Public schools should have their own USNews ranking

College Search & Selection
1

<p>It's sad that top public schools get the shaft in US News rankings (the bible for many a college aficionado). In fact many of these schools like Michigan and Cal are ahead of most of the top 20 US News schools in terms of research accomplishments and are ranked much higher in international rankings (which are less publicized in the US) and peer assessment rankings.</p>

<p>When I went to a public high school in Michigan years ago, most high achieving students considered Michigan their first choice. Perhaps 3 top students per year would apply to one of HYPSM. They were usually accepted, but would often still go to Michigan. It was unheard of to apply to any of the other top 20 USNews schools unless money was not an issue. </p>

<p>If USNews had a seperate ranking for private and public universities, much like they do for liberal arts colleges, it would give a better picture of the strength of the public schools. I suspect there is a lot at stake given that private schools need to justify the 50K per year they are charging students these days.</p>

2

<p>public schools are stirong in research and grad school - but for undergrad education they are far behind HYPS and The top liberal arts schools, in fact i beleive whiler berkely may be underranked - the other top publics maybe overranked</p>

3

<p>And you know this how??</p>

4

<p>footbally: How many public universities have you attended as an undergraduate? How many liberal arts colleges? And what do you really know of HYPS? Do tell.</p>

5

<p>LACs and (some of the) HYPS (read elite colleges) do have undergraduate focus. Public Universities are usually huge with large classes diminishing the Undergrad focus.</p>

6

<p>medha: And how many public universities have you attended? I'd love to know how you can make a blanket statement like that without having attended any public universities (or any university or college, for that matter--based on your past posts). You're simply regurgitating nonsense that you hear; just like footbally above, you have no idea what you're talking about.</p>

7

<p>jack- do you then think that the educational experience at a school 15000+ is the same as a LAC with less than 5000?</p>

8

<p>i agree with jack on this. How does anyone know what its like at all these universities. Ive also heard that harvard pays almost no attention to undergrads, i dont know this its just what ive heard. Also, ive recently purchased the fiske guide to colleges for 2008 and it says the the quality of education at some of the top state schools is just as good, and in some cases better, than those in the usnews top 20. Also, i dont think that the us news is just based off of undergrad edu. I hate it when people assume that if someone went to a public school, even a high ranking one, they arent as well educated as someone that attended a top tier private.</p>

9

<p>If people at USNews feel that LAC's and national universities should be ranked seperately, why not apply it to public and private universities? The cost of college is so astronomical that it is helpful to assess the relative cost benefit ratio of private school x vs. public school y. It's harder for kids to do that when an arbitrary ranking system puts no public school in the top 20.</p>

10

<p>thats another good point</p>

11

<p>swish: The overall experience of a larger school vs a small LAC may be different, but I would not ever say that the educational experience of one is better than the other--not by a long shot. I also suspect a student's educational experience (perhaps even the overall experience) is based, in large part, on the student himself.</p>

12

<p>Theres data that is available that lets us compare - things such as teacher:faculty ratios, feeder rates and strength of student body, opportunities for undergrads, resources per student</p>

<p>Its not that hard to have a side-by-side comparison...so I'm not sure why you'd have to attend every college in order to discern certain facts about each one that are publicly available</p>

13

<p>"How many public universities have you attended as an undergraduate?"</p>

<p>That's a ridiculous question. Why don't you also ask yourself how many private universities you've attended as an undergraduate?</p>

<p>I agree with thethoughtprocess in that there are objective figures such as student-faculty ratio, standardized test scores, feeder and placement rates, and resources that put the top 20 private schools up there in the rankings for "undergraduate education," but for graduate programs it's a different story.</p>

<p>Many state schools have excellent graduate programs and often put a heavier emphasis on its graduate students; hence, schools like Cal and U of M usually rank in the top 5 or top 10 for many graduate programs.</p>

