I agree. I’m not really sure why the OP included sports in this ranking.
IMO, class sizes, student-to-faculty ratios, retention rates, etc… don’t have anything to do with academic quality. That’s being biased toward smaller schools. In fact, I thought Harvard was notorious for having massive freshmen-level classes.
Which is a good thing. Everyone knows that because of their arbitrary factors, public schools get unfairly burned.</p>
<p>tk, I will start by saying that I do not think this ranking is any better than any other ranking. </p>
<p>This said, I have a couple of comments on your post:</p>
<p>“That’s fine if you don’t care whether your intro classes are 300-student lectures.”</p>
<p>Can you please list a few intro-level courses at the larger universities that have 300+ students? Once you have done so, please list class sizes for similar courses at other top universities? </p>
<p>"…or if 20% of your classmates fail to graduate…"</p>
<p>Other than NYU, UT-Austin, Emory and TAMU, can you name me a university on the OP’s list that fails to graduate more than 10% of its students?</p>
<p>The 4-year graduation rate at Princeton (the OP’s #18) is 90%. Here are the rates at some of the state universities on the OP’s list (which all get a significant boost in his ranking, which does not measure graduation rates / retention, compared to USNWR, which does):</p>
<p>My source is the Kiplinger’s “Best Values” college site (a convenient source for these numbers). These are the 4-year rates, so presumably some subset of the remainder do eventually graduate (I don’t have the 6 year or longer rates at hand.) I would assume, however, that if 45% or 52% or 67% fail to graduate in 4 years, that at least 10% of freshman fail to graduate, ever, from some of these schools (for whatever reason).</p>
<p>As for the class size differences, I admit my reference to “300-student lectures” may have been a bit of hyperbole. My wife tells me that at UC-Boulder, her largest freshmen year classes were held in a movie theater with approximately 900 students. My own largest lectures at Chicago had maybe 50-75 students. But I really don’t know how many “300-student lectures” occur at Michigan, Berkeley, UCLA, Texas, TAMU, etc. The Common Data Set, section I3, maxes out at “100+”. Here are the numbers of “100+” student classes at some of the schools on the OP’s list:</p>
<p>I don’t think I’m going far out on a limb to say that class size is one metric where the top private schools significantly out-perform the top public schools. This isn’t a matter of being “biased toward smaller schools”. Some mid-sized universities (all of them private, I think) have average class sizes as small as some of the top LACs. Class size affects the quantity and quality of discussion, written assignments, and feedback from professors. So I think it is a important factor in assessing undergraduate academic quality. More important than the basketball program, anyway.</p>
<p>tk, the actual graduation rate for Cal is 91% and for Michigan and UCLA is 90%. Those are similar graduation rates to Caltech, Chicago, Emory, Johns Hopkins, Rice, Vanderbilt. Schools like Cornell, Dartmouth, Duke, MIT, Northwestern and Stanford graduate between 93% and 95% of their students. Only a handful (7 to be exact) of universities graduate more than 95%.</p>
<p>As for the class size statistics you posted, they are misleading. Private universities offer far more freshmen seminars and senior colloquia. Another misleading factor to consider is that most private universities offer the same lecture with the same professor to several sections. Those are not discussion sections, they are identical lectures. At public universities, that seldom happens as one professor will have just one section for her/his class. In both cases, it creates the illusion that private universities offer much more attention to undergrads when in reality, the gap is negligible. You really need to compare actual classes. For example, Principles of Economics or Economics of Finance or Calculus III etc… I did this exercise (very throughly I might add) a while back. Classes at private universities were roughly 30% smaller at the intro levels and 15%-20% smaller at the intermediate-advanced levels. It is not at all unusual for intro to Economics or intermediate Economics classes at schools like Columbia or Harvard to have over 150 students enrolled in them. Their equivallent classes at Michigan would enroll 250 or so students.</p>
<p>What is your source, and how does it define “graduation rate”? Graduation in how many years?</p>
<p>According to the Kiplinger tables, the 4 year rate at all the top publics (other than UVa and W&M) is less than 80%. At all the UCs, it is less than 70%. At all the Ivies, it is greater than 85%. I think this is a fairly significant difference and that US News is right to consider it.</p>
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<p>Well, yes. More freshmen seminars. Exactly. I think you are making my point.</p>
<p>One of the good things about big state universities is the number and variety of courses they offer. Michigan and Berkeley, for example, cover a large number of foreign languages. That might be great for a linguistics major with an interest in language typology and description. However, if anything, the large number of advanced, low-enrollment classes means that the numbers I cited probably understate the percentage of large classes in popular subjects at the intro and intermediate levels. </p>
