<p>"UCSD will surpass UF, WM..."</p>
<p>UCSD already passed UF a long time ago in the rankings and is ranked well ahead of it. W&M is currently ranked a spot or two ahead of UCSD though, so who knows what will happen there.</p>
<p>
[quote]
barrons,
I guess I have been ignorant and/or na</p>
<ol>
<li>UC- Berkeley</li>
<li>UVA</li>
<li>UC-LA</li>
<li>Michigan</li>
<li>UNC</li>
<li>W & M</li>
<li>Ga Tech</li>
<li> Wisconsin</li>
<li>UC-SD</li>
<li>Washington</li>
<li>UC-D</li>
<li>UC-I</li>
<li>Texas</li>
<li>Penn State</li>
<li>Florida</li>
</ol>
<ol>
<li>Berkeley</li>
<li>UVA</li>
<li>Michigan</li>
<li>UNC</li>
<li>W & M</li>
<li>Texas</li>
<li>UCLA</li>
<li>Wisconsin</li>
<li>Florida</li>
<li>Illinois</li>
<li>UCSD</li>
</ol>
<p>All of these rankings are based solely on undergrad strength, which makes total sense. However, does anyone want to speculate on how the OVERALL public university rankings will look in 2017 (i.e., considering faculty quality/grad programs/dept. strength). The updated NRC rankings (the "gold standard") are supposed to come out this year which will go a long way in helping to identify where universities currently stand on the faculty/research/department side, but still will not give an overall picture in terms of including undergrad. Will Berkeley and Michigan continue to be the strongest research universities? There's no reason to believe otherwise, but have other schools (besides those from California) begun to close the gap more? </p>
<p>These have been posted on this forum many times before, but here are the 2006 Times of London world university rankings for only the US publics.</p>
<p>2006 World University ranking
US Rank / World Rank / University (*publics only)
1 / 8 / UC-Berkeley (Big surprise!)
2 / 29 / University of Michigan (seems a little low for world rank)
3 / 31 / UCLA
4 / 32 / UT-Austin (UT and UCLAs positions almost mirror NRC)
5 / 44 / UCSD
6 / 77 / Illinois
7 / 79 / Wisconsin (this one totally surprises me - should be higher!)
8 / 84 / Washington
9 / 99 / Penn State
10 / 123 / UNC
11 / 124 / UMass-Amherst (interesting...)
12 / 127 / Purdue
13 / 130 / UVA (seems kind of high for an overall institution ranking beyond undergrad)
14 / 131 / UCSB
15 / 145 / Georgia Tech (remember, its research is mainly only engineering)
16 / 150 / Texas A&M</p>
<p>source: <a href="http://www.thes.co.uk/worldrankings/%5B/url%5D">http://www.thes.co.uk/worldrankings/</a></p>
<p>LuxArtesVeritas, publics charge lower tuition for in-state students, but private universities give a lot more scholarship money per student. In the end, average tuition per student is roughly the same.</p>
<p>southpasdena, are you saying Michigan is reporting endowment figures differently from the way other universities are reporting their endowment figures?</p>
<p>Everyone is entitled to their opinion, but that London ranking is god awful.</p>
<p>
[quote]
UCSD already passed UF a long time ago in the rankings and is ranked well ahead of it. W&M is currently ranked a spot or two ahead of UCSD though, so who knows what will happen there.
