u of chicago is top of mind for top students in the US now… the marketing is paying off… but they have the academic chops to back it up too. definitely a school on the rise imo.
Agreed 100 %. Its “in” now. That is by itself a victory.
@JHS and others upthread - Stanford is perhaps the worst example of “how much can change in a few decades,” because Stanford’s situation is so unique. Stanford became the primary private-u beneficiary of the biggest concentrated wealth boom in recent human history (i.e. Silicon Valley). That totally changed the game in Palo Alto.
Also, outside of Stanford, what’s really changed in 30 years? A few private Us have risen a little bit (notably UPenn), and state Us have fallen as state funding has fallen (see Berkeley and Michigan). Maybe LACs have fallen out of favor a little bit too (but at the tippy top, they are still going strong). Besides that, what’s changed?
Here was the US News Top 10 in 1988:
1 - Stanford
2 - Harvard
3 - Yale
4 - Princeton
5 - Berkeley
6 - Dartmouth
7 - Duke
8 - U. of Chicago
8 - U. of Michigan
10 - Brown
That’s not that different from the situation now!
So, for everyone saying “A lot can change in a few decades” - where do we have proof of that? History doesn’t seem to be a guide.
I think that’s a fair point, @Cue7 . However, if you had gone back a couple of decades before that, I don’t think Stanford, Duke, or Brown would have been in the top-10 list. Wisconsin and Cornell could easily have been there, maybe Columbia, too. What about MIT?
Churn happens.
By the way, 1988 was still awfully near the beginning of the Silicon Valley phenomenon, at least if you are talking about “the biggest concentrated wealth boom in recent human history.” Of the Silicon Valley companies most associated with Stanford, Oracle and Sun Microsystems both went public in 1986, Cisco didn’t go public until 1990, and Google was barely a gleam in anyone’s eye. HP and Intel had both been public for awhile, but were hurt badly in the '87 stock crash, and their value didn’t take off until a year or so later. Defense contracting (albeit techy defense contracting) was still huge in the local economy. Route 128 was probably no longer as big a deal as Silicon Valley – but it hadn’t been that way for long. The point is, Stanford rose to prominence before Silicon Valley became the center or the world.
@JHS - I agree, Stanford rose to prominence before Silicon Valley, but it took that boom to get it into the #1 or #2 spot in the country. I don’t think, before Silicon Valley took off (and no matter what US News says), it was seen as #1 or #2.
Also, yes, if you go back fifty or sixty years, you’ll see a little more change - but not actually that much.
Let’s go back about 100 years. Look at the survey of American colleges in 1925, below. The consistency found below is rather spectacular.
Overall Ranking 1925:
- University of Chicago
- Harvard
- Columbia
- Yale
- Wisconsin
- Princeton
- Johns Hopkins
- Michigan
- California (Berkeley)
- Cornell
- Illinois
- Pennsylvania
- Minnesota
- Stanford
- Ohio State
- Iowa
- Bryn Mawr
- Caltech
- MIT
- Northwestern
About a 100 years ago, many more state universities dominated the top 20. If you take out the state Us (which have fallen as state funding has fallen), here’s the list from 100 years ago:
1.) Chicago
2.) Harvard
3.) Columbia
4.) Yale
5.) Princeton
6.) Johns Hopkins
7.) Cornell
8.) U. of Pennsylvania
9.) Stanford
10.) Caltech
11.) MIT
12.) Northwestern
Does that really look that different from today?
(The only U. that has fallen hard from the 1925 list, by the way is the University of Chicago, which is almost universally NOT in consideration to be the #1 U in America today.)
@cue7 Yes … Fell “hard” from one to three …
Don’t get too caught up in one year at #3 @Chrchill !
What will you say if Chicago pulls a Duke - ranked #3 one year, and, two years later, ranked #8?
Or, the shame! - what if Chicago pulls a Caltech - ranked #1(!) one year, and, a few years later, plummets to #9?
My guess is, two years from now, you’d start a thread titled, oh, “Is University Strength Declining?”
Oh, and @Chrchill - that 1925 rank was of graduate schools - show me another aggregated rank of grad schools that currently has Chicago at #1, or even #3. Most have Chicago (at best) as #8 or #9.
Man, that fall from #1 looks even harder then, huh?
Law school 4 and business school 2
Still not #1 @Chrchill …
And remind me of the rank for med, for earth sciences, for poli sci, for sociology, for bio, for chem, for econ, and on and on… Any #1s there? Besides the English Dep’t, show me ANY other #1 rankings.
You should keep your wagon hitched to Harvard. They’ve had a much better run over the past 100 years…
If you look at Chicago’s run over the past 100, it’s hard to believe they ever outranked Harvard, isn’t it? But outrank Harvard they did - until they declined.
Who EVER said they will outrank Harvard ? You are mercilessly beating a dead horse, so much so it is rising from the dead … Everybody agrees Harvard/Stanford are destined to remain top dogs.
H and S are the only ones who are preeminent in all fields and graduate schools, Yale, Chicago, Columbia, MIT and Princeton are the elite tier below each with strenghts many areas and weaknesses in others.
I’m not saying they WILL @Chrchill - I’m saying at one time they DID outrank Harvard. Now, Chicago isn’t even close. And that’s the decline - they went from a true competitor to barely a blip on Harvard’s radar. That’s a decline.
“blip” is overstating it. Certainly not a blip in law, business, and many other subjects. I don’t attach any value to a bizarre ranking of 100 years ago. Seriously ?
Well, money speaks louder than words - in 1925 Chicago was a close #2 in wealth to Harvard. How would you say Chicago kept pace over the past 100 years?
If you don’t like the old rankings, talk to me about the green.
Concur in part and dissent in part. Harvard is mega rich. NO comparison. But now look at other schools that are MUCH richer than UChicago – Yale, Princeton, UT system etc – and see how well UChicago is doing notwithstanding the wealth difference.
And imagine how well Chicago could do if it hadn’t bungled it’s finances/institutional direction three generations ago! We could be talking about a true Harvard competitor then, couldn’t we?
If you suggest that their neglect of the college was a disaster, yes I agree. But they are rectifying that.
Jesus Christ is this thread still going on? What is the point here?
We have two or three posters who seem to make it their life’s work to denigrate UChicago (or at least fret about) every obscure thing they can think of, and we have a couple of posters who seem to care about nothing but finding obscure rankings that glorify UChicago. And they have been going back and forth for 236 posts of ever more useless squabbling and nitpicking.
Every school has strengths and areas that need improvement, but the amount of navel-gazing that is going on here is completely ridiculous.
Perhaps this thread has run its course.
Med decline, lack of engineering, drops in departmental rankings, and lackluster endowment aren’t obscure things @ThankYouforHelp