<p>Monydad: back in the day, Penn was a safety andno one would say that it is not a top 20 school. Basing rankings off info 30+ years old is no way to make a valid argument.</p>
<p>^ Just to clarify, Penn used to be a relative safety only when compared to most of the other Ivies–i.e., Penn’s admit rate was in the 40-50% range when most of the other Ivies had admit rates in the 20-30% range. Penn has always been considered selective when compared to all but a few schools, and has never been out of the top 20 since the US News rankings began in the 1980s.</p>
<p>jags861,
I think you are underrating ND and part of your argument (the strength of graduate programs and the spillover to undergrad) is not well reinforced at your own school (U Virginia) which has a higher PA than ND (4.3 to 3.9). Now I am a great fan of U Virginia and I am in that camp that says for undergraduate education, it is the premier public university in America. But unless I’m missing something, its best-known graduate programs (law and business) are located some distance from the undergraduate campus and there is little overlap in the undergraduate and graduate education involving these schools. </p>
<p>I suggest you take another look at ND. I agree that ND lacks great graduate programs but it does a pretty fine job with the undergrads. It may surprise you how strong the student body is and how effectively they score in a few areas of the USNWR survey (Grad/Retention, Alumni Giving). And among the Catholic populace nationally, if not internationally, ND is the premier academic institution and that is no small feat. I would argue that for name recognition and prestige, the ND name travels as well as nearly any college in the country.</p>
<p>Alexandre,
ND undergrad student body is 8352. Its endowment as of 6/30/06 was about $4.44 bn (about $403k per capita including grad students) although this has surely grown since that time.</p>
<p>Aleandre said:</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>But, can you show some love to App State? :D</p>
<p>back to regularly scheduled programming…</p>
<p>hawkette,</p>
<p>i wasn’t really mentioning UVa–as I wasn’t comparing it to ND. However, off the top of my head UVa’s english, religious studies, and languages are all top programs at the undergrad and grad level. Besides that, if you look at the NRC rankings (which i realize are old, but are an easy place to look to get a general picture), UVa out ranks ND in 40 of 41 subject areas.</p>
<p>Listen, I’m not bashing ND, its a great school. And I never said UVa/Michigan/Berkeley was Harvard. ND does have a strong alumni network, however, I’ve never met anyone who said they went to ND to be academically challenged, and I’ve heard more than 1 person say that they thought ND was not exactly the place to go if you were looking to be serious about academics. Of course these people are adults now and went 20 or so years ago, maybe its completely different.</p>
<p>Also, you and I obviously differ in our opinion about whats the “important” part of rankings. You seem to believe PA means nothing, whereas I believe its without a doubt the most important part of the rankings. You can change whatever other metrics you use and get a different ranking. If I, for example, thought “number of professors with terminal degrees at top 25 USnews universities” was important, that would change the ranking. If I thought “number of students from michigan” was important to the quality of a school, that would change the ranking. But the fact that they ask leaders of academic institutions opinions about schools, and ND’s PA is much lower than many of the schools around it, says something to me. I’m not trying to start another PA debate, I’m simply letting you know where I stand on the issue–and why i brought it up.</p>
<p>There’s another thread somewhere on here that shows that PA is based at least in part on the size and research of a university. Since ND has a relatively small grad school, it naturally has a lower PA. Plus, you can’t discount the anti-Catholic bias of academia and many posters on CC, which you seem to share.</p>
<p>Bentley,</p>
<p>I don’t buy many of the theories on this board that go around. I think theres way too much of an over analysis of certain things that weren’t meant to be over analyzed.</p>
<p>To your ‘anti-catholic’ point, I am catholic, so I’m not anti it. I think Georgetown is a better school than ND. What does that make me? Anti-brothers and pro-Jesuit (which I am pro-jesuit, btw, but thats besides the point). I love how any time anyone presents a point and and someone disagrees with it without presenting any information, I have an anti-X or bias against something.</p>
<p>Sorry, I was thinking of a post by Cherokeejes, not you. Sorry if I offended.</p>
<ol>
<li>Harvard</li>
<li>Yale</li>
</ol>
<p>(gap)</p>
<ol>
<li>Princeton</li>
<li>Stanford</li>
</ol>
<p>(gap)</p>
<ol>
<li>Your flagship state school</li>
</ol>
<p>“But, can you show some love to App State?”</p>
<p>You cut me deep Bluebayou! LOL!</p>
<p>Jags861,
Contrary to your statement that I think PA means nothing, I actually believe it means something. The problem is that that something differs depending on who is doing the grading or who you are asking to do the analysis. PA is a very undefined measure with no basis of comparing one academic’s view to another and certainly not one school to another. And for many, many students the views of academics bear no relationship at all to how a school and its graduates are viewed by employers. Consider W&M in your state of Virginia. It’s an excellent college yet it is rated on PA well behind U Virginia. I would hope that you would agree that these two schools are or near academic peers, but W&M does not have near the graduate program strength and to this I attribute the bulk of the PA scoring difference (4.3 U Virginia to 3.7 W&M). ND suffers the same fate. </p>
