<p>Argumentum ad populum, argumentum ad verecundiam… I’m well aware of the fact that we’re not making proof-level claims. However, as a rationalist, I continually incorporate whatever information I have and adjust my “predictions” to new information. Right now, the only information I have as someone who has not experienced philosophy at every school in the country is the collective wisdom of others and I have to assign probabilities that they can accurately depict reality. From the perspective of research, the difference between the way various experts rate NYU versus UChicago across a variety of fields and many data points is quite significant and I’m wiling to deduce a high probability that NYU is significantly better in terms of research and strength of faculty with a rather high probability. The information I have is not ideal, but its clear and coming from a source which is actively using better information and more near-knowledge than I have. Additionally, some low-level confidence information I have, friends and general studies about how the two institutions approach education and funding education, confirmed these higher-confidence reports, raising my probability a bit more.</p>
<p>I’m not a philosopher and don’t pretend to be one, and unless you’re someone with a PhD in philosophy who is a regular contributor to the academic discourse, the probability that you are working off of significantly different or better information than I am is quite low. The only conclusions I can draw from your posts is that you’re assigning less confidence in the accuracy of the information available. Why you have this lower confidence, I’m not sure, but the nature of your responses suggest to me you’re posting from an emotional stance which almost always leads to under/overconfidence to fit the outcome you want.</p>
<p>I have no horse in this race, but the best data that is available is clear that NYU is one of if not the best philosophy school in the country in terms of quality research and faculty in a wide breadth of areas. Does that mean it’s the best choice for a philosophy student? Absolutely not, and actually Philosophical Gourmet gives almost the same advice on choosing undergraduate schools that I would, with the addendum that there are significant factors which make these schools drastically different that’s far more important than the difference in quality of philosophy faculty in most cases, but that’s not what we’re talking about here is it.</p>
<p>“I’m wiling to deduce a high probability that NYU is significantly better in terms of research and strength of faculty with a rather high probability.”</p>
<p>Modest, you seem like a sincere person, but you should just stop trying to impress people with fancy words that you too often end up using incorrectly (like “deduce”). </p>
<p>My main concern with your comments here are the precision and certainty with which you claim to know about ranking philosophy departments. If an organization like the Gourmet wants to rank departments by certain criteria that it thinks are appropriate, fine. But for anyone (even the Gourmet) to claim that such rankings are a definitive and precise reflection of the departments’ “quality” is putting way way way too much faith in their numbers.</p>
<p>It’s not even clear that a shortstop who bats .312 is “better,” or even a “better hitter,” than a shortstop who bats
.291. You can rank them by batting average, but to make the jump from quantity to quality is really a leap of faith. And when you use dramatic language like “blows out of the water,” you’re pretending to know of an EXTREME difference.</p>
<p>Schmaltz: What are you aiming at here? To prove that rankings are not precise? That’s obvious! Rankings give “objective” notions of what schools are superior to others, but of course the methodologies used to make these are quite subjective. That said, credible rankings are somewhat accurate. The Gourmet Report is pretty credible.</p>
<p>However, if you’re continuing what you were getting at in earlier posts, good luck trying to prove Chicago’s philosophy department is as good as NYU’s.</p>
<p>I’m saying that Maxim’s Hot 100, and Best Damn Sports’ Top 50 Bloopers etc. pretend to be able to apply definitive and precise numerical rankings to the “quality” of things, when such things are too complex and subjective to lend themselves to accurate statistical analysis and precise rankings. Whereas a credit card with an 8% annual interest rate would be cheaper and “better” than one with a 15% interest rate, all other things being equal. I’m saying philosophy departments are more like the Maxim rankings than the credit card rankings. Somewhere along the line, people have become obsessed with numerical rankings, and have lost sight of the fact that some things lend themselves to precise and accurate numerical rankings, and some don’t. Precisely rank which cars go 0-60 mph the fastest? Fine. Precisely rank which philosophy departments are “best” to the point that Chicago is blown out of the water by NYU? Not so fine.</p>
