Top Ten most Prestigious Public Universities

College Search & Selection
381

<p>He learned how to make bombs at Michigan and was encouraged to follow through with detonating them at Berkeley. Hehe.</p>

382

<p>26 pages and not a single mention of USMA, USNA, USAFA, or the other military academies, even by mistake.</p>

<p>Most consider them liberal arts colleges, which perhaps explains their exclusion. They generally do not offer PhDs and only rarely grant master’s degrees. Certainly nobody would argue that they are not prestigious.</p>

<p>Berkeley vs. West Point
any takers? It appears the Michigan furor has died down. Don’t cease the entertainment now!</p>

383

<p>^ They aren’t “universities”</p>

384

<p>Lol
 “collegehelp” you have got to be kidding! Wow, what school do you go to? Umm, don’t you think that Nobel Prize winning faculty should also be a factor?</p>

385

<p>"He learned how to make bombs at Michigan and was encouraged to follow through with detonating them at Berkeley. Hehe. "</p>

<p>Seems obvious that the lack of close student-faculty contact at these research-oriented universities is the root cause of his alienation. If only he’d gone to a top-20 LAC
</p>

386

<ol>
<li> Michigan</li>
<li> Virginia</li>
<li> Berkeley</li>
<li> Texas</li>
<li> UCLA</li>
<li> UNC - Chapel Hill</li>
<li> Indiana</li>
<li> William & Mary</li>
<li> Iowa
10.SUNY Binghamton</li>
</ol>

387

<p>Is Michigan’s medical school located on the central campus? Or is it even further than the “bus ride” to the Engineering campus? If not, how does the medical school add to the completeness of campus life?</p>

<p>Most medical campuses are not contiguous to the main campus (eg. UCLA, USC, Cornell)</p>

<p>UCSF is Berkeley’s medical school campus. Period. It just happens to be located in SF vs. Berkeley.
UCSF > Michigan medicine, denistry, pharmacy. </p>

<p>;)</p>

388

<p>I have an interesting question.</p>

<p>It looks like UCB is probably the consensus #1 on here. But with California’s finances the way they are, given the choice, would you choose to enter Michigan, UCB, or UVA if you were entering as a '14?</p>

389

<p>UVA meets full need, I got a great FA offer from them. Have not heard the same about people who applied for aid at Cal or Mich</p>

<p>Anyway my rankings
1 Cal
2 Virginia
3 Michigan
4 UNC
5 UCLA
6 Texas
7 Illinois
8 W&M
9 Florida
10 Georgia Tech
11 Wisconsin
12 Maryland</p>

390

<p>You have the top 5</p>

<p>UC-Berkeley, UCLA, UNC, UVA, and Michigan.</p>

<p>After that, it becomes quickly irrelevant.</p>

391

<p>“Is Michigan’s medical school located on the central campus? Or is it even further than the “bus ride” to the Engineering campus? If not, how does the medical school add to the completeness of campus life?”</p>

<p>Michigan’s medical school is approximately 2 blocks north of Center Campus. It is part of the Hospital Complex.</p>

392

<p>Generally speaking, my experience has been that people equate “prestige” with selectivity for undergraduate programs and with research and faculty reputation for graduate programs. Many “prestigious” schools enjoy both kinds, but there are enough that do not so as to make two lists worthwhile.</p>

<p>For undergraduate programs probably the best indicator of selectivity is admitted student test scores rather than admission percentage as it is a direct and objective (with debatable accuracy) measure of student body ability. Here is a list of eight public schools with the highest summary 75th percentile SAT scores. I have chosen the 75th percentile values as these students are more likely to be retained and to graduate from the school and, thus, better characterize the overall student body.</p>

<p>(75th percentile combined SAT section scores)
UC-Berkeley (2190)
College of William and Mary (2160)
UVA (2150)
U of MI-Ann Arbor(2150)
UCLA (2130)
GA Tech (2100)
UNC-Chapel Hill (2090)
U of MD-College Park (2070*)</p>

<p>I have omitted schools that have under 50% of the students submitting SAT scores. Schools that have low SAT submission rates can have skewed aggregate scores, hence this constraint. “*” indicates that no writing score was available, so I have substituted the CR score which usually tracks writing closely.</p>

<p>Here is a list of ACT-dominant schools (>50% ACT submission rate) where 75th-percentile scores are 30 or higher (SAT equivalent 2000). I also have included the SAT total and SAT submission rate to show that these schools also sort near the top based on possibly-skewed SAT results</p>

<p>(75th percentile ACT composite scores)
UM-Ann Arbor(31; SAT 2150, 59% submitted) (note that Michigan appears on both lists)
UI-Urbana-Champaign (31; SAT 2090*, 27% submitted, 7th on unrestricted SAT list)
University of Wisconsin-Madison (30; SAT 2060, 31% submitted, 10th on unrestricted SAT list)</p>

