<p>Someone alert the media…</p>
<p>Go Bears!</p>
<p>^^it’s interesting to see that 4 of the top 10 are located in California (including two fantastic publics). It speaks volumes about the demographic shifts going on in this country…many of the top Californian/west coast students are now preferring to stay in California over the schools in the traditional northeast…and many of the students even in the northeast and internationals are starting to spread their wings out west more and more…</p>
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<p>If you mean to imply cause and effect–as in, the California schools are rising because top California students are electing to stay in California–I don’t think so. If you look at the Times Higher Education ranking methodology, the decisions of 18-year-old college applicants play zero role in the ranking. In that respect it’s quite different from the US News rankings where admissions selectivity is one of the most important ranking factors.</p>
<p>That’s one of the major reasons so many of the top U.S. public universities do so well in THE: UC Berkeley #6, UCLA #10, Michigan #15, Illinois #23, Wisconsin #28, U Washington #31, Texas #33, Penn State #39, UCSD #40, Purdue #48, while non-HYP Ivies and some other highly selective privates struggle a bit, with Penn at #22, Duke at #30, WUSTL in the #71-80 range, Brown in the #81-90 range, and Dartmouth at #126. The public institutions have a mandate to serve large numbers of state residents, which necessarily means they need to reach deeper into the applicant pool to fill a larger entering class. They’re punished for that in the US News rankings; not so in THE. </p>
<p>More importantly, THE ranks major RESEARCH Unis…“colleges” like Dartmouth won’t fare so well in such a list since D doesn’t have many research or grad programs.</p>