<p>whats the big deal about looking at colleges from a new perspective? yes it is extremely different from what we are used to, but thats not even my point. i think the take home point is that the usnews arent, and shouldnt be used as, the gospel. regardless of what you think of this particular list.</p>
<p>I tihnk its funny how the schools usually considered in the top 10 are totally masacred...CalTech at like 100, Penn at 30s, Harvard and Duke in the 20s, Yale does good at like 10, MIT powns all still - suprising since you consider MIT and CIT similar when thinking about them</p>
<p>Of course, this ranking is useless because students care about how strong their school is academically and how far it can get them, which is more what the US News gets at...whereas this ranking is like weird...that is all</p>
<p>US News is much more reliable, whic is why its the most popular and used guide. It uses real stats, like how selective students are. How many resources are available to students. How happy people are when they graduate. The US News correlates with the London Times Rankings, another ranking of quality of school. They all correlate with the WSJ feeder rankings, that shows how many students go to top professional schools. That is a guide students can use when deciding their futures, and if not perfect, still much more useful.</p>
<p>Go South Carolina.</p>
<p>7 Claremont McKenna College CA
15 Pomona College CA
17 Harvey Mudd College CA</p>
<p>It's pretty obvious that the point of these rankings is to rate the societal contributions of the school and their roles as civic institutions, rather than which ones have the most money, resources, and genius professors, or which ones produce the highest earners, post post-grads, etc.</p>
<p>Quoting from the article:
*Isn't it just as important for taxpayers to know whether their money — in the form of billions of dollars in research grants and student aid — is being put to good use?</p>
<p>....And so, to put The Washington Monthly College Rankings together, we started with a different assumption about what constitutes the "best" schools. We asked ourselves: What are reasonable indicators of how much a school is benefiting the country? We came up with three: how well it performs as an engine of social mobility (ideally helping the poor to get rich rather than the very rich to get very, very rich), how well it does in fostering scientific and humanistic research, and how well it promotes an ethic of service to country.*</p>
<p>Btw, ironically, using such a criteria means that ITT Tech and DeVry really might be ranked higher than a HYPS school in some areas. It seems certain schools geared toward professional training and education do more as "engines of social mobility" than ivory tower legacy-laden universities.</p>
<p>but if service is so ultra important with these rankings why aren't any of the service academies mentioned anywhere? those cadets are putting their lives on the line for years in service to nation for typically far less money than others of similar rank and station.</p>
<p>now to take a peek at that south carolina state campus....</p>
<p>Oh, I just meant did I use the same number a's as you. Trust me, I have been called Mooooom. Usually though I get silence and rolled eyes or an arched eyebrow.</p>
<p>"I mean, my problem is, if they use "service" as a criteria, it makes little sense as Tufts sends more people to the Peace Corps than just about anyone, oh well...not going to let it worry me when CalTech is like 20943433334, weird ass ranking."</p>
<p>lol ^_^ I know - and where is Tufts on this ranking? somewhere in the 70ish range? Doesn't make the least bit of sense. Well, I guess 15,000+ students fight to get into Tufts (I won't go into the stats again) because they LOVE it's lowish ranking! Don't you love deep sarcasm? haha</p>
<p>Actually, rankings need to stop focusing on the sort of criteria that USNews etc. loves -- they should focus much more on quality of student body (w/ up-to-date stats), quality of teaching, selectivity, student/faculty ratio, level of undergraduate research undertaken, #'s who go into good graduate schools (not just the "5" WSJ thing), strength of dominant programmes, etc. Then places like Tufts and Georgetown would shine in their correct light.</p>
<p>Haha finally a ranking list that gives Temple some love. 130 is around what it should actually be in USN, although it certainly isnt ahead of FSU, Binghamton, Baylor, WPI, SMU, Miami, Yeshiva.</p>
<p>these are pretty funny to be honest - by and large the accepted criteria belong to US NEWS so instead of altering the market, these rankings have dicredited the magazine from which they come. Too bad really. :(</p>
<p>Well, personally, I love the rankings...
