very specialized circumstances, that's an argument you're going to win every day of the week.</p>
<p>If you want to argue that Berkeley's research and Nobel Prize winners make it clearly superior to other schools -- say, the Penn/Duke/WUSTL set -- that's not a winnable argument.</p>