<p>Where is William and Mary? LOL.</p>
<p>^ I would have wanted to include all the top 50 schools (based on US News ranking) but it’s a long and tedious work. So I only included the top 31 instead. Having said that, there really is no point to gloat about the result of what I did, because all the schools in the list are said to be the best schools in the US. It’s not surprising though that what every metrics you use to rank schools for undergrad, HYPSM would always come out - cr</p>
<p>You cant convince me that trying to educate 15000-30000 undergrad students at a time will result in as deep of an intellectual experience as 5000 would receive. Rice, William & Mary, Tufts, Wake Forest, Wash U are all underrated compared to the giant publics.</p>
<p>Besides, Ive met too many alums of these large schools to be impressed. Its just common sense.</p>
<p>doctorb, a close mind is the greatest sign of a poor education.</p>
<p>
It’s in Virginia. :)</p>
<p>I think RML has done a lot of work to put numbers behind his perspective and I don’t necessarily think that people are giving him credit for the pretty decent job he’s done. RML, I applaud your attempt to do what USNews consistently fails to do by looking at outcome measures as part of the quality of an institution. I also think it’s wise to use outcomes as well as more permanent aspects of the university, the faculty, as large portions of your measurements. I agree with some other posters that removing ALL input variables is not necessarily a great idea, but I’m not surprised that you’ve done so as a way to step away from the USNews rankings which are, essentially, all about input variables.</p>
<p>That being said, the one poster who got it most right made the comment that you’re just “shuffling cards from the same deck”. I think most of the issues in all of these ranking games is not the weight of various components, and it’s often not the methods/ideology behind the ranking (since these are often clearly stated and so it’s quite easy to determine what the author thinks is important). Rather, the problem is that most of the data that has been collected sucks, plain and simple.</p>
<p>The WSJ Feeder report is biased toward certain schools, hurting places like Penn and Berkeley that send sizable students to their own programs that were not included. Payscale, in a valiant effort to remove the effects of other institutions, measures only students who do not attend graduate school, often leading to a very small sample at some of these schools, and more importantly, a sample which is not representative of the standard path for students at that institution. THES-Q employer rankings favors institutions with larger international populations and larger populations of students who choose to work abroad (and in fact, schools that are simply larger in general) by using smaller “boutique” type firms abroad (even if they’re large companies, their exposure to American students is as small as a boutique firm). Revealed preferences was a complex modeling system that makes some very interesting predictions, but ultimately fails to take into account a lot of decision-making that takes place before sending in applications and still produces a somewhat muddy picture.</p>
<p>The reason this whole game is a mess is because good, hard, objective data that measures what matters is hard, if not impossible to come by.</p>
<p>What this all really confirms is that without significant funds and a lot of research, we’re never going to get rankings which are dependable beyond lumping groups of 20+ schools together, in many cases. Everyone on this forum should take a step back and realize that this whole process really is personal and subjective, despite the best arguments by people fighting hard for their schools and schools they respect to receive notice. So can we all please step away from talking about “who wins” and instead talk about “what’s there” when helping students try and make good decisions?</p>
<p>I dont understand why people never include LACs in these lists. Williams, Amherst are HYP level. I know people who got into Princeton but not Williams, and people who got into Harvard but not Amherst. Middlebury and Swarthmore are probably as good as Brown, better than Cornell…I know people say you cant compare LACs to universities, but if you’re only comparing undergrad education anyway, its easy to compare.</p>
<p>
It’s because RML is exceedingly fond of using USNWR graduate rankings and things like the THES and AWRU rankings that don’t include LACs.</p>
<p>“Williams, Amherst are HYP level.” </p>
<p>No they aren’t. HYP, along with Stanford and MIT, are in a league of their own. </p>
<p>“I know people who got into Princeton but not Williams, and people who got into Harvard but not Amherst.”</p>
<p>It is certainly possible. I know people who were turned down by Michigan and accepted into Columbia, Harvard and Stanford. It happens, but it does not mean that Michigan is more selective than those schools. And selectivity is not directly correlated to academic quality.</p>
<p>“Middlebury and Swarthmore are probably as good as Brown, better than Cornell”</p>
<p>That equality/inequality makes no sense since Brown and Cornell are equal. However, I agree that Middlebury and Swarthmore are excellent in their own way.</p>
<p>“…I know people say you cant compare LACs to universities, but if you’re only comparing undergrad education anyway, its easy to compare.”</p>
<p>Not really. Last time I checked, LACs have no more than 10-15 faculty in any one department and as such, cannot offer nearly as much depth or breadth when it comes to academic courses. LACs simply have a completelydifferent model than universities and the two should not be compared.</p>
<p>Al- you just proved doc’s point with your statement. Open your mind that bigger may not always be better. Appalachian St proved that point.</p>
<p>
I got into both WA, and rejected from HYP. If they’re the same level, I’ll trade both WA acceptances for one from HYP. ;-).</p>
<p>
Swarthmore is as good as Brown since neither have real graduate programs.
