<p>...and who cares about Nobel Prize winners. Great researchers don't necessarily make great lecturers. I had the privilege/honor of being put to sleep by one Nobel laureate, being bored to death by another, and ditching the lecture of a third Nobel in the last 5 years of my life. But I have to admit, Andrew Fire is a very humble, friendly guy and I admire him a lot. Plus he did his undergrad at Berkeley so I made sure to write "Go Cal" when our class at Stanford signed a thank you note for him. Very nice guy.</p>
<p>Nobel Prize winners are tied to academic prestige which is a major factor in how a school is viewed by other academics and by the public. So are NAS memberships, AAAS members, major fellowship winners etc etc. Non recognized profs are just as likely to suck too. They just don't have much academic clout either.</p>
<p>All kinds of things influence how a school is viewed among the public: sports, geography, famous alums, campus beauty. I would say Nobel Prize winners among the faculty is pretty low on this list.</p>
<p>Among academics, professional schools are going to care exclusively about how the kids they've had from that school previously have performed. Whether MIT has higher quality research than Yale really doesn't matter to Cornell's law school -- all they care about is whether Yale kids have done well in the past.</p>
<p>I can see PhD programs caring some.</p>
<p>So having a high-powered research school might matter if your intention is to eventually get a PhD.</p>
<p>
[quote]
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.
[/quote]
</p>
<p>Well, in the category of research and Nobel prize winners, the overall quality of Berkeley's faculty is on a totally higher echelon compared to Duke and WUSTL. Faculty is a component of what makes a university great.</p>
<p>my point was that while berkeley (and other schools. not to pick on cal, but it keeps being brought up) has without a doubt some of the top grad programs in the WORLD, it doesnt necessarily have any effect on the undergrad, which is why some might feel that these world class research institutions might be overrated for UNDERgrad.</p>
<p>Faculty research might make a university as a whole "great," but they affect the undergraduate experience very little -- even if they are teaching (many of them aren't), the correlation between research awards and teaching ability is not obvious.</p>
<p>So in essence, if you want to impress grandma and the grocer, go to a school that is associated with a plethora of Nobel laureates. A faculty member in any field at any university has enough sense to know that your presence at Prestigious University X has absolutely nothing to do with the Nobel laureates at that university and their research...so you won't be impressing them. From a practical, undergraduate perspective: don't choose a school based on Nobel laureates at that school. That shouldn't even be a factor. As an undergraduate, "Nobel Prestige" is reputation by association, not reputation by anything tangible and relevant to you.</p>
<p>We might as well make a separate ranking for graduate and undergraduate.</p>
<p>
[quote]
We might as well make a separate ranking for graduate and undergraduate.
[/quote]
</p>
<p>For my field, chemical engineering, Berkeley provided me a fantastic "undergraduate experience".</p>
<p>If I choose Duke, can I even major in ChemE?</p>
<p>yay more of all these please!</p>
<p>Point 1: You need profs with academic reputation, especially if you get to work with one. However, those may be concerns more applicable to grad school. Non-recognized profs are just as likely to suck? Hmm, that may or may not be true because at the school I'm attending, one of the major determinants in keeping/hiring profs are our student reviews and teaching experience. In research unis, profs are hired more on their research CV. come on now, I don't think any of you are going to take issue with that. It's how the freaking system works.</p>
<p>Having said that, if you are the go getter and believe in doing close intimate study with a famous prof, go for the big, pretigious, quality research unis. don't go to an LAC.</p>
<p>Point 2: At an LAC, you're more likely to have a smaller class size and more contact with the profs than at a big research uni. Is that wrong? NO. Choose what you are more comfortable with!</p>
<p>Another thing is that not all LACs are made equal, and the same goes for all big unis. General tendencies are mostly accurate - generalizations on specifics and judgments made on generalizations don't work.</p>
<p>Go and get a good undergraduate education based on fit. And then, don't hang around boards like these and caper about how great your (type) of school is and how it is always better than the other (type) of school. Geez.</p>
<p>And positive student reviews have been associated with easy graders. Hmmmm. Could the profs be as good at gaming the system as students? Perhaps.</p>
<p>I won't deny that correlation. However, I believe a good LAC will definitely look into that and be discernibly skeptical of overly good student reviews, especially those that just say "great class great prof!". I've already stated that not all LACs are born equally.</p>
<p>My point is, that the specific traits that LACs and research unis look for will differ in the aspect with regards to priorities on teaching or priorities on research. What so many on these boards do is that they assume that just because this guy is a research prof - he won't bother teaching you or he is a snob - therefore bad college experience. Or the other way, all these touchy-feely profs that love teaching cute little ignorant undergrads and can't do research for nuts and consequently are outdated and outmoded in their education - bad college education. They forget that big Unis want their profs to teach well too, and LACs want their profs to be able in research as well, hence the sabbaticals where they are more free to do research.</p>
<p>To me, the dichotomy is more pronounced in the direction of a good school versus a bad school.</p>
<p>
[quote]
[quote]
We might as well make a separate ranking for graduate and undergraduate.
