@phoenix1616 “Also that’s nuts @Much2learn, picking Duke or Penn over Chicago in anything except very specialized areas (business most notably) is pretty much unheard of now. Princeton and Yale are also firmly ahead of Stanford.”
That is not what I see. Students pick Penn or Duke over Chicago often. A lot of students are not very excited about going, “Where fun goes to die.” In contrast, Penn and Duke are known for their sociable students. I know Chicago has a lower acceptance rate than Penn and Duke, but I still think that top students who have the choice are more likely to lean toward Penn or Duke.
It probably depends where you are in the country, but I think top students will choose Stanford more frequently than Princeton and Yale. That is how it looks to me.
That’s an interesting idea, but hard to accomplish, and it does seem to be very similar to a “prestige” list. It’s also a single criterion list, whereas prestige is baked into the USNews methodology (via counselors rather than students, but I wouldn’t expect too much variance, at least at the tippy top).
"WUSTL is known for gaming the rankings, so it’s no suprise they came back to reality a little. As per usual, the public flagships are underrated by U.S. News.
Does anyone actually believe Northeastern is a better school than Illinois, Wisconsin, UCSD, UT-Austin, and UWashington?"
Northeastern is moving up because they game the rankings. I give them a lot of credit for being up front about that. Realistically, I think the order of the the schools in that 30-50 range have a lot of similarities.
@emory323 I actually have no intimate knowledge of the UC schools, but from the disdain (class sizes, impacted majors, campus culture) I read from the majority of CC posters of the UC schools (excluding UCLA and UCB) I’m surprised any of the other UCs are ranked that high. What makes UC Irvine so great in USN eyes?
I have no dog in the Northeastern fight but the administration there has taken steps of the years to improve the quality of the school. It’s not just smoke and mirrors. “Gaming the rankings” is just fine in my book if it leads to substantive and positive changes.
“In academia at least, Chicago is seen as a step above Penn and Duke.”
I agree with that. If you want to be an academic, or are into “The life of the mind” and theoretical concepts, then you are probably going to pick Chicago over Penn or Duke. Penn and Duke are more likely to have more balance between theory and practical, hands-on experience.
@Much2learn@marvin100 while such a ranking would be interesting, another problem is that people choose a particular univ over another for reasons other than one being “better” than the other - in particular, finaid (example: did my D think RPI was better than CMU? No. But did she want to pay $20+K/year more to go to CMU? No.), location (closer to home, or in some cases, far from home), friends (my nephew picked TAMU over Rice cuz his best friends were going to TAMU), and weather (who wouldn’t want SoCal weather over Madison winters?)
This article attributes rise in ranking predominantly with selectivity. Selectivity is only a small portion of the formula., so the article does not give a lot of info.
This is not too big of an issue, but does anyone have a view why Santa Clara U is a Regional School and USF and USD are National University? Aren’t they peer schools? Also, I have seen Santa Clara become much more sought after nationally (and internationally) due to its fortunate location in Silicon Valley.
@londondad USNews follows the Carnegie classification of colleges and Santa Clara is not classified as a research university. It has to do with the number of doctoral programs and the amount of research conducted at a school.