<p>newmassdad,</p>
<p>Could you summarize the reference? When I click on the link, it urges me to subscribe to the service.</p>
<p>Is this the ranked list of "preferences" of college students, or is it something else?</p>
<p>Thanks.</p>
<p>cami, try this link:</p>
<p>According to this paper, Chicago ranks 27, right after Wesleyen</p>
<p>Chicago has an interesting problem. Its reputation for academics and "America's intellectual powerhouse" works against it. We know at least 3 students admitted to Chicago but who chose to go elsewhere because they believed the academics would be too demanding. Instead, they chose Stanford, Northwestern, and another I don't recall. Also Chicago wait listed or rejected another 2 that were admitted to Duke & Princeton, and accepted students (my S included) with lessor "numbers". All of this works against Chicago, but contributes to its specialness in American Higher Education.</p>
<p>Being ranked 15 is better than being ranked 25...U Chicago is a great school-everyone who recognizes exceptional schools know that!</p>
<p>Part of the problem, as I understand it, besides the acceptance rate has to do with alumni based contributions - the thinking goes that schools with more generous alumni must mean the school is better, and better prepared to provide for their students. Personally, I think that line of thought is silly.</p>
<p>Basically, in this country we think that if a school is abnormally hard to get into it must be good, right? Right? It's a self-perpetuating cycle.</p>
<p>I will bet anyone $50 that Harvard will be the top college (or tied for the top college) in the U.S. news ranking for the next 5 years, at least.</p>
<p>I think this will be the case because no matter the actual quality of education at Harvard (not to say that it it isn't superb - although I think Chicago is better), it is the most well known University in the country. It is also perceived as the best university. Thus, "everyone" who only cares about rankings want their children or themselves to go to Harvard. So Harvard gets many applications from people that probably wouldn't stand a chance. This makes it much easier to have a low acceptance rate, which in turn ranks it high in the rankings guides....which in turn causes it to be more well known...and leads to more people applying..and well the cycle repeats itself.</p>
<p>As for the generousness of alumni, part of me wonders whether the rate of contribution would be different if one factored in the alumni's parent's income level before they attended a University like Princeton, Yale, or Harvard. </p>
<p>Everyone knows that the more financially well off you are...the easier certain things will be for you in life. Such as getting into an ivy-league school.</p>
<p>Edit: I should add that when I tell people where I go to school, and they recognize it, I get universal praise and admiration. It certainly doesn't feel like a "#15" school.</p>
<p>Umassdad,</p>
<p>Thanks so much for the second link. This is the first time I'd taken a closer look at that study and list. </p>
<p>I must admit when the new Princeton Review scores came out just a day or so ago I took a look at the listings to see how Chicago fared. Since these are suppostedly based largely on student perceptions, they give a different angle.</p>
<p>To my surprise, it was not one of the schools listed on the "Places Where the Students Never Stop Studying." Nor was it on the list "Best Academic Experience for Undergraduates." However, the #1 school on both these lists was Reed College. As a LAC, Reed is obviously much smaller than Chicago and geered more towards undergrads, yet I have always thought of these two colleges as being similar in intensity and workload. I wonder why students have such a positive perception of Reed, given its extremely heavy workload, yet often question the exact same inclination in terms of Chicago. </p>
<p>I do believe that if academics were the ones crafting the rankings their criteria would not be identical to that used by USNWR, and Chicago would be higher on the list.</p>
<p>Cami - Last year U Chicago was the top of the Best Undergraduate Experience category :). I attribute it's dissapearance soley from the fact that there seems to be a conspriacy at Princeton Review to shuffle every category every year. Categories from Top Party School to Students never stop studying and everything in between constantly sees new leaders. Sure, there are often the same schools in the bunch, but not always.</p>
<p>Talk about bad rankings. How about Campus Dirt where Chicago is ranked 517th.</p>
<p>You really cannot compare Chicago to most of its "competitors."
