<p>How do you KNOW anything is lackluster if you have never been there?</p>
<p>What percentage is PA now, 25%?</p>
<p>
[quote]
the strength of graduate programs is not even considered in the PA. The PA meausres only the quality of undergraduate education.
[/quote]
</p>
<p>Perhaps in theory, but this certainly doesn't hold in practice.</p>
<p>As college2332 pointed out, look at the PA score for UMich (4.5) which is > than the following schools:
- Dartmouth
- Brown
- Northwestern </p>
<p>and equal to:
- Penn
- Duke</p>
<p>Berkeley's PA score of 4.7 is better than every single school except for HYPSM</p>
<p>Fine. But what exactly are we measuring here? What are those scores a true reflection of? You're telling me that this is ONLY a reflection of the scorer's opinion of the undergraduate programs? Do you really believe that when these folks were scoring Cal and Michigan, the research prowess and grad school strength had absolutely NOTHING to do with their assessment?</p>
<p>To put it another way, the undergraduate program at Cal is better than: Penn / Duke / Columbia / Dartmouth / Brown / Northwestern / Cornell / JHU?</p>
<p>I don't think so.</p>
<p>The more I'm looking at these posts, I'd think that PA is highly correlated with the Newsweek "Global Rankings" which is based off of the Shanghai rankings which measure grad school strength...hmmm</p>
<p>Maybe most people just pretty much agree on the outstanding universities.</p>
<p>"How do you KNOW anything is lackluster if you have never been there?"</p>
<p>LOL! By that logic, none of us could have an opinion, short of attending multiple schools. Oh, by the way, does your position not undermine the validity of the peer assessment ... the exact point I was discussing. Have the people <em>in the know</em> (100% sarcastic) attended the school they are supposed to opine on? Obviously, they always have last year's edition to use as a guideline, don't they? </p>
<p>Now, short of attending a school, since the issue is about rating, I hope we can agree that the underlying data can be used for making comparisons on graduation rates, faculty resources, class sizes, and faculty size and commitment-despite the wonderful smoke and mirror game played by the large research and public universities. In this regard, Barron, would you be able guesstimate the percentage of the tenured faculty from your cherished school who has taught an UG class in the past 3 years, and what the percentage of time over other activities they devote to teaching undergraduates. What would it be? Single digits or just a bit above 20%? </p>
<p>Why is it so important to pretend to be something you're not? Large research--or public--universities offer wonderful opportunities to undergraduates, but their size and structure are also severe handicaps. Refusing to recognize the shortcomings is as bad as exposing them.</p>
<p>Mr. Pink:</p>
<p>The version you posted is 2005 version, is not the most recent one. Before releasing of 2007 version, Let's look at the 2006 Version of US News Prestige Rankings: (sorry, not a completed version, just for your references only) </p>
<p>Rank Institution Peer Assessment*
1 Harvard 4.9
1 Princeton 4.9
3 Yale Univ. 4.9
4 Univ. of Pennsylvania 4.5
5 Duke 4.6
5 Stanford 4.9
7 CA Institute of Technology 4.7
7 Massachusetts Inst of Tech 4.9
9 Columbia Univ. 4.7
11 Washington Univ. - St Louis 4.1
12 Northwestern 4.4
13 Cornell Univ. 4.6
13 Johns Hopkins 4.6
15 Brown Univ. 4.4
15 Univ. of Chicago 4.6
17 Rice 4.1
18 Vanderbilt 4.0
20 Emory 4.0
20 Univ. of CA Berkeley 4.8
22 Carnegie Mellon 4.2
23 Univ. of Virginia 4.3
25 Univ of CA Los Angeles 4.3
25 Univ. of Michigan Ann Arbor 4.5
27 UNC Chapel Hill 4.2
30 Univ of Southern CA 3.9
32 Univ of CA San Diego 3.9
34 Brandeis Univ. 3.5
34 Univ of Wisconsin Madison 4.2
34 Univ. of Rochester 3.4
37 Case Western 3.5
37 Georgia Tech 4.0
37 New York Univ. 3.8
40 Univ. of CA Irvine 3.7
42 U of Illinois Urbana 4.0
43 Tulane 3.5
45 Univ of CA Santa Barbara 3.6
45 Univ. of Washington 3.9
48 Penn State 3.8
48 Univ. of CA Davis 3.8
50 Syracuse 3.4
50 Univ. of Florida 3.5</p>
<p>hpr168, I'm pretty sure those are the 2007 rankings</p>
<p>You left Notre Dame entirely off your list.</p>
<p>cause notre dame is possibly the most overrated school in the history of the universe and no one really cares to discuss it here.</p>
<p>Overrated? Not around here it isn't.</p>
<p>Wow, Mr Pink's list is 2007 Version!!!, how did you guys get that information before official releasing date of 2007 US news Best-College-ranking ?</p>
<p>some people bought the book yesterday. Don't ask how I don't know.</p>
<p>They started selling them yesterday at BN.</p>
<p>Yeah, mine are the 2007 rankings - I got them at Barnes and Nobles.</p>
<p>
[quote]
Why is it so important to pretend to be something you're not? Large research--or public--universities offer wonderful opportunities to undergraduates, but their size and structure are also severe handicaps. Refusing to recognize the shortcomings is as bad as exposing them.
[/quote]
</p>
<p>I agree 100%.</p>
<p>I was looking at some things on the UM site and they had a story on two winners they had of Young Scholar Presidential Awards this year. What struck me is both the number of major awards both had already earned and that one had also won teaching awards.</p>
<p><a href="http://www.umich.edu/%7Emichchem/faculty/mapp/%5B/url%5D">http://www.umich.edu/~michchem/faculty/mapp/</a>
<a href="http://www.umich.edu/%7Emichchem/faculty/sanford/%5B/url%5D">http://www.umich.edu/~michchem/faculty/sanford/</a></p>
<p>I approve of these prestige rankings more than I do of the traditional US News rankings. :rolleyes:</p>
<p>I second flopsy's ::rolleyes::</p>
<p>In my opinion, these are more accurate... but they're also less precise, because they create ties among too many schools (esp. at the top)</p>