What is the best source to compare departmental rankings across universities for undergraduate schools- USNWR ?
For GETTING A JOB, I recommend the WSJ recruiter rankings. Do you really care how many papers are published by research professors u never see?
http://www.wsj.com/articles/SB10001424052748703376504575491704156387646
USNWR graduate school rankings can be used as a proxy*.
*If comparing programs at research universities. Liberal arts colleges are left out.
Note: USNWR ranks undergraduate business and engineering programs directly.
I agree with UCBChemEGrad. Assuming a university has the resources and a vibrant intellectual student population, using graduate rankings to determine the strength of undergraduate departments in various discipline works well. That is not to say that universities or colleges that are not ranked, or ranked well, in your specific discipline at the graduate level do not have a strong undergraduate program/department in that discipline, but a strong graduate program will almost certainly mean a strong undergraduate program.
OP, clearly you’re looking for something other than grad rankings or you wouldn’t have asked for undergrad rankings. Unfortunately, this type of differentiation is less prevalent than it is at the grad level.
I’m not familiar with the WSJ rankings as suggested by @GMTplus7 but I’d give them a look.
Look closely at each school. Yale computer science students are bitter about their third rate education. They used USNWR instead of looking at the CS department data.
Thanks for the replies - I was mainly interested in undergrad Business rankings which USNWR does seem to rank but wasn’t sure if USNWR was the best source for this information or not.
Actually, the USNWR undergraduate BBA and Engineering rankings are probably quite accurate. I cannot think of a more accurate ranking of BBA programs.
The WSJ recruiter rankings is highly suspect as it was based on very limited survey data. In 2010, WSJ surveyed “842 recruiters for the nation’s largest public and private companies, nonprofit organizations and federal agencies across every region of the country and spanning nearly two dozen industries”, 479 of which responded. That’s hardly enough representations for the 8 industries they ranked. Thus the results are highly suspect.
http://www.wsj.com/articles/SB10001424052748704358904575478074223658024
For example, UT-Austin, the #1 accounting school ten years in a row according to Public Accounting Report, is not even ranked among the top 11 accounting schools according to WSJ. Most UT accounting grads routinely receive one or more offers from the Big 4. What more can you ask for?
Read the response from UT: Why the Wall Street Journal Rankings Are Bogus (http://alcalde.texasexes.org/2010/09/why-the-wall-street-journal-rankings-are-bogus-a-takedown/).
Btw, this is the same survey who claimed Penn State to be #1 among the top 25 schools picked by recruiters.
http://www.wsj.com/articles/SB10001424052748704554104575435563989873060
Was wondering if anyone has seen the report released by Brookings Institution recently on assessing 2 year and 4 year colleges based on a value-added approach.
http://www.brookings.edu/research/reports2/2015/04/29-beyond-college-rankings-rothwell-kulkarni