<p>Rice is only ranked low in the international ratings because of its graduate programs. The international ratings consider graduate school and from what I have heard Rice does not have all that great of a graduate program. It instead decided to focus on undergraduate education. So it sacrificed a few places in the ratings to give its underclassmen a better education.</p>
<p>i read on some website this year that rice ranked 10th in the nation among academics...could be true...could be false....but i suggest you take everything you read with a grain of salt...</p>
<p>:eek: Thank goodness that the kids actually at Rice don't spend their time fretting about stuff like this! Somewhere in earlier threads this was discussed at length.... but, basically, international rankings favor the ivy league, (because they have long history), and big Publics like U. of Mich, because their sheer size (plus quality) means they produce lots of research and enroll lots of international students. Ask yourself, how much do you know about small (undergrads less than 3000) universities in Australia, Canada, or other countries???
And, in real life, it's all about connections and experiences and talent, not about rankings. Your experiences (research, internships, projects, jobs, classwork) , connections (recommendations from profs, direct links from your internships, research etc.) and talent (your hard work, focus, interest) are what help you get your first real job, or placement in great grad school. So, forget "prestige" - international or local. Just find a great school that fits you well.
P.S.
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...and from what I have heard Rice does not have all that great of a graduate program
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At the grad level, what matters is connections, (what prof you work with), and the research you do. Forget what you've "heard"... when, and if, you go to graduate school, you will find the right prof to work with - whether it is at a school like University of Mississipi, or Harvard. The name of the school will not matter as much as the prof and/or department.</p>
<p>i dont think anyone knows what he/she is talking about. i mean, how can one actually invalidate a ranking? lets think, could it be by looking at another ranking? pretty obvious that the answer is no, unless its clear that one reveals the other is seriously flawed and fixes it. </p>
<p>even if you went to rice, you still have little conception of where it should be placed according to other schools. no one really knows how to rank. we dont have a way to show that certain methods of education are really better than other methods. all the studies and experiments in this area are very bad. the studies usually are biased from the start and the experiments are almost always not truly controlled experiments. </p>
<p>even if you factor in other things, such as prestige, or public opinion, which you could get a pretty accurate measure of by asking a lot of people (no brainer), how are you supposed to weight them? the final proportion the ranking assigns to a factor like this, even if perfect, is completely arbitrary. should it be 10, 15, maybe 30%? who knows?</p>