@Churchill “two top US universities are Harvard and Stanford. Second band is UChicago, Princeton, Yale and MIT. Third band is Columbia, Berkeley., and Cal Tech. Followed by UMichigan and UCLA. The other Ivy’s have little or no global brand.”
Very inaccurate. No one thinks that (except maybe for overzealous Chicagoans…). When looking at both grad/reserch and undergrad strength, quality, prominence etc the consensus is more like this: The two top schools are definitely Harvard and Stanford. Followed by MIT. Then Princeton, Yale, Caltech. Then you have Columbia, Penn, Chicago. Then Cornell, Berkeley, Michigan, UCLA, Hopkins. (Berkeley loses a lot due to undergraduate standing. If this was only grad it would be much higher).
Chicago does not have a global brand anywhere near as strong as Princeton, Yale or MIT. Its brand is on the level of Columbia and Penn if not a bit lower, given that these two benefit from the ivy league brand. Also for undergrad the only ranking that puts Chicago really high is USNews and that is mainly because Chicago has been working hard to game the ranking in the past few years. But that doesn’t change anything. No one thinks of Chicago as a top 5 college, the top 5 are HYPSM no matter what USNews says. People look at USNews for the top 10, top 20 they do not take the individual spots as true. Case in point, Princeton has been ranked #1 since forever and Stanford has never cracked the top 3 in recent memory. Still most people choose Harvard, Stanford over Princeton (and Yale) and H/S are the undisputed top schools.
The only ivies with quite weak global bands are Brown and Dartmouth because they do not have strong, elite grad schools.
The numbers do not lie. I averaged out (equal weights) the Uniranks rankings (which aggregate multiple rankings that measure graduate/research strength) and an aggregate of multiple us college rankings I put together.
@northwesty Penn was #4 for many years in 2000s (which was a bit too high). The jump from outside the top 10 in the mid-late 1990s to #4 happened due to the amazing improvements that President Judith Rodin made to the University and also intent focus on rankings. Penn was able to sustain its top #10 spot since then and that is why it is now considered a top 10 school just a notch below HYPSM. Penn definitely benefitted from its jump from outside the top 10, into the the top 10 and its sustained top 10 ranking, just like Chicago has benefitted from that in recent years.
However, small moves within the top 10 do not change the perception people have unless they are dramatic changes supported by actual changes and improvement of the school and if they happen organically. HYPSM are the top 5 no matter what USNews says at a specific year. Columbia, Penn,Chicago,Caltech have been the solid #6 - #9 in peoples perceptions for quite some time now in some order or another and #10 fluctuates. This is because the perception people have of a school is not solely shaped by USNews. i don’t think that it is a coincidence that HYPSM comes on top if one aggregates all the college rankings out there. Like many did here:
Proof that individual spots do not matter as much is that Princeton has been ranked #1 for years and Stanford has not entered the top 3 since forever and yet Harvard, Stanford are considered the top schools nowadays. Nowadays most people know that Stanford is a stronger school than Princeton (or Yale).
Some goes with Penn, when it was #4 for several years, no one believed it was a better school than MIT or Columbia. People continued to choose MIT over Penn and choose Columbia more or less equally with Penn.
@penn95 I agree about HSPYM for undergrad, but @Chrchill is including all grad & professional schools. That makes me think that Princeton drops down because of limited grad programs, and both Columbia and Penn would move up because the the high quality across a wide range of programs like in Medicine, MBA, Law, Education, Engineering, Liberal Arts & Sciences. Thoughts?
@Much2learn Penn does not compare to Princeton or Chicago in global reputation. UChicago Booth is ranked second and Wharton third. Chicago Law school is a top four school whereas Penn law school is low top ten. Penn medical school is clearly much higher ranked than Chicago. So that’s two to one in favor of Chicago in the three key professional schools. Chicago and Princeton also clearly slay Penn in academic graduate programs, ranging from economics and political science to physics, math. Astronomy and most area studies and humanities. Chicago is at the very top of nobel prize winners globally.
Columbia has been slipping badly in business (ranked 10) and medical schools. But it’s clearly is a powerhouse in many other professional chools and academic subjects. It is Chicago’s peer in Nobel prizes.
Very interesting that this discussion focuses on schools as a whole and not measurments of the value added to students’ educations. DD and I have certainly used rankings as data sources (US News Global, ARWU and NTU are favorites). But our emphasis, like that of several other posters, is what the data tell us about the educational opportunities she will receive. Toward that end, we focus on the departments that are important to her, the professors that she’s likely to interact with, and the school/college that houses them. Overall measures of a university have much less meaning to us.
And, BTW, I am not opposed to “top” schools (Princeton is one of DD’s favorites). But my concern is for her education, not the world’s view of which school she goes to. The “top” schools have no monopoly on individual success.
@Churchill just not true. Princeton has a much bigger global recognition that Chicago and Penn. Columbia has a slightly stronger reputation and name recognition ( not much) than Penn and Chicago but all three are definitely lower than Princeton and Penn and Chicago are on the same level for global reputation. Also Chicago is not a top 3 college, not a top 5 college.
Also do you really think Booth is better than Wharton? The holy trinity of business schools in H/S/W everyone knows that. In business circles there is really not competition for which is considered superior. Just because Booth has been ranked by USNews higher for a year does not mean much. That said Booth has been doing very well lately. I do agree than Chicago law school is a notch up from Penn ( but still it is not on the level of H/Y/S/C).
