<p>And one of the things that I think makes people rank UVA higher than it is by the numbers is its physical location fairly close to DC which opens up quite a few opportunities.</p>
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<p>How do I know that collegeboard is inaccurate and why should it be? I don’t spend my life comparing collegeboard stats to school websites. Actually, I think I initially looked up those differences on princetonreview and it was the same spread and then confirmed with collegeboard.</p>
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<p>Yes, I do think that CalTech students on average are smarter. However, it’s more because there are only ~ 200 students per class and there are no D-I athletes to bring down the average. Employers are hiring the students and not the professors or the lab equipment at these schools. If you’re not going to med school or directly into a PhD program, which describes (depending on the school) for the most part 85%+ of the students, it is relatively meaningless how much or what students are learning since it will be what they learn on the job that is important. Plus, faculty excellence sounds to me like number of Nobel winners and research grants winners and citations and things like that as opposed to what professors care about and are good at teaching, which is much more significant to UG students. </p>
<p>When I am interviewing grads, I could care less about the professors at the schools they went to and how much research grant money they receive. What good does that do for me as an employer compared to the innate abilities of the students that I will potentially be hiring?</p>
<p>According to the NRC rankings, UNC makes the top 10 public universities list for the strength of its graduate programs. UVA came in slightly behind at #12.</p>
<p>So yes, they’re exceedingly strong research universities.</p>
<p>Exactly my point: UNC and UVA don’t even compete.</p>
<p>Top 15 universities by average of all scores ranking 1995 University 1995 average score
1 Stanford 7.76
2 Berkeley 7.46
3 Michigan 7.31
4 Cornell 6.56
5 Wisconsin 6.44
6 UCLA 6.32
7 Texas 6.12
8 Columbia 6.07
9 Washington 6.05
9 Illinois 6.05
9 Penn 6.05
12 Harvard 6.00
13 Minnesota 5.78
14 Princeton 5.68
15 UChicago 5.66</p>