<p>Wake Forest:
what is their average sat and gpa?.. 1280-1400 is what it says on their site. im guessing average is somewhere lower than the mean number of 1280-1400, which meens likely less than 1340. Making the difference between the two schools sat somewhat small. UCSD's admit rate is 39.3% (41,395 applicants, 16,275 accepted), Wake Forests is 38.2% (7494 applicants, 2862 accepted), also very similar percentages. UC's are known for high gpa's and lower sat's as more importance is placed on GPA's than SAT's at most UC's. I imagine Wake Forests GPA is lower than UCSD's 4.01. Furthermore, if you examine US News and NRC's top 10 and top 20 programs, youll see UCSD has more top 10 and top 20 programs than many of the schools on the list. This top 50 list also, interestingly, seems to favor liberal arts colleges. That is not a bad thing, just a different way of examining colleges. I prefer to use strength of programs as a better judge. Still, which ever way you use to rank schools, UCSD belongs as a top 50 school.</p>
<p>I'm a California resident, and I'd have to agree.. UCSD shouldn't be on the top 50. It definitely is one of the top 50 national universities, but I don't see which school it would replace on the overall top 50 college list posted before. UCchris, you should know the top 10% students does not matter much. Hell, even UCI has something like 95% in the top 10%, while Dartmouth, Northwestern, and other ivy league schools hover around 85-90%. It just happens to be that California public schools are weak comparatively.</p>
<p>i believe ucsd currently has 10 nobel prize winning faculty members. plus its faculty has won 16 nobel prizes in its 40 something years of existence. 99% of class in top ten percent, 4.01 gpa, 1306 sat. tons of top ten and top 20 ranked programs including a few number one ranked programs including the scripps institute of oceanography. im not sure how it couldnt be in the top 50, especially academically speaking.</p>
<p>It's not useless as long as applicants are applying to NUs and LACs and are trying to compare the relative quality of each. I wouldn't say the rankings are heavily skewed towards LACs (16 out of the top 50 are LACs, which have some of the most accomplished student bodies in the country). To address people's questions on the rankings, Lehigh was #48, Brandeis #51, URocester #60 (hurt greatly by 48% admit rate and 18% yield), WFU # 61, Tulane #72. To be honest, I don't know much about UCSD. The Princeton Review reports their avg SAT at 1239 not 1306 and has avg GPA at 3.98. Without some type of weighting in place, this GPA seems impossible to me. It indicates that basically all the students there got all A's in every class throughout high school; yet this highly accomplished group that was able to pull off this impressive feat somehow has avg SATs 198 pts below Dartmouth, which claims to only have an avg GPA of 3.75. Something doesn't add up in the relation to these two variables. I don't dispute that UCSD has highly regarded programs in many disciplines, I was just looking for a way to quantify the academic qualifications of the student bodies of the top schools, realizing that many of the underlying statistics can be manipulated.</p>
<p>Maybe the typical Dartmouth applicant spends much more time on test prep and such. Does that really mean they are better students or better prepared for a ond day test?
Also do you prefer a brilliant faculty or a just good one?? I think I'm paying more for the faculty and not so much for the other students around campus.</p>
<p>Barrons, I think I somewhat disagree on your last point. First, it is the students who are coming out and applying to grad schools and jobs, not the faculty; and as a prospective student, I would be more concerned about how the students are regarded. Second, I would agree with you more if there was some way to assess faculty quality, but think this is much less quantifiable than student quality. Third, just because there are famous or well-respected faculty at the school doesn't necessarily translate into anything meaningful for the student. In fact, if anything, I would almost argue the inverse. The most famous, grant and prize winning profs are going to be disproportiontaely involved in research and (at non LACs) teaching grad students and that lesser known profs that are actually really good at and focused on teaching is what is going to make the most positive impact on students' lives. If you can come up with a way to measure this type of 'faculty quality', I would interested to hear.</p>