<p>My thoughts on the new rankings. I think Columbia will fall; MIT is ranked too low; NW, Penn too high; Chicago, WUSTL, and (especially) Brown will finally creep up a bit due to declining admission rates. I see about 4 clear tiers: HYPM…Columbia to WUSTL…then Brown to Carnegie Mellon are just a toss up…then u have the (no offense) stragglers. </p>
<p>Bias - Columbia. Hatred - Penn Sucks. Respect - Stanford. OH NO W T F - NW/Brown.</p>
<p>Thoughts?</p>
<p>1 Harvard
2 Princeton
Yale
4 MIT
5 Columbia
Stanford
7 Caltech
8 Chiacgo
9 Duke
Penn
11 Dartmouth
WUSTL
13 Brown
14 Northwestern
15 Cornell
16 Notre Dame
Vanderbilt
18 Johns Hopkins
19 Rice
20 Georgetown
21 Emory
22 Carnegie Mellon
23 Berkeley
24 Virginia
25 USC</p>
<p>Well yes, Columbia has lots of graduate students in the Arts and Sciences but the number is not signicantly different from that of several schools. Point being that the environment at Columbia, a school with 7934 undergrads and 5900+ graduate students in the arts and sciences+engineering, is different from Michigan a school with 26,000 undergrads and 11,000 grad students. I seriously doubt the environement will be the same.</p>
<p>Tbh I dont see how they are “peers” except that they have the same endowment but then everyone wants to associate with the best. If grouping schools by endowment is your thing then well ok.</p>
<p>USN&WR basically measures (domestic) prestige and student selectivity. It is not directly related to academic excellence, except to the extent that the latter is statistically correlated to the former (i.e. prestige and selectivity).</p>
<p>For an international student specifically, USN&WR is particularly bad because, apart from HYP, Stanford, MIT and a few others (like Caltech, Columbia, Penn, or Chicago), the ranking does not accurately reflect overseas perceptions about the relative strength of US universities. For example, schools like Emory, Vanderbilt, Georgetown, Notre Dame, WUSTL, or even Brown, Dartmouth and Northwestern are internationally perceived to be much lower ranked than USN&WR places them. Conversely, the top public schools in the US like Cal Berkeley, UCLA or even Michigan and Illinois are far more prestigious internationally.</p>
<p>Frankly, I think US HS seniors should stop obsessing about USN&WR the way they do and, certainly, should not base their application list or college choices on silly magazine rankings like that.</p>
<p>Depends on your definition of academic excellence. Domestic rankings are usually a better indication of quality fo education from my experience not just in the US but in say the UK. International rankings depend too strongly on research and very nebulous stuff and have little to do with the undergrad or postgrad teaching experience. My experience with research universities indicate that I would take a strong undergrad-focussed school for education and academic excellence any day any time over massive research universities where the quality of students is not that good and so the material cannot be that challenging. I do not want to take classes with students who are too dumb to understand the material, its usually bad for anyones academic development lol.</p>
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<p>And how do international rankings exactly affect international students? Please expand? And overseas perceptions, lol how does it really matter? I doubt domestic employers in most countries check international and national rankings or they particularly care. The HR department at most elite companies know the difference between a selective and rigorous undergrad, than a massive public research university which takes anyone that can read.</p>
<p>I find it hard to believe that people who are not familiar with the academic system of a particular country are well suited to rank their universities. In the US people focus on undergrad because that is what they are going to do, when they are trying to get a PhD they understand that HYPSM are the best, if they are going to med school to know that Harvard/WUSTLl/Johns Hopkins are great, Business School Harvard/Wharton and Stanford and Law School- Harvard, Yale and Stanford. Its ingenuous to lump whole programs together IMO and rank them as universities.</p>
<p>Actually sefago, Michigan only has fewer than 3,000 graduate students in Arts and Sciences compared to Columbia’s 5,000. Columbia’s graduate school is larger than Michigan’s, yet its faculty is smaller. In total, Columbia has 20,000 graduate students compared to 15,000 at Michigan. Columbia’s Business, Law and Arts and Science graduate programs are all larger than Michigan’s. </p>
<p>At any rate, Michigan has a significantly larger undergraduate student population and therefore a much different feel than Columbia…for better and for worse. Undeniably, Columbia is slightly better than Michigan. You can read some of my recent posts on the Michigan forum where I fully admit as much. But schools within a peer group share things in common and are not necessarily going to be identical in all ways. Both Columbia and Michigan are large and highly regarded research universities and that is sufficient to make them peer institutions. Obviously, Michigan has more in common with Cal, Cornell, Northwestern, Penn, Texas-Austin, UIUC and Wiscinsin than it has with Columbia, but I consider all of those schools peers of Michigan’s.</p>
<p>For clueless international students specifically, USN&WR is particularly bad because, apart from HYP, Stanford, MIT and a few others (like Caltech, Columbia, Penn, or Chicago), the ranking does not correspond to their massively ignorant perceptions about the relative strength of US universities. </p>
<p>For example, schools like Emory, Vanderbilt, Georgetown, Notre Dame, WUSTL, or even Brown, Dartmouth and Northwestern are erroneously perceived to be much lower ranked than USN&WR places them. Conversely, the top public schools in the US like Cal Berkeley, UCLA or even Michigan and Illinois are far more known by people who do not have clue, and are confused by their inability to understand the differences between undergraduate and graduate school prestige.</p>
Because you think Cal, Michigan, and Illinois are all far better than Emory, Vanderbilt, Georgetown, Notre Dame, WUSTL, Brown, Dartmouth, and Northwestern for undergraduate study, and you wouldn’t let your little Chinese kid go study at any of the latter because of the shame it would bring you, based on “international rankings”?</p>
<ol>
<li><p>I am a 5th generation, born and raised American.</p></li>
<li><p>Tell me how Emory, Vanderbilt, Notre Dame, WUSTL, Brown, Dartmouth, Northwestern, or heck even Duke would be better as an undergraduate program for my academic discipline than what Berkeley offers?</p></li>
</ol>
Hence the joke of comparing you to someone ignorant of the schools.</p>
<p>
Hey, it was the entireity of both lists being used. And it was that all three were NOT better than all of the other list, nothing the other way around. You tell me how Illinois is far better for undergrad quality than Emory, Vanderbilt, Georgetown, Notre Dame, WUSTL, Brown, Dartmouth, and Northwestern.</p>
<p>Haha, one of my friends posted on facebook for a week detailing his struggles with telebears. Honestly, stuff like that is why I didn’t want to go to a big state school. U of I admitted me to their early registration program, but I was turned off by the fact that there was a danger of not being able to take prereqs without it. Most people would not deny that places like Michigan, Berkeley, and U of I have great academics, my friend who is going to cal is ridiculously smart, but the infrastructure doesn’t seem quite up to the task as compared to the elite privates.</p>
<p>“Conversely, the top public schools in the US like Cal Berkeley, UCLA or even Michigan and Illinois are far more known by people who do not have clue, and are confused by their inability to understand the differences between uneVEdergraduate and graduate school prestige.”</p>
<p>Why do I get a feeling that someone was shaking with some sort of rage as he posted the above message?</p>
<p>A. I wrote … For clueless international students specifically,
B You wrote … xiggi, I must be clueless…
C. You wrote … I am a 5th generation, born and raised American.</p>
<p>No go back to what I wrote. Not what you think I might have written! Your post 189 is a total non sequitur to my “corrections!” :)</p>
Sure, that sounds acceptable. Much better than “These universities over here are far better than those over there because an international ranking says so” which was the attitude we were discussing, not one founded in specifics and reliability.</p>