Bummer, in the QS VU is behind Deft University, Tongji University, Singapore U, and ETH Zurich. But so are Princeton, Yale, & Stanford. Their methodology include the percentage of international professors and students…hmmm could they have an agenda to their rankings?? I don’t hear about too many US kids applying to Tongji University but I’m sure its a wonderful school. Unfortunately when you get past the top US schools the agenda to recruit international students is about expanding the search for well funded students.
Back in the US the top tier includes H,P,Y,S,M,C. Put them in any order you want. You can’t move them with a bulldozer, they are not welcoming new members, and they have all the money. Next you have about 10-12 universities and Vandy is in this group. As for the future, I think VU, Rice, and Wash SL are positioned well to move forward.
Which C? Chicago, Caltech or Columbia? I think those three are pretty even overall. Chicago has always been strong, with great faculty, but recently we’ve seen quite an increase in rep with their marketing campaigns driving up apps. Caltech is arguably the top shop in the world for theoretical physics and engineering, and Columbia is one of the best all-around powerhouses we have - and they have the famous Core.
I think those three, along with Penn (aided by Wharton’s massive rep), form Tier 2… just a hair below HYPSM.
More meaningless hair-splitting, but it passes the time. hehe
Huh, yeah, I always put Columbia, UofC, and Caltech in the same bracket as Stanford and our friends in the Boston area, New Jersey, and Connecticut. Did Chicago always have its core or was it developed after Columbia’s. Some faculty have apparently commented that Chicago’s is more “effective” in building an intellectual community citing that teaching there felt different from teaching at Columbia. I have a friend at Columbia (she doesn’t care for it that much) that often cited that Columbia, especially in the sciences has some of the annoying characteristics of a pre-professionally dominated school. She cited weird instances of student behavior that I would not have expected at a place with a serious core (such as students flat out asking a professor, in a calculus based physics class, if they actually needed to know certain things for their MCAT).
I do think that the QS rankings are good at measuring progress in real time and looking beyond surface metrics like UG admissions which can be gamed through marketing tactics and apparently often don’t have much to do with teaching and academic quality at such schools (when is the last time you’ve heard a tour guide speak on all of the wonderful things that happen in a physics building outside of more academically intense schools like HYPSMCtCh). At schools outside of this realm, except maybe the D-3 schools, students can care less about being sold specifics on the academics
Either way, I would put Duke with Penn (this idea of not moving those schools bud mentions is so false. Duke, Penn, and Hopkins are the prime examples of schools that of course have a time disadvantage, but are holding their own!). Also, Rice, Emory, and WashU theoretically have more potential than Vanderbilt unless Vanderbilt raises its endowment and recruits faculty more aggressively (it should be among the many schools that tries to poach off faculty from these 3 just as many of the Ivies, top 10’s, and elite publics do). And with undergrad. the others are a bit more aggressive in make innovations in the STEM curriculum. I honestly think if places like Vandy and WashU can further raise the UG profile and impact of their engineering schools, they’ll achieve a better position. Fortunately Vanderbilt is building a new engineering building, but WashU is doing the same or has completed it already. It also already seems a bit stronger in natural sciences already when you look at UG programs (it would help if Vanderbilt did more to enhance that as well- I think having more young faculty can do the trick). I think a part of attracting a different “breed” of student is not only making pretty buildings but enhancing the curriculum, pedagogy, and levels of the courses.
I think this is what makes the STEM programs at places like WashU, Rice, and JHU so successful (I would include Emory, but I think it used to actually be better, I think it is a little below those as of now, but it is trying to get there). It has to be good enough such that students specifically target those schools for those programs as opposed to targeting them generically. Part of the success of the super elites is that they they worked on their UG programs so much that they have become “the” places to study certain things among students with deep academic interests. Examples are like Stanford for CS (and non-STEM things like international affairs), Harvard for tons of things (such as econ. chemistry, physics and math), Caltech and MIT for science (though MIT expands further to say linguistics and econ), Chicago for many things including math, physics, and econ. These schools are known among students for top notch faculty in such areas along with innovative or very rigorous teaching (meaning that said students actually desire that and do not view it as a burden). They are not traditionally known for high quality of life (though all of them have joined that race lately) ort “harboring” talent, they put it to work and enhanced it further. That is largely the reason for their success at the UG level and it seems that others who have employed this method have enjoyed a nice rise.
As for internationals: Even before non-super elite schools, the other rich schools aimed for those students even throwing financial aid at them (you know, because they are rich). The fact that this is desirable beyond revenue is indicated by the fact that places like Chicago, Emory, and some other schools are at least attempting to expand need based and merit aid options for said students. So neither the revenue or score theory works out that neatly. There is a clear attempt to gain a reputational foothold while also getting talent from elsewhere.