<p>Graduate rankings couldn’t mean less in this discussion, and therefore the department rankings are more or less meaningless. NYU is a blackhole of undergraduate life (though the connections for business, I’ve witnessed, are spectacular). U Chicago is a brilliant environment for undergraduate learning. When I have kids, if one wants to go to NYU undergrad I will tell them no.</p>
<p>I’m not going to allow myself to be further dragged into a discussion with someone whose main point is all quality is subjective by nature except to say this:</p>
<p>I’m not arguing for rank-order level accuracy that you use as exaggerated examples to make your point.</p>
<p>There are objective data like number of publications and impact that one can use to compare these things. The usefulness of this data is a matter of some debate when looking at undergraduate education but is pretty strongly connected, with a few other metrics, with faculty and graduate school strength.</p>
<p>I am not making the point that NYU is better because it eeeks out UChicago in a few areas, but across many subfields and many metrics, there is a clear difference between the two such that any reasonable analysis of the data would conclude there exists a real difference between the two, even if the magnitude is unclear. Since with this sort of information it’s rare to see such a difference between well-regarded schools there is reasonable evidence to suggest NYU is a tier above UChicago overall if you’re studying most forms of philosophy. I didn’t use the phrase “blows it out of the water”, at least initially, but I do think this is about as close to slam dunk case as we can get with these kinds of comparisons.</p>
<p>If you want to deny the usefulness of any quality comparisons, then you are essentially conceeding any useful kind to conversation on this site that moves beyond description. There are many cases on this page where people Re overestimating differences. On a graduate quality or faculty quality level, this just isn’t one of them.</p>
<p>That’s funny you said that. There were only two schools I told my son I wouldn’t pay for and one of them was NYU. I think it is a wonderful school for many, but it was NOT the right learning environment for my kid and I was not willing to pay the $$$$ to maintain him in NYC. It just wasn’t worth it.</p>
<p>I could have easily seen him at Chicago where he was a recruited athlete, got in EA and again as a potential transfer student, but stayed put at the original school he chose.</p>
<p>arbiter213: Have you attended either UChicago or NYU? Judging by your listed location, the answer is no. What do you mean, NYU is a “blackhole of undergraduate life”? Biases aside, calling an NYU undergrad experience a “blackhole” is rather uncalled for. Non-traditional? Yes. Blackhole? No. And yes graduate rankings may not directly correlate with undergraduate teaching, but to say graduate rankings “couldn’t mean less” in this discussion is not right.</p>
<p>Schmaltz: I think the philosophy department rankings have a little more objectivity to them than you say. That said, they’re obviously not perfect by any means.</p>
<p>nyyankees: My mother is a U Chicago alumna, and because of my location I have plenty of interactions with current U Chicago students. My hometown is a suburb about an hour north by Metro-north of NYU, and I spent the summer between my junior and senior years in HS in an internship on Houston about 2 blocks west of Bleecker Street. About 14 kids from my HS graduating class are NYU students, with about that number every year going ahead and behind my year. Almost all of my friends would back me up that there is no centralized undergraduate life, and that the teaching was and is radically inadequate, and thats without getting in to the mess of the administration and the grotesquely poor financial aid. My father also used to teach as an adjunct for NYU but they proved too interested in their brand and not interested enough in supporting good teaching so he stopped.</p>
<p>I will grant two things: You are right, I have not attended either. But I’d wager having attended neither but being intimately acquainted with both is a better position to judge than having attended one but not the other.</p>
<p>The other is that NYU’s Philosophy Department is spectacular and way better than U Chicagos. The thing is, having the best philosophers doesn’t mean undergrads learn from them (please let me know if you do indeed get to, but I know, for instance, that T.M. Scanlon at Harvard doesn’t teach undergrads). And even if they do teach undergrads, famous professors don’t necessarily make the best teachers.</p>