[/quote]
</p>
<p>It's a few spots ahead, okay. Doesnt really make that much of a difference. Doesnt mean UCSD is ridiculously superior. My school is about the same number of spots behind UF as UCSD is ahead of UF. I dont consider my school to be so much worse than UF same as I dont think UF is so much worse than UCSD.</p>
<p>Only a FEW colleges allow for use of their endowment fund as an investment. Are they self reported, are they...., these are things i do not know. However, unless you show me that their endowment figure reflects only their assets and not all of what is deposited, then i will have to assss some sort of uncertainty to these numbers. Schools have decided to try and slip in operating fund investments, etc into their numbers, why wouldn't a school include outside money that is being invested with their actual endowment investment pool</p>
<p>I am still confused southpasdena. How is Michigan's endowment measured differently from any other university endowment? Are you saying that somehow, Michigan is including liabilities in its endowment figures? As far as I know, the market value of Michigan's endowment is $5.7 billion. </p>
<p>If you have proof that Michigan measures endowment differently from other universities (perhaps you have a breakdown of all universities' endowments), I am skeptical of your statement.</p>
<p>JWT86, the problem with those rankings as with all rankings is that the picture they convey is very skewed and incomplete. Much of the World Rankings is based on research and citations in various journals and don’t include aspects that make a school truly wonderful and great. The biggest difference between high school and college is that college life completely consumes you since you live and learn in that environment 24/7. So, when comparing schools, you can't just look at what a school does research-wise, you have to compare schools in their totality. </p>
<p>That said, does that ranking delve into excellent student/teacher interaction or compare actual attention to given to undergraduate teaching vs. research? Does it take into account the size of the student body and if students at large universities feel more anonymous and lost than at smaller ones? That ranking might look at how much is spent on research, but does it take into account how much is spent on financial aid? Does it look at graduation rates and question why kids at many of these top schools can’t graduate in 4 years? (Perhaps it’s because much of the school’s money is going to research rather making sure there are enough classes, financial aid, and other resources being offered to students so that they graduate on time.) </p>
<p>Those rankings are helpful if you’re trying to decide where to go if I want to do research, but I wouldn’t use it to determine where I would want to spend 4 years of my life. As you know, each student applying to college is more than the sum of his numbers, and schools too are more than the sum of their numbers - especially numbers like the ones above that don't take into account some of the most important aspects of an undergraduate education.</p>
<ol>
<li> UCB</li>
<li> UCSD</li>
<li> UCLA</li>
<li> Wisconsin</li>
<li> Washington</li>
<li> Michigan</li>
<li> UIUC</li>
<li> Minnesota</li>
<li> CU</li>
<li>UCSB</li>
<li>Maryland</li>
<li>Texas</li>
<li>UCD</li>
<li>UCI</li>
<li>Florida</li>
</ol>
<p>I dont agree with that. CU is a good school, but not as good as the schools under it.</p>
<p>UMD is a good school, but it's not better than UT or UF.</p>
<p>Where's UNC, UVA, W&M, GT, etc.?</p>
<p>Where's UNC, UVA, W&M, GT, etc? They are in the South....a place that most academics doing this ranking would have difficulty finding on a map.</p>
<p>
[quote]
Where's UNC, UVA, W&M, GT, etc? They are in the South....a place that most academics doing this ranking would have difficulty finding on a map.
[/quote]
hawkette, I'm not sure what you're getting at here. The reason those schools do not appear in the top of the SJTU rankings has absolutely nothing to do with academics being biased against the South. In fact, as I'm sure you will be delighted to learn, the SJTU rankings don't include a peer assessment component at all. The reason that excellent schools like UNC and UVa don't appear on this ranking is that the ranking is based entirely on research done by faculty (not quality of undergraduate education) and even in this respect is heavily weighted towards the sciences and economics. These are hardly comprehensive rankings and are basically worthless as undergraduate rankings (which is not what they purport to be), but to allege that they are somehow biased against the South due to prejudice on the part of academics is absurd. Frankly I'm not sure exactly what you are alleging - that Chinese academics are unaware of the South? I very much doubt that they are somehow more likely to be able to place Wisconsin (which did quite well in these rankings) on a map than they are to be able to find Virginia. Regardless, these rankings are based purely on "objective" characteristics (though chosen with a very narrow sense of what is important in a university).</p>
<p>Hawkette does have a point in that Southern Universities seem to get an unfair PA Score (on US News that is, not the SJTU rankings).</p>
<p>Well, UNC-CH is #59 on that "World List," so somebody found it. Of the top 500 universities, being ranked #59 isn't so bad, though I do find it a somewhat bizarre list/ranking. Who came up with these rankings, and how did they come to these conclusions?</p>
<p>svalbardlutefisk,
Hey, I was just making a joke. Probably not a very good one, if you didn't get it. Sorry. But I do agree with SSobick above and suspect that there probably is fire near that smoke about how academics view the South.</p>
<p>The study by SJTU rankings are entirely quantitative--which you should applaud--and based on research publications and other numerical factors.</p>