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UC Irvine was tied at #9 with UCSD. I’m sure UW Madison, UC Davis and UIUC (both currently tied at 11), are now tied with UC Irvine and/or UCSD. I bet we now have 5 schools tied at #9. Really, it’s just “noise” in the ranking system, and not something that signifies much at all. Tied with a few schools at #11 or tied with the same schools at #9?
The next 5 or 6 schools are also likely to be lumped together in one or two groups. (UF, PSU, UT-Austin, UW, OSU, and maybe UConn and UM-CP), much like they are today. We’re likely to see a bit more movement in the overall National Universities rankings, than in the public universities rankings.
I agree. A lot of new universities like villanova will bump the old ones like UT up.
nevermind
Can you explain how this will happen?
Does anybody know why the US New bias is so much in favor of all these University of California schools? I can understand Berkeley and UCLA but Santa Barbara, Irvine, Davis and San Diego?? How can they possibly be better than UTexas-Austin, UWashington, UFlorida, Ohio State, even Maryland or Penn State, which have so much more to offer?
I’m curious why you assume there is a bias? What “more” do those schools have to offer (other than big time sport)s?
@ThankYouforHelp Your response is like me saying I am curious what “more” do these UC schools have to offer other than the beautiful California weather! Lol For starters each of the large research Universities I mention have more academic programs to offer. There are too many comparisons but just take Santa Barbara, for example, only 3 schools–letters and science, engineer and creative writing. The letters and science does not offer any cognitive or neuroscience program. There is no pharmacy school. No architecture school. Ohio State, for example had all this and much more, just check its website and go down the alphabet list A to Z. Numerous centers and programs and schools within the University. And given the largesse of each of the Universities I mentioned I bet there are more high stat students at each than at any of these UC satellite campuses which unbelievably US News& World Report chose to rate higher than the Universities I mentioned above. Makes US News a lot less credible.
@bb3nyc Chicago at 19? Vandy at 5? CmK, Colgate, W&L and Emory in top 25 but Pomona, Amherst, Williams, CalTech and Harvey Mudd aren’t?
@trackmbe3 I won’t debate the rankings because all those schools in your post are excellent, but the UCs are not satellite campuses. UCSB has 6 Nobel Prize winners on faculty which probably surprises a lot of people. You mentioned Ohio State as one of the schools that probably have more high stat students - the average SAT is as high or higher at most of those UCs than tOSU. I think half those UCs don’t have football teams, so that may color people’s impressions because they don’t see them on TV all the time. But watch out in some of the other sports like soccer (OSU just got beat by those laid-back kids from the beach). 4 of those UCs have their own medical school and Berkeley has UCSF just across the bay (which was more closely affiliated with Berkeley years ago).
It’s funny because US news has a bias against public schools in general. Only 1/20 schools in the top 20 is public. Where’s UVA? Michigan? Many other institutions rank public schools among the top in the world…
Worldwide rankings are based heavily on research activity. USNews metrics focus on the undergraduate experience.
IMHO!
The UC’s are highly ranked because:
- California is a huge state with 39+ million residents. The state generates a LOT of great students. Ohio, another large state, has a population of around 11.6 million.
- The UC’s, historically, have been very well funded (yes, that’s changed) which has allowed them to invest huge sums of $ into infrastructure, faculty, research etc.
- The first two items have helped the UC’s build up a world class reputation (especially in the west) over the last several decades, and reputation still plays a major roll in the rankings.
A better question would be, what’s holding back OSU, UW, PSU, UT-Austin, UF, etc.(Keeping in mind that they are very, very, close in rankings to the UC-Davis, UCSB, UCSD, etc.)? The answer would be a little different for each of those (great) schools.
