Re: Chicago and Penn in the New US News Rankings

Colleges and Universities A-Z University of Pennsylvania
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I feel like the fault lies at least in part with high schools that rank. Of course colleges are going to use and report your students’ ranks, so you’re going to help some students but also hurt everyone else. If you think it’s worth it - perhaps because ranking students has improved academic performance overall at your school - then it may be justified. But at a school like mine - a top-performing, highly competitive non-magnet public school - it would have hurt much more than it would have helped, and they know that (thank god).</p>

<p>(I’m not sure why I used “you” as if I’m speaking to a school administrator…)</p>

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<p>All schools play the rankings game to some degree. Penn simply plays it better than others. Just because you’ve developed the notion that HYPSM are untouchable doesn’t mean you’re welcome to come to the Penn forum and not-so-subtly denigrate Penn.</p>

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<p>Choklit Rain - I don’t think I’ve “developed the notion” that HYPSM are a cut above Chicago, Columbia, Penn, etc etc. By pretty much any measure, these schools stand above pretty much all the rest in the college marketplace. </p>

<p>I also think my criticism is valid - it may not necessarily help a top college to rely so heavily on getting the top 10% of a HS class. In many ways, this is an example of gaming the rankings to an extent that it adversely affects the college itself.</p>

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<p>Why does penn’s reliance on the top 10% mean that it’s playing the rankings game? If you’re looking at it cynically, if ANYthing, the practice probably deters potential applicants outside of the top 10% because there’s an even slimmer chance they’ll get in, keeping the acceptance rate higher. </p>

<p>But then again, I see no statistical significance of 99% in the top 10% at Penn vs. (idk) 96, 97% for some of the other schools. Given the differences in class sizes, it honestly probably amounts to the same number of kids (really tough prep schools, athletes, development cases, whatever) that are getting those spots across the board.</p>

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<p>Not sure how it affects this discussion, but according to the Penn web site, out of the 22,935 applicants for the Class of 2012, “16,848 applicants attended a secondary school that did not provide rank in class.”</p>

<p>[Penn</a> Admissions: Incoming Class Profile](<a href=“http://www.admissions.upenn.edu/profile/]Penn”>http://www.admissions.upenn.edu/profile/)</p>

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<p>There are many, many schools that do not officially rank students, it’s more common than you’d think. That’s where the percentages come from.</p>

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<p>Based on the incoming class profile then, 16,848 / 22,935 = 73% don’t provide a rank?
So the 99% in the top decile number is based on the 27% that do come from schools that provide rank?</p>

<p>I wonder what this % is for the rest of the schools, but it seems that if USNews gives this category such a heavy weighting, it is meaningless given that only 27% of the applicants provided this data.</p>

<p>Student selectivity is 15% of the total score, and the decile portion in the selectivity category accounts for 40%; which translates to 6% of the total score. (.4*15% = 6%)</p>

<p>I am surprised this category has such a large weighting, and looks like actual acceptance rates or yield don’t factor into any thing in the USNWR ratings, maybe they shouldn’t. </p>

<p>Anyway, as if there could be any PERFECT tangible way to measure a school’s rank.</p>

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<p>Cue7, I don’t understand why you are getting so worked up about Penn rising in the ranks. What is the point in even looking at yearly rankings if you continue to view HYPSM as untouchable and perfect. You are simply allowing your personal bias towards the prestige of HYPSM prevent you from thoughtfully judging each of these schools on their merits. Sure, Penn might be playing the rankings game, but, I think it would be very naive to assume that most Top 20 colleges do not. If anything, it shows that Penn knows how to market itself.</p>

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<p>In educational quality? I disagree. I think Chicago and Caltech and some others (perhaps Penn, but I don’t know enough about it to say) are at the level of HYPSM in terms of educational quality, and maybe even slightly higher. Even in terms of selectivity, HYPSM may be the most selective, but that doesn’t necessarily mean that their student body is any stronger than that of any other top school. Even while Chicago’s admit rate hung around 60% in the 90s, they were popping out more PhDs than Harvard. And Caltech, despite having more than twice the admit rate of Harvard, easily produces more PhDs per student than any other university in the country.</p>

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<p>Yes, but it would be funnier if you said “pooping out more PhDs than Harvard”</p>

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<p>wait why is the number of PhDs/student relevant? I don’t know too many Wharton students even remotely interested in getting a PhD. </p>

<p>Even the average salary of graduates is a more interesting number</p>

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<p>PhD is a thing of interest. When I tell my friends I’m considering pursuing one they look at me like I’m insane. 5 years of voluntary poverty to come out and make as much or less than what many Penn grads are pulling in a few years out of college doesn’t seem rational. At least with med school and law school the pay days are huge when you finally start making money. Ivies are just more preprofessional, so the many brilliant students aren’t going to pursue a PhD when they can be filthy rich pursuing other ventures.</p>

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<p>who from on high ordained HYPSM a clear cut above the rest? saying Penn is a school for Harvard rejects or Brown/Cornell are the doormats of the ivy league really just perpetuates the same trite cliches. </p>

<p>For example, Columbia has won more Nobel prizes than Princeton and Yale combined…</p>

<p>Penn broke into the top 5 in the late 90s in USNWR and half of its class applies early, seeming to indicate that at least this portion of the class really wants to go there. Penn is not just Wharton; it has the #3 med school and a top flight genomics and computational biology graduate group, nanotech, econ, english, history, physics, combinatorics, algebra…</p>

<p>Caltech has the smartest student body in the country- where everyone is uniformly excellent- something you couldn’t say about any other school with the possible exceptions of MIT and Harvey Mudd.</p>