<p>"Michigan and Cal are ahead of most of the top 20 US News schools in terms of research accomplishments and are ranked much higher in international rankings."</p>

<p>Research accoplishments are usually made on the graduate level and international prestige is heavily dependent on PhD programs. Public school students argue about undergrad USNews rankings, but never bother to mention the fact that, while they do not make it in the top 20 for undergrad rankings, schools like Cal, U of M and UVA usually make it in the top 10 for many graduate rankings from the "same source" they call so biased, USNews.</p>

14

<p>Public schools are not just about graduate study, there is such a thing as a trickle down effect in the quality of the undergrad education.
I've heard before the US News craze started, William and Mary was considered on par with HYPS. It's really hurt the publics and unfairly so.</p>

15

<p>I'm happy to sell stock in the London Bridge to anyone who thinks H, Y & S are undergrad focused.....</p>

16

<p>The reputation of most top private universities is also based on their research and graduate schools. If USNews was truly only comparing undergrads, than there would be no reason to seperate universities from liberal arts colleges. </p>

<p>Public schools have a mission to educate as many qualified students as possible. It is difficult for them to do well on arbitrary USNews criteria like alumni giving rate. However, studies have shown that students who were admitted to elite private schools but chose to attend public schools did just as well as their private school counterparts. Clearly, the education is not inferior. </p>

<p>There is no USNews criteria for value. If you achieve your goals at a great state school and save 100K in the process, that is certainly as important as alumni giving rate. Seperating the private and public rankings addresses this.</p>

17

<p>Actually, public schools do have their own US News ranking:</p>

<p><a href="http://colleges.usnews.rankingsandreviews.com/usnews/edu/college/rankings/brief/natudoc_pub_brief.php%5B/url%5D"&gt;http://colleges.usnews.rankingsandreviews.com/usnews/edu/college/rankings/brief/natudoc_pub_brief.php&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p>

<p>
[quote]
LACs and (some of the) HYPS (read elite colleges) do have undergraduate focus. Public Universities are usually huge with large classes diminishing the Undergrad focus.

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</p>

<p>Not exactly. While I agree about the LACs, if for no other reason than that they don't have graduate programs, I'm not sure if I can agree about Harvard, Yale, and Stanford. Those three, along with others like Cornell, Columbia, etc. actually tend to be focused on their graduate programs and professional schools more than their undergraduate programs. Do they offer a top undergraduate program? Sure. But are the schools more focused on their undergraduate programs than anything else? No, I don't think so. Some top schools that are more focused on undergrad are Princeton, Dartmouth, and maybe Brown.</p>

<p>
[quote]
medha: And how many public universities have you attended? I'd love to know how you can make a blanket statement like that without having attended any public universities (or any university or college, for that matter--based on your past posts). You're simply regurgitating nonsense that you hear; just like footbally above, you have no idea what you're talking about.

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</p>

<p>If we were going by that standard, then no one would be "qualified" to compare schools since 99% of college students haven't attend more than 2 or 3 schools. We compare them based on available data, and comparative experiences from different students. For example, I made my statement about which schools tend to be grad-focused based on data like student-faculty ratio, high rankings for their graduate program but lower rankings for their undergrad program, where the schools spend their money, what kind of resources/amentities/grants the schools offer their undergrads compared to graduate students, word-of-mouth from students who attend those schools and even representatives from the schools themselves.</p>

<p>
[quote]
Public schools are not just about graduate study, there is such a thing as a trickle down effect in the quality of the undergrad education.
I've heard before the US News craze started, William and Mary was considered on par with HYPS. It's really hurt the publics and unfairly so.

