<p>if anything has taught me not to listen to rankings, its the fact that the u of c has (again) been ranked at number 15. how can such a great school be ranked so low?</p>
<p>How? Because USNWR uses formulaic rankings that !CLAIM! to be objective, but can be spun to give a variety of results. </p>
<p>Before you're too tough on USNWR, keep in mind that rankings devised by economists, variations on a concept called "perceived preferences", rank U. of C even lower.</p>
<p>To the degree that rankings are a beauty contest, so what? I have yet to see rankings that look at post graduation factors, other than income. It's too bad, as that's what matters, IMHO.</p>
<p>Newmassdad: just out of curiosity, which post-graduation factors do you think will show Chicago's excellence over the other top schools? (This is not to imply that I question Chicago's excellence, by the way.)</p>
<p>Also, why should income be completely excluded?</p>
<p>Chicago will want you to resurrect all of their Nobel Prize winners and pole them....that way Chicago says it will win. Don't you recall all of the T-shirts they sell extolling the great number of Nobel winners.</p>
<p>4th,</p>
<p>I honestly don't know what factors are relevant. I suppose it all depends. If you're into money, then lifetime earnings are important. If you're into scholarship, then look at grad school attendance and faculty positions.</p>
<p>If you're into what really matters to many people - happiness, then I suppose we have a problem, because I don't know how that's measured, or if anyone even measures it!</p>
<p>What is wrong with a rank of 15 given the caliber of the top 50 schools? If you look at the total points, only 4 points separate #9 from #15. </p>
<p>It seems that the biggest problem Chicago has is their accepatance rate of 40%. </p>
<p>Given the amount of UChicago bashing that I have seen in the posts on CC, it's surprising that the rate is even this good. For some reason, not academic, people like to bad mouth the school. It's not that bad.</p>
<p>I would have preferred that my son attend one of the Ivy League schools but that didn't happen. However, I have no problem with the education he is receiving nor the school, students, location etc. College experience is what you make it.</p>
<p>It is not worth getting too excited over a particualr ranking, but when several rankings show Chicago to be below where one thinks it should be (including some that have nothing to do with acceptance rate), one does wonder what's wrong in the picture.</p>
<p>For example, given:</p>
<p>"I would have preferred that my son attend one of the Ivy League schools",</p>
<p>why shouldn't Chicago have the same ranking as Columbia or Penn?</p>
<p>My statement about Ivy League preference had nothing to do with the rankings. "One of the Ivy's" happened to be the Wharton School at Penn which was more program oriented.</p>
<p>I believe that Chicago compares favorably to all the Ivy's academically and probably exceeds a couple of them (Cornell, Brown).</p>
<p>I have two daughters. One went to Wash U, the other to Chicago. Wash U is doing everything to promote its school. On the other hand, Chicago is proud of being against the ranking and "not treating education as a commodity". The US NEWS ranking reflects how each school spends its money. I wish that Chicago promoted its school a little bit better to match its highly regarded academic reputation. Then again, people chose Chicago probably are prepared to be in this "uncommon" situation.</p>
<p>When I was a Chicago grad student I traveled to many an Ivy campus and visited the West Coast "Ivy's" as well. It was always interesting to join in discussions at parties or other events. I remember one evening a Harvard student and some of his classmates were "holding court" at a party that included students from several other Boston area colleges. I don't remember the discussion, but when I entered into it, it was not long before I was asked what school I attended, I calmly said The University of Chicago. At that point their expression changed, they grew nervous, and said there was no point in continuing, they knew better than to argue with a Chicago student. If this were an isolated incident, I would have simply considered it an aberration. However, this type of thing repeatedly happened throughout the years not only to me but to my friends as well. Recently, the daughter of a close friend who is finishing her degree a Chicago was doing field work in South America. She found herself working with a student from Yale. The Yale student became somewhat distant and became highly competitive. My friend's daughter realized the Yale student was intimidated by the fact my friend's daughter was from Chicago. She took the student aside and said she was pleased to see that Yale produced students just as smart as Chicago students (though, she later admitted this was apparently not the case). The girl immediately warmed up, and they got along well from then on.</p>
<p>I believe this is what separates Chicago from any of the rest. If one can succeed at Chicago, one believes that there is no intellectual problem to big to solve, nor any challenge that cannot be faced, nor any argument that cannot be won. Perhaps that is why they cast Indiana Jones as a Chicago grad.</p>
<p>I think he was a professor, :)</p>
<p>Speaking of professors, your comment reminded me of a passage in one volume of B. F. Skinner's autobiography. He spent a short time lecturing at Chicago (his wife was a U of C grad, a student of Thornton Wilder I believe). He was used to teaching Harvard students and was surprised to find that the only time he felt challenged by students was at while lecturing at Chicago. He felt he had to be better prepared and ready to argue.</p>
<p>US News only covers the universities in US. The Economist magazine(July16th issue) quoted Shanghai Jiao Tong university's ranking on world wide universities, which might reflect the evaluation in other countries.<br>
1 Harvard Univ USA
2 Stanford Univ USA
3 Univ Cambridge UK
4 Univ California - Berkeley USA
5 Massachusetts Inst Tech (MIT) USA
6 California Inst Tech USA
7 Princeton Univ USA
8 Univ Oxford UK
9 Columbia Univ USA
10 Univ Chicago
Chicago is also ranked high in other reports. Please don't get depressed by one report.</p>
<p>cct -
just curious - where do they list IIT?</p>
<p>Chicago also seems to have won the Fullbright stakes this year - with grad students receiving a total of 28 Fullbright Hays scholarships. Many will be following in Indy's path!</p>
<p>This study is a little dated (2001) but is interesting.</p>
<p>I wouldn't pay any attention to the rankings. If U of Chicago was transplanted to the northeast, it would certainly be ranked higher. My sophomore son has zeroed in on U of C. Although, he has two more years before the college application process, he is wondering if he could sit-in on lectures and experience the U of C culture - just for a day maybe. Has anyone done this as a high school sophomore or junior?</p>
<p>Yes. Contact the admissions office with your request.</p>
<p>There are also some special experience programs that they may invite you to.</p>
<p>idad and hazmat, thank you for the info.</p>
<p>You think USNWR ranking is bad? See Avery and Hoxby's on page 26 of the article linked here:</p>
<p><a href="http://www.nber.org/papers/W10803%5B/url%5D">http://www.nber.org/papers/W10803</a></p>