<p>lol. Its all about maintaining the right balance between credibility and excitement...so you'll see the normal elite schools at the top of the list to maintain the reputation, but you'll see slight changes (like with JHU and Brown) to keep people wanting to get the next issue</p>
<p>I don't know about the Penn issue... I mean it's obvious that Harvard, Yale, Princeton, Stanford, MIT, etc, are wonderful schools that deserve to be in the top, too many people assume selectivity is a measure of quality. I don't know if I would rank Penn above these schools in an absolute fashion necessarily, but Penn is a large school and thus its acceptance rate will undoubtedly be higher. If Harvard, for example, were twice as big, what do you think would happen? These top schools build a lot of reputation from how many people they turn down.</p>
<p>i think its time for washu to take a dive, in order for US news to still retain some credibility. i think michigan will rise, to number 20. Cornell will rise as well. But all of this is just guess work, they can do anything they want.</p>
<p>UPenn should be ranked around 15-20. Being ranked #4 is a joke.</p>
<p>i think Penn should be ranked somewhere between 8 and 10</p>
<p>The only sort of "ranking" I respect are those that are based on academic impact (meaning citations in journals), at least there they give you an idea of who really works there. And man, Duke #5 is absurd, how come it was #35 or something in the world ranking made last year in Shanghai. I also agree that Penn is a little overrated. UChicago should always be among the top 10, and so should Berkeley, that's just comon sense!!!!</p>
<p>"If Harvard, for example, were twice as big, what do you think would happen?"</p>
<p>Um, I'm guessing they'd let in twice as many people, which would raise their admission. I don't think more people would apply just because they were bigger. Harvard is everyones major reach, so everyone applies. Being bigger would only mean that they have more room for some of the apps.</p>
<p>HAVE ANY OF YOU CONSIDERED THAT ANY CHANGES IN THE RANKINGS IS ALMOST MEANINGLESS?</p>
<p>It's not as if a school drops below another by one spot actually is any worse than it was from the previous school or that it is now worse than the school that got ranked higher than it this year! </p>
<p>oh wait we're here in CC. rankings mean everything! if penn drops one spot, that must mean its quality is decreasing, so i'm not going to apply there this year, even though i would've last year! if i get accepted to #8 and #10, i HAVE to choose #8 since it is simply better because it is ranked higher! #10 sucks!!! omg, my college rose 3 ranks! look how much we're improving (even though i can't notice any of it) but my school is getting better (even though it probably fell 2 spots down maybe a year or two ago).</p>
<p>We realize that the rankings do not mean anything. We are just speculating as to what they will be this year. No need to be so hyper.</p>
<p>I agree with joshb110. In fact, we are pointing out the flaws of rankings like the USNews one. Why would we ever think that rankings mean everything?</p>
<p>Rankings from other countries focus on like doctoral candidates and phd papers and stuff like that...not really much on undergrad stuff</p>
<p>Yale is #1, always and forever.</p>
<p>Penn and WUSTL enjoy relatively higher rankings than they deserve, IMHO, because certain graduate schools/programs elevate their nominal and undistinguished undergraduate schools, Wharton & Wash U Med School respectively, to a level that's unworthy and/or noncompetitive. Based on the reputations of their undergraduate programs alone, Penn and WUSTL, again IMHO, would rank along with the better LACs such as Davidson, Carleton, Haverford, Vassar, Holy Cross, Colby and Middlebury. However, these schools do have these excellent grad schools/programs to their credit (and yes I know Wharton is undergrad too) so their position within the USN&WR rankings should stay relatively stable.</p>
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Yale is #1, always and forever.
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<p><em>Harvard & Stanford do an east coast-west coast stomp</em></p>
<p>I think Georgetown deserves a higher ranking...</p>
<p>but a big part of calculating the rank is based on size of endowment, and gtown's is relatively small...</p>
<p>I agree... Georgetown deserves more credit. It is definitely not 20-rank, and neither is Berkeley.</p>
<p>They're low for basically the same reasons. Public schools don't have huge endowments either.</p>
<p>I predict that Yale will be tied with Harvard for first. Penn may go up because of its higher yield. It may be tied with Princeton (guessing, but only because I doubt Princeton is going to go down). Brown will also go up and I think Georgetown and Berkeley will too. Columbia might go down a rank, I think.</p>
<p>atu32, Duke is significantly ranked higher than UCBerk simply because these are undergrad rankings! The Shanghai rankings have NOTHING to do with an undergraduate education. I am living near UCLA this summer and have a few roommates who went there. They talk of not getting classes, having sections taught with T/As, having HUGE lecture classes for a majority of classes. In fact they said that when USNEWS calculates student/ faculty ratio it unfairly gives them an advantage because it doesnt count the amount of faculty that teach through TAs or don't teach at all. Berkeley is the same. Its an awesome grad school but its impossible for it to offer the attention Duke will offer its graduates.</p>
<p>My Tufts interviewer bashed UCLA for being too big without enough individual attention for undergrad.</p>
<p>Edit: When do these rankings come out, anyway?</p>