Really curious, how prestigious relatively is this place anyway?

Colleges & Universities A-Z University of Washington
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<p>I am currently a junior here, and my freshman orientation was in August 2008. I remember the First-Year Programs director Grant Kollet saying to us in Kane Hall that we were accepted to the best school in the Pacific Northwest. Well, what does that mean exactly? Is it including Canada as well, or just the U.S.? Are we better than the University of British Columbia in Vancouver, B.C.? And what about the unusually prestigious Reed College in Portland, Oregon? How do we match up against them? According to the latest version of USNWR, we are #41 in the United States, and that sounds more or less reasonable in my opinion:</p>

<p>National</a> University Rankings | Top National Universities | US News Best Colleges</p>

<p>ARWU has us as #14 in the world, and that seems like a huge stretch, especially since it has us above Duke, USC, Emory, Brown, and Dartmouth:</p>

<p>North</a> & Latin American Universities in Top 500 - 2010</p>

<p>So I'm leaning more toward the #41 in the United States more than #14 in the world. And even if we are the best in the Pacific Northwest, what would the second best be? The same USNWR has no other schools in the Pacific Northwest in the top 100. The next ones down in the Pacific Northwest are the University of Oregon and Washington State University, tied at #111. Neither has a reputation for being very prestigious, at least around here. The next one down is Oregon State University at #139, which is already pretty low.</p>

<p>So is that really it? Is this part of the world really so short on good colleges that there is really only one decent one in the whole area and everything else is just okay? Places like California and the East Coast have better ones everywhere, and it's not like Washington isn't one of the richest and most advanced states. When I was in high school, places that people applied to as backups if they didn't get into UW were Western especially, but also WSU, Seattle Pacific University, Seattle University, and Gonzaga. How do those rank? They're nowhere to be found on the USNWR list, and they're also generally more expensive because they're private despite the fact that they're worse, and the ones that aren't private also basically require you to dorm because the commute is too long.</p>

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<p>It seems like you’re stressing pretty hard about UW’s rank lol. Well you’re in your third year there, so I don’t see why it matters that much. Among all schools, it’s ranked #41, but among public schools I think UW is in the top 10 or somewhere around there. UW is def #1 in WA state. I guess after UW would be Whitman, Gonzaga, or WSU, just random guesses.</p>

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<p>I’m not going to leave Washington so all I care about is it’s head and shoulders the top school to put on my resume.</p>

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<h1>1 in WA state.</h1>

<p>Respected public institution with strong engineering and science departments.</p>

<p>In state students tend to marginalize it, since it’s no stretch to say that everyone and their best friends get in. OOS attitudes are different. (Kids from most states aren’t fans of their own flagships anyway)</p>

<p>Good programs; a good student will take advantage of them while the average ones won’t be harshly punished down the road if they don’t.</p>

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<p>Credence to a one-size-fits-none ranking by magazine editors? By someone otherwise reasonably well educated?</p>

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<p>Most people would rank Whitman #1 in WA with the UW at #2. UW is probably #3 in the NW behind Whitman and Reed. However, they are all very good schools that offer very different experiences.</p>

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<p>^ And the very different experiences by very different students is why it’s nonsense to form a ranking, since it applies to no one!</p>

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<p>okeedokie, UW is so completely different from Whitman and Reed, I don’t see any reasonable basis for ranking them against each other. It’s like saying that red is better than blue and purple. These are all excellent schools. </p>

<p>OP, UDub is known and respected everywhere. That’s all you need to know.</p>

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<p>Who knows how far Whitman will take you outside of Washington.</p>

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<p>I’m in Cali and I’ve never heard of Whitman, and only heard of Reed through prestige, but I’ve heard of U-Dub. I feel most people not in the northwest think along these lines, so from the outside, U-Dub would be more prestigious.</p>

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<p>If you just want a job after four years, maybe UW is more appropriate. But if you want preparation for an advanced grad school education, guess which school is not in the top 100:

</p>

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<p>If U Washington offers such poor preparation for advanced grad school education, why is it the twenty-sixth highest source of future PhDs? Didn’t those people get adequate preparation? Granted it’s not highest as a percentage of the whole student body, but then the whole student body there is more heterogeneous than an LAC, and has many people with different objectives, and also probably, quite frankly, many students who aren’t smart enough to get a PhD. Nevertheless there are others there who can and want to, and they do. They produce more future PhDs than all but twenty-five other institutions in the whole country.</p>

<p>This is a list of where most PhDs actually come from (undergrad schools of PhD and Doctoral Degree earners 1994 to 2003, I believe) :</p>

