Duke is number 1 overall.
^ Please refrain from insulting me personally. I know that it seems to be working for certain politicians but I will not tolerate it. An apology would be appreciated.
NerdyChica, your selection is very interesting.
For example, the public opinion has already been determined by a Gallup Poll. It went something like this:
According to the masses:
Harvard
Stanford
Yale
MIT
Berkeley
Notre Dame
Princeton
Michigan
Duke
UCLA
Texas-Austin
Texas A&M
Ohio State
UNC
Penn State
U Penn
According to people with graduate degrees
Harvard
Stanford
Yale
MIT
Berkeley
Princeton
Michigan
http://www.gallup.com/poll/9109/harvard-number-one-university-eyes-public.aspx
Not many sports enthusiasts who would count Vanderbilt or Northwestern among their top universities. By sports fan, I mean a person who would know universities entirely based on their athletic prowess, mainly in football and basketball. Amongst football fans, Michigan, Notre Dame and USC would be the three elite universities that would make the cut. Other universities that would certainly make a football fan’s list would include Alabama, Florida, LSU, Ohio State, Oklahoma, Penn State, Texas-Austin and a few others. Amongst basketball fans, Duke, Georgetown, UCLA and UNC would be the elite universities that would make the cut. Others would include Florida, Kansas, Kentucky etc…NU and Vanderbilt would not make the list of any self-respecting sports enthusiast.
In the case of academe’s perspective, just refer to the Peer Assessment score. It is probably the most comprehensive and consistent rating of undergraduate institutions. You forgot Brown, Cal, CMU, Dartmouth, Johns Hopkins, Michigan and Northwestern, UCLA and UVa.
Harvard 4.9
MIT 4.9
Stanford 4.9
Princeton 4.8
Yale 4.8
Berkeley 4.7
Caltech 4.6
Chicago 4.6
Columbia 4.6
Johns Hopkins 4.6
Cornell 4.5
Brown 4.4
Duke 4.4
Michigan 4.4
Penn 4.4
Northwestern 4.3
UVa 4.3
Carnegie Mellon 4.2
Dartmouth 4.2
Georgia Tech 4.21
UCLA 4.2
UNC 4.1
Vanderbilt 4.1
Wisconsin 4.1
Emory 4.0
Georgetown 4.0
Rice 4.0
Texas-Austin 4.0
WUSTL 4.0
I am not sure how you came up with the doctor’s perspective, as that would be difficult to determine without polling them. Personally, I would assume that a fairly good gauge of undergraduate prestige in the medical profession would entail some compromise between the prestige rating of medical schools (averaging the USNWR assessment ratings of head of internship programs rating with that of deans of medical schools) and how well represented undergraduate institutions are represented at medical schools.
Reputation Rating (average according to Deans of Medical Schools and Residency Directors):
Harvard 4.75
JHU 4.75
Stanford 4.65
UCSF 4.65
Duke 4.5
Penn 4.5
WUSTL 4.5
Columbia 4.4
Michigan 4.4
U Washington 4.25
Cornell 4.2
Vanderbilt 4.2
Yale 4.2
UCLA 4.15
Chicago 4.05
Pitt 4.05
Emory 4.0
Northwestern 4.0
As for the most well represented undergraduate institutions at medical schools, I would assume most of the schools above would be included among them. Other well represented institutions would include Brown, Cal, Dartmouth, Georgetown, Notre Dame, NYU, Princeton, Rice, Texas-Austin, Tufts, UC-Davis, UIUC, UNC, USC, UVa, Wisconsin-Madison, etc…
It is pretty clear that there is no single ideal when it comes to “prestige”. Different demographics will have different standards. Prestige will vary according to industry, academic field, age group, geographic location, religious affiliation etc…
“I would think the Guidance Counsellor ranking is the component most influenced by social prestige. Relative to the overall rankings, it bumps up Johns Hopkins, Georgetown, and NYU; it bumps down UChicago, Caltech, and WUSTL.”
Guidance counselor influenced by social prestige? TK, I don’t agree. GCs are, for the most part, not very knowledgeable. Most GCs could not cut it in other parts of a school’s faculty or administration. If they were highly competent, CC would not exist! The reason why the GCs give JHU, Georgetown and NYU high ratings, while Chicago, Caltech and WUSTL etc…lower ratings (relatively speaking) is because the majority of those GCs are located in the East Coast and have an East Coast bias.
Social prestige is an interesting concept, but I would not turn to GCs to establish the baseline. Perhaps an average of all the different types of prestige would be a better indicator of social prestige.
“I would think the Peer Assessment ranking is influenced by academic research output. Relative to the overall rankings, it bumps up Berkeley and Michigan strongly. It bumps down WUSTL, Penn, Duke and Dartmouth a bit.”