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</p>

<p>Of course there's a trickle down effect, but that's different from saying the undergrad school has the same quality as the grad school. I'm going to use Berkeley as an example. Many people praised and defended Berkeley as 2nd in the nation when the THES first came out, when THES focused mostly on grad programs and research.</p>

<p>I don't think Williams and Mary was ever on par with HYPS and still isn't as of now. That notion back then was probably a misconception. In fact, when US News first came out, the publics were ranked much higher, with Berkeley at #5 and I believe Michigan at around #8. Frankly I think the rankings are more accurate now, even if I do think the publics get dinked a little. Schools like Berkeley, Michigan, and UCLA simply aren't on par with HYPSM. The graduation rates are lower, admission rates to grad programs/professional schools are lower, fewer resources, impacted majors, larger classes, I could go on and on.</p>

<p>In fact, I think it's a good thing that US News is ranking the publics the way they are now. I'm going to again use Berkeley as an example. The administators keeps bringing up US News but only mentions that Berkeley is "ranked the top public school in the nation", citing the rankings which I showed above. If that were the only ranking that existed, Berkeley's administrators would feel even less pressure to improve its undergrad program. For example, in the mid 1990s Berkeley actually dropped all the way down to #27. This caused quite a bit of ruckus and the administators worked hard to improve the undergrad program and Berkeley went back up.</p>

<p>Now, do I want to see top publics like Berkeley ranked higher? Of course I do. But I want to see that as a result of improving the undergrad program. If it's ranked higher for no reason, or if another ranking is made simply to make the public schools look good, then it really defeats the point. Most people use US News to compare the quality of education at different colleges, and if public schools are only ranked as high as say, HYPS, but don't provide the same quality of education, then it's just deceiving.</p>

18

<p>Some comparisons can certainly be made based on available data; however, to compare educational experiences based on individual anecdotes; comments by high school students who have never been to university; and "word of mouth from students who attend these schools," and consider that solid data-- well, I think that might be somewhat interesting to hear, but ultimately worthless information when determining what offers the superior "educational experience." </p>

<p>By the way, I've never seen much in the way of undergraduate program rankings. Can you provide a link for rankings of undergraduate programs among universities and LACs? I'd love to see that.</p>

<p>I can believe that if you want--or feel you need--4 years of college classes that will never go over the limit of 10 students, then you will probably be happiest at a small LAC. However, class size means relatively little in one's overall educational experience. I will add, too, that many public universities have plenty of small classes--as well as large--as do Ivies, of course. So if you feel that you need small classes all the time, and that would make for the better educational experience for you, then that tells you something about yourself and what you need in a school. Again, that tells you something about <em>you,</em> not about anybody else. </p>

<p>
[quote]
I don't think Williams and Mary . . .

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</p>

<p>And just so you know, that would be William and Mary.</p>

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<p>If anybody has a copy of USNews (I don't) and would care to combine rankings for Univerisities and LAC's based on total score, I would be interested to see how they line up. Granted, the peer assessment scores are difficult to compare because they are generated by 2 different groups of people. But let's have some fun for a minute and see whose feathers get ruffled by this combination.</p>

20

<p>As vicissitudes was saying, some of the supposedly "undergrad focused" schools are actually not all that focused on undergrad. Harvard, based on all the objective statistics, comes in at #2. That's because it has a low student:faculty ratio, high grad rate, high retention rate, great resources, small classes (mostly), and is very selective. Yet at the same time, Harvard is very often cited as caring little about its undergrads and more about its grad students (I can't even count how many times I've heard this, even from students at Harvard). So even there, the US News ranking is flawed.</p>

<p>Regarding the size of classes at universities... well, it really varies, but there are some schools that are very private-like. University of Virginia, to me, seems very much like a private school 'cept made public. Cornell seems somewhat private and somewhat public (and is officially both). Berkeley, while seemingly huge, has a large number of small classes; for comparison:</p>

<p>Stanford - 38% classes under 10 students; Berkeley - 34%
Stanford - 4% classes over 100 students; Berkeley - 6%</p>

<p>(I would've used Harvard for comparison, but I don't think Harvard puts out CDS.)</p>

<p>As you can see, publics can be very similar to privates.</p>