The TRUE Top 25 Universities in the US

tk21769 · February 23, 2012, 4:31am

That’s one factor. Chicago’s Core isn’t a set of random distribution requirements. It’s an integrated, well-designed curriculum that has been refined for decades, accompanied by a rather distinctive approach to undergraduate teaching.

That doesn’t necessarily add up to the “best” undergraduate education in the United States among the major research universities. A handful of other schools offer a combination of equally good faculty, equally good facilities, even more talented students, and better social connections. But what Chicago offers is arguably the best for a certain kind of student, one who is interested above all in a liberal education and is willing to give 4 years of single-minded attention just to that.

It is probably the most LAC-like of the major research universities. I don’t know another school its size with a better combination of small classes, top faculty who actually teach undergraduates (and are rewarded for doing it well), and minimal use of TAs. Every undergraduate professor is appointed directly to “The College”; there are no undergraduate departments per se. This reinforces the interdisciplinary approach to big questions at the heart of the undergraduate curriculum. Course materials are almost always primary source documents (not textbooks). Reading loads are heavy, discussions and writing assignments frequent, with abundant feedback from professors. The place seems to have, working in the background, a sort of de facto Jedi Council of old guard faculty who ensure continuity of instructional best practices (down to the arrangement of classroom tables) going back to the days of the famous Hutchins College.

Chicago for years has produced the highest number of PhDs of any research university other than CalTech or MIT. More Nobel laureates have been affiliated with Chicago than any other US institution except Columbia (a much larger institution). Entire academic disciplines and “schools” have been defined or re-defined at the University of Chicago.

At the beginning of every academic year, a Chicago professor delivers an Aims of Education address to incoming students. Many of them are posted to the university’s web site ([Aims</a> of Education Addresses | University Reports & Documents | The University of Chicago](<a href=“Page Not Found | University of Chicago”>Page Not Found | University of Chicago)). Dennis J. Hutchinson’s 1999 address puts the Core curriculum in context and otherwise does a good job of describing the special qualities of Chicago’s approach.

[Dennis</a> J. Hutchinson | The Aims of Education Address | The University of Chicago](<a href=“http://www.uchicago.edu/about/documents/aims_of_education/199909_hutchinson.shtml]Dennis”>http://www.uchicago.edu/about/documents/aims_of_education/199909_hutchinson.shtml)

NYU2013 · February 23, 2012, 9:36am

"*no campus

*high tuition/high levels of student indebtedness

*high admit rate

*low endowment (relative to private universities.)"

Yet, the majority of this ranking came from academic quality. None of which has anything to do with anything you listed.

And I didn’t realize admit rates around 30% (25ish% for Stern/CAS/Tisch) were high… Last I checked, UMichigan has much higher admit rates… But I don’t say you trying to say UM isn’t a great school.

NYU is academically excellent. The faculty in many departments is excellent. I don’t see what your problem is. The cost of a university and/or not having a campus doesn’t tell you anything about the overall quality of school, let alone its educational quality.

phantasmagoric · February 23, 2012, 12:43pm

^ but people assess universities with many criteria, (some of) the most important of which include having a campus and being able to support students financially. NYU fails on both fronts.

As always JamieBrown/japanoko/JohnAdams12/whatever, you give a derisive response without giving a response at all. Why don’t you use a little critical thinking and actually say something that contributes to the discussion?

tk21769,

Why is it a factor? Why does Chicago focus on the humanities in its core?

To be clear, a small handful provides a better combination of all of the above. Chicago is far from the top in this respect.

Of course, but that’s true of every school (“fit”). That doesn’t mean a liberal education is better.

<h1>Nobels isn’t really related to the quality of the institution itself. There’s correlation, of course.</h1>

Again, how does this matter? FWIW, its PhD production is indistinguishable from Yale, Reed, Oberlin, and Bryn Mawr, and in that criterion there’s little difference between Chicago and many other schools like Amherst, Williams, Stanford, Rice, Grinnell, Pomona, etc. So this fact does not make Chicago the “best for undergraduate education.”

jkreine · February 23, 2012, 12:52pm

Guys, ModernMan is a ■■■■■ who posts anti-Princeton comments. Do not take him seriously.
Princeton is the most selective Ivy League ([Nation’s</a> most selective college isn’t in the Ivy League - The Business Journals](<a href=“http://www.bizjournals.com/bizjournals/on-numbers/scott-thomas/2011/12/nations-most-selective-college-isnt.html]Nation’s”>http://www.bizjournals.com/bizjournals/on-numbers/scott-thomas/2011/12/nations-most-selective-college-isnt.html)).
Again, do not feed the ■■■■■.

phantasmagoric · February 23, 2012, 12:55pm

^ Princeton isn’t the most selective. That has partly to do with its yield. Harvard and Yale are definitely more selective. (And no, acceptance rate has little to do with selectivity.)

jkreine · February 23, 2012, 1:01pm

Fine, but Princeton is number 3. (Or at least tied with Stanford at 3). No one serious would deny that.

