<p>I don’t really know what you’re talking about–where is UCSD ahead of most of those schools? Are you talking about on the whole or in CS? If the former, remember that rankings of individual programs don’t say anything about the university as a whole.</p>
<p>One thing to keep in mind is that none of the rankings are set. The NRC intentionally chose to state them as ranges, within an interval of high confidence. This recognizes the fluidity of rankings, when you weight different factors, ask different people, etc.</p>
<p>Also, incredulity over a school’s placement is not a valid reason for discrediting the ranking. If the ranking were completely weird (random schools placed high, great schools placed low), it’d be cause for suspicion. But it’s well-known that UCSD has built itself up quite a lot in the past few years, mainly in its graduate programs. That’s why surveys of academics show that many of UCSD’s programs are very highly regarded. That’s why more objective measures of quality–and what academics think are the best measures of quality, as inferred from the qualities embodied in the departments they deem “exemplary”–show that UCSD is among the best in many programs.</p>
<p>Rather than fight the data, accept that programs change. If a school does not measure up, then that’s their problem; the facts don’t lie. They need to step up and get their game on, basically. (Berkeley did worse in the S-rankings than the R-rankings in this study, which suggests that it’s riding on its reputation rather than concrete, defined quality. Not in all cases, but in many.)</p>
<p>sorry RML, but it seems that you can’t seem to interpret the NRC rankings correctly. As you can see below, Carnegie Mellon is rated much higher than UCSD</p>
<p>As a left-coast resident, I’m willing to buy into the fact that Cal has better grad programs than anybody not based in Cambridge. But for undergrad, I’d recommend P’ton for the no-brainer. But the experiences will be significantly different: large public research Uni with big-time D1 sports vs. small-medium, more undergrad-focused Uni with (so-called) D1 sports.</p>
<p>Why do people bring up grad versus undergrad everytime in a thread about Berkeley? If USNWR ranked every school’s undergrad department, I guarantee you, the rankings would hardly look any different from the graduate rankings.</p>
<p>^^That ranking is misleading. Princeton’s higher ranking (T-13, Cal is T-19) is based upon their 8 league titles as compared to Cal’s 1. However, a title in the Ivy League is much easier to come by than a title in the Pac-10. Looking at the number of top 30 finishes nationally, competing against teams of equal strength, Cal beats Princeton 12 to 4.</p>
<p>As storied as Ivy League sports are, it’s not the Pac-10, or the SEC, or the Big Ten. Especially for the major sports, the level of play, coaching, and even the rivalries are a couple notches below the top athletic conferences.</p>
<p>I was defining “major sports” as football and basketball, but we can throw baseball in there as well.</p>
<p>The only possible way you could be comparing Cal and Princeton this year is by simply comparing their records, which is quite frankly, an awful way of doing it, as it neglects the all-important strength of schedule. </p>
<p>In football, Cal managed to go 5-7 despite being in the same conference as Oregon, Stanford, and USC. Princeton had a miserable 1-9 record, in Division 1-AA.</p>
<p>Basketball-wise, Princeton does have a better record than Cal, but they’ve been able to play each team in the Ivy League twice, whereas Cal has had Arizona and UCLA to play.</p>
<p>In baseball, Cal was ranked as high as 15th nationally last year, whereas Princeton finished last in the league.</p>
<p>For undergraduate engineering, the only two universities I would recommend over Princeton are MIT and Stanford. Cal is obviously AMAZING in Engineering, but Princeton is practically as good and at the undergraduate level, probably as good as Cal. However, as an overall institution, Princeton is slightly better than Cal and for this reason, I would recommend it over Cal.</p>
<p>Cal wins 2-1 in major sports of Football, Basketball and Baseball this school year. Sorry, I thought that Cal baseball was going to be discontinued this year and not next year as is planned*</p>