Middlebury is 2 tiers down from Cornell.</p>
<p>Swish, care you share with the class how I proved Doc’s point? Where did I say that bigger is always better?</p>
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</p>
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</p>
<p>Oh, Alexandre, since there has been more than enough subtle hints in this thread, I believe you are in the perfect position to remove all ambiguity from your statements about LAC and “bigger is not better” </p>
<p>All you need to do is declare that, despite a smaller faculty and despite the absence of TAs, there is NOTHING precluding a LAC to offer an undergraduate education that could be superior to schools with larger departments. </p>
<p>By the way, perhaps it might help to ask yourself which schools are known to offer the best undergraduate education in engineering in the country. To make it easy, just think about six schools or universities. I’ll spot you three of the six … MIT, Caltech, Stanford … and now add the next three best UG engineering programs!</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>Must make the fact that you didn’t get in all the more embarrassing then. ;)</p>
<p>“All you need to do is declare that, despite a smaller faculty and despite the absence of TAs, there is NOTHING precluding a LAC to offer an undergraduate education that could be superior to schools with larger departments.”</p>
<p>Xiggi, most TAs at major research universities like Harvard and Cal are reduced to discussions and typically are more capable than professors at most LACs. That is not to say that TAs do not teach a handful of intro level math, english and foreign language classes, but it is extremely rare to have a TA tech any other type of class. At most top research universities, the actual teaching is conducted by faculty, so I don’t see the point of bringing TAs into the picture. </p>
<p>This said, I agree that in some ways, LACs can offer superior undergraduate educations to larger research universities because they are smaller and their faculties focus entirelyon teaching and expend vurtually no effort on research. By that same token, they also offer inferior educations to larger research universities. Most LACs students hit a ceilling before graduating from college. Overall, I would say that the top LACs offer educations of equal quality to top research universities…but in completely different ways. That is why I do not think it is possible to compare.</p>
<p>“By the way, perhaps it might help to ask yourself which schools are known to offer the best undergraduate education in engineering in the country. To make it easy, just think about six schools or universities. I’ll spot you three of the six … MIT, Caltech, Stanford … and now add the next three best UG engineering programs!”</p>
<p>The 6 schools that are known to offer the best undergraduate education in Engineering? That’s a tough one. You named 3 of the “big 4”. The fourth, of course, is Cal. Beyond those 4, it is difficult to pin down the other 2 that would form the top 6. I would say Carnegie Mellon, Cornell, Georgia Tech, Michigan, Princeton, Texas-Austin and UIUC. </p>
<p>In Engineering, LACs tend to be significantly weaker. Cooper Union, Harvey Mudd and Rose Hulman are generally considered the top 3, but neither of those three would match the offerings (labs, undergraduate research, faculty,depth of academic offerings etc…) availlable at the top 10 research programs listed above.</p>
<p>
Considering that a considerable chunk of LAC faculty were themselves TAs at “major universities like Harvard and Cal” at some point in their academic careers, I find that claim dubious and unsubstantiated in the extreme.</p>
<p>I will say this: we always discuss the benefit of going to LACs on this forum but there are disadvantages, like:</p>
<p>1) fewer people knowing where you are studying
2) worse class selection, and less depth in departments (many have transferred from LACs to national universities for precisely this reason)
3) for how difficult LAC X is to get into, a student might find better job opportunities graduating from National University Y, which is as difficult to get into.
