Ranking by group

College Search & Selection
1

<p>If you were going to rank the top US Universities in terms of overall prestige, talent of faculty, academic excellence, and research produced, how would you rank the top universities? </p>

<p>Let's also note that I'm looking for relatively broad groupings here... Let's not get into debates as to whether CalTech or UChicago belong in the same group as HYPSM - when it comes to talent of faculty, academic excellence, etc. they're all peers. </p>

<p>Let's also go off of overall university reputation and not just grad or undergrad; as grad has a 'trickle-down', etc.</p>

<p>Of course we all know the USNWR T35 (undergrad, obviously):
Harvard
Yale
Princeton
Columbia
CalTech
MIT
Stanford
UChicago
UPenn
Duke
Dartmouth
Northwestern
Johns Hopkins
WUStL
Brown
Cornell
Rice
Vanderbilt
Notre Dame
Emory
UCB
Georgetown
Carnegie Mellon
USC
UCLA
UVa
Wake Forest
UMich
Tufts
UNC
BC
Brandeis
William & Mary
NYU
Rochester</p>

<p>I would feel inclined to say something along the lines of:</p>

<p>Group 1:
Harvard, Yale, Princeton, Stanford, MIT, Columbia, CalTech, UChicago</p>

<p>Group 2:
UPenn, Duke, Northwestern, Hopkins, Dartmouth, WUStL, Brown, Cornell</p>

<p>Group 3:
UCB, UCLA, UNC, UMich, NYU </p>

<p>Group 4:
Carnegie Mellon, Georgetown, USC, UVa, Rice, Vanderbilt, Notre Dame, Emory</p>

<p>Group 5:
Wake Forest, Tufts, BC, Brandeis, William & Mary, Rochester</p>

<p>Is this generally accurate? Would people agree? Disagree? What would you move around?</p>

2

<p>Group 1. easy</p>

3

<p>Group 1: Harvard, Stanford, MIT, Princeton, Yale, Caltech (and Wharton)</p>

<p>Group 2: Berkeley, Columbia, Northwestern, Chicago, Duke, Cornell, Penn, JHU, CMU, Michigan</p>

<p>Group 3: Dartmouth, WUStL, Brown, Rice, Vanderbilt, Notre Dame, Emory, Georgetown, UVa</p>

<p>Group 4: USC, UCLA, Wake Forest, Tufts, UNC, William & Mary, NYU</p>

<p>Group 5: BC, Brandeis, Rochester</p>

4

<p>Really ^^^ Wake Forest before Rochester and even Brandeis for that matter for “prestige, talent of faculty, academic excellence, and research produced”?!?!</p>

<p>RML you are actually one of the people that constantly push faculty excellence over anything else and in any discipline, Wake Forest is not better than Rochester. And even for undergraduate student quality, Rochester is still better.</p>

5

<p>Maybe Rochester has a better student and faculty quality, but as a university, I think Wake is more prestigious. Of course, I am not the authority on this, so you may take my comment with a grain of salt.</p>

6

<p>

</p>

<p>Then what’s the point of this post if you’re dictating what schools can go where? This requirement is arbitrary enough that one could say “Let’s not get into debates as to whether JHU or Notre Dame belong in the same group as HYPSM - when it comes to talent of faculty, academic excellence, etc. they’re all peers.”</p>

<p>And a great many would find that perfectly legitimate. IMO given the criteria you specified, not even all of HYPSM deserve to be in the same group. Of course, all of your criteria are extremely vague - “research produced” (breadth? depth? highly cited?) and “overall prestige” (to whom?) and “talent of the faculty” are all vague enough that these groups can be sliced in a great, great many ways just by changing your interpretation of the criteria.</p>

<p>IMO at least Columbia, Caltech, and Chicago shouldn’t be in the first group; Dartmouth and WUStL shouldn’t be in the second group; NYU shouldn’t be in the third group; a good argument could be made for UCB, UCLA, etc. being in the second group; and so on.</p>

7

<p>sigh…another one of these threads…tedious and tiresome and pointless.</p>

8

<p>Let’s make this simple guys.</p>

<p>Definite Top 5 Universities
Harvard
Yale
Princeton
Stanford
MIT</p>

<p>Definite Top 15 Universities
Columbia
Caltech
University of Chicago
Penn
Duke</p>

