University of Chicago -- The Meteoric Rise

Colleges and Universities A-Z University of Chicago ✅
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As a parent of a happy UChicago freshman from Europe, I can assure you that not just the average people in Europe but 95% of the population would not know the difference between the U of Chicago and U of Cincinnati or U of Connecticut. Here, UChicago name is mostly known by people who’ve dealt with economics/finance or by people who are in the US college search process.

It is the same case for most of the other US schools; the Europeans wouldn’t know them (including half of the Ivies), except HYP+Stanford+MIT. The recognizability of Columbia could be slightly better than the rest of the top schools (mostly due to the New York factor, I guess).

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No dog in this hunt, but as my alma mater was mentioned :

I have not studied international recognition of American universities, and have no valid basis to judge this myself.
Increasing undergraduate selectivity is nice, but my guess is international recognition in conventional arts & sciences fields is probably derived mostly from graduate schools, and specifically areas that people get Nobel prizes for. Physical sciences mostly, and economics.

Cornell has traditionally been strong in the physical sciences. though some universities have been yet stronger…
However, conventional Arts & Sciences fields, aside, it is my understanding is that Cornell has traditionally drawn some international recognition for its programs outside of those areas. Particularly in agriculture, engineering, architecture, and, yes, hotel administration. There have been countries whose students go abroad mostly to study agriculture or engineering. A past president of Taiwan received his PhD from Cornell in agriculture. I would guess some people in Taiwan have heard of it, at least.

I do recall reading some survey, someplace, that showed Cornell had better recognition in Asia, and somewhat less in Europe. But I don’t know where that study/survey is now, and I don’t recall how other universities fared (because I don’t care).

My guess is U Penn is primarily known internationally for Wharton. But that one program itself is is really, really famous, I’m guessing. Though maybe some people overseas don’t recognize Wharton is U Penn, that may be a case of over-branding being too successful. But my guess is few universities, if any, have any single program as well known as Wharton. Chicago has a formidable business school too, of course, but my guess it is less famous.

U Chicago is, and has been, one of our great universities. I don’t even get threads that start “meteoric rise”
There are other schools that rose after changing their undergraduate admissions practices, but U Chicago has always been great, well before that. As far as I recall. Its long string of Nobelists and other distinguished faculty probably runs pages. In terms areas of conventional arts & sciences fields, its recognition level should be at or near the very top. But of course it won’t garner international recognition to the extent that such recognition may derive in part from fields that it doesn’t offer.

Also name recognition of universities is almost certainly abetted by association with famous alumni. People who are more likely to get to be famous include politicians, TV personalities, actors, sports people, highest-profile businessmen. A US president is a relatively internationally famous alumnus, for one. Academics are rarely famous.

Also some universities gain, or lose, recognition due to their location. My recollection of that survey I saw was NYU and UCLA were way higher than most US people would put them.

Like I said I have no idea how this actually plays out, I am no expert in international recognition.
But if somebody want to look, there are surveys/ studies of some sort or other.

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The numerous world university rankings have UChicago consistently in the top 5-6 of US Universities. if you takeI out MIT and Caltech (which are specialty schools), UChicago is top 3-4. . That’s the best indication for global reputation. Notably, PENN, Brown, Dartmouth are all way below.

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this thread is soooooo off topic…

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UChicago received the largest ever early applications. 13,000 for ED1and EA. Total admission from that was 9 %…About two thirds of the admits were ED1. This is startling when you consider the substantial double digit early admit stats for the other top peer colleges. It is also in line with this year being the most competitive by far for all college admissions.

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UChicago Law now ahead of Columbia in about to be released USNWR ranking.

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Is that news?

I don’t follow law school rankings year to year in USNWR, but I definitely pay attention to law school reputations over time. I don’t think precise order matters for the tier of law schools that includes Chicago and Columbia and a few others, but I can’t remember a time since I’ve been paying attention – i.e., about 40 years – when I wouldn’t have put Chicago towards the top of that group and Columbia nearer to the bottom of it. Columbia gets an awful lot of mileage out of simply being in New York City.

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@JHS - in the rankings world, this would be fairly significant news. Chicago hasn’t been ahead of Columbia in the rankings for about 20 years. In fact, just six years ago, Chicago had fallen to the “unfathomable” position of being tied with Berkeley and U. of Penn (at #7).

Source: http://law.stanford.edu/wp-content/uploads/2015/03/lomio_etal-rp20.pdf

The school has been buoyed of late by some fairly significant donations, and I think the rankings drop from 5-6 years back set off some alarm bells in Hyde Park. The school soon climbed back to its “rightful” position in the top 5 and, as you say, many have always perceived it as a notch above Columbia. (Of course, some would consider the Law School a notch above - and separate - from everyone else, no matter who.)

Nevertheless, having the rankings reflect this is never a bad thing, especially in an industry where one ranking (US News) is so dominant.

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Chicago medical school l is the one that needs a … shot in the arm ranking wise. Will be interesting to see if Booth Business school will hold on to its second spot tie with Stanford,

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Interesting that Harvard fell one spot to #3 behind Yale and Stanford in the new Law school ranking. Not that it makes that much of a difference, but I am sure the Stanford team must be happy with that :slight_smile:

The Berkeley drop to 12 from 8 is also interesting

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@Chrchill said:

"Chicago medical school l is the one that needs a … shot in the arm ranking wise. "

This is absolutely the one area where, if Chicago can solve its “problem,” it’d achieve truly rarefied air. The problem is, improving the medical plant is extremely costly, takes lots of time, and requires a broad STEM infrastructure.

