<p>Actually that’s how I got to that number. I have opinions and just enjoy sharing them without much regard to the Golden Rule which does not even apply in this case. This is not the Lake Wobegon Board. What I do try to do is not insult people unless they request it.</p>
<p>I’d rather not touch on the Ivies since I think they’re worth the name they get (at least most the time).
This is out of CC and in real life btw.
Overrated: NYU, BU (I think these two are great, but people obsess because of the location or something)
Underrated: UChicago, UPenn (with the exception of Wharton, people usually mistake these two for state schools)</p>
<p>I don’t think NYU or BU is overrated. For what it’s worth, NYU is ranked in the low 30s by USNWR and BU is in the 40s I think. NYU has a bunch of top programs and has a competitive student body. Their FA sucks, but how does this make it overrated? At worst, it’s appropriately rated – it doesn’t deserve to be lower than mid 30s. At best, it should be ranked mid to high 20s, amongst USC, UNC, Tufts, and Michigan. Let’s not pretend location is the only appeal of these schools. If this is the case then all urban schools should be “overrated”, but you don’t hear many calling Penn, Chicago, etc overrated do you?</p>
<p>One way to discover whether a school is overrated or underrated would be to measure the discrepency between two metrics, one representing what you think is “truth” and another representing what you think is “opinion”. For example, for the sake of argument let’s take the USNWR PA scores as a ground truth rating of academic quality. Let’s take the admission yield rate as an indicator of student opinion. Rank the top N universities by each, then compare the difference.</p>
<p>Below are the results I get using yield rates for the class of 2012 ([Mathacle’s</a> Blog: Yield to Admit-Rate Ratio (YAR) for Class of 2012](<a href=“http://mathacle.blogspot.com/2010/03/yield-to-admit-rate-yar-index-for-class.html]Mathacle’s”>Mathacle's Blog: Yield to Admit (YAR) Ratio for Class of 2012)).I believe the PA scores are for 2009 (<a href=“http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/college-search-selection/797962-college-comparison-xxii-usnwr-peer-assessment-ratings.html[/url]”>http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/college-search-selection/797962-college-comparison-xxii-usnwr-peer-assessment-ratings.html</a>) “PAR” means PA Rank. I include only private national universities (apples to apples). A high negative number suggests a school is overrated by students relative to PA; a high positive number suggests it is underrated. Of course, you could flip the metrics around if you believe student behavior represents truth and the PA is the out-of-whack opinion. Or, use two completely different metrics as proxies for truth and opinion.
School PA PAR Yield Yld Rank Discrepency
ND 3.8 24 54% 10 -14
G'town 4 22 45% 12 -10
NYU 3.8 25 38% 16 -9
Brown 4.4 14 55% 8 -6
D'mouth 4.3 15 55% 9 -6
UPenn 4.5 10 63% 5 -5
Vandy 4 21 37% 17 -4
Tufts 3.6 26 33% 22 -4
USC 3.9 23 35% 20 -3
Stanf 4.9 4 71.00% 2 -2
Yale 4.8 5 68% 3 -2
C'mbia 4.6 8 60% 6 -2
Cornell 4.5 12 49% 11 -1
Rice 4 20 35% 19 -1
Harvard 4.9 1 76% 1 0
MIT 4.9 3 66% 4 1
Duke 4.4 13 40% 14 1
NU 4.3 16 35% 18 2
P'ton 4.9 2 59.00% 7 5
Chicago 4.6 9 38% 15 6
WashU 4.1 18 30% 24 6
Cal 4.7 6 41.00% 13 7
Emory 4 19 28% 26 7
CMU 4.2 17 29% 25 8
JHU 4.5 11 30% 23 12
Caltech 4.6 7 34% 21 14
</p>
<p>Overrated:
Boston U, UW-Madison, UC-San Diego, Emory</p>
<p>Underrated:
Purdue, University of Minnesota, Tulane, Northwestern (on CC),</p>
<p>Overrated: Harvard, Princeton, Brown, Cornell, Stanford, MIT, Columbia, Dartmouth, Yale</p>
<p>Underrated: UPenn (imo, better than Harvard), Caltech, and almost everything except community college</p>
<p>Well tk21769, I can say with certainty that using PA as truth is a non-starter, but so is using yield. So even if your premise for how to measure the discrepency between the actual and the perceived is correct, that won’t do it for colleges. But then, nothing will because there is no actual “truth” that can be measured. Colleges are a complex mixture, containing many components which have different values to different people. It is not as universally accepted as to what is important as, say, rating a car using how reliable it is as a factor. Even that is not universal, people bought MG’s and Jaguars for years even knowing they would be in the shop more than most cars. Futile and foolish exersize.</p>
<p>I actually agree with fallenchemist.</p>
<p>barrons - I knew you would get smarter with time. LOL. Kidding, but glad we have some points in common.</p>
<p>Overrated : Emory, CMU, UPenn, Cornell, especially emory… seriously (no offense to GA lovers).
