<p>
</p>
<p>Umm, I don't know about Penn, but Caltech's greatest asset is the reputation it has for the close interaction students have with professors, and at Chicago, all faculty members are REQUIRED to teach classes at the college...</p>
<p>Really? Are Medical school researchers, who are counted as members of the faculty, required to teach undergrads? Are Law school professors or MBA program professors also required to teach undergrads? Chicago has Law, Business and Medical faculties that never teach undergrads. Generally speaking, universities that have a much larger graduate student body than undergraduate student body will tend to have much better student to faculty ratios, but that's because many of those professors teach purely graduate students. </p>
<p>But don't get me wrong, I love Chicago. I believe that this year's ranking is finally doing the school justice. But Let us not kid ourselves, faculty to student ratios are not very telling. Class size on the other hand, can be, but like I said, they can be manipulated.</p>
<p>Ditto Atomicfusion -- what's the LAC list, please?</p>
<p><<chicago has="" law,="" business="" and="" medical="" faculties="" that="" never="" teach="" undergrads.="">></chicago></p>
<p>This is only somewhat true. Economics concentrators at Chicago register for classes that would at any other school be open to only MBA students all the time. Two of my advanced classes were Graduate School of Business classes, meaning all but a handful of my classmates were business students. I am not sure, but I do believe a few Law and Medical School classes are open to undergraduates as well, but perhaps not for credit.</p>
<p>Ninety percent of Chicago's faculty teach undergraduate courses, the remaining 10% being Medical/Law School professors. This figure is unheard of at any other research university that I am familiar with. Most lower-level graduate courses are populated by a substantial number of undergraduates as well, as the many I'm sure astonished Chicago graduate students will be quick to tell you.</p>
<p>PA is a good ranking but its scores are based in large part off of opinions on grad programs...not of much use to kids trying to go to the best undergrad</p>
<p>Top 50 LACs (Prestige):</p>
<ol>
<li> Amherst
Williams</li>
<li>Swarthmore</li>
<li>Wellesley</li>
<li>Carleton</li>
<li>Bowdoin
Middlebury
Pomona
Smith
Wesleyan
11.Bryn Mawr
Grinell
Haverford
Oberlin</li>
<li>Davidson
Harvey Mudd
Vassar</li>
<li>Bates
Claremont McKenna
Colby
Colgate
Macalester
Mount Holyoke</li>
<li> Barnard
Reed
26.Washington and Lee
Bucknell</li>
<li>Colorado
Hamilton
Kenyon
Occidental
Trinity</li>
<li>Holy Cross
Scripps
Sewanee</li>
<li>Connecticut
Earlham
Franklin and Marshall
Pitzer
Rhodes
Sarah Lawrence
St. Olaf
University of Richmond</li>
<li>Bard
Denison
DePauw
Dickinson
Furman
Lafayette
Skidmore</li>
</ol>
<p>To add to what Alexandre said, also remember that private universities often go out of their way to manipulate the rankings, while public universities, being public, have less of an ability to play the numbers.</p>
<p>But anyways, public schools might have more classes over 50 students, but that's often because they have to give more sections of Intro Econ, or perhaps even because they have more departments (a good thing) with a bunch of popular/intro classes.</p>
<p>Yes...Great list , seems very reasonable to me!!!</p>
<p>Those who say that the PA score is a reflection of graduate school quality are seriously missinformed. Those surveyed in the PA are purely deans and provosts of undergraduate programs. They are sked to rate peer institutions in all ways that relate to undergraduate education.</p>
<p>But Alexandre, you don't think the strength of the graduate program plays a big roll in the opinions of deans rating an undergrad school? Unlike objective factors such as SAT scores or alumni giving or selectivity, PA is still based on subjective factors and it is not clear how much weight graduate school quality has in the decisions made by those on the PA survey.</p>
<p>yes, the student faculty ratio is one of the most outrageous indicators on how private schools manipulate the numbers.</p>
<p>take upenn for example, which cites its student faculty ratio as 6:1. On penn's website (which is very uninformative i might add), it lists its faculty as </p>
<p>"standing 2427, associate 1808, total 4235" - I am sure this includes every person who has anything to do with instructing any class.</p>
<p>however, when using the standard cds form that UVa, Michigan, and Berkeley use (all schools with 15:1 ratios), notice how restrictive it is. </p>
<p>these 3 schools exclude in their faculty count, "instructional faculty in the precliical and clinical medicine, faculty who are not paid, research - oly faculty, post and pre doctoral fellows, deans, librarians, coaches, registrar, librarian (even though they may have faculty status), administrators/staff who teach one or more non-clinical credit courses even though they do not have faculty status, undergraduate or graduate students who assist in the instruction of courses, but have titles such as TA, Teaching fellow, and the like, faculty on leave, replacement faculty for faculty on sabbatical" </p>
<p>thats a mightly list of "not included." I'm sure if you include all of that into your student faculty ratio, then you would find UVa, Michigan, Berkeley and other top publics with 6:1, 7:1, 8:1 type student faculty ratios.</p>
<p>I don't think using solely PA gives an accurate picture. These "rankings" have Michigan tied with Duke/Penn and better than Dartmouth. The University of Texas is ranked equal to Georgetown and Vanderbilt. Ohio State is tied with Tufts. University of Iowa is tied with Boston College, etc. In all these cases, the private schools seem to have the more gifted student bodies.</p>
<p>
[quote]
Mean SAT scores and ranges are measured differently at public universities than at private universities. Either the USNWR should adjust for the difference in reporting styles (which favors private universities by an average of 40 points) or they should not use the SAT as an indicator.
