<p>I personally don't put a lot of stock in any of these rankings. However, Times Higher Education does use a new, more objective formula when equating their college rankings.</p>
<p>US News rankings seem really subjective and a lot of the score comes from peer review and other subjective material.</p>
<p>Which ranking system do you put more stock in? Do you think a world ranking, such as the Times Higher Education ranking, is more important than a national college ranking?</p>
<p>As long as the Times gives points for things like number of international students and staff it’s still crap. Just slightly less crappy than it was before. Most still prefer the ARWU world rankings as less biased.</p>
<p>World rankings measure primarily research output and are more relevant to graduate students. USNWR in the US and Maclean’s in Canada at least attempt to measure the undergraduate programs.</p>
<p>Most people don’t use anything but US News. No one uses any of the million other rankins that are out there. I don’t think it means one is better than any other, but US News is really the only ranking that matters in the U.S.</p>
<p>Rankings have different levels of crappiness. World rankings are on top of that crapiness. The amount of subjectivity in these rankings is just disturbing.</p>
<p>The Methodology is not even uniform- for example when THE ranking is ranking based on teaching- are they asking for teaching in the undergraduate, graduate, medical, law school of a university in the US? How does this apply to European universities with different models?</p>
<p>Is the teaching at large universities such as UIUC et al better than that at Duke or Northwestern?</p>
<p>In terms of citation- where did thy get their citation data from? Its not clearly stated on their website. At least they must have a database for all their data.</p>
<p>I could go on, but not worth the point</p>
<p>ARWU is slightly better for graduate research in the sciences and engineering</p>
<p>ARWU are the best.</p>
<p>ARWU ranks Georgetown and Dartmouth well below 100. Does that mean that these are inferior schools for an undergraduate? I dont think so.</p>
<p>
People are going to favor whichever ranking best fits their own views and biases. It’s perfectly natural, and there’s nothing wrong with it, but it’s something to keep in mind.</p>
<p>For example, say someone likes small private universities. </p>
<p>Brown
US News - #15 in US
AWRU - #41 in US, #65 in world</p>
<p>Dartmouth
US News - #9 in US
AWRU - #77-100 in US, #151-200 in world</p>
<p>Which ranking do you think (s)he’ll favor?</p>
<p>Then take someone who loves big public universities.</p>
<p>Berkeley
US News - #22 in US
AWRU - #2 in US, #2 in world</p>
<p>Wisconsin
US News - #45 in US
AWRU - #15 in US, #17 in world</p>
<p>Which ranking do you think (s)he’ll favor?</p>
<p>The faculties at UIUC, NU and Duke are fairly similar in quality and most have gotten similar level PhD’s and done similar work thereafter. While one might be better in one thing than the others overall they are pretty close. At the upper course levels I think it would be hard to find much difference. Intro classes will be larger at UI but they won’t be small at any of them. All have excellent facilities and libraries (UI is the biggest by a good margin) etc.</p>
<p>@Warbler: Exactly. The only “valid” survey is the one that matches our own preferences/prejudices.</p>
<p>I would toss both rankings out the window in favor of rankings that put heavy weight on the quality of the final product. USNWR and AWRU tend to look at the quality of student coming in to a school rather than the quality of graduate produced or even comparison of the two.</p>
<p>How would you measure that “final product”?</p>
<p>Still, anyone can argue all they want, but the only rankings that matter are US News. This is all we go by in the US. Sad, as it is such a flawed system, but it is what we go by.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>Yeah in terms of research but is teaching that much emphasized in UIUC? Like in some schools for example they have faculty reviews in which the faculty has to be above average in both teaching and research. I have heard otehrwise and that infact getting researcher of the year award is definitely held in higher regard than best teacher award.</p>
<p>@Warbler
Exactly, I was going to say that</p>
<p>But still there are some big methodology problems with world rankings that are way worse than that in national rankings. Imagine the problem with national rankings. Then magnify them to the world stage.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>ARWU does not put any impact on entering student body but predominantly on research. I have see some schools decently ranked in the ARWU ranking in action, and the teaching quality and student body in such schools is just atrocious. The students that come out are half-baked and not really good in their field. However as long as the University produces world class research everyone is happy.</p>
<p>As for product quality- would this not depend on the student and not the school. Lets be honest you dont gain much from college or university anyways. Really a waste of 4 years.</p>
<p>Output can be measured in a few differnt ways. Standardized testing, job satisfaction, salary, patents or literary works per student. I guess the problem becomes as you measure many of these things the rankings would start to lag the quality of the school by a number of years. For sure though the quality of education recieved is not based on who you intake but instead how much you do with those that you intake.</p>
<p>Also I would say that you get out what you put into it. If the college demands a lot from those who attend then they will tend to rise to the occasion. Personally I am learning quite a bit in college, but I have to qualify that with the fact that I am an Electrical Engineering major.</p>
<p>Most people would argue especially for standardized test scores that those who go into top schools are already good at standardized testing- which is true anyways</p>
<ul>
<li>Job satisfaction?</li>
<li>Salary- If a school sends more people to nonprofit and teaching jobs (like brown) while another sends more into finance (dartmouth and duke) which one is better?</li>
<li>Patent? Not everyone in a school is a major in science or engineering you know. You know how hard it is to develop a patent in hard science???</li>
</ul>
<p>These are really not good metrics tbh</p>
<p>pretty cool…the school im going to ranks top 18 in all 3 rankings.
I prefer World Rankings…they ignore the “ivy” hype of a school and evaluate it without bias. brown, for example, is an ivy but it’s not that good…and its world rankings reflect that.
world rankings show international prestige…thats good depending on what you want to do with your life.</p>
<p>^ Huh, international prestige to whom?</p>
<p>You think people around the world dont know about brown?</p>
<p>Brown not that good??</p>
<p>people around the world know about brown but it is not as heavily regarded internationally as it is within the US.
brown is an excellent school but it doesnt deserve all the praise it receives.</p>
<p>We’re taking about world rankings, are we not?
In such rankings, Brown is #39 (USNews), #55(Times Higher World rankings)</p>