<p>Sounds like UF is already playing the "Clemson" game where you rank everyone else below you to pick up the 25% points in USNWR.</p>
<p>Other than the self ranking that he gave UF, I wonder how he considers the University of West Florida to be on par with USF & UCF?</p>
<p>I think they should get rid of peer assessment. Its so arbitrary, since most presidents already know how they feel about other schools and little will change. The only way to really improve on peer ranking is for the president to network and/or become good friends/associate with another president. </p>
<p>Personally, I don’t see anything wrong with want he did. I think most president will think of their university as the best and want their rankings to be higher. I bet when he was filling out this, he focused on the “historically” top schools and then he marked almost every other school as 2 (adequate). He probably paid little attention to those schools. </p>
<p>Here is the full rankings: <a href=“http://www.gainesville.com/assets/pdf/GS17003616.PDF[/url]”>http://www.gainesville.com/assets/pdf/GS17003616.PDF</a></p>
<p>This is why anyone who buys into USNWR rankings is an absolute fool.</p>
<p>UF doesn’t even come close to Harvard.</p>
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<p>I don’t think Berkeley comes close to Harvard either. But that’s how he ranked it. Subjective BS.</p>
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<p>Yep.</p>
<p>I would have looked at the survey as “good” being the average score. I feel like if the universities were more appropriately scored, this is how it would have looked:</p>
<p>Distinguished: UF, UM, NCF (Not included in Gainesville Sun article, for whatever reason)
Strong: FSU, UCF
Good: USF, FAU, FIU
Adequate: FIT, FAMU, NSU, Barry, UNF
Marginal: FGCU</p>
<p>It’s strange to think about, but EVERY university in my list except UF (because it can’t go any higher) and FGCU is ranked better than before.</p>
<p>NCF is not in this ranking because it is a Liberal Arts College, not a national university. It’s in a separate ranking, where only LAC’s Presidents, Provosts, and Dean of Admissions do their own PA.</p>
<p>I don’t feel that any school in FL fully deserves “Distinguished”, and the closest one that deserves would be UF. UF, imo, is in between Strong and Distinguished. Every school follows UF after that.</p>
<p>DVM, not every school is listed in the US News survey.</p>
<p>Rockerguyasj, i’m not so sure about that. Dartmouth College for example is a Liberal Arts College and barely does any research and they are on the survey.</p>
<p>Does this mean that UF is now officially ‘The Harvard of South’? LMAO.</p>
<p>rockerguyasj, I believe now you are correct about the reason why UNF isn’t on it. Now I wonder what the difference between national liberal arts colleges and non-national liberal arts colleges.</p>
<p>goufgators, I am not sure what you are talking about. There are many universities in the National University section of the USNWR that are quasi-LACs, like Wake Forest, Tufts, and Dartmouth being some examples. All three universities have graduate students and programs, but their primary concern can still be said is for the undergraduate education. On the other hand, LACs like NCF (IDK why you said UNF), have ZERO graduate students, and many in the LAC category are the same. Or they might have a very small insignificant graduate student body, like the University of Richmond. Many of the schools in the Liberal Arts section is very much a “national” school, like Amherst, Williams, Swarthmore among others.</p>
<p>UF should of been rated strong (almost $600 million in research expenditures last year, and over 100 graduate programs ranked).</p>
<p>John Hopkins and Cornell University should of been ranked distinguished.</p>
<p>Other than that: Machen was dead on.</p>
<p>ASMAJ Berkeley has more top ten departments than any other university in the country, even Harvard. It’s a fraud to claim UF is anywhere near even Berkeley. At the very best UF is in between good and strong, and that’s at the very tip top best. UF’s programs are not ranked very high.</p>
<p>UF has ALOT of ranked graduate & professional programs according to US News.</p>
<p>[Office</a> of Institutional Planning and Research - UF National Rankings: US News & World Report - Graduate](<a href=“http://www.ir.ufl.edu/nat_rankings/grad.htm]Office”>Office of Institutional Planning and Research - UF National Rankings: US News & World Report - Graduate)</p>
<p>The 2007 Academic Ranking of World Universities list assessed the University of Florida as 51st among world universities and 38th in the United States based on overall research output and faculty awards. In the “2007 National College Ranking”, U.S.News & World Report America’s Best Colleges 2009 UF’s Overall Ranking Overall #35, Washington Monthly ranked the University of Florida 26th overall. For 2007, Newsweek ranked UF one of the “Top 25 Hottest Schools”.[60] According to the Webometrics Ranking of World Universities in 2009, the University of Florida ranks 22nd best all around.</p>
<p>Another ranking by Research Center for Chinese Science Evaluation of Wuhan University ranks UF 37th in the world. The ranking is based on Essential Science Indicators (ESI), which provides data of journal article publication counts and citation frequencies in over 11,000 journals around the world in 22 research fields.</p>
<p>UF ranked 2nd among all universities in Kiplinger’s “100 Best Values in Public Colleges” (2006, 2007 & 2008) and 4th in The Scientist magazine’s “Best Places to Work in Academia” (2005); UF was also ranked the best overall in top values amongst all the public flagship universities by USA Today (2006). UF admitted 1,049 International Baccalaureate students for the 2004-2005 academic year - more than any other university in the world. The freshmen retention rate of 94 percent is among the highest in the U.S.[64]</p>
<p>UF’s ranked college placement 13th best by “The Princeton Review” in its “2009 Best 368 Colleges Rankings”.</p>
<p>Source: [University</a> of Florida - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia](<a href=“http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uf]University”>University of Florida - Wikipedia)</p>
<p>sofla951, your process for selecting the ranking levels on the survey for all the schools makes the survey entirely useless!</p>
<p>Sofia got owned.</p>
<p>SSobick, UF should be ranked “strong” but I don’t see any problem with Machen bumping his university up one notch.</p>
<p>I agree not that bad to rate one’s own instition in the highest category. Besides US News throws it out anyway I think.</p>
<p>The other Florida universities are just pi$$ed because the truth hurts. FSU and UM maybe should of been bumped up to strong, but it’s not that big of a slight in my opinion.</p>
<p>Sorry, but this is going to drive me crazy. It’s either “should have” or “should’ve.”</p>
<p>My process? I was trying to be nice and give UF some credit for its research budget even though it yields little hence UF’s dearth of nobel prizes, successful spinoffs and other awards. I understand since UF was found with its pants down many of the students who go there are going to be very defensive but let’s be honest in most surveys and rankings UF would be considered good at best, not strong and not distinguished. I could spend my time showing how UF really can’t compete with the others that Machen rated distinguished, but its not worth my time. UF probably will fall out of the top 50 this coming year and delusional UF students hopefully will get a reality check.</p>
<p>^ Would that make it easier to justify paying 16k in out-of-state tuition at Berkeley.</p>