(can anyone guess where I'm going?)</p>
<p>And berkeley was my second choice. lol.</p>
<p>i can buy the top 2 (it may happen in US news one year). the rest goes down hill. SCSU isnt the best school in hte state, how did it get to the top 10? heck, i though south carolinians didnt go to college if they werent gamecocks or tigers.</p>
<p>The "Is our students" thing was most likely a play on the fact that many college students have low verbal and writing skills upon graduation.</p>
<p>Ironically...</p>
<p>
[quote]
It's pretty obvious that the point of these rankings is to rate the societal contributions of the school and their roles as civic institutions, rather than which ones have the most money, resources, and genius professors, or which ones produce the highest earners, post post-grads, etc.
[/quote]
</p>
<p>If the ranking doesn't take into account "genius professors," why are MIT and Berkeley so high up? Are you proposing that those two schools don't have extraordinarily high numbers of "genius professors"?</p>
<p>If the ranking doesn't take into account "genius professors," why are MIT and Berkeley so high up? Are you proposing that those two schools don't have extraordinarily high numbers of "genius professors"?</p>
<p>I'm not saying that they DON'T have a high number of world-class talents, but that this isn't being directly measured by the rankings criteria. It does shine through in some indirect ways: genius professors tend to get large grants and produce groundbreaking research, lucrative technologies and patents, etc. which counts as "contributing to society." MIT and Berkeley would naturally rank at the very top given such a measure, since they are particularly well-endowed with high-level technological and scientific researchers and developers. But such a fact isn't measured in and of itself, and a school that had, for example, an English department full of world-leading Proust scholars and master literary critics wouldn't receive as great of a weighting in the rankings, since those kinds of geniuses don't produce as tangible (maybe materialistic is a better description here) of a benefit to society, which is what the Wash. Monthly is saying they are trying to measure.</p>
<p>I was surprised by how much the article bashed Emory. What made them stand out so much? Or Princeton for that matter - the article seemed to focus on the eating clubs and the rich elite atmosphere. While that may be true, that isn't necessarily an indicator of how these universities are "helping" society. Honestly, trying to use ROTC and Peacecorps isn't necessarily a good indicator of public service as the school can hardly represent all of its graduates. A school merely provides the means for its students to learn; while you can influence them in some manner it ultimately seems rather random. They also failed to see how wonderful Princeton's financial aid program was, focusing instead on its perceived image of "what has Princeton done for us lately?" The article was myopic and poorly thought out in my opinion, even if its intentions were in the right place. It seemed to try too hard to appeal to the laymen's perspective in rationalizations.</p>
<p>I'm never reading Washington Monthy again, but wait, when did I ever read Washington Monthly in the first place? It's definitely not credible at all.</p>
<p>
[quote]
But such a fact isn't measured in and of itself, and a school that had, for example, an English department full of world-leading Proust scholars and master literary critics wouldn't receive as great of a weighting in the rankings, since those kinds of geniuses don't produce as tangible (maybe materialistic is a better description here) of a benefit to society, which is what the Wash. Monthly is saying they are trying to measure.
[/quote]
</p>
<p>Well, if great English departments were taken into account (or history or poli sci or whatever), Berkeley would get an even bigger advantage. But do you know what significantly hurts it?</p>
<p>
[quote]
A school's Research score is also based on three measurements: the total amount of an institution's research spending, the number of PhDs awarded by the university in the sciences and engineering, and the percentage of undergraduate alumni who have gone on to receive a PhD in any subject (baccalaureate PhDs).
[/quote]
</p>
<p>That really hurts Berkeley, and helps schools like Princeton and Harvard, I imagine, as well as Stanford and Yale blah blah blah.</p>
<p>
[quote]
I'm never reading Washington Monthy again, but wait, when did I ever read Washington Monthly in the first place? It's definitely not credible at all.
[/quote]
</p>
<p>i dont think many of us read the regular US News magazines. they kinda suck (i think you'll agree... if you've ever read one) :rolleyes:</p>
<p>I did subscribe and read US News, until the stupid war in Iraq and all crazy killings which was all that was in it after a while. The other stuff wasn't bad, I just got tired of hearing the fighting over and over.</p>