<p>Caltech and Duke both rank much higher than Yale in the Putnam exams, year after year.</p>

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<p>Does anyone know why Penn sucks in the Putnam exam year after year? Why doesn’t it attract any strong undergraduates in math or do these high performing universities have lots of preparatory classes for it?</p>

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<p>i saw that Duke does very well in this math competition, i guess math is not one of Penn’s strongest departments. with the Dean of CAS being a math guy, you would expect a stronger math dept. </p>

<p>i guess the wharton math whiz kids are not interested in such competitions? does Penn have an official ranking in these exams? Looks like the top 5 winning teams have not changed much in the last few years.</p>

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<p>I know Duke organizes a problem solving course specifically for the Putnam and has some pretty extensive coaching for it. Penn does have a stronger department in math than Duke, so the strength of the department is not the problem. One reason might be that Princeton is really close, so the best math students from the area would go there instead of Penn whereas Duke doesn’t have to compete for the really brightest kids in a similar fashion (assuming they want to stay close to home or whatever).</p>

<p>I know that internationally the Putnam is well recognized and the rankings was one of the first places where I started to look for graduate programs. I was quite surprised I couldn’t find Penn undergrads anywhere near the top and it even made be think less of the department before I had looked at it more closely. In the end Penn and Chicago turned out to be my top choices.</p>

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<p>Personally, I think that schools that do well in the Putnam only do so because they’re attention-whores who want to boost their reputations. At MIT, Caltech, and Duke, there are classes that prepare you for the Putnam - it’s a freaking competition, people, not real work.</p>

<p>All in all, Putnam scores don’t matter in graduate admission, except at lower schools where it can serve as prestige points. Rarely does Chicago have many students in the top 100 (although we did by luck get in the top 5 two years ago from the 1 team that competed), but last year, 4 students got into Stanford’s graduate math program, and they only admit about 20 students a year, with about 1/2 of that being domestic students. Similarly, the year before, 2 students went to Harvard, which composed about 1/3 of their domestic class. Clearly, grad schools value actual research more than they do performance in a competition.</p>

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<p>God himself, obviously</p>

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<p>Ok I posted this in another thread, but here’s the reason why I see HYPS (maybe not MIT bc it’s more of a niche school) as a cut above the rest:</p>

<p>After reading more scholarship about the university pecking order in the US, following a variety of rankings, meeting scores of graduates from HYPS, going to a good grad school, etc., I’ve grown increasingly convinced that those schools (HYPS) still form the gold standard in American higher education.</p>

<p>Now, don’t get me wrong, in certain specific areas, other schools can compete with the very top. Chicago, for example, does a tremendous job in terms of actual liberal arts education offered. Wharton, for example, places its graduates pretty much just as well as HYPSM.</p>

<p>At the same time, I don’t really believe that any other schools offer as good of an ENTIRE package as the top 5. In terms of financial resources, strength of faculty, social catchet, grad school placement, job placement, for connections and networking, etc., these 5 generally eclipse all the rest.</p>

<p>Yes, Chicago offers a great education, but at least in the American tradition of higher learning, a college is more about the education offered. Social catchet and preparing graduates to take on positions of power, however unfortunately, matters. Chicago does a great job on the education front, but it still lags in the OTHER goals that a top school fulfills, at least in american society.</p>

<p>Similarly, yes, Penn for example has a great business school and medical school, or Columbia has enjoyed great success with producing nobel laureates. In terms of the OVERALL package across fields, though, from what I’ve seen, the top 5 are a cut above.</p>

<p>At least in the american tradition of higher education, an elite school must contain top-notch academics, strong financial resources, and possess a high level of social catchet - the elite university in question must prepare its students to take positions of power, and it must be well connected to avenues of power.</p>

<p>In certain areas (Chicago for academics, maybe Columbia and Chicago for Nobel Laureates, Penn in business and medicine), other schools do great and compete on the same level as HYPS. OVERALL though, I don’t see any other US university doing so well across so many planes and categories that fulfill the tacit mission of elite american universities.</p>

<p>(Sorry I’ve repeated myself in this message because I cut and pasted in text from a previous post.)</p>

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<p>Cue7-</p>

<p>you raise some interesting points- in terms of who gets the best jobs (hedge funds/private equity/investment banking and institutional trading), there is no doubt Wharton + Penn undergrad would top just about any list- look at the bios of partners at the leading PE firms or the the principals of the II100 top funds- if you are talking politics- I would say Yale is the best, but a career in electoral politics is too random to analyze formally… Columbia is doing pretty well these days- with the sitting president, attorney general and governor of New York all CC alums.</p>

<p>about the Putnam-</p>

<p>Duke is awesome because it recruits international superstars… Penn could go a long way towards improving its prestige if it were to attract these students (foreign IMO champs)…</p>

<p>I would say the average Penn undergrad student is pretty similar in academic ability to the average Harvard or Princeton student- but the top 20 smartest students at Harvard and probably Princeton are definitely a cut above the comparable group at Penn. Granted this is a very small sample, but Penn needs to go out and find these extremely smart students so it can do well in national competitions, the most notable being the Putnam… also, the most accomplished math students at Penn are in the college or engineering, probably not in Wharton (owing to the restrictive curriculum at Wharton, which doesn’t allow much in the way of advanced math).</p>

<p>UChicago does well because of the tremendous reputation of its math department and the self-selected nature of the Chicago applicant pool (many very, very bright student choose the university for its intellectual environment).</p>