Student Opinions on the USNWR Top 30 Nat’l Universities

College Search & Selection
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<p>The website, Sparknotes, provides a lot of data about colleges, including comments that they have garnered from students at colleges all across the USA. </p>

<p>One of the questions that they ask is: “How involved is the faculty in your academic life?”</p>

<p>A series of choices were provided for students to respond to, eg,:
1) More than most. They know when I’m lying if I try to use the “my grandmother died” excuse for the third semester in a row.
2) Purely on school hours. We have a casual, in-class relationship. They see other students; I see other professors.
3) Not much. A secret service-like wall of TAs surrounds all of my professors.<br>
4) Not at all. I once saw one of my professors through a high powered telescope. </p>

<p>Most of the answers were for #s 1 and 2, but there were a few outliers. </p>

<p>Following are the responses for each college ranked in the USNWR Top 30. Keep in mind that this is not a scientifically done survey, but I suspect that the conclusions they suggest are broadly accurate.</p>

<p>“How involved is the faculty in your academic life?”</p>

<p>More than most , Purely on school hours , Not much/Not at all , College , # of Students responding</p>

<p>79% , 18% , na , Wake Forest , 56
73% , 16% , na , Notre Dame , 105
68% , 15% , na , Princeton , 40
68% , 23% , na , Vanderbilt , 47
64% , 23% , na , Dartmouth , 47
64% , 33% , na , Emory , 36
58% , 23% , na , U Chicago , 48
58% , 38% , na , Georgetown , 66
54% , 20% , na , Stanford , 50
53% , 27% , na , Tufts , 30
50% , 35% , na , U Penn , 54
48% , 26% , na , Yale , 82
44% , 53% , na , Wash U , 34
43% , 35% , na , Carnegie Mellon , 23
41% , 41% , na , Duke , 51
40% , 45% , na , Brown , 47
38% , 31% , na , Caltech , 13
38% , 54% , na , U Virginia , 52
36% , na , 28% , MIT , 39
33% , 61% , na , Rice , 18
32% , 50% , na , U North Carolina , 68
31% , 50% , na , Cornell , 52
28% , 59% , na , Johns Hopkins , 39
27% , 51% , na , Northwestern , 45
27% , 47% , na , USC , 64
25% , 67% , na , Columbia , 69
22% , na , 34% , Harvard , 217
21% , 59% , na , U Michigan , 95
na , 64% , 17% , UC Berkeley , 58
na , 49% , 20% , UCLA , 79</p>

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More than most? What does that mean? I’m sure the students responding to this survey have attended numerous undergraduate colleges to make a comparison.</p>

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<p>Hawkette,
These numbers don’t make any sense. This was a multiple choice test with only 4 possible answers. How can the percentages not add up to 100%? Shouldn’t someone who didn’t give one of these 4 answers count as a non-response, i.e., a lower N for the school, requiring a recalculation of the percentage of those who did respond so they add up to 100%?</p>

<p>I’m skeptical that “surveys” of this self-selecting kind, especially extremely low-N surveys like this one, have any value whatsoever. If this one did, however, the clear loser here is Harvard, which had by far the highest percentage of negative responses (categories #3 & #4), only 22% positive responses (categories #1 and #2), and at 217 responses by far the highest N in the group, suggesting a greater intensity of feeling on the subject. By contrast, most other schools come out in the 80-90% positive range (categories #1 & #2).</p>

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<p>I agree with blink.. especially CMU’s n of 23.</p>

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<p>cool thread, hawkette. I’ve looked at this before, and the results really seemed to confirm my intuition that certain schools place more emphasis on undergraduate teaching. </p>

<p>Big surprises: Harvard and Notre Dame.</p>

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<p>Percentage of students who felt it was worth their time posting their opinion on a college website: (survey respondents/undergrad population)</p>