Lets look at two examples (with UF being the one I’m most familiar with…)
With UF, it’s an issue with reputation (which takes years to move, up or down), and faculty (good, but not great). They currently are in the process to add 100’s of tenure faculty to the school (92+ so far), adding 500 endowed faculty positions, fund key areas of focus, add scholarships, and so on. It’s the focus of UF’s Preeminence initiative and recent fundraising goals.
http://ufpreeminence.org/what-is-uf-preeminence/
With UT-Austin, one issue is that the Texas top 10% (or whatever % it is this year) tends to lower the freshman incoming stats, as compared to a UC, UF, etc. Without the 10% rule, UT-Austin would be much more selective (Texas is another huge state), but less diversified. The 10% rule also helps to explain UT-Austin’s issues with low student graduation rates, compared to it’s peers. It’s at 80%, with AA/Blacks at 65% and Hispanics at 70%. Compare that to UF (which has an ever larger % of URM students), where AA/Blacks are at 80% and Hispanics are at 86%.
Of course, it’s much more complicated than that, but that gives you a sense of some of the factors that could be “holding” back a university, other than a simple metric in the US News ranking system.
As a rule, the top 20+ public universities are not trying to “game” the US News rankings. They are focused on dealing with fundamental challenges that they perceive are holding back the school. Funding always pops up as the number 1 issue, but when they do get additional funding, they likely would spend it a bit differently, as each school may have different priorities.
With that in mind, it takes a lot of funding, and several years, to have a top 20 public university move up in rank compare to other public schools. Or it simply takes US News changing it’s calculations! (which is more likely). On the other hand, it also takes several years for a school to drop (reputation can take decades to change).
Re #106, ten of those schools are within seven points of each other in overall score (56-63). Statistically, US News has assessed them about equally.
The UCs get a ton of applicants because of how huge its instate student base is. That keeps its acceptance rate low and they qualify for the highest level of research which inflates its peer score. So in US News world the 5th best UC might beat out a major flagship from another state like Florida or Texas. The UCs are not gaming the rankings they are just an unexpected beneficiary of its seemingly random methodology.
^ Further to your point about the huge instate student base, most of the UCs receive a relatively small number of US OOS applicants (perhaps due to cost) and more international applicants than US OOS applicants (perhaps because cost doesn’t matter as much for international applicants). By comparison, Washington receives about twice as many OOS applicants as instate applicants. I think Michigan is similar in this respect.
http://www.ucop.edu/news/factsheets/2014/fall-2014-admissions-table2.pdf
The UC admissions process is heavily based on grades/class rank/performance against your peers at your particular high school. The UCs do not value standardized test scores as highly in their assessment as class rank, because they would prefer to offer their spots to applicants who made the most of their situation, rather than those who were able to pay for lots of test prep tutoring. Comparing straight SAT scores to other state universities can be very misleading - it is much, much harder to get into the upper tier UCs than it is to get into large state flagships like Ohio State, Penn State or UFlorida. And it works - the students at the UCs tend to be very driven and focused.
@trackmbe3 Yes, Ohio State is an enormous school that offers every program under the sun. Does that make it a better school than, say, Princeton or UChicago? After all, Princeton doesn’t have a pharmacy school either, and UChicago doesn’t even offer engineering. You are assuming that the USNews people are biased in favor of California schools, but you have not suggested any possible reason for it to have such a bias.
Looks like US Naval Academy dropped out of the top 10 LACs. Other than that, things seem pretty similar.
@ThankYouforHelp It was my visceral reaction that there was some bias in favor of ranking 4 UC schools in the top 10 public universities to the exclusion of the other fine public university flagships. Just the fact that they were included while the others were not. I am sure the UCs are all fine schools, but I’d have to look carefully at the methodology to figure out what factors led to their being ranked in the top 10 and whether the factors and weight accorded seem fair and objective.
Just putting this down on paper, I think Tufts will be in the 20-25 range, probably tied with 2-3 other schools. My guess is down (up?) 4 spots to #23. Have not crunched the numbers, just a feeling I get based on acceptance rate going down a couple points last year.
I don’t actually care that much about the rankings but I think it would be nice to see it in the top 25. Maybe they could even get on the “Top Universities” list here, which I do care deeeeeply about.