top 15 most prestigious universities

College Search & Selection
1021

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Yale pays for student fellowships to study languages around the world.

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<p>What is this program you're talking about? Link?</p>

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Furthermore, if Yale does not offer a particular language a student wants to study, they hire a private tutor for that student to learn their desired language.

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<p>Are you talking about DILS? If so, they are explicitly not 'private tutors,' but quite literally 'language partners,' someone with whom you are supposed to interact, but they don't assign work or give explanations.</p>

<p>(It's odd, because Yale had communicated to me a bit about DILS, but I'd never even heard about this 'fellowship' business, nor had I seen it in my explorations online.)</p>

1022

<p>To answer the original question of this discussion:</p>

<ol>
<li>Harvard</li>
<li>Yale</li>
<li>Princeton</li>
<li>Stanford</li>
<li>Columbia</li>
<li>MIT</li>
<li>Duke</li>
<li>Notre Dame</li>
<li>Cornell</li>
<li>Georgetown</li>
<li>Penn</li>
<li>Brown</li>
<li>Dartmouth</li>
<li>Northwestern</li>
<li>Hopkins</li>
<li>Wash U</li>
</ol>

1023

<p>^^ Fellowships such as the Light Fellowship. I know plenty that are studying in China, Japan, and Korea on Yale funding. The</a> Richard U. Light Fellowship at Yale University
there are also more programs that I could look up, but this is the general idea.</p>

<p>for DILS, Yale assigns students work materials and requires them to demonstrate proficiency in reading, listening, speaking and writing. In the end, they are indeed learning the language. Still most students wouldn't need the program because Yale already offers extremely obscure languages such as Urdu, Tamil, Akkadian, Syriac, Zulu, Yoruba, Turkish, and too many more to list.</p>

1024

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<p>Yes both methods are flawed, but the point is that graduate departmental rankings are not that meaningful at the undergraduate level, and that the process to rank undergraduate schools should be more complex. Although you may think that USNWR methods aren't well-justified, their criteria is pretty reasonable. Endowment, student:faculty ratio, class sizes, student body strength, etc. all have an impact on undergraduate education.</p>

<p>Even if we went by Peer Assessment alone, which is used for graduate rankings, Yale still comes in at #5, tied with Berkeley (PA 4.8). Still, your undergraduate experience is influenced by way more than flawed and subjective peer assessment ratings of departments. All these other factors that USNWR measures are actually objective, and some would argue that such measures are more reliable than PA. It's just the relative weighting of those factors that don't seem justified, but it's not like they're totally out there. These are educated professionals, so we can't just dismiss the weightings of criteria as irrational, especially since we aren't really qualified to do so.</p>

1025

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Even if we went by Peer Assessment alone, which is used for graduate rankings, Yale still comes in at #5, tied with Berkeley (PA 4.8). Still, your undergraduate experience is influenced by way more than subjective peer assessment ratings of departments.

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<p>Uhh.... when did I ever say Yale doesn't deserve the recognition it does at the ug level? It obviously does and you don't need to justify this.</p>

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Although you may think that USNWR methods aren't well-justified, their criteria is pretty reasonable. Endowment, student:faculty ratio, class sizes, student body strength, etc. all have an impact on undergraduate education.

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<p>I don't the rankings are reasonable. Things like peer assessment, selectivity and what guidance counselors think about schools don't mean jack about a school's undergraduate education. There is no method to their madness.</p>

1026

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All these other factors that USNWR measures are actually objective, and some would argue that such measures are more reliable than PA.

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<p>USNWR's choice of factors/criteria is definitely subjective. This is what I was trying to get at.</p>

1027

<p>Just to see where you stand, would you mind ranking <em>undergraduate</em> schools, based on your own opinion?</p>

1028

<p>My top 15:</p>

<p>(tiered)</p>

<p>Harvard</p>

<p>Yale, Princeton, Stanford, MIT, Caltech</p>

<p>Columbia, Penn, Cornell, Dartmouth, Chicago</p>

<p>JHU, Nortwestern, Duke, Brown</p>

<p>It's different from USNEWS. You aren't going to prove to me that USNWR correspond directly to my views. Schools on the left side of the tier are more "prestigious" than ones on the right.</p>

1029

<p>I think the weightings are subjective. I think the criteria themselves, such as endowment, class sizes, student:faculty ratio, strength of students by SAT/Class rank, are all pretty objective. I mean, most people would agree that financial resources, faculty resources, selectivity, etc. are all objective and fair measures and should be included for undergraduate quality.</p>

<p>Anyways, I agree almost 100% with your ranking, so I think we're done with this.</p>

1030

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I think the criteria themselves, such as endowment, class sizes, student:faculty ratio, strength of students by SAT/Class rank, are all pretty objective.