<p>(U of MN-Morris appears 8th on the unrestricted SAT list, but its SAT submission rate is 12% and its overall 75th percentile ACT composite is 27 so I have omitted it.)</p>

<p>Combining the lists into a ranked top 10</p>

<ol>
<li>UC-Berkeley</li>
<li>College of William and Mary</li>
<li>UVA </li>
<li>U of MI-Ann Arbor</li>
<li>UCLA</li>
<li>GA Tech</li>
<li>U of IL-Urbana-Champaign</li>
<li>UNC-Chapel Hill</li>
<li>U of MD-College Park</li>
<li>U of WI-Madison</li>
</ol>

<p>For graduate program prestige, I have taken the 10 schools which appear:

<p>These are the only schools that match all these requirments (and, as I note, not all of them meet even these). From here I subjectively compared across list rankings with the notion that any weighting would be arbitrary, except I gave the last list less subjective priority as it pertained only to scientific research. With this subjective last step I found the schools arranged themselves into three tiers which I could only arbitrarily rank within. Hence I alphabetize the order within prestige tiers.</p>

<p>Tier I
UC-Berkeley
UCLA
U of MI-Ann Arbor</p>

<p>Tier II
UC-San Diego
U of WA-Seattle
U of WI-Madison</p>

<p>Tier III
U of IL-Urbana-Champaign
U of MN-Twin Cities
UNC-Chapel Hill
UT-Austin</p>

<p>I will avoid creating an “overall” prestige list but note that UCSD would have been the 11th school on my undergraduate program list and UMN-TC and UT-Austin would both be in the top 20. UVA and W&M would not be correspondingly high as research schools, but that is not their focus.</p>

393

<p>IMO all of these departmental arguments are useless. Why should I care about the strength of the engineering school or the chemistry department if I’m a foreign language or speech/rhetoric major???</p>

<p>Btw, the rankings of “strength” usually have next to nothing to do with most undergraduate students. They reflect the research reputations of the faculty members, regardless of their impact or value to undergrads. </p>

<p>Anyway, for UNDERGRADUATE education, these are the premier publics in the USA:</p>

<p>1a and 1b. Army and Navy</p>

<ol>
<li>William & Mary</li>
<li>U Virginia</li>
<li>UC Berkeley</li>
<li>U North Carolina</li>
<li>UCLA</li>
<li>U Michigan</li>
<li>Georgia Tech</li>
<li>U Wisconsin</li>
</ol>

<p>Again, my ranking is for undergraduate education and is based on the following:</p>

<ol>
<li> Strength of students (stronger is preferred)</li>
<li> Class sizes (smaller is preferred)</li>
<li> Teaching quality & access to top profs (more profs and satisfied students is preferred)</li>
<li> Institutional resource AND the willingness to spend them to help undergrads (more money per student and more spending, as referenced by things like financial aid, is preferred)</li>
</ol>

394

<p>The academies I have overlooked in my methodology, probably because their “prestige”, while certainly in part academic, is not mostly so and, thus, are underrepresented by this approach. However, using the same metric as above, I get the following scores for the five academies:</p>

<p>2100 Navy/Annapolis
2030 Air Force/Colorado Springs
2000 Coast Guard/New London
1970 Army/West Point
1940 Merchant Marine/Kings Point</p>

<p>in which case only Annapolis finishes in the top 10.</p>

395

<p>The more good departments the more likely you will end up taking classes in one. Very strong schools across the board such as UCB, UM, UW, UCLA and a very few others have broad strengths in depts as the analysis done here showed–only a handful of schools had top 25 depts in nearly every area rated by US News. As the faculty are the heart of the university–not the students–better is better. Being successful at research is a sign of being more known in your field, respected by peers, and up to date as well as harder working and more interesting in many cases. Instead of a drone you have a leader.</p>

396

<p>^^^^Agreed!!</p>

397

<p>“Is Michigan’s medical school located on the central campus? Or is it even further than the “bus ride” to the Engineering campus?”</p>

<p>UCB, first of all, Michigan’s Medical complex (Hospital and Medical School) is across the street (as in 10 yards away) from “the Hill”, where the majority of undergraduate students live. It is also located within a 10 minute walk from Main campus and the Chemistry, Biology and Physics buildings.</p>

<p>“If not, how does the medical school add to the completeness of campus life?”</p>

<p>There are literally dozens of undergrads working on Medical School reseach projects at any time.</p>

<p>“Most medical campuses are not contiguous to the main campus (eg. UCLA, USC, Cornell)”</p>