<p>Harvard 3.23%
Yale 1.54%
Caltech 1.50%
Wake Forest 1.30%
Notre Dame 1.26%
Dartmouth 1.13%
Columbia 1.00%
Chicago 0.98%
Georgetown 0.96%
MIT 0.94%
JHU 0.87%
Duke 0.82%
Princeton 0.81%
Brown 0.81%
Stanford 0.74%
Vanderbilt 0.72%
Tufts 0.60%
Rice 0.59%
Northwestern 0.56%
Penn 0.56%
WUSTL 0.56%
Emory 0.54%
Cornell 0.44%
Carnegie Mellon 0.40%
UNC 0.39%
USC 0.38%
UVA 0.38%
Michigan 0.36%
UCLA 0.31%
Berkeley 0.24%</p>

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<p>me thinks an ulterior motive I smell…</p>

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<p>I don’t normally argue with people on these boards, since it seems like a pretty futile waste of time, but UCB grad, you really need to stop with all the data/arguments/facts you keep presenting to somehow always defend Berkeley and place it above all other schools. The post above, your most ironic, clearly places you in the 0.24% who are so insecure about the status of their school that they have to post on message boards defending it against the opinions of others. Get real, man. No school with 23,000+ undergrads can compare in faculty attention to students with a school that has 8,000 undergrads. It’s simple math. Berkeley is a great school. Notre Dame is a great school. You get more faculty attention at Notre Dame. End of argument. No one is debating the quality of Berkeley’s programs or whatever else makes a university great. This thread is about overall faculty attention to undergraduates. So sit back and accept that your school LOSES in this particular competition, and stop whining, above all else.</p>

<p>“Facts are meaningless! You can use facts to prove anything!” -Homer Simpson</p>

<p>This pithy little facetious quote could alleviate a lot of the debate that goes on around here if some people would form their arguments with ideas and not statistical surveys and similarly useless comparisons.</p>

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Well thanks for clearing that up, Hawkette…In my time at Berkeley, yes, I would agree that the vast majority of profs exhibit “purely on school hours” behavior…IMHO, there’s nothing wrong with that.</p>

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Haha…why don’t you just post about your school and don’t worry about me?</p>

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I realized the irony as I was posting, thank you. But, I’m not insecure about the status of my school…My degree has taken me very far…I’m just proud of my alma mater.</p>

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What did I ever say about Notre Dame specifically?</p>

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<p>That’s the most ironic part of indiejimmy’s little rant. :rolleyes:</p>

<p>This data is mostly meaningless–voluntary response error, tiny sampling, etc.</p>

<p>indiejimmy, if you knew anything about statistics, you’d know that UCBChemEgrad’s post is simply putting hawkette’s data in context (in fact, hawkette should have put that in the OP)–a tiny sampling (10% MIGHT be adequate), not to mention one that uses voluntary response, completely changes the interpretation of the data.</p>

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<p>If you had some degree of common sense, you’d be able to see that I was using ND as an example of a school that is favored by this survey more than, say, Berkeley, but that may be too much to presume on my part.</p>

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<p>I disagree that this is inaccurate because it comes from less than 10% of the undergrads. Usually national polls are taken with a tiny sampling of the population because it would be impractical to poll millions of people. This is the same concept only scaled down further… I think these numbers are fairly accurate. I have always heard that profs at Harvard are very inaccessible. Likewise, a close family friend is a junior at Notre Dame and has told me personally that it’s extremely easy to get in touch with almost all of her professors. This data seems to reflect that…</p>

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<p>Or, as per your posting history, you have a bias for ND. It’s ironic that you’d be criticizing UCBChemEGrad for “defending” Berkeley, when that’s exactly what you were doing for ND. I smell some hypocrisy.</p>

<p>At this point, I could criticize you further by asserting that as soon as a measure portraying ND as a tippy-top school surfaces, you’re willing to defend it (vehemently, at that) to any nay-sayers–but that would be a little mean. (Yes, this too is irony.)</p>

