<p>LoL, I agree with what Lejeune said. Did Pat get rejected by Northwestern and WashU or something? Why is he so biased against them? I saw a post earlier by him saying that "Emory is better than Northwestern in every way." Um, how is one school completely "better" than another in "every way"?? And what the f*** is included in this "every way" he's talking about?</p>
<p>coolweather: That article is hella interesting, lmao. Thanks. My favorite is "Hottest for No SAT or ACT Needed."</p>
<p>gatoreng -
[quote]
Laugh all you want, Vandy > NW and Stanford
[/quote]
</p>
<p>Lets overlook the fact that NU has won 3 B10 championships to Vandys zero SEC championships in recent history.</p>
<p>Last year both teams finished 4-8. For the 3 years prior, Vandy went 5-6, 2-9 and 2-10. Otoh, NU went 7-4, 6-6 and 6-6.</p>
<p>And NU has a real good shot to finish .500 or higher this season Vandy, not so much.</p>
<p>And oh, Im still laughing.</p>
<p>This is hilarious...!</p>
<p>By the way, everyone agrees that WashU needs to go waayyy down (it will give some needed credibility to the USNews rankings...)</p>
<p>Haha, it cracks me up that Midwesterners take personal offense when people don't declare their schools the greatest thing since sliced bread. Really, relax. Honestly, I didn't even know that they were ranked that high. I don't pay attention to US News and I didn't spend hours agonizing over my list, I just posted it for fun. And really, 99% of people on the East Coast have never even heard of WashU, so I think 20th is quite respectable. My sincerest apologies go out to those whom I personally offended. I hope no corn production was lost from worrying over my post.</p>
<p>...best post yet in this thread... ;)</p>
<p>when do the rankings come out?</p>
<p>oh by the way guys, do you have anything better to do with your time?</p>
<p>Pat,</p>
<p>Nobody was taking offense. Some of us just thought you acted and posted like a 13-yo.</p>
<p>"oh by the way guys, do you have anything better to do with your time?"</p>
<p>I was wondering this, too. 33 pages on this? Are you kidding me?</p>
<p>Rankings come out August 17th, and yes, everyone has something better to do with their time (or at least I hope they do).</p>
<p>Um. Pat, I'm Californian.</p>
<p>Pat, I'm also Californian, unless LA is now considered the Midwest :)</p>
<p>Let's try and use a little brain when we talk.</p>
<p>like i mean i am interested in rankings, but if you have all these statistics on really random stuff then um...</p>
<p>GET A LIFE!!!</p>
<p>like seriously for reals.</p>
<p>which of these two are worse?
- discussing the rankings, since you go to a top school (or plan to) and are curious to see how they stack up
- not having any vested interest in the rankings, but still making fun of people who do for their own reasons</p>
<p>I'm stunned why people come to CC and click on these threads just to diss people for wondering how their school will do on the ranking. If you don't have anything better to do than to persuade people why these rankings don't matter and claim they have no lives, thats worse than if you are just curious to see what they are.</p>
<p>thetoughtprocess, ranking universities is ridiculous. There is no way one can accuately rank universities because there aren't clear cut criteria that determine the quality of a university. Even if there were a set number of criteria that determined quality of education, there would still be major issues. </p>
<p>1) There would be no accurate way of measuring those criteria. Universities would manipulate the data in order to look better.</p>
<p>2) The data must be taken into context. For example, a school that attracts a large number of Finance and Econ majors (relative to the size of the entire student body) will probably have a significantly higher Wall Street placement rate than a school that does not attract many Finance and Econ majors. Or a school where 95% of the students major in the Humanities, Social Sciences and Hard Sciences will pobably have a higher placement rate into Law Schools and Medical Schools than a university where 30%-50% of the students major in professional disciplines such as Engineering, Architecture, Nursing, Business, Music, Agriculture, Art etc...</p>
<p>3) There would be no way of allotting accurate weight to those criteria. Who is to say what is most important? Is it faculty, department strength, reputation and prestige in academic and professional circles, student quality, resources, alumni influence and loyalty, research, intellectual atmosphere, class size, corporate recruitment on campus, etc...? Obviously, the importance of each of those criteria depends on the individual. </p>
<p>In short, rankings are severely flawed and meaningless... marketing and sales gimmicks. Universities can be grouped with universities of similar overall quality and reputation or with universities of similar atmosphere and culuture, but they cannot be ranked with any degree of accuracy. Alternatively, we can seek out the collective opinions of the academic and corporate worlds in the form of surveys. Either, you are going to have a rough estimate and never an accurate ranking.</p>
<p>Alexandre,
Rankings may be flawed but that does not mean that meaningful, objective comparisons cannot be made and that overall conclusions can’t be drawn. </p>
<p>For an UNDERGRADUATE education, IMO there are four major factors that affect the quality of the undergraduate ACADEMIC experience. Those are:</p>
<ol>
<li> Quality of the student body (many objective measurements available to compare)</li>
<li> Size of the classroom (again, many objective measurements to compare)</li>
<li> Quality and nature of the faculty (much more difficult to measure although you can measure the use of TAs)</li>
<li> Institutional resources and willingness to use them to fund UNDERGRADUATE activities (eg, endowment per capita and spending on undergraduate advising, career counseling, etc.)</li>
</ol>