In terms of pure med school rankings - the US News methodology is fairly streamlined:

https://www.usnews.com/education/best-graduate-schools/articles/medical-schools-methodology

Research Activity and NIH funding account for nearly 50% of the score! Further, research activity directly correlates to the peer assessment score. Which school publishes the most big-time papers? Those schools get good peer assessment rankings.

This is why I started a thread on Chicago’s “decline.” Chicago’s NIH funding has plummeted, which creates a cascade effect within the medical plant. Top scientists will eventually go elsewhere, and a vicious cycle can start.

Note - I don’t think Chicago is there yet, but the STEM/medical plant absolutely need to be top priorities for the school, backed by billions (literally, billions) of dollars in investment. The school needs to create more salary pools/funds to poach top scientists from elsewhere, and it needs to pull it’s NIH funding per capita way back up - hopefully to the $200-250M/yr range (up from about $140M a year now). You pull NIH funding up by recruiting and cultivating a core of top scientists who can do great science, publish great papers and, guess what? pull in more and more funding every year.

Relatedly, science flourishes on an interdisciplinary model, perhaps more than most other fields. Biology labs nowadays have sophisticated computational guys (often pulled in from comp sci depts), and collaborate with engineering labs. Chicago needs to expand upon its offerings here to keep up.

All this being said, in the final couple years of Chicago’s campaign, I’m hoping we catch wind of a big-time donation to its medical school/bio sciences division - hopefully in the $250-$350M range. With that sort of investment to kickstart things, it’s conceivable that Chicago could break into the top 6-8 medical schools, which is about where it needs to be.

(Interestingly, this is EXACTLY what Stanford has done over the past decade - it’s engineered a move from the top 12 to the top 3 by spending a decade luring top scientists from elsewhere to Palo Alto. You can see the 2003 US News med school ranking here - https://■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■/threads/complete-usnews-2003-medical-school-rankings.11970/. In contrast, Chicago med improved its ranking by shrinking its class size. It’s plateaued - it now needs serious investment to climb higher. And climb higher they should.)

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They already raised 3.5 billion and increased campaign to 5 billion. Not a STEM issue; UChicago is preeminent in Physics, Astronomy and Math, for e.g… It is a bioscience/medical school problem. Still – being the leader in economics, tops in many social sciences and humanities, and having a top two business school and top four law school is pretty special.

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I have always and will always love U Chicago. I do t tho k this trend will fail because the college has the substance to back up its new status. Before now it was under ranked, if you will.

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I don’t think the situation is so dire for the medical school as everybody is thinking. I came across this in another forum and found it very telling. Chicago is doing fine

http://journals.lww.com/academicmedicine/Fulltext/2015/05000/What_Makes_a_Top_Research_Medical_School__A_Call.20.aspx

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@Chrchill

Sorry, I was being overbroad in my use of “STEM” - I agree, physics, astronomy, math, are all in good standing. The problem is, Chicago needs to strengthen bio, chem, comp sci, and it would be great to have things like bioengineering.

Also, I agree, the campaign increase to $5B is heartening. Science is a huge money drain though. Also, I certainly agree that Chicago is “pretty special,” but your characterization is a little off - it is A leader in economics (not necessarily “THE” leader in econ), tops in many social sciences and humanities, and has what would generally be considered top 5 law schools and business schools. I wouldn’t be comfortable asserting that Chicago has a “top 2” business school - it may say so in some rankings, but I’m not ready to say it’s ahead of either Harvard or Stanford.

@denydenzig - I’d come across that article in the past, and, on a per capita basis, it does a good job. The problem is, data collected was before Chicago’s more sizable drop in NIH funding. Further, in the era of “big science,” the model (having lots of top scientists - known as principal investigators - bringing in as much NIH funding as possible) is fairly standard. Chicago has significant room for improvement here.

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@Cue7 Chicago school in economics is not just top ranked with leading nobel winners, but it is the leading economics school of thought since world war II. It is the leading global intellectual force in this field.

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@Cue7 Chicago economics is so influential that it has “contaminated” other fields. most prominently law with law and economics. Saying this as an economics major and law school graduate (not from UChicago in either case).

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@Chrchill

I didn’t concentrate in econ, so I’m not the best to comment on this, but I always thought Chicago was “the” place for free-market, “freshwater” ideology. (E.g. government regulation can’t do much.) This is in contrast to places like Harvard or Stanford, the leading “saltwater” schools, that have a differing view.

Further, the neoclassical, freshwater view was at its height in the 80s and (less so) in the 90s. That’s when the Chicago School was really booming. Now, the climate seems to have shifted.

(Relatedly, this links to Nobel production at Chicago: from 1980-2000, the school produced a mind-boggling 15 nobel prize winners. From 2001 - 2017, on the other hand, the U has produced “only” six nobels.)

So, again, as I’m not comfortable saying Chicago has a “top 2” business school, I’m not comfortable saying it’s “THE” leader in economics. It’s certainly one of the top few places - and especially great to learn a certain paradigm - but not “THE” place. Maybe in 1987 or even 1997 it was “the” place, but not in 2017.

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@Cue7 With respect, your comfort level matters not. The market speaks.