[/quote]
For my field, chemical engineering, Berkeley provided me a fantastic "undergraduate experience".
[/quote]
Is this a response? Of course sometimes the rankings overlap. But sometimes they don't.</p>
<p>
[quote]
If I choose Duke, can I even major in ChemE?
[/quote]
No. So if you want to do ChemE, Duke is a bad school to go to. However, Duke would still be a bad school to go to for ChemE if it hired the past hundred Nobel Laureates in Chemistry.</p>
<p>
[quote]
However, Duke would still be a bad school to go to for ChemE if it hired the past hundred Nobel Laureates in Chemistry.
[/quote]
</p>
<p>Doubted. With prestigious faculty, you attract more great (reputed, at that) faculty to teach undergrads and grads alike, funds to build facilities and conduct research, excellent students in chemistry/chemE to take advantage of these resources, etc. From there, it's all down hill, and Duke would then be a top school for chemistry/chemE.</p>
<p>Duke **does not offer **a major in chemical engineering. You can hire whatever faculty you like; going there will remain a bad idea if that's what you want to major in.</p>
<p>Enough with this Duke/Berkeley and Nobel nonsense.</p>
<p>So I'm really opinionated...</p>
<p>Overrated: </p>
<p>Harvard--why do cross admits always seem to choose Harvard over Yale, Princeton, Stanford, other similarly ranked schools? </p>
<p>Penn--except for Wharton perhaps, not that good for undergraduates </p>
<p>Columbia--people love NYC, but don't seem to look at the school itself, which is lopsided in favor of the humanities</p>
<p>Dartmouth--floats atop many other great schools in USNews rankings just because it's an Ivy</p>
<p>WashU--improving, but still not amazing</p>
<p>Cornell--I'm sure it's "specialty" schools are good, but why do people go there for the college?</p>
<p>Brown--very lopsided in the humanities direction, also seems to triumph over other schools in rankings because it's an Ivy</p>
<p>JHU--what's so great about JHU if you don't want to go Premed? I live in Maryland though, maybe it's accurately rated elsewhere </p>
<p>NYU--not by USNews, but overrated by a lot of other people because everyone wants to go to NYC</p>
<p>Underrated: </p>
<p>UChicago--I think people forget about how good it is because it's not particularly hard to get into</p>
<p>Rice--no one outside of Texas seems to have heard of it, even though it's amazing for undergraduates </p>
<p>Vanderbilt--in the South, people forget about it</p>
<p>UND--because it's Catholic?, I don't know why everyone always forgets about it</p>
<p>Tufts--seems to be improving greatly, but continuously gets shafted by USNews b/c of its peer assessment ranking</p>
<p>URochester--similar to Tufts</p>
<p>LACs are underrated in general, but among LACs:
Overrated: Williams, Swarthmore, Vassar
Underrated: Carleton, Bowdoin, Haverford, Harvey Mudd</p>
<p>Expensive and overrated (the worst kind):</p>
<p>George Washington University
New York University
University of Southern California
Boston University
Boston College
Notre Dame
Tulane</p>
<p>Inexpensive (for in-state students) and underrated:</p>
<p>William & Mary
Miami of Ohio
University of North Carolina
The College of New Jersey
Evergreen State (Washington)
University of California, San Diego
University of Texas Plan II Honors
St. Mary's of Maryland
Truman State (Missouri)
Penn State (Honors)
Morris College (Minnesota)
New College (Florida)
CUNY (Honors)</p>
<p>Underrated</p>
<p>Tufts (and, unfortunately, a fate that shall ever remain so)
Rochester
Rice
Cooper Union
All LACs ranked 20-65 in the US News & World Report</p>
<p>Overrated: UCLA (way too many applicants)
Underrated: Harvey Mudd</p>