<p>These are the primary factors that will decide the quality of an UNDERGRADUATE college academic experience and there are many objective data points that can be used. The art is in the weighting of the various categories and we all have our differences with how USNWR weights various factors. But the rankings results are far from meaningless and not so easily manipulated as to catapult a school multiple positions and place it in an undeserved position. The more shallow universities may use them as marketing and sales gimmicks, but ultimately a thorough review of the objective data reveals much of the quality of a university and is useful to students as they perform their college searches. </p>
<p>As an aside, maybe it is time to further refine the groups that USNWR uses. They made a decision to separate the National Universities from the LACs due to their clearly different size and environment and the experience that they offer. Perhaps the time has come for the National Universities themselves to be regrouped into public and private institutions as so often the missions, the sizes, and the environments are quite a bit different from their private competitors. For example, to compare a UCLA (undergrad size of 25,000+) with Tufts (undergrad size under 5000) is a stretch, but comparing it to U Michigan (also 25,000+) makes sense and provides a more appropriate benchmark.</p>
<p>Hawkette, like I said in my post above...it is very difficult (inconceivable as my good friend Vizzini would say) for any ranking to overcome the three points I mentioned above. Size is not necessarily an issue. Private or public status means little if one does not consider wealth, budget and economies of scale. </p>
<p>The 4 criteria you listed above are important, as are other criteria. But how do you truly measure them? </p>
<p>1) Quality of student body:</p>
<p>Like I always say, universities have different reporting styles and sometimes even manipulate date. </p>
<p>Brown University
Mean unweighed HS graduating GPA: N/A
% graduating in the top 10% of their class 91%
Mid 50% ACT range: 27-33 (mean 30)
<a href="http://www.brown.edu/Administration/Institutional_Research/documents/CDS2006_2007.pdf%5B/url%5D">http://www.brown.edu/Administration/Institutional_Research/documents/CDS2006_2007.pdf</a></p>
<p>Columbia University
Mean unweighed HS graduating GPA: N/A
% graduating in the top 10% of their class 92%
Mid 50% ACT range: According to the USNWR 28-33 (mean 30.5)</p>
<p>Cornell University
Mean unweighed HS graduating GPA: N/A
% graduating in the top 10% of their class 84%
Mid 50% ACT range: 28-32 (mean 30)
<a href="http://dpb.cornell.edu/documents/1000375.pdf%5B/url%5D">http://dpb.cornell.edu/documents/1000375.pdf</a></p>
<p>University of Michigan
Mean unweighed HS graduating GPA: 3.75
% graduating in the top 10% of their class 90%
Mid 50% ACT range: 27-31 (mean 29)
<a href="http://sitemaker.umich.edu/obpinfo/files/umaa_cds2007.pdf%5B/url%5D">http://sitemaker.umich.edu/obpinfo/files/umaa_cds2007.pdf</a></p>
<p>Tell me, based on those statistics, is there a significant different between the student bodies at those four schools? I realize there is a larger gap when looking at SAT ranges, but that behooves us to at least ask the burning question; are SATs reliably reported and interpreted, or are state universities so different in their approach to SATs that it is impossible to compare the SAT results at state universities to the SAT results at private universities?</p>
<p>2) Size of classroom. This can be measured somewhat, but again, unless we are comparing apples to apples, it is pointless. Comparing how many students there are in an intermediate Microbiology or Microeconomics class, an intro Organic Chemistry or Clinical Psychology class and at an advanced European History or Mathematics class at a number of universities would at least give a clearer picture. But just looking at raw statistics and faculty to student ratios says nothing.</p>
<p>3) Good luck measuring that. And what's wrong with TAs? TAs can be more effective and caring teachers than professors. At any rate, TAs "teach" very few classes at any of the major universities. TAs can sometimes lead discussion groups, but they seldome lead lectures. </p>
<p>4) Again, good luck measuring resources. I would love to see how much a university spends per student or on undergraduate advising. If you have accurate date, I would love to see it. I have been trying to do this for over a decade and I have yet to put my arms around this bear! Can you measure the impact of economies of scale and reduced duplicity? Endowment figures are important to be certain, but in the case of state universities, are you including annual state funding that amounts to hundreds of milliams of dollars?</p>
<p>And even if we could magically measure all four of those important criteria, how much weight would be assign to each of them...and why not assign weight to other equally important criteria?</p>
<p>Finally, assuming we could come up with accurate statistics, we would have to look at similar colleges/schools within universities to come up with an accurate and fair final analysis. In other words, we can only compare colleges of Engineering to other colleges of Engineering or schools of Arts and Science to other schools of Arts and Science. Comparing the total student body at a university with large Nursing, Agriculture, Architecture or Music departments to a school that has purely colleges of Arts and Science and Engineering is pointless and unfair.</p>
<p>
[quote]
For an UNDERGRADUATE education, IMO there are four major factors that affect the quality of the undergraduate ACADEMIC experience.
[/quote]
There is at least a fifth major factor - academic offerings in your area(s) of interest ... such as the breadth and depth of courses in your major; opportunity for interdisciplinary studies; undergraduate research opportunities, etc.</p>
<p>For example, proximity of a top research medical school is a big plus for a pre-med student.</p>
<p>Alex,</p>
<p>Ranking colleges is normal. Its easy. Just use empirical data and weight it. I don't see why you can't do that. Some schools are just better than others at most things, its a fact, not every school is equal, which is why rankings are useful.</p>