<p>??? - macsuile was comparing to WM to Duke, so I responded using facts. He said William and Mary is better than Duke. Thats completely untrue in almost every way, so I responded in accord.</p>
<p>Of course you can compare public schools to private schools, I just did - SAT scores, feeding into professional schools, peer assesment scores, and national merit scholars don't favor privates more than publics. Ok, maybe SAT scores do since its best combined scores, but still. These aren't rankings that favor privates, but instead are stand-alone facts.</p>
<p>Of course US News doesn't give recognition to state U's, thats why I added like a bunch of other indicators...but in terms of size, Willian and Mary is actually smaller than most privates with 1,300 a class, so it doesn't suffer the disadvantages most state schools suffer.</p>
<p>Also - I was joking about white basketball players, since someone mentioned that earlier - but if you'd followed the news at all, the LaX players are pretty much innocent, and Redick blew a .11, which is like a half beer over the legal limit. Saying that Duke athletics lead to rape is really terrible, so please stop and learn the facts before talking about such a sensitive issue like that. </p>
<p>On the NCAA 2006 rankings of best combination of Academics and Athletics, released 2 days ago, ranks....guess who....Duke at first, followed by Stanford, Harvard, Yale, Notre Dame, and Brown for D1. I don't think William and Mary is on the top 30 for that either. Williams was first for D2.</p>
<p>"Um you cant compare WM to Duke because its a state university. If, for example, you compare out of state acceptance rates and SAT ranges, WM's acceptance rate according to the registrar themselves (i asked) is approximately 10 % for girls and 22% for guys, both lower than Duke's and rivaling the Ivy's. the SAT range is also signficantly higher when considering OOS applicants. And US news is notorious for giving far too little recognition to public universities."</p>
<p>-There is no reason in the world why public schools can not be compared with private schools, unless you are arguing that all public schools are inherently inferior to private schools. Also, how is US News notorious for underranking public schools? The rankings follow a methodology, if anything it is the schools themselves that fail to perform to a level that would warrant their being higher on the list, ant not the workings of US News.</p>
<p>bc they consider endowments heavilly in said methodology so they underrank schools with low endowments. and with the public to private thing, i only mean that they use different criteria in selecting an undergraduate body. in state admission to any state school, including berkley is groslly easier than OOS to elite publics.</p>
<p>Wait, yeah, state schools might have a lower endowment per student, but I dont even know if thats used as a factor on US News? Is it? What weight is it given?</p>
<p>It seems like you are saying that schools like William and Mary are inherently inferior to privates like Duke and that they shouldn't be compared...lol, but I'm sure you dont mean that.</p>
<p>Yeah, OOS admissions is always harder at state schools, but that makes the OOS acceptance rate artificially high since only a small number of seats are reserved for OOS.</p>
<p>However, this is all besides my point - my point is to respond to masuile and make him see that Duke is not only an elite college but overall better than W and M despite being a century or two younger.</p>
<p>yea u know what i meant tho... just that its tuff to compare the two since they have different goals in general and since rankings seem to wait acceptance and such heavier than quality of eduation.</p>
<p>
[quote]
On the NCAA 2006 rankings of best combination of Academics and Athletics, released 2 days ago, ranks....guess who....Duke at first, followed by Stanford, Harvard, Yale, Notre Dame, and Brown for D1.
