Over/Underrated Colleges

<p>Vastly Overrated: Penn, WUSTL
Slightly Overrated: CalTech
Slightly Underrated: Cornell, Brown, Tufts, Dartmouth, Columbia
Vastly Underrated: Georgetown, Berkeley, UC Davis</p>

<p>^^People SHOULD have the right to talk up their own school. Or even talking up other schools, for that matter, if they have a good reason to back up their claim. But saying that a school that you have no connection to is "overrated" is both rude and arbitrary.</p>

<p>^^
That's true.</p>

<p>In my PERSONAL experience (having only attended two schools), I found Harvard to be somewhat overrated and Cornell to be somewhat underrated (probably deserves to be solidly in 6-10).</p>

<p>I don't know where I would personally rank Harvard. It's so divinely ordained, it's hard for anyone to imagine it anywhere outside the top three. I was just quite let down based on my personal experience. Hopefully mine was an isolated circumstance.</p>

<p>I'm not saying that just because you have connections, you can't mention a comment, but giving a pure opinion is also not the best way to go with things because many people may have different thoughts. Going by the mind itself is arbitrary as what you may think is good may be bad for another. For example, I absolutely HATE my high school (total truth), but some people just really love it. Just because some people believe it's good, it doesn't mean it applies for me. Therefore, I believe we can't use opinions as a way of saying something is overrated OR underrated. Instead, I think it's best to leave it to the rank compliers (who are suppose do this as part of their living) and see if there is a general consensus (which there generally is by rank compliers).</p>

<p>Otherwise, it's like choosing emotions over logic. It's like saying I believe A on question #15 is correct and therefore it MUST be correct. On the other hand, a person, who knows his stuff (like the rank compliers) and agrees with the rest of the pros, is more likely to give a logical answer rather than believing blind faith or emotions.</p>

<p>This is my personal opinion! Don't get mad at me! :D</p>

<p>Overrated: HARVARD (call me crazy, but it's true!!)</p>

<p>Underrated: Columbia and Cornell, JHU and LACs</p>

<p>Overrated: Caltech and Princeton
Little Overrated: Penn and Chicago
Little Underrated: Michigan and Dartmouth
Underrated: Vanderbilt and Georgetown</p>

<p>Georgetown should be in the top 10. Before coming on this site, I thought it was slightly less presigious than Harvard LOL.</p>

<p>Overrated:Brown</p>

<p>Overrated universities:
1. WUSTL
2. Rice
3. Emory
4. Vanderbilt
5. Notre Dame</p>

<p>Underrated universities:
1. Cal-Berkeley
2. Michigan
3. UNC-Chapel Hill
4. Georgia Tech
5. Purdue</p>

<p>Overrated LACS:
1. Middlebury
2. Colgate
3. Hamilton
4. CMC
5. Colby</p>

<p>Underrated LACs:
1. Grinnell
2. Smith
3. Bryn Mawr
4. Macalester
5. Reed</p>

<p>Generally, the leading public "flagship" universities and Midwestern schools (with notable exceptions like WUSTL & Notre Dame) are underrated due to private-over-public and geographic biases among those doing the rating.</p>

<p>bias yourself, bclintonk...
Your overrated LACs all have conservative, preppy reps.
Your underrated LACs are liberal darlings.
Your overrated universities have student bodies much like your disliked LACs.
Guess you aren't making your determination based upon some weird academic quality issue.</p>

<p>bclintonk,
To my knowledge, the only ones who are even given a chance to rank colleges are those in the Ivory Tower and I doubt that anyone would agree that the Midwestern publics are underrated by folks in this cloistered world. </p>

<p>I think what you are really saying is that measurement factors other than Peer Assessment are overrated, eg, student selectivity, faculty resources, financial resources, etc.</p>

<p>I think what you are really saying is that measurement factors other than Peer Assessment are overrated, eg, student selectivity, faculty resources, financial resources, etc.</p>

<p>Now you're catching on hawkette. :-)</p>

<p>I didn't say I agree. </p>

<p>IMO, it's pretty clear that in the cosseted world of academia, the things that are valued (read: research priorities) often aren't aligned with the best interests of the undergraduate student (read: teaching focus in manageable class sizes of strong students with sizable resources to support that learning). </p>

