Part V: Student Opinions of the USNWR Top 30 (Faculty Instruction)

College Search & Selection
1

<p>The following question was asked of students:</p>

<p>Most of your classes are:</p>

<li> Inspiring events. Really. All that talk about expanding horizons and changing lives—it’s real here. Sometimes, we burst out into applause.</li>
<li> Much more than I ever expected. I’m eager to go to class. My professors are really at the top of their game.</li>
<li> Eh…they vary. I’ve had great teachers, and I’ve had awful ones.</li>
<li> A necessary toil. My teachers don’t look like they want to be here any more than I do, but we all go along with it.</li>
<li> A slow, pointless death of the soul. Given the choice between going to class or being forced to watch my parents make out, I think I’d have to go with the last one.</li>
</ol>

<p>The answers for the colleges of the USWNR Top 30 national universities were:</p>

<p>RANKED BY COMBINED RESPONSES TO ANSWERS 1 and 2</p>

<p>More than ever expected , Inspiring , Combined , Eh, they vary , Pointless , College , # of Student Responses
43% , 40% , 83% , na , na , Princeton*** , 40
43% , 32% , 75% , na , na , Brown*** , 47
26% , 46% , 72% , na , na , Stanford*** , 50
27% , 44% , 71% , na , na , Yale*** , 82
23% , 48% , 71% , na , na , U Chicago*** , 48
36% , 32% , 68% , na , na , Dartmouth*** , 47
na , 62% , 62% , na , na , Caltech*** , 13
53% , na , 53% , 36% , na , Emory*** , 36
53% , na , 53% , 20% , na , Tufts*** , 30
52% , na , 52% , 28% , na , U Penn , 54
51% , na , 51% , 25% , na , Notre Dame*** , 105
50% , na , 50% , 35% , na , U Virginia*** , 52
50% , na , 50% , 41% , na , Wake Forest*** , 56
49% , na , 49% , 30% , na , Vanderbilt*** , 47
48% , na , 48% , 34% , na , UC Berkeley , 58
47% , na , 47% , 38% , na , Wash U*** , 34
na , 46% , 46% , na , 21% , MIT , 39
42% , na , 42% , 38% , na , Columbia , 69
41% , na , 41% , 38% , na , Johns Hopkins , 39
40% , na , 40% , 40% , na , U North Carolina*** , 68
38% , na , 38% , 42% , na , Northwestern*** , 45
38% , na , 38% , 42% , na , U Michigan , 95
33% , na , 33% , 40% , na , Cornell , 52
33% , na , 33% , 42% , na , Georgetown*** , 66
33% , na , 33% , 39% , na , USC , 64
30% , na , 30% , 30% , na , Carnegie Mellon , 23
29% , na , 29% , 45% , na , Duke*** , 51
28% , na , 28% , 49% , na , UCLA , 79
na , 25% , 25% , na , 39% , Harvard*** , 217
17% , na , 17% , 67% , na , Rice*** , 18</p>

<p>***indicates college was recognized by USNWR for Classroom Teaching Excellence</p>

2

<p>I wonder if universities are willing to release stats from their course evaluation forms. It would be the best information to elicit from universities. If you are going as far as to garner student responses from each individual school, they should try to attempt to get the administration to release some of these info. Transparency and accountability in colleges shouldn’t be an issue given they are non-for-profit, institutes for higher education, and serve the public.</p>

<p>Based on my experience taking classes in the extension school/summer school at Harvard, and undergrad classes at Hopkins, these figures seem kinda erratic and all over the place. I can’t really explain it myself. I don’t believe such information is really useful for college prospectives in general it is inadequate with respect to the number of samples were taken at individual schools. A more accurate representation could be delivered via information from the course evaluations.</p>