Again, that is not accurate tk. The reason why Cal and Michigan seem to benefit from the PA relative to their US News ranking is because the US News ranking methodology is designed to rank small private universities and does not make the necessary adjustments for large public universities. Furthermore, as you well know, the US News has a significant case of GIGO (garbage in, garbage out). The data presented by many universities is simply not accurate. If the methodology were tweaked to adjust for the differences between public and private universities, and if the data presented by universities were audited for accuracy and consistency, Cal would be ranked in the top 10 and Michigan in the top 15. In other words, the PA rating is an accurate depiction of the quality of undergraduate institutions.
I was focusing exclusively on private universities (with the exception of UCSF). Michigan, Berkeley, UCLA, UVA and UNC-CH would definitely be among the post prestigious public schools.
Also, my list was not intended to be scientific. I based my opinion on conversations I’ve had with people in the know. Take it with a grain of salt.
I think Columbia is more prestigious than Berkeley or Penn
The heavily-weighted PA score IS the adjustment.
What other, data-driven adjustment would produce similar effects?
tk, are you saying that purely as an undergraduate institution, Michigan should not receive a rating of 4.4 or Cal a rating of 4.7? That university presidents are not capable of following a simple instruction of rating peer institutions purely for the quality of their undergraduate programs? Or is it a fair assessment, and it is the rest of the methodology that stinks? I don’t think it unreasonable to lump Michigan along with Northwestern, Cornell and Penn. Cal is admittedly a notch above Michigan, so if Michigan is fairly rated at 4.4, Cal’s 4.7 rating is also fair.
“What other, data-driven adjustment would produce similar effects”
For one, I have said it before, the data is manipulated, inconsistent and inaccurate and does not factor in important differences between different types of universities (small, LAC ish universities like Dartmouth, mid-sized LACish universities like Notre Dame, small research universities like Caltech, mid-sized research universities like Northwestern, large research universities like Penn, huge research universities like Cal, private and public etc…)
The financial resources ranking is so flawed and laughably inaccurate that it borders on criminal. Michigan’s endowment is #7 in size, and #20 on a per capita basis. That does not factor in state funding, which runs in the hundreds of millions annually. As such, its financial resources rank should be well among the top 20, arguably among the top 10. Ranking it #41 is outrageous, no matter how one slices it.
Faculty resources. I have already discussed this one on several occasions. For one, the student to faculty ratios are often manipulated by omitting thousands of graduate students. For another, merely stating the percentage of classes with under 20 or over 50 does not say much without comparing apples to apples.
Alumni donation rates should not be part of the ranking. It blatantly favors small private universities with a history of dependence on alumni donations. Those universities also solicit donations in ways that public universities cannot. The donation rate can be listed as an aside, such as the USNWR ranking of institutions according to the quality of instruction, but it should not be part of the ranking.
Overall, the US News takes insignificant differences and blows them out of proportion in order to justify the ranking system that is clearly unnatural (hello sales!). I have always maintained that grouping universities in peer groups makes better sense than ranking them the way the US News does.
With accordance to post #39 of my own thread, I wouldn’t even rate WUSTL as elite. For the reasons outlined in that particular comment, I don’t consider it on the level of UNC Chapel Hill at all. It’s a bit overrated in that regard. They’ve gamed the rankings more than actually improving the academics of the university.
Those ratings are based on opinion polls.
The opinions may or may not be valid.
Usually it is a good idea to validate (or correct) opinions against measurement data rather than the other way around.
I’m skeptical of the “East Coast bias” claim, and of claims that all the CDS data is hopelessly corrupt. These sound like conspiracy theories. There is a simpler explanation:
University presidents, provosts, and deans may tend to be biased in favor of the large universities where so many of them earned their doctorates. They value research production (in which Berkeley and Michigan excel). However, they don’t necessarily have consistently better insight than educated parents do into the quality of undergraduate education at scores of institutions they or their relatives never attended.
I’m not saying research production isn’t important, that it doesn’t benefit undergraduates, that it’s the only good quality of those two universities, or even that it shouldn’t be one of the most important factors for some students. Nevertheless I think the overall undergraduate ranking of UC Berkeley at #20 is more plausible (for a random top student from a random state, who is considering a random arts & science major) than the PA ranking at #6, in light of all the other rankings, measurements, and student reviews I’ve seen.
tk, you have not explained how a university with the 6th or 7th largest endowment in the nation (20th on a per student basis), and $300 million in annual state funding can possibly be #41 on the financial resources rank.