<p>I admit, there may be too many big classes in these subjects even at some of the top private universities. We do need more, better data on how the class size averages play out in popular undergraduate classes. If small classes are very important to you, consider a LAC. Some of them (e.g. Haverford, Macalester, Middlebury) have no classes larger than 100, and very few with even as many as 50.</p>
<p>tk, I got my data from the USNWR, and I was responding to your statement that universities do not graduate 20% of their students. If you had specified within 4 years, I would not have responded to your statement because there would be no point. I guess schools like Caltech, Rice and Stanford, both of which graduate 70%-79% of their undergrads in 4 years (similar to Michigan) are also not that good. The fact of the matter is, there are many reasons why students do not graduate in 4 years. As long as the university does not cause the delay, I do not think the university should be penalized.</p>
<p>With regards to class size, I think we can agree that LACs offer more intimate settings. That is not the case with most major research universities, including the likes of Columbia, Cornell, Harvard, Northwestern, Penn and Stanford. At those universities, freshmen classes with 150-300 students are fairly common. Furthermore, in popular majors, such as Economics, Political Science and Psychology, classes will remain relatively large throughout. Obviously, classes in those popular majors will tend to be slightly larger at huge public universities, but the difference is not noteworthy. I remember comparing my Econ class sizes with fellow Econ majors at Columbia, Northwestern, Penn and Stanford and the difference was never glaring. </p>
<p>As for freshmen seminars, they may appeal to some but not to others. I think we can both agree that they are not a measure of academic excellence. Sure it would be nice to give students the option, but it does not enrich one’s academic experience.</p>
<p>I did not make a statement that specific universities on the OP’s list fail to graduate 20% of their students. What I wrote was this:
" [Ignoring class size and graduation/retention data is] fine if you don’t care whether your intro classes are 300-student lectures or if 20% of your classmates fail to graduate, as long as you get a winning b-ball team."</p>
<p>The data I’m seeing suggest, as I’ve said, that there are fairly significant and relevant differences between the Ivies and the top public universities. How significant and how relevant? Of course, that’s debatable. If Caltech, Rice, and Stanford have 4-year graduation rates that low (which I’m not saying is catastrophically low) then I suppose that is one respect in which they aren’t quite as strong as some of their peers. In other respects, they are excellent (as are some of the public schools on these lists). </p>
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<p>I disagree, and I don’t care whether they appeal to everyone or not. In my opinion, a first-rate university (or college) should offer small, discussion-based classes from the very first semester. College should expose all students, early, to close reading and discussion of challenging primary source material on topics of general interest to a well-educated person. If you’re not getting this, no matter how prestigious the institution, you’re being short-changed. If you wait until the 3rd year to get it, then chances are you are not fully engaging in active, liberal learning until you’ve begun to specialize. That’s too late.</p>
<p>Endowment should be measured as average per student, because the enrollments of universities vary so much in size. Ideally, debt would be deleted from endowment to make a more fair comparison.</p>
<p>“In my opinion, a first-rate university (or college) should offer small, discussion-based classes from the very first semester. College should expose all students, early, to close reading and discussion of challenging primary source material on topics of general interest to a well-educated person. If you’re not getting this, no matter how prestigious the institution, you’re being short-changed.”</p>
<p>I don’t disagree, tk, but then you are referring to the quality of general education that a college provides to its students. That is a consideration that almost never figures into the ranking lists made on CC. In fact, you seem to have a certain version of general education in mind, specifically, Chicago’s model. By that criterion, a list of the TRUE top universities would have Chicago and Columbia at the top, as well as a number of little-recognized schools that still provide that type of general education. At many schools, it’s not impossible to find, but a student has to take the initiative to seek it out. Few students will do so because most don’t understand or value what constitutes a liberal education. For that matter, the faculty doesn’t either.</p>
