Rankings based on Peer Assessment

College Search & Selection
1

<p>Perhaps the only deciding factor in ranking colleges?</p>

<li>Harvard University </li>
</ol>

<p>Massachusetts Institute of Technology </p>

<p>Princeton University </p>

<p>Stanford University </p>

<p>Yale University </p>

<li><p>University of California, Berkeley </p></li>
<li><p>California Institute of Technology </p></li>
</ol>

<p>Columbia University </p>

<li>Cornell University </li>
</ol>

<p>Duke University </p>

<p>Johns Hopkins University </p>

<p>University of Chicago </p>

<li>University of Michigan </li>
</ol>

<p>University of Pennsylvania </p>

<li>Brown University </li>
</ol>

<p>Dartmouth University </p>

<p>Northwestern University </p>

<li>University of California, Los Angeles </li>
</ol>

<p>University of Virginia </p>

<li>Carnegie Mellon University </li>
</ol>

<p>University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill </p>

<p>University of Wisconsin - Madison </p>

<li>Rice University </li>
</ol>

<p>Washington University in St. Louis </p>

<li>Vanderbilt University </li>
</ol>

<p>Emory University </p>

<p>Georgia Institute of Technology </p>

<p>University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign </p>

<p>University of Texas at Austin </p>

<li>University of California, San Diego </li>
</ol>

<p>University of Notre Dame </p>

<p>University of Southern California </p>

<p>University of Washington </p>

<li>College of William and Mary </li>
</ol>

<p>New York University </p>

<p>Pennsylvania State University - University Park </p>

<p>University of California, Davis </p>

<p>Purdue University - West Lafayette </p>

<li>Indiana University - Bloomington </li>
</ol>

<p>University of California, Irvine </p>

<p>University of Maryland - College Park </p>

<p>University of Minnesota, Twin Cities </p>

<li>Ohio State University - Columbus </li>
</ol>

<p>Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute </p>

<p>Tufts University </p>

<p>University of Arizona </p>

<p>University of California, Santa Barbara </p>

<p>University of Iowa </p>

<li>Brandeis University </li>
</ol>

<p>Case Western Reserve University </p>

<p>Michigan State University </p>

<p>University of Florida </p>

<p>Texas A&M University - College Station </p>

<p>Tulane University </p>

<li>University of Colorado at Boulder </li>
</ol>

<p>University of Georgia </p>

<p>University of Pittsburgh </p>

<p>University of Rochester </p>

<p>Virginia Tech </p>

<li>Boston University </li>
</ol>

<p>Iowa State University </p>

<p>Rutgers University - New Brunswick </p>

<p>University of Kansas </p>

<p>University of Missouri - Columbia </p>

<li>Arizona State University </li>
</ol>

<p>SUNY - Stony Brook University </p>

<p>University of California, Santa Cruz </p>

<p>University of Connecticut </p>

<p>University of Delaware </p>

<p>University of Massachusetts Amherst </p>

<p>University of Miami </p>

<li>North Carolina State University </li>
</ol>

<p>University at Buffalo - SUNY </p>

<p>University of California, Riverside </p>

<p>University of Nebraska - Lincoln </p>

<p>University of Tennessee </p>

<p>University of Utah </p>

<li>Florida State University </li>
</ol>

<p>University of Illinois at Chicago </p>

<p>University of Kentucky </p>

<p>University of South Carolina, Columbia </p>

<p>Washington State University </p>

<li>Colorado State University </li>
</ol>

<p>Louisiana State University - Baton Rouge </p>

<p>SUNY - University at Albany </p>

<p>University of New Mexico </p>

<p>Yeshiva University </p>

<li>Kansas State University </li>
</ol>

<p>University of Alabama - Birmingham </p>

<li>University of Colorado at Denver and Health Sciences Center </li>
</ol>

<p>University of Hawaii at Manoa </p>

<li>Montana State University - Bozeman </li>
</ol>

<p>Wayne State University </p>

<li>Wright State University</li>
</ol>

2

<p>I'm wondering what exactly they use to calculate the peer assessment scores. Is it just self explanatory, how others view the school?</p>

3

<p>isn't this same list in another forum?</p>

4

<p>hold up,</p>

<p>Rice and Wash U are tied with peer assessment</p>

<p>how did U of Michigan go down like that, it used to be top 7-10, all of a sudden.....</p>