We found the admissions staff to be extremely honest about the character of the school. Unlike other places, it does not try to be all things to all applicants and does not make the decision to apply an easy one by using the uncommon app. If UC used the common app. (some schools do not even have supps) it would undoubtedly increase its applicant pool by if not double or triple it. Moreover, everyone in the educational stratosphere knows that Chicago is a first rate, very challenging, intellectual place. I don't think they care all that much about their rankings and I don't think that an applicant who is so conventional that their decision where to attend is driven by artifical
rankings or the opinions of the avg. guy is a Chicago kind of person anyway.</p>
<p>Reed College does a very good job of building community and pride in being a Reedie. It begins when students receive their acceptance email, which takes them to a page with animated fireworks. The mailed packet contains confetti for celebrating. The whole experience is geared toward making students feel included rather than privileged and honored to be accepted as is Chicago's approach. The Reed approach almost swayed my S to the college. It does have excellent academics, but it also has a certain Esprit de Corp somewhat absent at Chicago.</p>
<p>Campus dirt is a joke. The website purports itself to be the inside truth on schools around the country, however, it is not widely known about, and everyone knows that people who are happy don't generally bother posting their happiness on websites like campus dirt. Blagh on campus dirt is what I say. Don't listen to it.</p>
<p>hmlee</p>
<p>I don't take campus dirt seriously, but I thought it was a good example of how ridiculous some of ther rankings are.</p>
<p>Well said, idad. Reed is an excellent LAC that has been pretty goood at building an excellent sense of pride and community sense among its students...I hear especially academically. I can think of probably a few other LACs that a bit like it...that have also challenged the US News Rankings publicly and deserve to be higher up in these rankings than they are...Earlham, Oberlin, Ohio Wesleyan and UPS.</p>
<p>Okay, here are some more rankings. all are nonsense, but here they are anyway:</p>
<p>World University Rankings
<a href="http://www.epfl.ch/soc/etudes/pdf/world-rankingsUnis.pdf%5B/url%5D">http://www.epfl.ch/soc/etudes/pdf/world-rankingsUnis.pdf</a></p>
<p>1 Harvard University US
2 University of California, Berkeley
3 Massachusetts Institute of Technology US
4 California Institute of Technology<br>
5 Oxford University UK
6 Cambridge University UK
7 Stanford University US
8 Yale University US
9 Princeton University US
10 ETH Zurich Switzerland
11 London School of Economics UK
12 Tokyo University Japan
13 University of Chicago US</p>
<p>Shanghai Jiao Tong University's Rankings of the world's top 500 Universities
<a href="http://ed.sjtu.edu.cn/ranking.htm%5B/url%5D">http://ed.sjtu.edu.cn/ranking.htm</a></p>
<p>1 Harvard University
2 University of Cambridge
3 Stanford University
4 University of California, Berkeley
5 MIT
6 California IT
7 Columbia University
8 Princeton University
9 University of Chicago
10 University of Oxford</p>
<p>Chicago's world ranking is now at number 9 (up from 10). USNews places Chicago at 15, down from 13. My BS detector just went off.</p>
<p>idad, i think you are right on about Reed building community and said it all when you said: "... here are some more rankings. all are nonsense..."</p>
<p>We just left our daughter at Reed for her 1st year and were at a reception for parents to meet with the profs and administrators. A young Prof came over, introduced himself as a professor of English. He was clearly excited about being at Reed, so much so, that I thought he may have graduated from there himself. When I inquired as to where he was educated, he seemed almost embarassed to tell us "Harvard". He continued that he felt his money (or rather, his benefactor's money, as he put it) had been wasted at Harvard. He felt that he received a 2nd rate education with very little attention from the profs - that most were concerned not with truly teaching, but rather, with using H as a springboard to further their careers. He did state that the money spent there would be best spent at the graduate level. He added that he wishes that he had found a smaller place that fosters true learning like Reed as an undergrad. </p>
<p>I hope that all the underated LAC's continue to challenge and/or shun the various magazine rankings. Maybe then students (and parents) will begin to realize how ridiculous the comparisons are.</p>
<p>I hope your D enjoys Reed, metermaid. Many on CC recommended it for my son, but he didn't want to do the west coast thing so will be at Chicago.</p>
<p>My S had an agonizing choice between Reed and Chicago and ultimately chose Chicago because after visiting he thought the class sizes and contact with professors were about the same, but that Chicago offered more choices, and was in, well, Chicago.</p>