<p>Oh, and whenever I have to go to a city and need help, I just pull out my trusty UW Real Estate Alumni Directory and find a friendly face.</p>
<p><a href="http://www.wreaa.org/%5B/url%5D">http://www.wreaa.org/</a></p>
<p>Or I can get updated on my fellow alums and their activities</p>
<p>Do you Ivy types think you are the only ones that network and maintain old school ties?? How narrow and naive.</p>
<p>Do you know how much more loyalty there is though. Dartmouth reunions have upwards of 70% attendance. When someone mentions a name, chances are you actually will know them or you know common people. Its much different than a state school; I know, my brother goes to UNC.</p>
<p>The UW RE alums have their own reunion every year with about 50% attending. Most large schools break down into smaller units so there will be more subgroups with common interests. We call it a conference so it is a tax deduction too!!</p>
<p><a href="http://www.wreaa.org/Conf%202005/index.htm%5B/url%5D">http://www.wreaa.org/Conf%202005/index.htm</a></p>
<p>Slipper, Michigan alumns are just as active as Dartmouth alums. The notion that small schools provide a better social atmopshere is completely incorrect. I made as many friends at Michigan as anybody could make at Dartmouth and I keep in touch with dozens of them on a weekly basis. The Michigan network is one of the top 5 to be found anywhere. You cannot have a better social experience than Michigan. And last time I checked, Michigan had 24,000+ undergrads. Wisconsin, UVA and UNC also have amazing social offerings that match those at Dartmouth any day.</p>
<p>Sorry, I've been away. I'll try to post another year or two of rankings today.</p>
<p>UM-AA has been awed by the faculty Wisconsin has been drawing recently. Maybe quality of life is drawing top scholars to Madison (in addition to the university's quality appeal); at any rate, Wisconsin's quality is well-regarded and its reputation is likely to be even better in the future given the increasing stature of their faculty.</p>
<p>University of Wisconsin is really impressive lately, especially in political science.</p>
<p>I always figured the rankings were utter bull. I go to Penn and I never, ever got all jazzed that it jumped to #4 in the rankings. Seriously, Penn is not equivalent to Stanford in terms of research in most areas (it's close but Stanford has the better facilities, faculty, grad students, and more money). Still, I spoken to a lot of prospective students and their parents and they are now considering Penn due to said ranking. Just goes to show that the rankings do mean something...</p>
<p>Must be the QOL in Madison because it is not the high pay or light workload. I think UW has always been strong at developing its own stars rather than following the Harvard model of hiring proven stars with tenure while letting the asst profs lanquish. UW will lose a few stars every year but the number of good young PHd's exceeds the good slots so there is still an opportunity to get good young people and give them the platform to become stars. Thanks to the WARF's $1.5 Billion in assets UW has money for research grants to faculty away from the competitive federal research grants.</p>
<p>Very much agree with Alexandre's point about how slowly universities change. This blows the gaff on a great many league tables: mostly what changes is the counting method or the fashionableness or otherwise of the college concerned, that's what the tables record year on year.</p>
<p>I agree that it is very hard for a college to change its position in the "higher ed ecosystem". Part of the explanation for shifting positions in the US News rankings since 1988 might be legislation passed by congress in the early 1990s that tried to standardize the way universities calculate graduation rates. A few years later, the US Dept of Education started sending an annual graduation rate survey that further defined the methods for reporting graduation rates. Graduation rates and freshman retention are about 20% of the US News formula. Just a possibility. For example, Penn State had a graduation rate of 57% in 1993. Now Penn State reports a graduation rate of 82%. That can't be for real.</p>
<p>if you average the past rankings of the top 20 posted in the very first reply on this thread, you get this: (assuming i didn't screw up)</p>
<ol>
<li> Princeton University 1.625</li>
<li> Harvard University 1.75</li>
<li> Yale University 2.125</li>
<li> Massachusetts Inst. of Technology 4.625</li>
<li> Stanford University 5</li>
<li> Duke University 5.75</li>
<li> California Inst. of Technology 5.875</li>
<li> University of Pennsylvania 7.375</li>
<li> Dartmouth College 8.625</li>
<li>Columbia University 10.5</li>
<li>Northwestern University 11.25</li>
<li>University of Chicago 11.875</li>
<li>Cornell University 12</li>
<li>Brown University 12.25</li>
<li>Johns Hopkins University 13.25</li>
<li>Rice University 15</li>
<li>Washington University 16</li>
<li>Emory University 16.625</li>
<li>University of Notre Dame 18.375</li>
<li>Vanderbilt University 20.625</li>
</ol>
<p>has anyone else noticed that duke always seems surprisingly high??</p>
<p>how many years is this for?</p>
<p>I'm sort of suprised, because what everytone considers the top 5 schools are ranked in the top 5 in the averages</p>
<p>just look at the beginning of the thread....it's for those years.</p>
<p>That list actually looks quite nice and as accurate as any arbitrary ranking could be. :)</p>