5

<p>How is this accurate? These people, for the most part, have only been to one of these institutions. People are different and they rate differently. If some guy went to two universities and rated them differently then maybe that has some value but this...ehh I don't trust it too much.</p>

6

<p>It's quite accurate. They don't just randomly ask people what they think.</p>

7

<p>Bball, 6-14 is the historic norm for Michigan's peer assessment score. 13 is on the low side, but 12 and 11 have been quite common. I'd say anywhere between #6 and #18 would be fair. </p>

<p>Vicissitudes, the professors who take part in the peer assessment score are generally veterans in the academic world. They usually attended a couple of universities as students and then, taught at a couple of universities before being promotted to Dean or President of a university. For example:</p>

<p>Take Lee Bolinger, president of Columbia University. He started off as an undergraduate student at the University of Oregon, got his PhD from Columbia, taught at Dartmouth College and the University of Michigan, served as president of the University of Michigan and then took the Columbia presidency. He has intimate knowledge of 4 universities that belong to the same peer group. </p>

<p>Or Amy Gutmann, president of Penn. She did her undergraduate studies at Harvard, her graduate studies at the LSE (in London) and Harvard and taught at Princeton before becoming president of Penn. </p>

<p>Or Don Michael Randel, president of the University of Chicago. Did most of his studies at Princeton, taught at Cornell for many years and recently took over the presidency of Chicago.</p>

<p>Or John Hennessy, president of Stanford. He did his undergraduate studies at Villanova, his graduate studies at SUNY and taught at Stanford.</p>

<p>Or Susan Hockfield, president of MIT. She did her undergraduate studies at the University of Rochester, her graduate studies at Georgetown and she taught at Yale before joining MIT. </p>

<p>Or Henry Bienen, president of Northwestern. He did his undergraduate studies at Cornell and his graduate studies at the University of Chicago. He also taught at Columbia, Stanford and Princeton before joining Northwestern.</p>

<p>And this last entry, I dedicate to Slipper, who seems to think poorly of the folks from the Cheesehead state. James Wright, president of Dartmouth College. Hatched and raised in Madison, Wisconsin. Earned his BA at the University of Wisconsin-Platteville and his PhD at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Oh my, whadja know! LOL I guess something good did come out of the University of Wisconsin afterall! hehe He taught mostly at Dartmouth, although he did teach at Harvard for a short while.</p>

<p>Now that's just a handfull presidents I chose at random. There are hundreds of different combinations. Those professors have also dealt with students from many different universities as well as with professors from many different universities for a number of years, so they really have a pretty good feel for the quality of a university. Of course, that does not mean the Peer assessement score is 100% accurate. I'd say that it is accurate within two of three tenth of a point or so.</p>

<p>So let us say you take Michigan and Penn. They have peer assessment scores of 4.5 according to the latest USNWR poll. Rice got a peer assessment score of 4.2 and Cal got a peer assessment score of 4.8. I'd say all four of those schools, and the schools that get peer assessment scores of 4.3, 4.4, 4.6 and 4.7 are all pretty similar in terms of academic excellence.</p>

8

<p>I apologize. The word "peer" had misled me to believe that this ranking is based on assessment by current undergraduate or graduate students.</p>

9

<p>The peer assessment ranking is not very accurate.</p>

<p>Reasons:
1. Professors tend to give higher score on schools who have
famous professors/colleagues with less/no attention to the quality of
the student itself.
2. Peer assessment fails to narrow down field perspectives of the
academia. E.g. John Hopkins profs tend to rank WUSTL higher than
Brown profs. MIT profs tend to rank CMU higher than UCLA, etc.</p>

<p>Peer assessment ranking will be more accurate if not only the academics are given the opportunity, but also the top cream students in those colleges. Also, a professor should only give the assessment of his/her field on certain departments of a school, and this assessment shouldn't be counted if the corresponding department is not available in that school. Moreover, the aggregated average peer ranking in each field/dept should be multiplied to a constant/weight factor, e.g. the number of students in that department, and finally summed up together.</p>

<p>Unfortunately, US NEWS ranking is only a commercial tool to boost its sales. I doubt if really good statisticians with neutral motives are really employed for this purposes. <em>sigh</em></p>