<p>It’s just a different college experience. Some people don’t like the rah rah sports, fratty, isolated atmosphere. How bad could the administration be? Stern’s dean and the president seem very open-minded and seem to be improving NYU.</p>
<p>arbiter: I don’t think the lack of centralized undergraduate life should be held against the school. Trust me, the typical slew of mundane undergraduate activities is available for those who want it. But most students come to NYU with the realization that their hands won’t be held through their college education. A part of my point is that comparing a traditional, albeit excellent school like UChicago to a place like NYU is comparing apples and oranges. Both are great, but neither is for everyone. </p>
<p>In terms of inadequacy of teaching, it’s case-dependent. I guess I’ve had good luck with my experience. Some don’t and I accept that. This can be said about most large universities. </p>
<p>Same goes for administrative problems, which were unjustly exaggerated during the little fiasco we endured last February. Things are not nearly as bad as Take Back NYU made them out to be. In fact, President Sexton is considered one of the most innovative university presidents of recent times. But thanks to that group, which most NYU students despise, our administration gets a bad rep. </p>
<p>And regarding Philosophy, I wasn’t under the impression that this discussion was exclusive to undergraduate education. In fact, I believe this thread is meant as a comparison of the two universities as a whole.</p>
<p>I was under the opposite impression, since we’re in the “college search and selection” forum, and comparing the two schools writ large is completely meaningless. </p>
<p>I wasn’t even thinking of the Take Back NYU wackos (thats a little harsh, but I saw the videos and thought they were being ridiculous). I was referring mostly the general incompetence of the administration that my friends have been inflicted with.</p>
<p>Your other points are fair enough, and I definitely agree they’re apples and oranges. But NYU’s main appeal is basically that it can serve as a commuter school in NYC, with the city as your campus life. I’m a strong believer in the classical style of education, and don’t think a “explore the city!!!”, isolated apartment style dorms lifestyle is conducive to education.</p>
<p>I only responded to the thread because there were accusations that the people siding heavily with UChicago were U Chicago ■■■■■■. I bear little love for grey city on the south side of chicago either, but I take offense to the suggestion you have to be a fanboy to think its better than NYU.</p>
<p>Chicago is a wonderful school to study philosophy, though there is no undergraduate Philosophy department or any other department per se, only “The College” with its major and minor programs of study. Since it was founded, the school has always fostered interdisciplinary approaches. This is very much so in the Humanities. So a prospective Philosophy student should consider not only the Philosophy listings but also programs such as “Fundamentals: Issues and Texts”. The goal of a program like this is not to take you through a comprehensive survey of Philosophic schools of thought but to ground you in philosophic and literary approaches to big, enduring questions from the perspective of classic texts (supported by extensive training in at least one foreign language.) </p>
<p>Chicago has been putting together undergraduate programs like this for years and years. The idiosyncrasies resist “which is better” comparison with the course content of departments at other good schools.</p>
<p>Arbiter: Your points are well taken. The administration is rather sub par. I was just trying to give it some deserved credit before. </p>
<p>However, I think NYU’s appeal as a “commuter school in NYC” is long gone, if it had ever existed to begin with. If it’s “main appeal” were as a commuter school, why would students be drawn from around the country and world to study here?</p>
<p>I accept the fact that you’re a supporter of a classic education, and that’s great, but I still don’t understand how an “explore the city” attitude, which I might add is quite a generalization about NYU, is a bad thing. What’s wrong with exploring a city you happen to be studying in? How can that possibly impact the educational experience in a negative way? Yes it’s a large university, but there’s much more community than you give credit to. It just won’t be given to you in a cozy little package like at traditional schools.</p>
<p>And regarding Chicago, I do believe it’s more or less a better school than NYU is, but I still don’t think NYU gets enough credit.</p>
<p>In general, UChicago by far unless we’re talking about Tisch/Stern. Well, Chicago doesn’t believe in having an undergraduate business program for the same reason they don’t have an engineering program. And I don’t even know if there is a theater department at Chicago.</p>