Underrated : NYU, Northwestern, Notre Dame, UW</p>
<p>why is northwestern so underrated?</p>
<p>Isn’t PA a little deceiving since most universities pass it onto their secretary since they a. don’t have time and b. don’t know 300+ colleges well enough to rank them?</p>
<p>I think an interesting metric, however, would be to take objective data and then compare it to a mean of students, PA, and counselors (although these are skewed, at least it gives a perspective of the general lay person). Yet if you were to do those metrics, you would have to standardize things. For example, using acceptance rates, you would have to realize that some schools have more applicants than others, thus lowering their acceptance rates. Or if you were to use average SAT/ACT score, you would have to realize that some colleges game the system by making submissions optional. Thus, the only kids sending those scores are ones who have really good scores. The solution, albeit imperfect, would be to weigh them less in that area by the percentage not admitting their test scores. Finally, this last one is impossible to do but would be good in theory, and is in regards to being in the top 10% of your class. Some kids go to a school of 700, so being in the top 70 means you are in the top 10%. Trust when I say a lot of kids in high school are stupid and this isn’t that difficult to achieve. Then you have kids who have a class of 25, where being 3rd means you are excluded from the top 10% of your class. Kind of unfair, huh?</p>
<p>Overrated: NYU</p>
<p>Underrated: Brandeis</p>
<p>Overrated: NYU, Harvard
Underrated: Purdue, Fordham, Villanova</p>
<p>Overrated: Columbia & UPenn undergrad
Underrated: Binghamton</p>
<p>Overrated: Notre Dame</p>
<p>Underrated: UPenn…I know it’s an ivy but I feel that a lot of people don’t know that and when people hear Penn they think your talking about Penn State. Because of this I feel that it isn’t looked at as highly as it should be.</p>
<p>From NYC:
Overrated-
SUNY Geneseo (Bing is much better)
UChicago (underrated in real life, overrated in CC, CC people inflate its prestige too much, I would say it’s prestige is around Duke, not HYPSMC)
UMich (overrated on CC, underratedon rankings)
Northwestern (journalism program)</p>
<p>Underrated-
Carnegie Mellon,
Johns Hopkins (in other fields besides science),
Georgetown (on the rankings),
Cornell & Brown (on the rankings)
Northwestern (in other fields besides its theater and journalism programs)
NYU (Stern is underrated on CC)
Dartmouth</p>
<p>Wow a lot of conflicting opinions on NYU lol. I would say Stern/Tisch/philosophy/econ/maths are top 10/15 worthy programs but are ranked where they should be.</p>
<p>In my circle of people:</p>
<p>Overrated National- HYP, WUSTL, Umich. People think HYP is some sort of god, they’re great but…</p>
<p>Overrated LAC- Swarthmore </p>
<p>Underrated National: UNC, Uchicago, Cal</p>
<p>Underrated LAC: Middlebury, Pomona. I think Pomona is one of the most underrated schools around.</p>
<p>Overrated: NYU, Duke, Princeton, Penn, Harvard</p>
<p>Underrated: Ga Tech, Carnegie Mellon, Harvey Mudd, Penn State, William and Mary, Univ. of Del., Rutgers, UNC, Stony Brook. </p>
<p>Out of the underrated list, I’d have to say either Stony Brook or Harvey Mudd is the most underrated.</p>
<p>Discoveries/inventions made at Stony Brook:</p>
<p>
</p>