NYU2013 · February 23, 2012, 1:04pm

It may not have a campus, true. And it many not support many of its students as well as other universities. But that’s no reason to discredit it as an excellent academic institution. I don’t see USC, UCLA or some other large publics as being necessarily superior to NYU; NYU is stronger in some subjects, whereas USC and so on and so forth, are stronger in others.

Maybe NYU ought not be as high as it is on this ranking if you want to consider campus, finances, sports, and so on and so forth. But solely in terms of academics, there’s no reason to discredit NYU as being “mediocre” or having “average academics”.

phantasmagoric · February 23, 2012, 2:19pm

I’m never one to come to USC’s defense, but in this case I can say this: at least USC takes care of its students. It’s a huge private university and still manages to have adequate financial aid. In fact, it’s almost as large as NYU (about 90%) and has a marginally larger endowment (by $800 million), yet it does a far better job recruiting a high-quality student body, because it actually uses its financial resources to help students attend (and no, you can’t reduce this simply to SAT scores and high school rankings). Sure USC, UCLA, NYU, etc. each have their own academic strengths, but IMO that matters little when you can’t even manage to matriculate students that aren’t rich or that don’t take on massive debt. Whether you want to admit it or not, this significantly affects the quality of the student body. It also matters less when you don’t even have a campus.

I wouldn’t say “mediocre,” but “average” or “a bit above average” is about right.

NYU2013 · February 23, 2012, 2:51pm

How can a world-leading research university, with world-leading professors, who teach the undergraduate body and not just the graduate students, have “average” academics? By that token, Tufts, William & Mary, and the like ought have “average” academics.

Not only that, your argument is completely fallacious. You give reasons as to NYU not being of high academic quality as “it’s students are rich” or “they must take on debt”. Being ‘rich’ doesn’t automatically make one less intelligent than any other given person; nor does ‘taking on debt’. I have no idea what these have to do with the, let me emphasize this again, quality of education at NYU. Any given individual’s financial status is in no way a testament to their educational ability, intellect, and so on and so forth.

And, on what grounds can you assert USC has a better student body if, according to your own argument, the quality of a student body isn’t wholly dependent on SAT scores or GPAs? You’ve just successfully eliminated objective factors as being determinant and opened up a realm of subjective factors as determining the quality of a student body. I wasn’t aware that you knew every student at NYU and USC? I also didn’t know that you could read minds? You’ve just asserted something based on entirely subjective reasons, without having met the epistemic standards to do so. By claiming ‘subjective’ factors, you’ve completely discredited yourself, as now your statement is based solely on opinion with no quality supporting evidence

And, of course, again you cite financial capabilities of the schools in question; which relates to my above response on financial aid.

Everything you’ve stated has nothing to do with the quality of education NYU provides, or, if it does, you’ve eliminated all objective measurements and instead claimed subjective measurements as clearly objective truths, when you haven’t even come close to meeting the epistemic standards for so doing.

Methinks you ought go back and try again?

phantasmagoric · February 23, 2012, 3:49pm

Because I can think of many universities that are equal to or better than NYU in academics. Of course, there are many thousands of universities in the world, so in that sense NYU is one of the best. But by that logic, Clemson or Yeshiva are also among the best, and the difference between NYU (or even a top 5 school) and these is pretty small. We aren’t talking about all universities though, and IMO the academics of NYU are at best “average” compared to the rest of the top 25. To many, that’s a compliment.

I never said it did. But as another poster explained in more detail, this does have an effect on the students that NYU accepts and, more importantly, on the students that matriculate. I do think that because wealth is very important in getting into/attending NYU, the quality of the student body suffers - students at NYU are much more likely than at other elite universities to be there not because of their intelligence or abilities, but because of their pocketbook.

There are few factors that define all top 25 universities. One of these is being need-blind and offering adequate financial aid. Another of these is having an actual campus.

Because USC meets 100% of its students’ financial need, because USC accepts far fewer students, etc.

I’m sorry, but do you really need everyone to state “this is a subjective opinion” when posting on these boards?