Also, I would like to hear your explanation on why private universities generally leave our thousands of graduate students from their student to faculty ratios, or how the USNWR throws out a garbage statistic such as % of classes with fewer than 20 or more than 50 students without qualifying that data with specifics, such as how many of those classes are seminars, how many sections are taught by the same professor etc…
Finally, do you think comparing alumni donation rates between Dartmouth and Berkeley makes sense, or provides any insight into alumni satisfaction?
I await your answers to the above with eager anticipation.
“I’m skeptical of the “East Coast bias” claim, and of claims that all the CDS data is hopelessly corrupt. These sound like conspiracy theories.”
Conspiracy theories? So JHU and Georgetown are significantly better than Chicago and other non East Coast elites? And private universities do not lie about their student to faculty ratios?
“They value research production (in which Berkeley and Michigan excel). However, they don’t necessarily have consistently better insight than educated parents do into the quality of undergraduate education at scores of institutions they or their relatives never attended.”
Wow, university presidents cannot understand a simple instruction, but educated parents know better eh? LOL! Has a survey on “educated parents” been conducted? If so, can you share it with us. According to the Gallup Poll taken a few years ago, people with graduate degrees tend to think very highly of Berkeley (top 5 nationally).
“Nevertheless I think the overall undergraduate ranking of UC Berkeley at #20 is more plausible (for a random top student from a random state, who is considering a random arts & science major) than the PA ranking at #6, in light of all the other rankings, measurements, and student reviews I’ve seen.”
Please provide a link to an article that references fabricated student to faculty ratios.
I think you guys are taking this a tad bit too seriously
I assume some private universities do occasionally present incorrect or misleading information in their CDS reports, either deliberately or through carelessness. Do they do it systematically, in a way that significantly distorts the results? Do public universities never do it? When so many different metrics all diverge from the PA assessments of those two state schools, I think there is a pretty big burden of proof to show the other measurements are all inaccurate or irrelevant. If you happen to believe they are, and that the PA scores are a better indicator, fine. Go with that.
At any rate, with respect to a personal college choice, I don’t think a ~20 position ranking spread means too much. Berkeley represents a great value for a strong student who lives in California. It generally wouldn’t make much sense to pay a big price premium for one of the 19 higher ranked schools.
“I assume some private universities do occasionally present incorrect or misleading information in their CDS reports, either deliberately or through carelessness. Do they do it systematically, in a way that significantly distorts the results?”
When it comes to student to faculty ratios, it may not be systematic, but it is rampant and significant. Brown, CMU, Georgetown, JHU, MIT, NYU and Notre Dame report the data honestly. Most other private universities seem to live in an alternate reality where graduate students do not exist. That includes the following:
California Institute of Technology
Cornell University (my own alma matter)
Dartmouth College
Duke University
Harvard University
Northwestern University
Rice University
Stanford University
University of Pennsylvania
Vanderbilt University
Yale University
Columbia, Chicago and Emory do not have CDSs, so it is difficult to prove in their case, but considering the above, and their suspiciously low student to faculty ratios, it is pretty clear that they too are taking their liberty in reporting data. In most of the cases above, the omissions are extreme. Some of those universities have as many, if not more, graduate students as undergraduate students. All of them, with the exception of Dartmouth, are leaving out thousands of graduate students.
Now one may say that the student to faculty ratio alone does not impact rankings. Fair enough. But it is a very effective visual stimulus for overprotective parents. a 3:1, 4:1, 5:1, 6:1 or 7:1 ratio sounds much better than a 10:1, 11:1, 12:1 or 13:1 ratio does it not? I think it is very misleading.
Also, while this one incidence alone does not impact rankings that much, this is just one metric, and it is very visible. If universities blatantly take their liberty about something as easily verifiable as their student to faculty ratios, they are most certainly manipulating about other data. The burden of proof, as you put it, is not on us, but on them.
“Do public universities never do it?”
I have yet to see a suspicious or erroneous report come out of a public university. Feel free to search the CDS of public universities. You will see that they include thousands of graduate students enrolled in programs/departments that enroll undergraduate students.
“When so many different metrics all diverge from the PA assessments of those two state schools, I think there is a pretty big burden of proof to show the other measurements are all inaccurate or irrelevant. If you happen to believe they are, and that the PA scores are a better indicator, fine. Go with that.”
Considering the facts I have laid out above, I would say that the PA is the one variable that cannot be manipulated, and outliers are factored out to ensure that the few inconsistencies do not impact the overall outcome. The burden of proof rests squarely on the universities as they are clearly not being honest. I have been following the US News closely since 1990. I saw private universities alter their data overnight in an attempt to rise in the rankings.
“At any rate, with respect to a personal college choice, I don’t think a ~20 position ranking spread means too much.”
I agree. Unfortunately, impressionable children with little knowledge are easily swayed by little variances.
“It generally wouldn’t make much sense to pay a big price premium for one of the 19 higher ranked schools.”
