<p>
[quote]
"Interesting when you look at the top ten publics in terms of rankings of overall individual schools and departments. Only Berkeley and Michigan truly stand out."
[/quote]
</p>
<p>You said that only Berkeley and Michigan stand out, that is what I was addressing. I did not say that UT was better than Berkeley or Michigan only that it had top programs as well.</p>
<p>I agree with Dbate. The University of Texas has highly ranked programs in virtually every field. It belongs in any discussion of top public universities.</p>
<p>Wisconsin has about as many highly ranked programs as Michigan. It covers many fields Michigan does not.</p>
<p>^^ Yes, Texas does well. This is an aggregate of all 41 NRC rankings compiled by someone at your rival, Texas A&M:</p>
<ol>
<li>Stanford
2. Berkeley</li>
<li>Michigan</li>
<li>Cornell
5. Wisconsin</li>
<li>UCLA</li>
<li>Texas</li>
<li>Columbia
9. Washington/Illinois/Penn</li>
<li>Harvard</li>
</ol>
<p>NRC</a> Rankings</p>
<p>That is a very interesting page. Thanks UCBChemEGrad.</p>
<p>However that was produced by Texas A&M so it may have some flaws ;)</p>
<p>No. It was produced by the National Research Council. The data is just presented on an A&M site.</p>
<p>Ut-Austin is an excellent school. I never said it wasn't. I just stated that Cal and Michigan stand out at the top of the public school category. To be honest, Cal really stands alone, everyone else is down the pecking order.</p>
<p>I added these up myself a while ago, based on the 1995 NRC rankings. Here's how I'd stack them up, based on how many top 10 programs a school has (I award 2 points for each program in this category) and how many programs ranked #11-#25 (1 point) in the 41 "core academic areas" listed by NRC:</p>
<p>rank/school/top 10 programs/#11-#25 programs/score</p>
<ol>
<li>Berkeley 35/1 71</li>
<li>Stanford 31/8 70</li>
<li>Harvard 25/4 54</li>
<li>Cornell 19/12 50</li>
<li>(tie) Michigan 14/21 49</li>
<li>(tie) UCLA 15/19 49</li>
<li>Princeton 21/6 48</li>
<li>Wisconsin 14/19 47</li>
<li>(tie) Chicago 16/12 44</li>
<li>(tie) Penn 14/16 44</li>
<li>Yale 18/7 43</li>
<li>MIT 20/2 42</li>
<li>Columbia 13/15 41</li>
<li>Texas 7/21 35</li>
<li>UIUC 10/13 33</li>
<li>Caltech 12/6 30</li>
<li>JHU 8/12 28</li>
<li>Minnesota 5/17 27</li>
<li>Duke 7/12 26</li>
<li>Northwestern 6/11 23</li>
<li>UNC Chapel Hill 3/16 22</li>
<li>Virginia 4/11 19</li>
<li>Brown 2/14 18 </li>
<li>NYU 2/13 17</li>
<li>WUSTL 3/8 14</li>
<li>Purdue 4/4 12</li>
</ol>
<p>Schools like Emory, Vanderbilt, and Georgetown scored 0/0. Notre Dame was 0/3, CMU 1/6, Rice 1/5, Georgia Tech 2/3.</p>
<p>Some caveats. First, I may have missed a few schools as I was generally working off the top national universities in the US News ranking, which obviously does not correlate particularly well with NRC rankings---but these would likely be schools that come out toward the lower end of these rankings. Second, this is old (1995) NRC data. Third, I was doing this late at night and may have missed or mistabulated some departmental rankings. Fourth, you might come out with a different ranking depending on where you draw the cutoffs and how you weight the categories; Princeton and MIT, for example, are arguably underrated in my ranking because they're effectively punished for not having the full range of programs that a Berkeley, Stanford, Michigan, or Wisconsin has, but what they do have is outstanding. (I didn't deduct points for missing programs, but with a limited number of programs it's hard to rack up points in my system even if the programs you do have are outstanding). </p>
<p>That said, I think this exercise is pretty revealing. Schools like Berkeley, Michigan, UCLA, Wisconsin, and, yes, Texas and UIUC have outstanding faculties---they're competitive with the very best private schools in the country, and rather stronger than all but a handful of top privates on this score. Some other schools that rarely get mentioned as academic leaders---Minnesota comes to mind---are clearly deserving of more respect than they typically get. I think these things are generally recognized in academia, but not so much in US News, and rarely on CC.</p>
<p>
[quote]
Princeton and MIT, for example, are arguably underrated in my ranking because they're effectively punished for not having the full range of programs that a Berkeley, Stanford, Michigan, or Wisconsin has, but what they do have is outstanding.
[/quote]
Yes, Princeton and MIT do better in this compilation, when you only look at the average of the programs they have:</p>
<ol>
<li>MIT
2. Berkeley</li>
<li>Harvard</li>
<li>Princeton</li>
<li>Caltech</li>
<li>Stanford</li>
<li>Chicago</li>
<li>Yale</li>
<li>Cornell
10. UCSD</li>
<li>Columbia
12. Michigan</li>
<li>UCLA</li>
<li>Penn
15. Wisconsin</li>
<li>Texas</li>
<li>Washington</li>
<li>Illinois</li>
<li>Northwestern</li>
<li>Duke</li>
<li>Johns Hopkins</li>
</ol>
<p>NRC</a> Rankings</p>
<p>This ranking shows depth of programs...not breadth.</p>
<p>From the above findings I feel that UCLA does deserve its place near the top with Michigan. So can anyone tell me why UVA is so highly ranked as a top public?</p>
<p>^ It's smaller and more selective than others (partly due to less competition from other nearby flagship publics). So, in USNWR ranking it does well.
I think its PA score is a little high, but perhaps the raters do take undergraduate into account like they are supposed to.</p>
<p>
[quote]
From the above findings I feel that UCLA does deserve its place near the top with Michigan.
[/quote]
Heh, maybe I should give the little 'ruins more credit too...;)</p>
<p>^ how old are you? you just seem to spend a lot of time trashing other schools and defending berkeley. i understand the need for an occasional ego boost, but you're overdoing it, man.</p>
<p>^ I agree...I'll back off.</p>
<p>UVa's own internal study will answer that question--they don't have the same goods as the other top schools.</p>
<p>
[quote]
^ I agree...I'll back off.
[/quote]
</p>
<p>Wow. Way to man up. I never would've expected that... ;)</p>
<p>top publics for undergrad:</p>
<p>William & Mary</p>
<p>UVirginia
UMichigan
UCBerkely
UCLA
UNorth Carolina</p>
<p>Ga Tech
Wisconsin
Washington</p>