<p>Im not here to defend U.S. News and, as I suggested, U.S. News should NOT be the authority on college rankings. I was only trying to point out that their rankings are not totally arbitrary and their methodology does not change every year. Since rankings are not likely to go away, perhaps other publications should compete with U.S. News and provide alternative rankings. For instance, several sources rank MBA programs using different methodologies and no one publication seems to be the ultimate authority. Credible competition in college rankings would provide students with different perspectives and additional information about individual schools. One would hope, however, that a credible, independent, and unbiased source would produce the competing rankings; Professor Leiter is not such a source.</p>
<p>Quixotic,</p>
<p>I was at the Bethesda one as well, and I will admit that it was truly awful. Had I not been already interested in the University of Chicago or other ways to get information about the school, I certainly wouldn't have applied after that presentation, and I especially would have never thought to actually enroll, like I did.</p>
<p>I'm kind of suprised that chicago had such a bad presentation in your area. I've been really impressed with the way chicago advertises itself. Brown has also had really good presentations. The worst presentations I've ever seen were Georgetown's- their admissions officers were painfully dull and the presentation completely turned me off the school. </p>
<p>As for University of Texas v. University of Virginia, in all the non USNWR rankings I've seen UT has been ranked much higher than University of Virginia- in the Times Higher Education Supplement, UT is ranked 9th in North America (after UofC and before Columbia) and in the Shanghai Jiao Tong rankings, UT's ranked 36th in the world. I'm not saying that these rankings are in any way more reliable, just that University of Virginia is in no way definitively better than UT, and it isn't strange for UT to be more highly regarded.</p>
<p>The Shanghai and THES rankings are of research universities as a whole, and is not based entirely on a comparison of undergraduate programs.</p>
<p>COMPARE: <a href="http://thecenter.ufl.edu/Rankings-I/2005_Top25_Public.xls%5B/url%5D">http://thecenter.ufl.edu/Rankings-I/2005_Top25_Public.xls</a></p>
<p>and the private schools for those that arent internet-savvy</p>
<p>felipecocco,</p>
<p>I knew that the University of Chicago was a great school and I never held that presentation against them. Im glad to hear that our experience in Bethesda was probably an anomaly. My main reason for not pursuing Chicago was my medical school concern. Im sure that you will love the University of Chicago as it has so many excellent programs.</p>