<p>We can all agree on the top 5 and as far as the second group goes, I’ve never seen any statistical measure that compares American schools place these 5 schools outside the top 15 including faculty pay, student body strength, selectivity, endowment per capita, professional school placement, graduation rates, class sizes, job placement, department reputation, etc. etc.</p>

<p>I think Wash U, Northwestern, JHU, Brown, Dartmouth, Cornell, Rice, Vanderbilt, Georgetown and Emory are all possible candidates for the other 5 spots in a “Top 15 School” list as they all excel in various areas but it’s not clear which ones stand out over the rest.</p>

<p>See, was that that hard? ;)</p>

9

<p>“mommy make it stop!” Please.</p>

10

<p>

</p>

<p>Perhaps not outside the top 15, but I don’t think it’s the case that “we can all agree on the top 5.” Of course, it depends on what you’re measuring. Given the criteria the OP gave, it definitely isn’t right to say that, for example, Yale is on par with Harvard and Stanford. The statistical fact (given those specific criteria) is that it isn’t.</p>

11

<p>Overall:
Group 1: Harvard, Stanford, MIT, Berkeley
Group 2: Yale, Princeton, Caltech, Columbia, UPenn, UChicago, Cornell
Group 3: UMichigan, UW-Madison, Johns Hopkins, </p>

<p>For undergrad:
Group 1: HYPSM, Caltech
Group 2: Columbia, Dartmouth, UPenn, UChicago, Brown, Duke
Group 3: Northwestern, Cornell, Berkeley, etc.</p>

12

<p>^ +1 …</p>

13

<p>

</p>

<p>We can?</p>

<p>stateuniversity.com ranks Dartmouth #31, Yale #33, Harvard #38, Columbia #68, and Penn #112.</p>

<p>Washington Monthly ranks Dartmouth #21, Princeton #24, Yale #33, Penn #34, Cornell #38, Brown #63, and Columbia #67.</p>

<p>Forbes ranks Dartmouth #30, Penn #36, Brown #45 and Cornell #70.</p>

<p>These rankings use statistical measures (just not the same combination or weightings as USNWR and others do).</p>

14

<p>“Overall:
Group 1: Harvard, Stanford, MIT, Berkeley
Group 2: Yale, Princeton, Caltech, Columbia, UPenn, UChicago, Cornell
Group 3: UMichigan, UW-Madison, Johns Hopkins,”</p>

<p>I can totally agree with the above ranking. :-)</p>

15

<p>Is there an academic version of this guide? </p>

<p>[How</a> to Overcome Your Insecurities | eHow.com](<a href=“http://www.ehow.com/how_5083516_overcome-insecurities.html]How”>http://www.ehow.com/how_5083516_overcome-insecurities.html)</p>

16

<p>+1 to the above</p>

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<p>

<em>beep</em> <em>intruder alert</em> <em>beep</em></p>

<p>“You will be assimilated.”</p>

<p>PtonGrad2000 did an analysis of the new NRC rankings that may be of value here. I’ve color coded his post for convenience.

</p>

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<p>It’s not clear how to get exact ranks from the new NRC rankings as there are R and S rankings which both are large intervals so more explanation on PtonGrad2000’s methodology is warranted. In terms of reputation internationally, this survey [Top</a> Universities by Reputation 2010-2011](<a href=“http://www.timeshighereducation.co.uk/world-university-rankings/2010-2011/reputation-rankings.html]Top”>http://www.timeshighereducation.co.uk/world-university-rankings/2010-2011/reputation-rankings.html) by the Times Higher Education rankings is pretty good.</p>

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<p>

So PtonGrad2000 showed all the possible ways to rank Princeton #2. I guess any other ways besides these Princeton would be nowhere in sight.</p>

20

<p>^ that’s what I was thinking. Of course, we could all come up with reasons for excluding certain disciplines that bring our alma maters down. Then there are all sorts of ways of making sure they do well even in places they don’t - e.g. counting it as “top 5” if R-range is 5-20 and the S-range is 14-30. Then of course we can count all the times a program makes it into the rankings - e.g. in one ranking alone, Harvard appears 10 different times. Some even like to double-count a program if it makes it in the top 10 in both the S and the R ranking. :rolleyes:</p>