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<p>Yes, but the choice of criteria is very subjective.</p>

1031

<p>Well, then you would probably agree that most rankings are subjective in their choice of criteria.</p>

<p>Anyways, I'm done with the USNWR discussion. I think.</p>

1032

<p>yup, which is what I believe.</p>

1033

<p>what's so good about UChicago...seriously it has good economics and that's pretty much it. it doesn't even come close to the other top schools in the sciences.</p>

1034

<p>^^ LOL UChicago is a mean powerhouse in math and physics, do you know how many nobel prize winners they have? Oppenheimer, long history of excellence.</p>

1035

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What's your rationale for dropping Duke and Brown while raising Cornell here? If you were doing a straight up ranking of undergraduate department quality and faculty qualifications, then I would agree with the placement of Brown and Duke below those other Ivies. However, you're clearly not since Michigan and Berkeley are missing here and would belong in Tier 1 or 2, while Yale would definitely be dropped to Tier 3.</p>

<p>You just come off as being biased towards Duke and Brown specifically by saying Cornell is better than them. Cornell might arguably be a peer or of roughly equal quality, but there is no way at the undergraduate level it should be placed above a school like Brown UNLESS you're just rating faculty and department quality, which you clearly are not like I outlined.</p>

<p>Care to explain yourself?</p>

1036

<p>Let's see, Top 15 Most Prestigious Universities (tiered):</p>

<p>Harvard
Yale/Princeton/Stanford/MIT
Columbia/Cal-Tech/Penn/Duke
Cornell/Dartmouth/Chicago/Northwestern/Brown/Georgetown </p>

<p>Top 15 Universities (tiered) - includes undergrad, graduate & professional programs: </p>

<p>Harvard/Stanford
Columbia/Penn/Berkeley/Yale/MIT/Chicago
Princeton/Cornell/Duke/Michigan/Northwestern/UCLA/Hopkins</p>

1037

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Please...if Yale had the depth and breadth of grad programs that Stanford, Harvard and Berkeley enjoy, I would say that svalbardlutefisk would be arguing the opposite.

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If I'd wanted to go to Berkeley or Stanford, I would have. If I'd wanted to go to Harvard, I would have applied - my opinion isn't based on where I go to school, it's the reason I go to school where I do. I already acknowledged that Berkeley has more excellent grad programs than Yale, and once you find me someone who is planning to attend grad school in all disciplines simultaneously, I'll be happy to say that Berkeley would be better for them. But what people are arguing about here is prestige at the undergrad level (which is all prestige matters for, again, for grad school, all you care about is what experts thinks and they will only care about prestige in your field). Berkeley definitively has less than Yale, even in California - the place, in this country at least, where it would be most likely to have more. I also think it doesn't provide as good an undergrad education, but that's a different argument that I don't really want to have (I don't think it's my place to criticize other universities).</p>

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I have shown you several times that the quality of departments at graduate level and at undergraduate level are basically the same, as long as a university has both a graduate program and an undergraduate program in a given department. For instance, in business and engineering, MIT and Berkeley both have a super strong graduate program, and at the same time, they both have a super strong undegraduate program.

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Datalook, this is a stupid argument, as I've told you many times. US News' undergrad department ratings are based solely on peer assessment, just like the grad ratings. For all intents and purposes they are the same ranking, because they use essentially the same data. It doesn't take into account many of the things that affect undergrad quality, of which faculty research strength is only a small part - there's a reason some LACs produce huge numbers of future professors and it's not because they have the best research faculty in any field - in fact, their faculty research is quite weak. </p>

<p>And this isn't about where I go to school. According to everything datalook believes (that is, that US News graduate department rankings tell you which schools are the best), I'm going to the best college possible for my field (ie, #1 in US News grad rankings). Datalook's opinion works out great for me, it's just not an accurate reflection of the truth. </p>

<p>One last thing. Datalook, do you believe that the average undergrad, which is what people are interested in here, should go to Berkeley over Yale (without regard to cost, which obviously could have a big effect, but is separate from quality)? If you do, you might want to start thinking about the reasons that 90%+ of cross-admits disagree with you. If not, then you are acknowledging that quality of undergraduate education is not equivalent to this concept of "overall graduate program strength."</p>

<p>Also, I'm now done with this thread - I'm not sure why I wasted time here in the first place, it's full of all that is worst about CC (and yet manages to suck otherwise rational people in).</p>

1038

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which is what people are interested in here, should go to Berkeley over Yale

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<p>I can say a no to that one, but I don't think anyone "should" go to Yale over Berkeley, either, even those "90%+ cross-admits."</p>

1039

<p>Harvard, Yale, Stanford, Columbia, UChicago, Oxford, Cambridge, LSE, Princeton, are definitely among the most prestigious colleges in the world</p>

1040

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What's your rationale for dropping Duke and Brown while raising Cornell here? If you were doing a straight up ranking of undergraduate department quality and faculty qualifications, then I would agree with the placement of Brown and Duke below those other Ivies. However, you're clearly not since Michigan and Berkeley are missing here and would belong in Tier 1 or 2, while Yale would definitely be dropped to Tier 3.</p>

<p>You just come off as being biased towards Duke and Brown specifically by saying Cornell is better than them. Cornell might arguably be a peer or of roughly equal quality, but there is no way at the undergraduate level it should be placed above a school like Brown UNLESS you're just rating faculty and department quality, which you clearly are not like I outlined.</p>

<p>Care to explain yourself?

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<p>Uhh... we're talking about prestige here. Prestige is all in the eye of the beholder and this is how I've always seen the rankings (I live in the Northeast by the way). You're entitled to have your own opinion, and I'm entitled to mine. I don't need to be a tool and conform to the USNEWS rankings. I had not heard of Brown until after I had applied to college and until I arrived at college I had only known of Duke as a school with a good basketball team (bash me all you want for this, I don't care). By the way. why did you single out Cornell? Why not Chicago or Dartmouth?</p>