[/quote]
</p>
<p>Public schools seem to be more numbers orientated. Private schools are more likely to have a more holistic approach to applications where a unique talent can make up for low test scores. While a public school will take the kid with lackluster ECs and high test scores.</p>
<p>You can also say the rankings are biased towards privates. 40% of the student selectivity score is based upon the percent of kids who are top 10% in their class. It would be alot easier to do this at a mediocre public school than an elite prep school.</p>
<p>Thethoughtprocess, the strength of graduate programs is not even considered int eh PA. The PA meausres only the quality of undergraduate education.</p>
<p>And the others have more accomplished faculty.</p>
<p>
[quote]
And the others have more accomplished faculty.
[/quote]
</p>
<p>Yeah, Ohio State and Iowa are academic powerhouses.</p>
<p>Alexandre, all I'm saying is that the individuals who are doing the ratings for PA are most likely basing their judgements for the undergrad departments off of the quality of the grad departments...rather than specifically investigating each undergrad departments requirements and quality</p>
<p>I mean, how can an adminsitrator/dean look at undergrad schools and see the quality of the program? Do they have access to lists of which top grad schools the students go to? Or how many professors teach classes instead of grad students? Or would it just be easier for an administrator to look at the strength of the grad school and generalize off of that. I'm not sure personally, but just because PA claims to be solely about undergrad strength doesn't mean the strength of the grad programs doesn't skew their judgement.</p>
<p>For example, Michigan is ranked higher than Brown, Penn, Duke, or Dartmouth based on PA, even though the undergraduate student body at the latter schools are more competetive and probably go onto top grad schools (I have no data on this) and professional schools (only the WSJ feeder rankings to rely on for this) at higher proportions. Thus, the only way to explain this is if academic deans look at grad schools and not solely undergrad schools.</p>
<p>As I've said, PA and actual "quality" is correlated, but the correlation cannot be used to arrive at comparative conclusions because 1) it is not a unity correlation and 2) PA becomes almost useless down once you're looking into a specific criteria, such as job recruiting.</p>
<p>Also, Michigan is not ranked higher than Penn and Duke on PA. Two years ago both Penn and Duke had 4.6 on PA.</p>
<p>
[quote]
2) Graduation rates are indeed important. But is there a difference between graduating 87% and 93% of the class? I didn't think so!
[/quote]
</p>
<p>Actually, yeah I think it does. After all, turn the figures around. Those figures imply that at one school, 13% of the students won't graduate, whereas at the other school, 7% won't graduate. Hence, that more that ALMOST DOUBLE the percentage of students won't graduate from one school compared to the other. I would say that that is extremely meaningful. It means that a student randomly selected from the first school is almost twice as likely to not graduate as a student randomly selected from the second school.</p>
<p>I think you may have fallen for the fallacy of the large percentages. You may say that the difference between 87% and 93% is only 6% which doesn't seem to be much. But that's not the right way to look at it. The right way is to realize that the non-graduation rate is already 7% at the second school, so an additional 6% is HUGE. </p>
<p>
[quote]
Student:Faculty ratio is meaningless, since some universities, like Chicago, Caltech and Penn have a huge chunk of their faculties engaged purely in research.
[/quote]
</p>
<p>Well, yeah, but I don't see how this necessarily favors private schools. Trust me, at Berkeley, there were PLENTY of profs who haven't taught classes in years. For any Berkeley-backers out there, ask yourself, when was the last time that Yuan Lee (1986 Chemistry Nobel Prize winner) actually taught a real class? Yes, I know he is emeritus now, but he only obtained that status a short while ago. Even a decade ago, before he was emeritus but after he won the Nobel, the guy never taught real classes (the occasional doctoral seminar doesn't count). </p>
<p>The point is, all research universities, whether it's Chicago or Michigan or Berkeley or anybody else, have a bunch of profs who don't teach undergrads, and in some cases, don't teach anything at all. </p>
<p>
[quote]
To add to what Alexandre said, also remember that private universities often go out of their way to manipulate the rankings, while public universities, being public, have less of an ability to play the numbers
[/quote]
</p>
<p>Oh, but they play allright. As a case in point, Berkeley doesn't report the SAT scores of transfer students (because it doesn't even require that transfer students take the SAT). This is a rather neat trick considering that something like 25% of the junior class (which is when the transfer students enter) consist of transfers.</p>
<p>Iowa and OSU each have about 20 NAS members and win an average of 20 major faculty awards per year (Guggenheim etc.).</p>
<p>"Those who say that the PA score is a reflection of graduate school quality are seriously missinformed. Those surveyed in the PA are purely deans and provosts of undergraduate programs. They are sked to rate peer institutions in all ways that relate to undergraduate education."</p>
<p>Oh yes, and what evidence is there to support such lofty claim? How many times do we have to link to articles that have exposed the utter manipulation of the peer assessment, and shown it to be nothing more than an uncontrolled and unverifiable exercise in abject cronyism. </p>
<p>Alexandre, do you really believe that the graduate school reputation do not influence the peer assessment? I'd say that the reputation of graduate schools has a MAJOR influence on the scores, and this easily explain why schools with great graduate programs and lackluster undergraduate programs earn unrealistic scores, as many of your favorites DO. </p>
<p>If integrity was important to the USNews, the peer assessment should be relegated to 20% of what is it right now, or even better, presented in a separate category.</p>