I agree. When did I, or anybody, say that it is worth paying more money to attend Cal than to pay less money to attend a university ranked in the same general ball park. I merely object to ignorant posters who think that if cost of attendance is the same, one should choose a private university because it provides a better undergraduate experience. That is a load of BS. Only the most ignorant of adults would make such a baseless assumption.
tk, again, you have not explained how a university with the 6th or 7th largest endowment in the nation (20th on a per student basis), without factoring $300 million in annual state funding and the economies of scale that comes with a university that enrolls 43,000 students, can possibly be #41 on the financial resources rank. You speak about burden of proof? In this case, who, do you think, needs to explain its position, the university or the ranking? 
Also, I would like to hear your explanation on why private universities generally leave out thousands of graduate students from their student to faculty ratios, or how the USNWR throws out a garbage statistic such as % of classes with fewer than 20 or more than 50 students without qualifying that data with specifics, such as how many of those classes are seminars, how many sections are taught by the same professor etc…
Finally, do you think comparing alumni donation rates between Dartmouth and Berkeley makes sense, or provides any insight into alumni satisfaction or quality of the respective institutions? If yes, please explain. If not, why is it part of the ranking?
I have responded to all your questions, perhaps you could respond in kind.
No Purdue?
Maybe they are … but the issue here is whether they are fudging their numbers to such an extent that it misrepresents the significant differences, or the ranking outcomes, when it comes to top private v. top public universities. Does anyone doubt that Michigan and Berkeley have a bigger problem with huge undergraduate classes and over-reliance on TAs than private schools like Chicago and Columbia do? I don’t doubt that they do, and I don’t base this opinion solely on the published S:F ratios. Now, you can say you don’t care about class sizes, and if so I can’t really argue with your personal preferences … but you’ll have a hard time persuading me that very big classes aren’t more common at big state universities than they are at rich, selective private schools.
Sorry, but I don’t understand why this is germane. USNWR does not consider endowment size in its ranking (not directly, anyway). If it did, the relevant number would be endowment per student. If Michigan is 20th by that measure, then I don’t think it would have much effect on its overall ranking (since “financial resources” only counts for 10% and 20th is not all that much better than its current overall ranking).
I also don’t understand your issue with “seminars”. In my opinion, if a university is offering many small, discussion-focused classes with frequent writing assignments, led by a professor not a TA, that’s a good thing. I remember that you raised this issue in reference to Princeton. As I recall, you thought their freshmen seminar topics sounded silly. I’m not inclined to agree. http://www.princeton.edu/pub/frs/
This is probably my least favorite element of the US News ranking.
It may provide some marginal insight into alumni satisfaction, but no, I don’t think it’s a meaningful indicator of institutional quality. I’d drop it.
One other number alone is a pretty good proxy for the overall US News national university ranking (even though it only counts for ~8% of the total). That number is the average SAT M+CR. If you used that number alone, Berkeley’s and Michigan’s positions would be almost exactly where they are in the overall rankings. Are private universities (and only private universities) so misrepresenting their test numbers, that if you eliminated those errors, Berkeley would leapfrog to #6 and Michigan to #13? I don’t think so. The differences in the averages are too big to be easily explained away. This one number is telling, in my opinion, because it indicates which universities are best able to compete year after year for top students from all over the country.
“Peer” opinions ought to matter, too. However, if you think the CDS numbers (or the USNWR criteria) are hopelessly corrupt (or biased), then why should we trust the peer assessment surveys to be a perfect reflection of faculty opinions? Opinion polls are notoriously biased by the way the survey questions are framed, or by the survey population sample.
tk, I think we have debated long enough. Suffice it to say you are a firm believer that public universities are inferior, relative to their academic private peers. I believe that they are underrated. To you, Cal and Michigan are only prestigious for their research, and do not deserve the recognition as undergraduate institutions. To me, their undergraduate programs are excellent in their own right. To you, they are only worth attending at a much lower cost, and should not be chosen if one can attend a private universities ranked on par or better by the USNWR if the cost of attendance is not significantly lower. To me, and to thousands of gifted students with multiple options, attending Cal and Michigan as OOS students makes perfect sense. To you, private universities are doing nothing wrong by manipulating the data they provide to ranking authorities because they are so vastly superior to public universities at the undergraduate level anyway, even if they reported the data accurately, and the USNWR adjusted for the differences in the types of institutions properly, public universities will not rise in the rankings. To me, the difference between wealthy public universities and research-intensive private universities is so negligible, and in many cases, non-existent, that those little manipulations and inconsistencies make a difference in the rankings.
Let us get back to this post’s purpose…prestige. None of our arguments alter the fact that in many quarters, Cal, Michigan and some other public universities are prestigious, which is what this thread is about.