<p>I also think that the for-profit world sees it like I do.</p>

<p>Why do these threads continue to live? Sigh... We all disagree. There's no convincing others of your viewpoint. The end.</p>

<p>overrated: any ivy school
underrated: Northeastern University for sure.</p>

<p>How's this?</p>

<p>Underrated: The school you attend.</p>

<p>Overrated: Any school that rejected you.</p>

<p>I generally do think highly selective colleges with disproportionately low peer assessment scores are overrated. They're attracting a larger applicant pool than is warranted given their faculty strength. And I find it particularly absurd to think that selectivity per se is a good measure of a school's strength. If a school is popular with applicants, it will end up being highly selective----even if it's popular only because of an inflated reputation. Selectivity, then, if not matched by faculty strength, is as likely an indicator that a school is overrated than that it is strong. HYP are not overrated because their faculty strength matches their selectivity. WUSTL et al are overrated precisely because while highly selective their faculties don't measure up to the truly top schools.</p>

<p>I do think factors like student:faculty ratio matter. Some of the elements of "faculty resources" as used by USN, however, are just plain dumb. For example, a school gets rated higher by USN for paying higher faculty salaries, a factor that generally favors privates. But higher pay doesn't mean the school is attracting the best faculty. Many top faculty members strongly prefer to be on the top faculties, and especially in science and engineering, strongly perfer to be at top research universities with topnotch research facilities---even if it means accepting slightly lower pay than they might comman at a mediocre private. But the private school paying top dollar for mediocre faculty gets rated higher under USN's "faculty resources" criterion than a top public that's doing its job more efficiently by attracting better faculty at slightly lower pay. To my mind, that makes the mediocre private "overrated."</p>

<p>Same for "financial resources." As I understand it, this includes endowment. Most publics don't have large endowments per student, in part because they're state institutions that rely on annual appropriations from the legislature in lieu of endowment income. But think of it this way: an annual legislative appropriation of $250 million is worth the same as an endowment of $5 billion, because the endowed school typically takes only 5% of its endowment as annual income. Not counted the same by USN.</p>

<p>Same for "resources per student," which measures how much a school spends per student, not the quality of the education it delivers or the efficiency with which it's delivered. Again, jacking up faculty and staff salaries, benefits, and expense accounts gets rewarded in USN, even though it may only signal inefficiency. Also note that a private that charges $37,000 in tuition but provides a $27,000 scholarship will come out ahead of a public that charges only $10,000 tuition and provides no scholarship, even though the cost to the kid is identical. Why? Because the private's $27,000 scholarship counts toward "expenditures per student," while the public's imputed subsidy of $27,000 (assuming all other education-related expenses at the two school are identical) isn't counted. It's gotten to the point where I have heard serious talk at some publics about raising tuition closer to private-school levels and canceling that out with increased financial aid---paid for by the increased tuition revenue---just to drive up the schools' USN rankings by cycling more money through the system. Truly absurd.</p>

<p>Bottom line, if a school is spending a ton of money and attracting an enormous applicant pool but failing to field a top-notch faculty, to my mind that's the essence of "overrated." The top publics can't do that. To my mind, they're the best educational value in America, and the most underrated.</p>

<p>^Brian Leiter from UT made his own undergraduate rankings a few years back based on Faculty Quality, Student:Faculty Ratio and Student Quality...</p>

<p>A</a> RANKING OF UNDERGRADUATE SCHOOLS</p>

<p>According to Leiter
Overrated: Notre Dame, Georgetown, Vandy, Dartmouth
Underrated: Case Western, Minnesota, UT</p>

<p>bclintonk--
You claim that overrated schools (you give examples as Rice, Emory, Middlebury, Colgate, etc.) are those that are enormously popular but have weaker faculties. What measure are you using to determine faculty strength? Peer assessment scores?</p>

<p>crs, thanks for the link.</p>

<p>I especially like the faculty quality score...;)</p>

<p>^you would</p>