[/quote]
</p>
<p>thoughtprocess, do you happen to have a link for the full list?</p>
<p>Still wondering why masuile assumes why a few centuries of extra history makes a difference though...its the future that matters if you ask me, though older colleges do have more impressive achievements.</p>
<p>Alexandre is absolutely right. The USN&WR poll is so obviously biased in favor of the smaller private undergraduate programs. Both Berkeley & Michigan have many more highly regarded departments, programs, & schools across the board than many of the schools ranked ahead of them in the USN&WR undergrad poll. Fortunately, many of the university presidents are aware of this. The prestige ratings for both Berkeley & Michigan are justified.</p>
<p>Yes, presidents are aware of their grad strength and rate accordingly. I hardly believe they are of undergraduate strength. There is no way of identifying undergrad strength of a department - you can't measure papers published and that sort of thing for undergrads. The best way to measure undergrad strength is by the statistical strength of the student body and how succesful they are post-graduation. </p>
<p>For undergrad, students at HYPSM, Dartmouth, Duke, Columbia, Brown, Chicago NU etc. are much statistically stronger than Berkeley or Michigan. I don't think, at the undergrad level, top publics have a legitimate argument to be ranked higher in terms of student body and success of student body. However, I do feel the top publics are rated below some privates I would consider less academically strong. So they are indeed underrated, but not that underrated.</p>
<p>Not really. The mean SAT score at Cal, Michigan and UVa is roughly 0-50 points lower than those at Brown, Chicago, Columbia, Duke etc.... Hardly a difference. And the placement into top graduate schools and exclusive companies aren't that different either. You are severely misinformed if you think otherwise.</p>
<p>I don't know why it would be severely misinformed to think top privates like Columbia and Duke are better than Berkeley and Michigan for student strength and placement.</p>
<p>Chicago 1350 - 1530, median 1440
Brown 1330 - 1540, median 1440
Duke 1370 - 1540, median 1460
Columbia 1340 - 1540, median 1450
...
Cal 1220 - 1450, median 1330
Michigan 1220 - 1420, median 1320
UVA 1220 - 1430, median 1330</p>
<p>The SAT difference is about 120 points, which is more than 0-50 points</p>
<p>Proportions of students sent to one of top 15 professioanl schools using the WSJ Survey (notes, Chicago and Columbia have their own professional schools on the list, as does Chicago):
Chicago - 6.2%
Columbia - 7.1%
Duke - 8.7%
Brown - 6.5%
...Gap
Michigan - 2.73%
UVA - 2.55%
Berkeley - 1.9%</p>
<p>Mean of privates ~ 7.3%
Mean of Publics ~ 2.4%
So privates, proportionally, send three times as many students to one of the top 15 professional schools.</p>
<p>Of course, there is a Northeast professional school bias, but Chicago and Duke aren't in the Northeast either.</p>
<p>Is there any more top graduate school rankings besides WSJ? And is there data on corporate recruitment? I think they'd support the ideas that top privates do much better in student body strength and placement than top publics.</p>
<p>Actually, Michigan's SAT range this year was 1260-1480 (median 1360) and that's in one sitting, which is equivallent to 1300-1520 (median 1410) as measured by the Ivies, Duke, Chicago and Northwestern, since they take the highest of each section and report those instead. </p>
<p>UVa and Cal have similar SAT ranges to Michigan. Like I said, there is a 0-50 point difference. </p>
<p>As for professional and graduate school placement, like I said, Michigan, Cal and UVa have very similar success as their private peers. Cornell and Michigan, unlike schools like Brown and Dartmouth and Duke, have huge programs like Agriculture, Kinesiology, Nursing, Music etc... Not many students from those colleges go on to Law school or Medical School or to professions that lead to MBA placement. But if you look at the placement of their students coming out of their colleges of Engineering, Business and Arts and Sciences, their % would jump from 3% to 5%. </p>
<p>Like I said, if you think there is a clear difference between Michigan, Cal and UVA and their private peers, you are severely misinformed. They are identical.</p>
<p>I went by collegeboard.com's numbers, which show for all three the median scores being around 1330. For some reason you add 40 points, I guess to very generously compensate for single-sitting. Even if a 1410 is at all accurate, it is still 40-50 points below its private peers. However, if you stick by collegeboard.com and add 40, you get 1370 (80 point difference) and if you keep collegeboard.com's numbers without adding, you get 1330 (120+ difference). So I really don't think its misinformed to think that the student bodies are not equal. Also, I think the website refers to accepted students scores, not attending.</p>
<p>Also, to go with the above, Columbia Duke and Brown have higher absolute numbers of NMS, even though they are 1/3 - 1/4 the size of Mich or Berkeley.</p>
<p>And Columbia, Duke, and Brown still proportionally send over three times as many grads to top 15 professional schools. If the percentage of Mich or Berkeley that is involved in specialized schools such as hotel admin. or Nursing and not Arts and Sciences or Business is around 50-60%, this could explain the difference. However, I doubt this. Even without heeding this argument, the bottom line is Columbia, Duke, and Brown send a much higher proportion to elite grad schools, and I'm sure any other ranking of undergrads going onto top grad schools would be similar. I'm just not sure if any exist.</p>