Also Penn is most known for its professional schools but it does not only have top professional grad schools. It is ranked top 10 in quite a few social sciences, humanities, ranked higher than Chicago in English, Sociology, Computer Science and in many other areas ranked only one or two spots lower than Chicago on UsNews ( say for sociology, biology, chemistry, statistics).
Also Stanford has fewer Nobel prize winds than Chicago and Columbia. So you think Chicago and Columbia are considered superior to Stanford? Not at all.
@Much2learn I think HYPSM still comes on top when considering both grad and undergrad. Princeton still has some very strong grad programs. When looking purely in grad school I would expect this to change.
@Penn95 “I think HYPSM still comes on top when considering both grad and undergrad. Princeton still has some very strong grad programs. When looking purely in grad school I would expect this to change.”
I agree with that. When Princeton offers a grad program, it tends to be very highly rated. So I would rate Princeton higher at what they do.
However, I am struggling with when I look at @chrchill s definition: “I think there is no doubt that “all in” (graduate departments, professional graduate schools, undergraduate prestige, global reputation and breadth of academic offerings and graduate schools)”
How do you account for “breadth of academic programs and graduate schools?” Penn and Columbia have a breadth of high quality programs that Princeton, Yale and Chicago can’t match. It is true that many are more professionally focused, like Veterinary School, Dental School, Engineering School, Education School, Nursing School, but that is a lot of breadth of important subject areas where Penn is offering high quality programs that the others are not even covering.
I think I feel a bit defensive about Penn because many people seem to have the idea that because Penn tends to be more hands-on practical, the students are somehow not as intelligent. In reality the academics are also very strong, and the projects and experiences are an additional expectation, and not a substitute for book learning. As an avid reader, and printer, Ben Franklin understood the importance of combining bookish academics with real world experience in becoming educated. He established Penn as place where both were expected, even though it was long considered low class to go out and physically do things.
“The holy trinity of business schools in H/S/W everyone knows that. In business circles there is really not competition for which is considered superior.”
This is false.
If you are running recruiting for a global consumer products company, you are more likely to hire MBA’s from Northwestern than you are Wharton. If you are hiring for a media conglomerate, you will go to Columbia before you go to Harvard. If you are hiring MBA’s and you need someone with strong skills in econometrics you will go to Chicago or Sloan before going to Stanford (and certainly not to Harvard). Harvard and Stanford and Wharton are great for SOME kinds of finance, not all- Princeton doesn’t even have a B-school but its finance program (a plain Master’s degree) is significantly more rigorous in some aspects of quantitative finance than your “holy trinity”.
All MBA’s are not created equal. If Harvard, Stanford and Wharton were measurably superior as far as the performance of their grads- top employers would essentially empty out the class before “dipping down” to the other universities. And that doesn’t happen. Many elite employers would rather hire the top of the class from Duke’s MBA program than from the bottom half at Harvard, Stanford or Wharton- regardless of the focus of the role or needs of that particular industry. There are business schools with an 'interest group" or two in particular industries (which are really glorified wine and cheese clubs and resume padders) and then there are business schools with deep rigor in a particular function.
GE’s needs aren’t the same as KKR which are not the same as McKinsey’s which are not the same as Procter & Gamble.
And the idea of a holy trinity is absurd. I’ve been in corporate recruiting for over 30 years and the only folks who think that way are 23 year old kids taking their 3rd round of GMAT prep classes and afraid to apply to Kellogg because of the funny name.
@blossom If I can upvote #72 ten times, I would gladly do so.
Each school (business, medical, law or graduate) has its own strength in individual specialty. It is very important to know what each school is famous for. Harvard Business School arguably is the best business school in the world with its illustrious alumni list. But if I want to study quantitative finance and want to get a job at Renaissance Technologies, HBS may not be my optimal choice…
@85bears46. The speciality differentiation is a lot more pronounced among business schools than law schools. There is a clear top five law school group. Yale – the top law school – is the only one that really is markedly different in emphasis and graduate deployment. While there are some differences between Harvard, Stanford, Chicago and Columbia, especially in culture, they are very similar. Graduates from all five schools do exceptionally well.
Remember the New York Times reporting everyone was talking about 4 weeks ago on CC (see link below)?
I looked at the chart of family income vs student income at age 34. For the 12 Ivy Plus schools (Ivy + S.M.Chi.Duke), the highest student median income goes to MIT, followed by Penn and Princeton, with UChicago in the distance last place. I was surprised.
As to what ranking is the best, I think any ranking will let you pick a segment of 30-50 schools to focus on. The rest is irrelevant to a particular kid.
@eiholi Did the article adjust for cost of living differences by region of employment? For example, if more Chicago grads stay in the midwest, that would make a big difference, as salaries tend to be lower than on the coasts. Plus, Chicago lacks various high-paying undergraduate majors in engineering and business that might affect overall salary results based only on a 4-year degree.
@chrchill My son was very interested in Berkeley, until he toured. Of all the campuses we visited, he thought it appeared more run down and less well kept, and the tour was not impressive to him in general. Plus we heard mostly negatives- about budget crunch, class availability, housing shortage… He decided not to apply. Maybe that’s how they weed out anyone who doesn’t already love Cal?