<p>As for your other qualitative comments, the USNWR weighting attached to faculty with terminal degrees carries considerably less weight than PA (3% vs 25%) so it’s hard to really compare the relative importance of these two items. And for “the number of students from Michigan,” I can’t see how this would have any value for anywhere else but state schools in Michigan so not sure what your point is.</p>
<p>hawkette,</p>
<p>If by “near academic peers” you mean are they both tier 1 schools, then yes I agree they are “near academic peers.” But there are plenty of reasons why UVa has a better PA score than W&M. Inclusive in them is that UVa is a far superior research university compared to W&M, and W&M is ranked with “national research universities.”</p>
<p>My comments about the other data, which you call “objective data” in all your posts was that they are just as “subjetive” as PA. USNews can pick and choose what it wants included in its rankings, and how much it should weigh. So, for example, if a NEW condition was put into USnews that was “what percentage of professors hold terminal degrees from USNew’s tier 1 universities” or something to that effect, it would likely change the ranking. You could easily take any data which is “objective” and make it subjective by sticking into USNew’s formula at a randomly assigned weight–which is the point I’m trying to make.</p>
<p>But, like I said, with PA its simply “on a scale of 1-5, what do you guys who control and are at the head of academia think about these schools in comparison to each other.” In the answer to that question, ND, like W&M, don’t do as well against the schools they are compared to–which is why they have lower PAs.</p>
<p>Anyway, back to the issue at hand, which is prestige, like I said before, depending on the audience, you’re going to get a much different answer. ND will get a better response with the average joe or even a person who isn’t really “into” college stuff, than you will from people who are more into, like we are.</p>
<p>My stats about SAT scores were for the freshman class only, 2011..i know the average stats are a bit lower than that. The average SAT of 1390 is quoted from The Observer, as is the 24% admit rate. As for the comments about people who are serious academically not coming here..well thats just completely false, almost everyone i know is completely serious about academics, and you wouldnt believe the schools people turn down to come here. Go ahead and call me an idiot since I had the chance to go to Hopkins (out of HS) and Chicago (as a transfer) and turned them both down, but I dont regret it at all. And there is nothing like a Saturday afternoon in Notre Dame Stadium, even when we lose 33-3.</p>
<p>“Monydad: back in the day, Penn was a safety andno one would say that it is not a top 20 school. Basing rankings off info 30+ years old is no way to make a valid argument.”</p>
<p>My argument was a response to the comment “where have you been all your life”. It is completely valid, in the context it was made. Your response is a non sequitor.</p>
<p>Just to clarify:</p>
<p>I wasn’t saying anything bad about Notre Dame, I was just making the point that its reputation as a sports school overshadowed its academic reputation. If you reread my post, you will see that I made a similar statement regarding UC Berkeley’s political reputation overshadowing its academic one (to a degree).</p>
<p>I was making this point to illustrate that outside of a schools immediate region, the reputation of a school is not necessarily based on academics. Many Americans would know more about a school’s football team than its academic ranking or strongest programs, I’m sure.</p>
<p>That is also why I brought up the issue of “international prestige”. It was not because I thought that it should be an important selection factor for prospective students, but rather because it might possibly avoid the more cultural factors of a schools reputation (such as sports or politics) while focusing more on the academic factors.</p>
<p>Obviously thats a broad generalization, but it was just a thought. Of course its also affected by region because some schools have a much larger percentage of international students or concentration of a certain ethnicity (i.e. UC Berkeley is predominantly Asian).</p>
<p>It is quite possible that Berkeley placed very highly in the oft quoted Asian ranking (what was the name again?) because of its recognition in the Asian world. Who knows? But somehow I doubt that its political history would have as much of a role in its reputation as it would in the states, in the same way that I doubt that NDs reputation in football is as well known by foreigners than Americans.</p>
<p>These cultural factors are somewhat distracting when trying to asses academic prestige.</p>
<p>No, it really isn’t possible that Berkeley placed high in the Asian ranking because of that; it uses objective measures. The only reason it is 3 instead of a mere 8th, like in the Times Higher Education Supplement rankings, is because it focuses on different things - citations and prizes rather than # of international faculty or faculty/student ratio.</p>
<p>Hawkette: PA is important. Just get over the fact that employers do not count in that assessment. Period. Your determination of which school deserves a higher PA, is meaningless, since USNWR values the opinions of academics, and NOT employers. Give it up, already.</p>
<p>ckmets13. Please don’t confuse the numbers needed for admission with those alleged to be of students attending. Go to the Hopkins’ website for the accurate figures. For admission, better shoot for a solid 1450.</p>
<p>I got a 1500 and i got into Hopkins out of HS, and all I am doing is taking the SAT ranges off of US News. Hopkins has a 25-75 of 1290-1490 and ND has a 25-75 of 1290-1500..it is the same thing, +/- the margin of error. And we have a higher yield</p>
<p>ckmets,</p>
<p>collegeboard lists ND’s SATs as 1230-1460, and Hopkins’ as 1290-1490, just for your info. Are you sure you’re not saying ND’s ACCEPTED applicants SAT ranges, and not ATTENDING students SAT ranges?</p>