Quick question: could you point out to me where I was judging the quality of education at NYU? This thread is about people’s judgment of the top 25 universities. As I said in post #63, in response to you: people assess universities with many criteria, (some of) the most important of which include having a campus and being able to support students financially. NYU fails on both fronts. “Quality of education” is only one piece of the puzzle and depends a lot on what you define to be part of an “education” (some say it’s just your classes, others that it includes undergraduate research, others that it depends partly on graduate quality, etc.). And as an institution, there are at least 25 other schools that I would put ahead of NYU for all factors considered.

I don’t understand why universities like WUStL and NYU are effectively need-aware when there are plenty of need-blind schools that are far less wealthy. Perhaps it has to do with NYU’s size, which I think harms the quality of the university: it’s more or less a huge public school at the price of an expensive private school. To be honest, I don’t understand why anyone would attend NYU if they weren’t rich or if they weren’t given financial aid. And even if you do have the money, there are many other schools that will give you a better bang for your buck. IMO the main draw of NYU is simply its location, which alone does not make a university great.

ArKhAiK · February 23, 2012, 4:23pm

There’s no reason to keep ripping on NYU. Sure, maybe it’s a bit overrated, but I wouldn’t call the academics ‘above-average at best’. There are thousands of colleges in the world and NYU is at least in the top 100. That’s much better than above-average.

NYU2013 · February 23, 2012, 4:26pm

Again, your subjective opinion. NYU is ranked very well in many subjects, ahead of, in many cases, schools of the likes of Georgetown, Emory, Notre Dame, Vanderbilt, etc. Just look as the USNews graduate rankings. The same faculty teach undergrads as grads; so you can’t discredit those rankings as only applying to graduate schools.

NYU is need-blind, I have no idea where on this planet you’ve been for the past I don’t know how many years; so the wealth of anyone in question is a non-factor for their being accepted or not being accepted.

A campus or lack-thereof does not determine academic quality. I didn’t realize trees taught subjects or were professors

Meeting 100% of need and accepting far fewer students doesn’t accurately tell you anything. Stop making horrible speculations. UMichigan doesn’t meet need for OOS students. And their acceptance rate is in the 40ish% range. Are you now going to tell me that their student body isn’t very strong?

My point was that you asserted “USC’s student body is better than NYU’s based on these subjective factors and these objective factors don’t count”. Well, I think the sky is green and your objective measures can’t tell me otherwise, because I said so. Yes, very good argument you have there. Maybe try making assertions that aren’t based on speculative non-sense and then stating that objective measures can’t say otherwise?

“Quick question: could you point out to me where I was judging the quality of education at NYU?”

Where did you comment as to the academic quality? Last I checked statements like “NYU has average academics” is a statement making a judgement on the academic quality of NYU. Of course, I may be completely wrong, but I’m pretty sure that the syntactic structure of your sentence and the semantic meanings of the words you used, indicate that you WERE, in fact, contrary to what you just stated, judging the academic quality of NYU.

“I don’t understand why universities like WUStL and NYU are effectively need-aware when there are plenty of need-blind schools that are far less wealthy”

And, as I’ve already stated NYU is need-blind and I have no idea on what planet you’ve been living.

At this point you should really just stop. This is just sad for you.

phantasmagoric · February 23, 2012, 5:12pm

ArKhAiK,

That’s why I qualified my statement in a subsequent post, admitting that in comparison to the vast majority, NYU is one of the best, but is average at best compared to top-25 schools.

NYU2013,

I never said that NYU didn’t have highly-ranked programs. As I said above, NYU as well as every other school will have its academic strengths.

I know, that’s why I said NYU is “effectively” need-aware. Sure they accept students who can’t pay, but they don’t give them financial aid so it’s effectively a rejection.

Okay, let me repeat: academic quality is not the only goal of this discussion. There is more to a university than simply the academics. And yes, having a real campus is a big one. I know of no T25 university that has such an ill-defined campus as NYU’s.

I’m not paying attention to the acceptance rate. NYU accepts some 14,000 students, more than huge public schools like Berkeley. Are you saying that the *average *- for whatever quality measure you can think of (even ones that aren’t measured, like leadership roles and such) - of the NYU accepted class is equal to or higher than the average accepted class of a university that’s similarly competitive (in terms of the number of applicants) and accepts 5,000 fewer students? NYU and USC also have similar yields, even though USC doesn’t lock a third of its class in through ED.

No, your “objective measures” can’t tell me otherwise because other non-quantifiable factors are far more important when elite universities select students. Tufts and Stanford have the same average SAT scores; which is harder to get into?

No, you’re not answering my question. I never made a claim regarding education. As indicated by my question, I am drawing a distinction between educational quality and academic quality. (To illustrate, I consider the educational quality of Northwestern and Stanford to be equal; I could probably say the same about schools outside of even the top 25. But would I say that Northwestern and Stanford are academically equal? No.)

