<p>Below are the Top 50 universities in the US. After each university, list out what programs/departments your university has the greatest influence and strengths in.
Please copy and paste the entire list before adding a program/department. Also some universities are well renowned for numerous departments ie Harvard and Stanford. Try to narrow it down to their most well-known programs.</p>
<p>Princeton University
Harvard University
Yale University
Columbia University
Stanford University
University of Chicago
Duke University
Massachusetts Institute of Technology
University of Pennsylvania
California Institute of Technology
Dartmouth College
Johns Hopkins University
Northwestern University
Brown University
Washington University in St. Louis
Cornell University
Vanderbilt University
Rice University
University of Notre Dame
Emory University
Georgetown University
University of California--Berkeley
Carnegie Mellon University
University of California--Los Angeles
University of Southern California
University of Virginia
Wake Forest University
Tufts University
University of Michigan--Ann Arbor
University of North Carolina--Chapel Hill
Boston College
Brandeis University
College of William and Mary
New York University
University of Rochester
Georgia Institute of Technology
Pennsylvania State University--University Park
University of California--Davis
University of California--San Diego
Boston University
Lehigh University
Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute
University of California--Santa Barbara
University of Illinois--Urbana-Champaign
University of Wisconsin--Madison
University of Miami
Yeshiva University
Northeastern University
University of California--Irvine</p>
<p>Just going off the reputation of the schools. I think it’s hard to name a “top department” for schools in or near the Top 10…they’re just so well-rounded it would almost be an insult to name one department as superior to the others.</p>
<p>Princeton University
Harvard University
Yale University
Columbia University
Stanford University
University of Chicago - Economics
Duke University - Biomedical Engineering
Massachusetts Institute of Technology - Engineering/Physical Sciences
University of Pennsylvania - Business
California Institute of Technology - Physics
Dartmouth College
Johns Hopkins University - Biological Sciences/Biomedical Engineering
Northwestern University
Brown University - Liberal Arts
Washington University in St. Louis - Biological Sciences
Cornell University
Vanderbilt University
Rice University - Engineering/Physical Sciences
University of Notre Dame
Emory University
Georgetown University - Political Science/International Relations
University of California–Berkeley
Carnegie Mellon University - Computer Science/Engineering
University of California–Los Angeles
University of Southern California
University of Virginia
Wake Forest University
Tufts University
University of Michigan–Ann Arbor
University of North Carolina–Chapel Hill
Boston College
Brandeis University
College of William and Mary
New York University
University of Rochester
Georgia Institute of Technology - Engineering
Pennsylvania State University–University Park
University of California–Davis
University of California–San Diego
Boston University
Lehigh University
Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute
University of California–Santa Barbara
University of Illinois–Urbana-Champaign
University of Wisconsin–Madison
University of Miami
Yeshiva University
Northeastern University
University of California–Irvine</p>
<p>Your “top fifty” list is rather odd. If you look at where faculty members at Harvard, Yale and Princeton got their undergraduate degrees, the names you see are Reed, Beloit, Oberlin, Occidental, Whitman, Amherst, Williams, Swarthmore, Haverford, Kenyon, Grinnell, Union, Colby, Bowdoin, Colgate and Wesleyan. </p>
<p>Mega-size research universities are good at many things, but undergraduate education is not one of them.</p>
<p>If I were going to approach this topic systematically, I’d focus on several factors:</p>
<p>Which majors are most popular? (indicators might include the USNWR “Most Popular Majors” listings or the Common Data Set Section J “Degrees Conferred” percentages")</p>
<p>Which majors/departments are highly ranked? (indicators might include the USNWR or NRC graduate program rankings)</p>
<p>Which majors/departments have the strongest outcomes? (indicators might include PhD productivity adjusted for institution or program size)</p>
<p>One also could look at the distribution of star faculty, the number of courses offered, facilities, etc.</p>
<p>Unfortunately, these indicators are problematic. Even if the data were up-to-date, comprehensive, and accessible … and even if we could agree on how to count it … it would be challenging for each of us to systematically identify the “best” programs for even one or a few schools.</p>
<p>Another thing no one’s mentioned is the problem with using USNews to determine the ‘top 50’ universities in the U.S. </p>
<p>The list is variable from year to year, and second, it doesn’t include at least one university that I think many would classify a top 50 (UT-Austin)</p>
<p>I think beyphy brings up a good point about UT Austin and the rankings variability. I think USNews was going for shock factor to sell more issues this time around. It seems the schools in the 35-60 range cant seem to find their place. For example, here are some schools whose rankings changed a lot.</p>
<p>UT Austin was 45 now 52</p>
<p>Penn State was 45 now 37</p>
<p>Univ of Washington was 42 now 52 (ouch!)</p>
<p>Univ of Florida was 55 now 49</p>
<p>IMO the whole thing is super stupid. Obviously I’m biased, but I don’t know of anyone that would rank Penn Sate 37 and UT Austin 52.</p>
<p>Really? I haven’t done a systematic study of this, but my rough sense of the academic fields I’m familiar with is that you’re sorely mistaken.</p>
<p>Just to confirm my impressions, I did a quick survey of the c.v.'s of the faculty in Princeton’s philosophy department, a field I’m familiar with. The overwhelming majority got their undergraduate degrees from major research universities: Harvard 4, Princeton 2, Cambridge 2, Oxford, University College London, Melbourne, Notre Dame, Goethe University Frankfurt, Rutgers, Dartmouth, Arizona, Fribourg, National University of Ireland, Columbia, Monash. </p>
<p>LACs were also represented: Swarthmore 2, Calvin College </p>
