<p>Kluge,
All good and very valid points, but I am not as quick to accept the Northeastern college superiority over other regions of the country. Your Western examples demonstrate this. Why are there so many Western colleges ranked 20-50 and so few 1-20? I concede that my study group of the USNWR Top 20 schools is arbitrary, but I think that this is a large measure of the prestige that is accorded a school generally (and also here on CC). I want to challenge that thinking and see if it is reflective of the true quality of these schools. </p>
<p>I think you have hit on a key aspect of the comparison, which is that the West does not have many private institutions compared to the Northeast. As a result, these larger university settings perhaps dilute the student quality and the academic offerings are presented in much larger classroom settings. Furthermore, these public universities don’t have the financial resources to provide the same level of support to the faculty and to the undergraduate students. But a school like USC probably is underrated by Easterners and I suspect very strongly that the Pomona/CMC/Harvey Mudd et al group is underrated. </p>
<p>My personal belief is that the locals in these regions (West and South/Southwest) know very well the quality of the college students coming out of their top universities. Schools such as Stanford and Duke are pretty accepted nationally as peers to virtually all of the Ivy League schools (although I’m likely in a small minority accepting Duke as a peer to HYP). However, the next group of schools, while very highly regarded by residents and employers in their home regions and certainly at the same or better level than the so-called lower Ivies, has not reached the same level of prestige or acceptance on a national level. </p>
<p>Part of my conviction goes to the breadth and depth of students attending colleges today. There are only 13,300 spots available to incoming freshman at the Ivy League schools, only 30,000 total for the entire Top 20 National Universities and only another 10,000 for those going to the Top 20 LACs. But there are many more than 40,000 “top” students graduating from high school in America today and these top students are matriculating to a much broader universe of schools than ever before. I don’t believe that this breadth is recognized generally and appreciated for the quality improvement at many non-Northeastern schools.</p>
<p>JWT,
I object mightily to the PA scoring of USNWR and believe that the Northeastern schools benefit mightily from this. However, publics generally also benefit from this as their strong graduate programs do much to enhance their research reputations and thus how academics view them.</p>