This is simply a matter of what you consider to be “education” and “academic quality,” so I can see how you could misconstrue what I said. (By the way, “semantic meaning” and “syntactic structure” are both redundant…)

NYU2013 · February 23, 2012, 5:21pm

But their being need-blind nullifies whom they accept or reject based on financial well-being. It plays no role in whom they accept, just who attends.

I never said academic quality was the only point of this thread. But in this case, I’m particularly referring to the academic strength of NYU - responding to statement that NYU has “average” academics.

You made a statement that USC accepts less students than NYU… But that has no bearing on the academic quality of either school.

What are you using to differentiate between academic quality and educational quality; you’ve yet to define that, which is pretty important for purposes here.

And no, semantic meaning and syntactic structure are not redundant. Syntactic structure refers to the world-placement, grammar, and the like of the statement in question. Semantic meaning has to do with the linguistic meanings of words. For example, the following is syntactically correct, if we take “2” to be a subject, “3” to be a verb and “4” to be an adjective: 2 3 4. But clearly, that has no semantic meaning to you.

phantasmagoric · February 23, 2012, 6:18pm

It doesn’t matter if it accepts students who can’t pay. It knows they can’t pay, so what’s the difference? Of course, those who do attend usually rack up a lot of debt. NYU reports every financial aid statistic to the CollegeBoard except average % need met and the average indebtedness at graduation. Wonder why that is?

For me educational quality is defined by the material covered in their courses, the curricula they offer, etc. This is the same for most top schools. Academic quality rests more on the quality of professors, quality of students, quality of facilities, etc. In professors NYU would be considered ‘average’ for the top 25 (actually, likely below average for the top 25). I’d say the same of students and facilities as well. IMO (remember what the ‘O’ stands for), student quality is harmed by its poor financial aid.

[Linguistics has been my main field of study for 8 years. I could throw around terms like “syntax” and “semantics,” but I don’t because it’s pretentious.]

tk21769 · February 23, 2012, 6:36pm

Chicago’s Core covers the humanities, social sciences, biological and physical sciences. The university’s greatest area of research strength, relative to other universities, probably is in the social sciences (which are well covered in the Core curriculum).

Well, if you want a technical education, you can go to an engineering school. If you’re looking for a certain kind of moral or spiritual education, you can choose a religious school. However, the ostensible focus of all liberal arts colleges, and of much of undergraduate education at most selective private research universities, is on liberal education in the arts & sciences.

The PhD is the highest level of training in what universities exist to do, which is to discover and spread new knowledge. PhD productivity speaks to how well the faculty is motivating and preparing students to do that. Of course, many top students do choose other options.

([PHD</a> PRODUCTIVITY](<a href=“http://www.reed.edu/ir/phd.html]PHD”>Doctoral Degree Productivity - Institutional Research - Reed College))

beyphy · February 24, 2012, 2:10am

So let me get this straight: to counter phantasmagoric’s “subjective” opinion, you cite rankings which are somehow non-subjective? i’d be surprised if i didn’t remember who was posting this.

you should take your own advice:

NYU2013 · February 24, 2012, 12:52pm

Yes beyphy you’re clearly so right, how could I ever doubt you?

Oh wait… Rankings typically use objective measures such as SAT scores, GPAs, research output and so on and do forth. Right… Numbers aren’t subjective, they’re objective.

Who taught you the difference between objective and subjective? Because you clearly need to go back to them and get your money back

beyphy · February 24, 2012, 4:53pm

Right – because criteria like “Who’s who” or how to weight the ‘objective’ numbers are themselves objective.

In fact, let’s take a look at Forbes, which ranks NYU at 200.

[America’s</a> Best Colleges List - Forbes](<a href=“Forbes America’s Top Colleges List 2022”>Forbes America’s Top Colleges List 2022)

(and, since i compared them above, UCLA at 55 and Princeton at 2)

Objective right?

NYU2013 · February 24, 2012, 5:10pm

Again beyphy you’re so right and I’m so wrong, how could I ever still doubt you?

Clearly it’s subjective how they weight the criteria, but at least that’s only one level of subjectivity, with objective numbers to back it up.

phantasmagoric simply claimed that there are these other, non-objective, criteria that determine the quality of a student body - without any objective data whatsoever. In fact, the statement was that there were these other things which cannot be measured objectively, by which phantasmagoric inherently knew (via reading minds) that the study body at XYZ school is better than the student body at ABC school. Clearly an accurate statement with objective data to back it up.

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