<p>I also agree with you tk, but class discussion in an intimate setting can be delivered in a regular classes. They do not have to be in the form of seminars. In my experience, roughly 25% of the classes I took in college had fewer than 15 students, all taught by professors. Those classes were virtually entirely discussed-based. Another 25% had fewer than 30 students and involved a good deal of class discussion too. Even some of the larger classes I had were broken down into manageable discussion groups (15-25 students) that met weekly.</p>
<p>As for graduation rates, like I said tk, if the university is not the cause of the delayed graduation, I don’t see how this should reflect negatively on the school. Some universities have more graduation requirements, encourage double majors etc… I don’t think schools like Caltech, Michigan, Rice or Stanford offer their undergrads fewer resources to graduate in 4 years. The logical reason for lower 4-year graduation rates is curricular.</p>
<p>If you look closer at the graduation rates, most colleges have a respectable graduation rate if you look at 4.5 years, instead of 4 years. There are some majors where it is very hard to graduate within 4 years, and some people need the extra semester because they changed majors and needed to follow a certain order of required classes.</p>
<p>If a college has a poor graduation rate for 6 years (which many do), then that is a major problem. Also, if a college makes it almost impossible to graduate on time because they have cut back on offering required classes, that is a major problem.</p>
<p>If a college has large numbers of students entering with AP credit, that makes it much easier to graduate within 4 years. In fact, UVa is starting programs to allow students with large amounts of AP credits to earn a bachelors and a masters within 4 years.</p>
<p>Colleges vary greatly in how they offer credit for AP test results - some require 5s, some give credit for 3s, some offer 8 credits for certain tests while others offer 3 credits, and some strictly limit the total amount of credit you can receive.</p>
<p>That’s probably because it’s hard to measure. Rankings invariably depend on measurement. Class size is just a measurable proxy (one of several). There is no guarantee that a discussion class with 10 students will result in better learning than one with 35 students, or even a really inspiring lecture delivered to 135 students. Nevertheless, I think class size is a relatively important indicator of undergraduate program quality. A Socratic approach to liberal education is time-tested (it’s been around since … Socrates). I cannot imagine it working well in anything but a fairly small class. Maybe an exceptional teacher can make it work with great material in a very strong class of 50 students, but I think that must be rare. </p>
<p>What ought to be happening in discussion classes is much more than information-sharing or even an exchange of diverse opinions. A good mentor can manage the attitudes and emotions that interfere not only with learning but also with civil discourse. These include shyness, showing-off, and sucking up as well as factual errors, logical errors, or biases. Lecture classes are not designed to expose any of that.</p>
<p>If the cost is the same, I’d definitely pick the privates over their public peers any day. I’d taken classes at UCB & UCLA and attended two privates. Rooms are more comfy; gyms are less crowded and more nicely maintained; easier to find open desks/chairs in the library; bathrooms are cleaners; professors are closer in the intro premed class (~150 instead of ~500 students in the lecture halls)…etc. It’s like between going to 24hr Fitness and Equinox. You probably get similar health benefit out of the workout but it’s a more pleasant experience at Equinox. ;)</p>
<p>@ArKhAiK, because it does well in the other criteria.</p>
<p>This ranking’s methodology is no less suspect than that of US News, ARWU, Forbes, etc. We could all find rankings that favor our alma mater (and come up with legitimate excuses for including X ranking but excluding Y ranking) that lead to a favorable aggregate ranking. If you don’t like this one, come up with your own.</p>
<p>Re: graduation rate, it makes no sense to look at 4-year rates when many students graduate in more than 4 years by no fault of the colleges’; these students take time off or work in a dual-degree program (e.g. about 15% of Stanford’s undergrads coterm, getting their BS+MS in 5 years rather than 4), etc. </p>
<p>Re: class sizes, everything over 15 students is the same. It doesn’t matter what your field of study is, 15+ students = lecture, not discussion/seminar. When you calculate what the average student experience is (i.e. take into account that small seminars affect fewer students and large lectures affect most students, so “75% classes under 20 students” is actually a useless figure), there isn’t much difference among the elite private universities, so it doesn’t help much in distinguishing them.</p>
<p>^I’d beg to differ. It’s simply nicer to sit at a premed class with 150 students than 400-500 students. I remember taking chemistry at Wash U; I could hear the questions my classmates asked. I don’t think that would necessarily be the case at a 500-seat hall, depending on where you sit.</p>
<p>^you forget that it’s generally less bureacratic and much easier to switch/double major in privates. that’s why so many students do all kinds of combos (double or even triple for example) at where I went. it’s also easier to make appointments for career, scholarships counseling…etc.</p>