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<p>Er, how much do you know about polling? National polls are taken from random segments of the population, and for every x amount of people, there must be x amount of polled individuals. It’s a very complicated process, which is why it’s so costly to do a truly accurate national poll. 50-100 people is not enough, even on the smaller scale of an undergraduate population. (Any statistician would tell you this.)</p>

<p>Then you have the problems with voluntary response. tokenadult would probably be willing to post again a message re: why voluntary response data is meaningless.</p>

<p>And of course there’s the wording problem–the wording of the poll can greatly affect results. I think we can all agree that this poll is an extreme example of the wording problem (in an attempt at humor).</p>

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<p>Everyone has “some” bias and I definitely understand the reasoning for loving one’s school (heck I’m not even an alumni but I love mine already). There’s no need for arguing but with that said, this board does have some California bias (kyledavid was here when my friend was here looking for colleges a looong time ago and has almost 6500posts and is a firm Cal supporter/alumnus). I remember the two of you got into a fight once but you probably have forgotten that by now.</p>

<p>PS: UCB you said you graduated Cal in 2000, that makes you 30 years old doesn’t it? I haven’t graduated yet but I sure won’t be on here when I do :). Perhaps arguing with 18 year olds is not the best primary activity for someone who has “gotten very far” in life as it causes unnecessary stress and frankly, I don’t think it does anything in the greater scheme of things. I mean, most people already know Cal is an AMAZING school. Also, with Cal being a public school and all, only the best students would probably get in out of state and I think few would go there if they could get into equally selective same cost and higher ranked Privates. Thus, perhaps arguing and promoting Berkeley would be best on a major Californian message board with a lot of Californians who will more likely apply as well as attend due to them being in-state? I don’t know, that’s just what I would think if I were in your shoes. Who knows, perhaps you guys already do that and have a whole Bookmark full of message boards already.</p>

<p>I’m very tired and it is late, so I am basically speaking what I think a lot of people have thought but that is my decision so flame away, haha.</p>

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<p>Why do you assume that? I am not a student there. I am not an alumnus. I am not even explicitly a Cal supporter–I support the school and all its peers, esp. the publics that are often underrated here on CC. It may appear that I (and others) am a “fan” of it, but that’s only in contrast to those who are obsessed with top privates, which is the primary culture at CC.</p>

<p>And it’s not as though I have a “bias” for CA (esp. since I’m from the Midwest)–I argue in favor of many other non-CA universities when I see fit.</p>

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<p>Cheap arguments, no?</p>

<p>Imagine–going online and helping people out! UCBChemEGrad is very helpful to the students here on CC. You should check out the parents forum and you’d see many people like him–people who are successful grads of Harvard, Yale, etc. and who still find the time to come on CC to help others. (Northstarmom comes to mind.)</p>

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<p>I assume it because of way back when from a few arguments concerning Cal and also your past history in numerous Cal boards kinda says it all :slight_smile: Just start at the last page and go back. I posted an example but decided to edit it out. It seems wrong to take just 1 excerpt out of the many and I have no desire to post the hundreds of posts that display pro-Cal statements.</p>

<p>I don’t know why you would deny it, everyone has bias, like I said, and I’d be the first to admit mine. I didn’t label it as a bad thing, just that something new people should be aware of. </p>

<p>Also, Northstarmom does not promote a school in the way you guys promote Cal. From her past posts, I see a lot more help and a lot less arguing or selective picking threads/posts that have something to do with a school(defending/arguing for said school) or hanging around in that school’s own msg board. </p>

<p>Whatever, I think most people know what I mean. I just think it’s funny people come here to argue for years and years and I kinda see the previous poster’s (indiejimmy’s) point when he came out from not posting to address UCB’s posts concerning Cal.</p>