Any or all of those C schools could take that spot. I put Columbia since the post is about reputation and Chicago is still under recognized although worthy and I consider Cal Tech to be an elite STEM one-on-one research facility not a diverse national university. I leave JHU off as its a bit long in the tooth, the reputation of where fun goes to die, and no one wants to live in Baltimore are creating problems recruiting talent. Emory has the resources but seems to be underachieving. Emory was a player 20 years ago but seems to be fading away. Perhaps new leadership would help in Atlanta. I don’t place the other or lower Ivy’s ahead of the other top 20’s and an argument could be made they would be ranked lower without their affiliation to H,Y,P,C. Don’t get me wrong, they are all elite but still riding some coat-tails.
Again the growth of international students has occurred for the same reason as the growth of OOS students in state U’s. It is about the money. Some top U’s are struggling to attract high stat well funded students in the US and are forced to move overseas to maintain their ranking and revenue. Not many U’s are offering aid to IS and many “offer” them a surcharge on top of paying the full COA.
40% of the QS score is based on research, most of which is done at the graduated level and above and has little impact on the super-majority of UG students. But I agree if you want to be on the list you need engineers and healthcare divisions to crank out papers.
Again, Rice, Wash SL, and Vanderbilt are all doing the right things in and out of the classroom and are hot universities now. Other very, very warm U’s are Stanford, Dartmouth, Duke, Yale, UofC, UCLA, UVA, USC.
As Prez…noted, hairsplitting but something to do.
Yeah, I have a hard time classifying Caltech. I have read that the Humanities/soft science courses they do have are excellent… there just aren’t very many of them and all of the focus is on STEM.
JHU I like – if you check out their grad school rankings, they are good at a lot of things. That would trickle down into the “major years” of the undergrad experience probably, when students are typically juniors and seniors. But they do see lower test scores than perhaps their reputation should merit, which points to lack of popularity currently.
@prezbucky : Students in general (even many aiming for elites) are attracted to “fun” and laid back atmospheres (who blames them, HS for those aiming for elites was stressful enough and they are also riding high on their accomplishments. It could be hard to basically be told “you have a long way to go” by an extremely intense curriculum or environment though apparently at less prestigious schools, students often wish for more intensity). This has been going on for a while (the marketization of highered), so unless JHU has ridiculous marketing like WashU (perhaps it chooses not to), it isn’t going to fare but so well in popularity. It is basically competing for the more academically intense students which puts it up against some serious competition from some schools that are straight up “better” and some schools that are almost just as good and better at playing the rankings game (marketing) like WashU. However, its scores have actually risen a bit. They are pretty much in the Brown, ND, Cornell, Duke, Penn, Dartmouth, Rice, Stanford category score wise, especially if you look at the bottom range. I would ask you to consider the concept that students don’t necessarily want the intensity of a place like JHU or WashU (if it wasn’t for the marketing, they would likely perform like JHU) if it isn’t attached to the type of prestige that other (mostly higher ranked schools) have. They would rather just go to the intense higher ranked school. At the same time, if Johns Hopkins went too far in its marketing and did not get a somewhat self-selected pool, I am not sure it would work out that well. They may end up with a bunch of high scoring kids who actually do not want the intensity they offer (they want to be “harbored” more or less).
Such kids will not be happy alums and would likely be less engaged than current students (yes, higher scoring students can be less engaged than lower scoring ones. It is merely a multiple choice test, albeit a decent one. The output metrics such as post-grad scholarships show not so great relationships with scores once they are already high, say beyond 1350. JHU has always done really well in this arena with the types of students it attracts and the caliber of its programs). If they were to increase aggression of marketing, they would need to be careful about the message (like do not try to sell “work hard play hard” when it isn’t actually true because you will attract students looking for that, and it may not be a fit with the institutional character), because I don’t think the “big 3 D-3” (Emory, WashU, JHU) are for just anyone just as not everyone should want to go to CMU, Caltech, Harvey Mudd, or MIT. Some schools “should” have a self-selected crowd. Scores should not be the primary concern of schools that are already phenomenal at producing certain types of students and having a huge impact. They need to keep their institutional culture and legacy in mind and some schools have very distinct cultures that have led to a lot of success in what many consider the “right” areas. To aim too widely could actually set them back.
@bernie12 , maybe JHU doesn’t spend as much time engaged in undergrad recruiting because they are such a research powerhouse. In fact, they spend more on research than any other school in the US.
That appears to be what butters their bread, though there’s no denying the quality of their undergrad programs.
Yes, it is actually amazing that Hopkins and Chicago are so solid with their UG programs especially since both are based on the same model (though Chicago doesn’t spend as much as like…any of the other top privates-seems not having engineering or a ridiculously large healthcare system may reduce costs). However, it is only conventional wisdom to think that research powerhouse + teaching powerhouse often don’t go hand-in-hand. Again, as a STEM interested person, I notice that the research power-house (as in ranking near the very top research expenditure wise-let us say top 20) are often most aggressive at refining their STEM curricula and the teaching methods used within them. MIT, Harvard, Michigan, Minnesota,UCSD, and Wisconsin come to mind (several of those “Big 10” publics seem very serious about it!).
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