<p>But that is why the rankings are not fair. Wake Forest is a research orientated LAC!!! Michigan is just research orientated period, but his research is more on the grad level. These rankings show you that perhaps you get a better undergraduate experience at a school like Wake/BC/Tufts/Lehigh/etc. than at a graduate focused school like UMich or Wisconsin.
Furthermore, you can estimate the quality of faculty and facilities with numbers. Numbers are just. The opinion of possibly uninformed people contain biases. PA is obviously a joke within the upper echelon of deans/presidents when less than half respond.</p>
<p>edit:
Don't make it seem like i think Wake is better than Michigan. I never stated that, I think Wake and schools like it will give you a better undergraduate experience. For graduate school Michigan is on par with about any school in the country.</p>
<p>if the same people that were asked to rate the national universities were asked to rank top LACs, i guarantee you Amherst and Williams would be ranked lower than "we thought they should be," maybe somewhere around the 4.0 range, because there is no graduate level research. And theyre called PEER assessment ratings for a reason. Only schools on the same rankings list are asked to evaluate each other. This accounts for Amherst and Williams having a 4.6-4.7 i forget exactly what it is, and also accounts for villanova having a 4.2, when you wouldnt say its more prestigious than WashU, Notre Dame...., because only masters granting universities rank them.</p>
<p>Because it shows how great their undergraduate experience was. Are you likely to give $$$ to a place you didn't enjoy? No! It also helps show how strong the alumni network is within the school.</p>
<p>You only want it to die because PA helps your school hang on to where it is on USNWR. Otherwise, the differences in selectivity and other important factors would be exposed.</p>
<p>the average public school is a lot larger than the average private school so of course the alumni giving rate will be higher. Also what correlation is there between yeild rate and quality of education?</p>
PA is the best factor in judging the quality of a school? What about the quality of the students that attend? Shouldnt that count for something? You can have the greatest researchers in the world, but if the average student as a 2.8 HS GPA and SATs below 1100, what are these researchers going to do for them? With the exception of UVA, all top public schools are focused mainly on research, and nearly all (with the exception of UCB, UVA, W&M, and maybe Michigan) have lower student profiles than the private schools that are ranked about the same on USNWR. According to PA, Penn State undergraduate is more prestigious than Lehigh. However, I would venture to guess that every student at Lehigh could have gained acceptance to PSU had they wanted to. Why, then, did they choose to go to a school with a 3.2 PA as opposed to a 3.8? Maybe its because PSU has so many students, including many with very marginal high school stats (especially PA residents, some of whom can get in with under 3.0 GPAs), that the undergrad experience is severely diminished. I dont know about everyone else here, but I would certainly much prefer my undergrad classes to be with kids who actually care about learning, compared to kids who are at the school just because the parties are great and the football team is getting better recruits lately. This is not to say that many students at PSU dont care about their grades, because certainly many do, and many attend due to financial reasons and not due to lower performance in high school, but the fact remains that schools like Lehigh and Wake Forest, while being ranked far below PSU in terms of PA, have a higher graduation rate, smaller student-faculty ratios, and better undergraduate students on the whole. You cant have a good school without good students, this is why it is ridiculous to see schools like Indiana, with a 990 25th percentile for SATs, ranked above Tufts, with a 1330 (such a large difference cant be accounted for by the 'mix and match' SAT reporting techniques used by privates). By no means is the SAT the only indicator of a good school, but it should not be discounted. In conclusion, if PA really mattered, id be at Penn State right now (not to mention the fact that I turned down JHU to attend BC, no prestige involved there).
[/quote]
</p>
<p>So what you're saying is if school A is more selective than school B then you'll get a better education at school A?</p>
<p>
[quote]
Your points are not valid. Basically what predicted graduation rate means is that the school was able to exceed expectations and work with the students and help some of them graduate that they didn't think would be able to.
[/quote]
</p>
<p>My points ARE not valid? You only gave feedback on one of three things I mentioned. I didn't ask WHAT "predicted graduation rate" is. I said it's not objective. "expectation" is by definition subjective! There's no objective way to quantify it. </p>
<p>Like I said, when financial resource includes those for medical research, the advantage can be pretty signifcant for schools with top med schools, given the little difference and tight race in other categories. I suspect that plays a major role in UPenn/WashU's ranking (regardless whether you include PA or not).</p>
<p>"Because it shows how great their undergraduate experience was. Are you likely to give $$$ to a place you didn't enjoy? No! It also helps show how strong the alumni network is within the school."</p>
<p>You don't need to be rude. Your comment adds nothing to the discussion. Yes, I don't know and don't see how they can come up with it objectively; do you? If you do, please explain.</p>