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<p>Gee, what a surprise. I heard something similar as well from several Notre Dame students (they were all in the College of Science). I concur that it is irresponsible to dismiss these data as “useless” simply because of the voluntary nature of the survey. I would think that voluntary surveys would be naturally polarizing, attracting the most enthusiastic and least enthusiastic students of a school in terms of their favorable impressions of, in this case, faculty involvement in undergraduate academic life. So, I would think that the data would then skew towards the side that has more support (i.e. the side that more frequently represents reality). Also, maybe a low number of student responses could indicate that students have lukewarm feelings about their faculty’s involvement. I know that at MIT, faculty are somewhat distant, but this is not a huge problem, since MIT students are EXTREMELY, HIGHLY, and INFINITELY motivated and utterly brilliant. MIT does not fare too well in this survey, but that is not something to be held against it, since the people who belong at MIT do not require as much out-of-class faculty assistance as, say, students at Notre Dame, who are, on average, less brilliant. </p>

<p>Yes, that’s right kyledavid, I just said something perceivably derogatory about Notre Dame. You know why? Because I am in touch with reality. Your claim that I have a “bias” implies that I favor Notre Dame over other schools, a statement that is completely false if you look at the arguments I make. I stand up for Notre Dame when CC’ers shame it for its Catholicism and football team and fail to give it the academic respect it deserves. So don’t accuse me of trying to place my school on a pedestal, like it seems a disproportionate number of Cornell and Berkeley students seem to do around here.</p>

<p>I challenge you to find the “irony” in that post.</p>

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<p>Just thought I’d let you re-read that for emphasis.</p>

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<p>As indicated in the opening post, the sampling here was not part of a scientific process. Many of the objections about the statistical basis of these results have some merit. I didn’t make up the question or the responses. There actually were 5 possible selections with one being too much involvement (none of these colleges registered at that level) and the sparknotes website only reports (probably the top) two of the answers for each college. I have reposted those students responses here and people are free to interpret the data as they see fit. </p>

<p>For my own interpretation, I think that the results reinforce impressions created elsewhere. For example, regarding other surveys done about the prioritization and quality of classroom teaching, the sparknotes responses reinforce the results of the 1995 USNWR Teaching excellence survey. </p>

<p>All of the Sparknotes Top 10 and 18 of the first 21 were ranked in the USNWR Top 25 for Classroom Teaching Excellence. 7 of the bottom 9 in the Sparknotes data did not rank in the Classroom Teaching Excellence rankings. Most impressively breaking the trend on the upside was U Penn while Harvard and Northwesterrn clearly underperform among those colleges that had previously been touted as strong in the classroom. </p>

<p>Ranked in USNWR Top 25 Teaching Colleges? , % of students who felt that faculty involvement was better than most colleges, College</p>

<p>YES , 79% , Wake Forest
YES , 73% , Notre Dame
YES , 68% , Princeton
YES , 68% , Vanderbilt
YES , 64% , Dartmouth
YES , 64% , Emory
YES , 58% , U Chicago
YES , 58% , Georgetown
YES , 54% , Stanford
YES , 53% ,Tufts
no , 50% , U Penn
YES , 48% , Yale
YES , 44% , Wash U
no , 43% , Carnegie Mellon
YES , 41% , Duke
YES , 40% , Brown
YES , 38% , Caltech
YES , 38% , U Virginia
no , 36% , MIT
YES , 33% , Rice
YES , 32% , U North Carolina
no , 31% , Cornell
no , 28% ,Johns Hopkins
YES , 27% , Northwestern
no , 27% ,USC
no , 25% , Columbia
YES , 22% , Harvard
no , 21% , U Michigan
no , na , UC Berkeley
no , na , UCLA</p>

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<p>It’s funny that you say this, Hawkette, because just last night dh (also an NU alum) and I were talking about this, and really, I don’t think either of us had contact with our professors aside from in the classroom. (And I was in an honors program with about 15 students.) And we had some great, world-renowned professors – but our contact was still in the context of having them lecture to us and answering our questions in the classroom. I don’t have a point of comparison, of course, but it’s really started to make me think about the character and quality of my NU education.</p>