<p>That’s research universities 23, LACs 3. Now I suppose you could say that means LACs are strongly overrepresented, since they produce only about 3% of the output of Bachelors degrees. I’ll grant you that much. But the research universities must be doing something right at the undergrad level as well. And it’s certainly a mistake to imply, as your post does, that a majority of faculty at top research universities got their undergrad degrees at LACs. At least that’s not the case in philosophy. If it’s different in other fields, I’d like to see evidence of it.</p>
<p>LACs have a higher percentage of students who get PhD’s. That doesn’t mean they’re getting into good PhD programs however, and hence, doesn’t mean they’re getting into top departments after they graduate.</p>
<p>I think this is encouraging the wrong approach for undergrads.</p>
<p>With the exception of a few areas (arts/dance/theater, nursing, engineering) for the most part a liberal arts education’s purpose is breadth of study. Only 1/3 of a students credits are actually earned in the major - the other 66% are in general education requirements and distribution/divisional electives. That’s why I somewhat disagree with the strategy of trying to find the “best” college for a student’s major, when their major is something mundane like anthropology, psychology, math, etc. </p>
<p>Of course, there are exceptions, which is why I said “somewhat.” One would be a student sufficiently advanced in math that she might exhaust the course offerings at an average LAC by sophomore or junior year, and may need to go to a stronger LAC or a large university so she can take graduate courses. Or an anthropology major who has already been on several digs and needs to go somewhere he can be intellectually nurtured in research as well as class. But for 95% of students not majoring in something like nursing, arts, or engineering, a good school is probably just fine.</p>
<p>Plus, so many students change their major - sometimes drastically. It’d be a shame for someone to pick a school they didn’t really like simply because it has a strong psychology department only for them to decide to major in political science by the end of freshman year.</p>
<p>That depends on the student’s post-graduation goals.</p>
<p>A student intending to go to PhD study in the subject, or employment where academic study in one’s major (or minor or other academic interests) matters (e.g. teaching some subject at the high school level, actuarial work, computer software, or jobs which any obviously pre-professional major aims for) may emphasize offerings in the major much more than a student whose post-graduation goals do not depend on one’s major (medical school, law school, employment in jobs that look for non-specific bachelor’s degree holders).</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>A student who may change major should look for schools that have decent offerings in the full range of majors that the student may want to change to. That may be a harder college selection problem than for a student who will not change major.</p>
<p>It doesn’t mean they are not getting into good PhD programs, either.
As far as I can tell, good data simply isn’t available to identify clear patterns.</p>
<p>This question interests me. My hypothesis is that it’s mostly a numbers game. LACs produce about 3% of the Bachelors degrees, and we’ve seen that their graduates go on to earn PhDs at a higher rate than graduates of research universities. But starting from that small base of 3% of all Bachelors’ degrees, they’ll almost inevitably end up holding a small minority of faculty positions, even if they are getting into top graduate programs.</p>
<p>And some of them must be, at least in some disciplines. In post #11, I pointed out that 3 of the 26 Princeton philosophy professors whose undergraduate institution could be identified from the departmental website had earned their undergraduate degrees at LACs. (I’m including here only full, associate, and assistant professors, not lecturers, visiting faculty, or other non-core positions). But that’s about 11.5%, well over the 3% of Bachelor’s degrees produced by LACs.</p>
<p>In Princeton’s math department, however, all 29 professors whose undergraduate institution could be identified earned their first degrees at research universities, none at LACs.</p>
<p>LACs are more strongly represented in Princeton’s history department, where 9 of 47 professors have undergraduate degrees from LACs (Carleton 2, Amherst, Williams, Hamilton, Smith, Wellesley, Wesleyan, Ripon). That’s 19.1% from LACs, really quite a strong representation for LACs.</p>
<p>So my preliminary hypothesis is that it probably varies by field, but overall LAC grads are probably represented in quite large percentages at the highest levels of academia relative to the tiny share of Bachelor’s degrees produced by LACs. But that still leaves LAC grads as a small minority of all faculty at such institutions. Even if they’re earning PhDs from top grad programs at impressive rates relative to graduates of research universities, there are just so few of them going in that their numbers coming out the other end of the pipeline are still quite small.</p>
<p>I’d say math for Princeton, Electrical engineering and Computer Science for Stanford, Econ for UChicago, Business for Penn, All engineering for MIT and Caltech, liberal arts for Brown, then the rest are pretty much just great all around with no department that really is distinctive.</p>
<p>Based on the earnings potential?<br>
In my opinion that is fairly irrelevant to the value of PhD productivity as an academic outcome (or department quality) metric. Whether it pays off or not for most grad students, earning a PhD is a difficult academic task that requires motivation and preparation, which presumably have a direct relationship to the quality of undergraduate work.</p>
<p>If you don’t buy that, fine. What is a better, available outcome metric for the quality of undergraduate departments? Not earnings (which research has shown to be unrelated to the choice of college). You could look at major awards, but the number of people who receive them is much smaller than the number who get doctorates. </p>
<p>Law and medical admissions seem to be driven largely by GPAs and MCAT scores, which telegraph the selectivity of the feeder colleges. I don’t think we have good data on med school completions, which might tell us something (although not necessarily about the quality of specific departments, since pre-med students major in so many different things).</p>
<p>^ yeah right. Real life is working 9-5 behind a cubicle all day doing the same repetitive crap, while being dangled with hopes of promotion within an organization.</p>