<p>Which begs the question, why is UCSF not named UC-Berkeley Medical school. Afterall, Cornell’s Medical school is still named Cornell Medical school, and UCLA’s Medical school is also named UCLA Medical school.</p>

<p>I guess I have a few questions.</p>

<p>1) Are UCSF’s budget and operations run by UC-Berkeley administrators?
2) Is UCSF’s endowment part of Cal’s endowment
3) Do Cal alums make up a significant chunk of the students enrolled at UCSF (like 30% or 40%)? If UCSF is truly part of Cal, Cal students should make up a large chunk of UCSF’s student body. For example, at Harvard, Johns Hopkins, Penn and Michigan Medical schools, alums make up 30% or more of the Medical school student population.</p>

<p>“UCSF > Michigan medicine, denistry, pharmacy.”</p>

<p>Not really UCB. Only Harvard and JHU have medical schools that are truly superior to Michigan Medical school. According to the latest USNWR rankings, Michigan’s Medical school is ranked #6 in the nation and UCSF is ranked #4 in the nation.</p>

398

<p>

Michigan’s medical school complex is an extension of central campus. It’s right across the street from the Hill Area (undergraduate) dormitories. The Molecular & Behavioral Neuroscience Institute and the Biomedical Science Research Building is a block off Couzens Hall (dorm) and the Power (Performance) Center. It is definitely contiguous to the main campus.</p>

<p>Michigan’s medical school brings in lots of research $$$, many of which are interdisciplinary and available to aspiring undergraduate students. For example, as a freshman premed student, you can do this:
[University</a> of Michigan News Service](<a href=“http://www.ns.umich.edu/index.html?Releases/2005/Apr05/r041205a]University”>http://www.ns.umich.edu/index.html?Releases/2005/Apr05/r041205a)
and have your research presented on Capital Hill.</p>

399

<p>Alex, </p>

<p>

Like I said, it’s located in the City of San Francisco - not the City of Berkeley.</p>

<p>Administrators wanted the school to relocate to Berkeley, but it was already established in San Francisco.

</p>

<p>UCSF campus is graduate medical sciences only. Berkeley campus does not have graduate medical sciences
for Berkeley to form a competing medical school would be redundant.</p>

<p>UCSF and Berkeley have several joint degrees:
[JMP</a> - Main Home Page](<a href=“http://jmp.berkeley.edu/]JMP”>http://jmp.berkeley.edu/)
[UCSF</a> School of Medicine - Anthropology, History and Social Medicine](<a href=“http://dahsm.medschool.ucsf.edu/]UCSF”>http://dahsm.medschool.ucsf.edu/)

[UCSF</a>, UC Berkeley consider joint degree program in translational medicine - UCSF Today](<a href=“http://today.ucsf.edu/stories/ucsf-uc-berkeley-consider-joint-degree-program-in-translational-medicine/]UCSF”>http://today.ucsf.edu/stories/ucsf-uc-berkeley-consider-joint-degree-program-in-translational-medicine/)
[The</a> Curriculum | Degrees & Programs | Office of Admissions | UCSF School of Medicine](<a href=“http://medschool.ucsf.edu/admissions/degrees/curriculum.aspx]The”>http://medschool.ucsf.edu/admissions/degrees/curriculum.aspx)</p>

<p>UCSF having its own administration and budget just means it has more focused management.</p>

<p>I don’t know the answer to your question about percentage of Cal students at UCSF. It may just imply that they don’t promote academic in-breeding like the other schools you mention.</p>

<p>

Isn’t coming in 4th place better than coming in 6th place? ;)</p>

400

<p>barrons,
In order for me to agree with you, I have to accept your definition of “good departments.” I don’t. My longstanding interest on CC is for the student. I don’t think that rankings of departments care a whit about the average undergraduate and what he/she learns in the classroom. “Good” departments, as measured within academia, frequently ignore what happens with the undergraduates. They care about research and publication. </p>

<p>By contrast, think about a hiring company that comes to ABC College. The employer wants talent. That can mean talented students taking classes with academic-leading profs, but take away the talent from the students and employers aren’t interested. Employers are hiring the student, not the prof and not the school. They want talented students first and foremost and if they get taught by people beloved within academia, then that’s an extra benefit. </p>

<p>Re your assertion that the faculty are the heart of the institution, that may be accurate from your perspective, but is it so for the average undergraduate student? What will be his/her connection to the school for years and years and years afterwards? You’re right that some will remain in touch with a few profs, some of whom might make very material contributions to the advancement of their careers. </p>

<p>Far more likely, however, is that the average undergraduate student will remain in touch with many fellow students and that they will become the key contacts for the student and across a myriad of areas spanning both professional and social life. So, while institutionally, the faculty may be the heart of the institution, one’s fellow students are commonly a far bigger and more influential and longer lasting force for the average undergraduate student.</p>