4) Senior faculty are not as accomplished as comparable National Univ’s
5) Research opportunities are sometimes constrained
6) Too few people in your year, can make your college experience stuffy after 3 years.</p>
<p>Going to an LAC is a trade off, you forgo some of these factors and possibly more, for a faculty that is focused on teaching undergrads, in some cases smaller class sizes (a lot of top national univs maintain student:faculty ratios comparable to the best LACs), a college where you have more room to explore what you want to study, and a smaller class size so your environment is often more intimate.</p>
<p>After carefully readjusting the criteria and their weight assignments, and adding and factoring in other data suggested by our friends from the PRIVATE schools, the ranking of the top 31 universities (for undergraduate) has changed a bit, but the placement and rankings of the Top-5 (HYPSM) remained solid, and kept a distant lead over the rest of the universities. Berkeley stayed in the Top 10, Michigan is in the Top 20, and Emory, Vanderbilt and Notre Dame aren’t superior to Berkeley. </p>
<p>The criteria:</p>
<p>30% - School Prestige
*10% - Ranking of the Best Colleges (National Colleges Ranking)
*10% - Peer Assessment Score
*10% - Best Colleges: High School Counselor Rankings of National Universities</p>
<p>25% - Teaching/Instructional Quality
*10% - Best Undergraduate Teaching (US News)
*10% - Student Selectivity Ranak (US News)
*5% - Graduation Rate (WM) </p>
<p>20% - Quality of Products
*10% - Forbes Payscale
*5% - WSJ Ranking
*5% - THES Employer Review</p>
<p>15% - Faculty Caliber
*10% - Washington Monthly Producing cutting-edge scholarship & PhDs
*5% - Shanghai’s Academic Ranking Quality of Faculty</p>
<p>10% - Financial Resources
*5% - Endowment Fund
*5% - WM Research Expenditures </p>
<p>Here’s the Ranking:
**
-On the league of their own
97.45 Stanford
96.95 Harvard
96.95 Princeton
96.45 Yale
95.80 MIT</p>
<p>-Super Elite Group
90.55 Duke
90.50 Penn
90.10 Columbia
89.65 Caltech
89.65 Dartmouth
89.65 Berkeley
89.45 Chicago
88.05 Brown
88.05 Cornell</p>
<p>-Very Elite Group
86.25 JHU
85.55 Northwestern
84.70 Michigan
83.95 WUSL
83.80 Notre Dame
83.10 UCLA
82.75 Rice
81.45 Georgetown
81.10 UVA</p>
<p>-Elite Group
80.70 Emory
80.55 CMU
80.50 Vanderbilt</p>
<p>-Heading towards Elite Group (Up and Coming Elite)
79.35 USC
78.25 Tufts
78.05 UNC
76.35 NYU
75.10 Wake
**</p>
<p>Please take note that all these universities are very prestigious academic institutions and are generally considered the Top 31 universities in America.</p>
<p>modestmelody, thank you for noticing the efforts that I putted into this. Ironic as this may sound, I originally did this to prove myself wrong. If you’ve noticed, I have been constantly “annoying” posters on here who constantly tries to annoy me by skirmishing Berkeley (due to its large size). I cannot accept that even those less prestigious schools such as Emory, Vanderbilt and Notre Dame are superior to Berkeley, which I think is a super elite school for undergrad. I can accept all the ivy league schools to be superior to Berkeley, but not those 3 schools I’ve questioned despite that they have slightly higher SAT scores and graduation ranks. </p>
<p>I cannot “incorporate” LACs in the ranking primarily due to the fact that the criteria for universities aren’t applicable to LACs or are biased against LACs. For example, LACs cannot compete with HYPSM or even with the lower ivies in School Prestige. LACs cannot compete with ivy league schools in Financial Resources since universities conduct research in the highest form and quality, so correspondingly, LACs cannot attract the best faculty members, thus would suffer heavily on this ranking.</p>
<p>RML, I can not think a better way to do this.</p>
<p>By polling people, you may further refine the rankings by adjusting the weights of the five things you considered:</p>
<p>School Prestige
Teaching/Instructional Quality
Quality of Products
Faculty Caliber
Financial Resources</p>
<p>Let’s say that I would put them in the order of importance as</p>
<p>School Prestige 5
Teaching/Instructional Quality 2
Quality of Products 1
Faculty Caliber 4
Financial Resources 3</p>
<p>where 5 represents the most importance. Then you can take the average of the polling results to see what the weights look like.</p>