<p>1 University of California-Berkeley 4,470
2 University of Michigan at Ann Arbor 3,134
3 Cornell University 3,033
4 University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign 2,931
5 University of Wisconsin-Madison 2,667
6 University of Texas at Austin 2,613
7 Harvard University 2,545
8 Pennsylvania State U, Main Campus 2,519
9 University of California-Los Angeles 2,454
10 Massachusetts Institute of Technology 2,078
11 Brigham Young University, Main Campus 2,049
12 University of Minnesota - Twin Cities 1,970
13 Michigan State University 1,917
14 Stanford University 1,894
15 Yale University 1,877
16 Ohio State University, Main Campus 1,876
17 University of Florida 1,863
18 University of California-Davis 1,829
19 Texas A&M University Main Campus 1,770
20 University of Pennsylvania 1,688
21 Purdue University, Main Campus 1,654
22 University of California-San Diego 1,624
23 Rutgers the State Univ of NJ New Brunswick 1,607
24 University of Maryland at College Park 1,592
25 Princeton University 1,585
26 University of Washington - Seattle 1,580
27 Indiana University at Bloomington 1,575
28 University of Virginia, Main Campus 1,567
29 Brown University 1,554
30 University of Colorado at Boulder 1,510
31 University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill 1,453
32 Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State Univ 1,386
33 University of Arizona 1,356
34 Duke University 1,313
35 Northwestern Univ 1,273
36 University of Massachusetts at Amherst 1,265
37 University of Chicago 1,263
38 University of California-Santa Barbara 1,251
39 University of California-Santa Cruz 1,209
40 SUNY at Buffalo 1,169
41 Iowa State University 1,164
42 Boston University 1,144
43 University of Iowa 1,138
44 Florida State University 1,110
45 Oberlin College 1,107
46 Columbia University in the City of New York 1,101
47 University of Missouri, Columbia 1,086
48 University of California-Irvine 1,077
49 University of PR Rio Piedras Campus 1,034
50 University of Georgia 1,011
51 College of William and Mary 1,005
52 Arizona State University Main 985
53 University of Rochester 983
54 University of Notre Dame 983
55 University of Nebraska at Lincoln 978
56 University of Kansas, Main Campus 952
57 University of Tennessee at Knoxville 951
58 North Carolina State University at Raleigh 929
59 University of Delaware 921
60 Miami University, All Campuses 904
61 Washington University 897
62 University of Pittsburgh Main Campus 881
63 Colorado State University 847
64 Louisiana State Univ & Agric & Mechanical 844
65 Rice University 842
66 New York University 842
67 University of Utah 834
68 Dartmouth College 817
69 San Diego State University 814
70 Johns Hopkins University 805
71 University of South Florida 794
72 SUNY at Binghamton 793
73 Auburn University, Main Campus 786
74 Wesleyan University 780
75 SUNY at Albany 775
76 Swarthmore College 770
77 Carleton College 766
78 University of Connecticut 764
79 Georgia Institute of Technology, Main Campus 757
80 Baylor University 756
81 Southern Illinois University-Carbondale 752
82 SUNY at Stony Brook, All Campuses 751
83 California Institute of Technology 738
84 Carnegie Mellon University 736
85 University of Oklahoma, Norman Campus 718
86 Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute 712
87 Tufts University 702
88 Georgetown University 699
89 Oklahoma State University, All Campuses 692
90 University of Southern California 692
91 University of Kentucky 690
92 University of Cincinnati, All Campuses 687
93 University of Oregon 683
94 University of South Carolina at Columbia 680
95 Texas Tech University 678
96 University of New Mexico, All Campuses 674
97 Ohio University, All Campuses 667
98 Temple University 664
99 University of Houston 647
100 Williams College 644</p>

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<p>“If U Washington offers such poor preparation for a future PhD, why is it the twenty-sixth highest source of future PhDs?”</p>

<p>Well, I didn’t know that UW’s percentage PhD prep was poor, but if it is, it’s because it’s huge. Get enough students together, and raw numbers will swamp small schools in any category. Some high school students will consider their percentage chances of achieving something at a given school.</p>

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<p>Their chances depend in large part on themselves. All those people who go there are not all the same, in capabilities or interests, before they even arrive on campus. The preponderance undoubtedly enter with no thought or reasonable prospect of obtaining a PhD some day. Yet thousands do achieve those goals. </p>

<p>YOUR percentage chances can only be benchmarked if the denominator consists of students who are just like YOU. In a diverse state university, with many students admitted to specialized programs geared towards immediate employment, and/or with a great spread of academic credentials among those admitted, the correct denominator for comparison vs. other dissimilar institutions is unavailable.</p>

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<p>Likewise, schools are not all the same. One thing we do here is try to help students get matched with schools. Some schools shine at professional prep, some at grad school prep, by percentage of graduates. Some HS grads don’t care about these percentages, knowing they want to go to a large school or a small school.</p>

<p>So we have presented two lists of PhD sources, one for those who care more about total production, and one for those who care more about the concentration of like-minded students. Enjoy!</p>

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<p>If it makes you feel better, UW is ranked #2 for public research university. #1 is UMichigan.</p>