<p>Yes; I don’t mean to say that it isn’t a valid ranking, because it obviously is completely objective. I also understand how it’s reached (given that I have look through the departmental NRC rankings several times). I just question its general usefulness, except for someone who is completely undecided and could go into anything. It seems clear that schools with a large graduate presence are at an advantage, which obviously is not to the benefit of LACs, Princeton, Dartmouth, etc.</p>
<p>That’s right. I think what some if us are doing on this thread is poking around with various simple modeling techniques to see what falls out, to observe the effects of this or that factor. It’s not really aiming toward one set of normative judgments for everybody.</p>
<p>Some of the USNWR metrics are considered a bit suspect by some posters. Especially the peer assessment and alumni giving components. So we want to see what happens when you take these out and insert different kinds of data.</p>
<p>The fact that model was very sensitive to input survey data (which is good thing to have) was the very reason why I came up with his many different versions of rankings. I would like to reveal to you more on those rankings results posted by myself: modeligLiao for post #135 (2nd update based on 8 survey data), #158 (calibrated results considering missing data), and #169 (Final Draft results based 31 survey data) From three- scores comparisons, I found it is very difficult to separate Brown, Columbia, Cornell, Dartmouth, and Penn (5 ivies), Berkeley, Chicago, Caltech, Duke, JHU, and Northwestern into different tiers , which was evident by observing exchange leads and/or ties among these ten universities across the board, so Tier2 is larger than the others, based on survey data. Similar observations can be found for UVA-and-WSTL-and-Rice, CMU-and-Emory-and-UNC, and USC-Wisconsin-UIUC-GATech in Tier3, Tier4, and Tier5, respectively. S-Ranking (2nd column from the attached table) is a numerical ranking of top25 universities generated by statistical averaging process based on their frequency ranking orders across the board. </p>
<p>Lastly, I would like to conclude this mini study or research with a friendly warning. Statistics discerns the differences between polls which may be a minor thing we didn’t pay attention to, but believe it or not people usually take the results very seriously. I would like to thank each individual who shared his opinion in this thread. Thank you for your participation. I will take your questions and comments for the few days till 6-05-2009.</p>
<p>Order S-Ranking 2nd Update Calibrated Final Draft<br>
1 1 Harvard Harvard Princeton 100 1
2 1 Yale Princeton Yale 100 1
3 1 Princeton Stanford Harvard 100 1
4 1 Stanford Yale Stanford 99.4 1</p>
<h2>5 1 MIT MIT MIT 96.8 1</h2>
<p>6 6 Caltech Caltech Columbia 80.6 2<br>
7 6 Columbia Columbia Caltech 76.8 2<br>
8 8 Duke Chicago Cornell 75.5 2<br>
9 8 Dartmouth Penn Duke 75.5 2<br>
10 8 Penn Duke Penn 74.2 2<br>
11 8 Chicago Cornell Chicago 71.6 2<br>
12 8 Cornell Berkeley Berkeley 67.1 2<br>
13 8 Brown Brown Brown 67.1 2<br>
14 8 Berkeley Dartmouth Dartmouth 67.1 2<br>
15 15 Johns Hopkins Northwestern Johns Hopkins 67.1 2 </p>
<h2>16 15 Northwestern Johns Hopkins Northwestern 63.2 2 </h2>
<p>17 17 Michigan Michigan Michigan 54.8 3<br>
18 18 WUSTL Rice UVA 49.7 3<br>
19 18 Rice WUSTL WUSTL 49 3<br>
20 18 UVA UCLA Rice 47.7 3 </p>
<h2>21 18 Vanderbilt UVA Georgetown 47.1 3 </h2>
<p>22 22 Georgetown Emory Vanderbilt 39.4 4<br>
23 22 Emory Carnegie-Mellon UCLA 37.4 4<br>
24 22 UCLA Vanderbilt Carnegie-Mellon 31.6 4<br>
25 22 UNC Georgetown Emory 31 4<br>
26 22 Carnegie-Mellon UNC UNC 27.7 4 </p>
<h2>27 27 NYU Notre Dame Notre Dame 24.5 4 </h2>
<p>28 28 Notre Dame NYU NYU 17.4 5<br>
29 29 USC Wisconsin USC 13.5 5<br>
30 30 Wisconsin UIUC Wisconsin 11 5<br>
31 31 UIUC USC Georgia Tech 7.7 5<br>
32 31 Georgia Tech Georgia Tech UIUC 7.7 5</p>
<p>tk:</p>
<p>From many excellent modeling statements you made, I see great potential in you to be a great modeler. I enjoyed your discussions in this thread. Good luck in everything.</p>
<p>Based on survey data and best judgment, Post #184’s S-Ranking and tiered ranking can be finalized in the attached table. As mentioned in that post, I found it is very difficult to separate Brown, Columbia, Cornell, Dartmouth, and Penn (5 ivies), Berkeley, Chicago, Caltech, Duke, JHU, and Northwestern into different tiers, which was evident by observing exchange leads and/or ties among these 11 universities across the board, so Tier2 is larger than the others, based on three independent assessments. Similar observations can be found for UVA-and-WSTL-and-Rice, CMU-and-Emory-and-UNC, and USC-Wisconsin-UIUC-GATech in Tier3, Tier4, and Tier5, respectively. Vanderbilt and UCLA, though not on Tier3 of original final draft, rose to Tier3 because they scored well in two other independent assessments. NYU rose to Tier4 for the same reason.</p>
<p>Tier1 (1-5)<br>
1 Harvard/MIT /Princeton/Stanford/Yale [96.8，100]</p>
<p>Tier2 (6-16)
6 Caltech/Columbia/Berkeley/Brown/Chicago/Cornell/Dartmouth/Duke/JHU/Northwestern/Penn [63.2, 80.6]</p>
<p>Tier3 (17-23)
17 Michigan/Rice/UVA/WUSTL/Georgetown [47.1, 54.8]
21 Vanderbilt/UCLA [37.4, 39.4]</p>
<p>Tier4 (24-28)
24 CMU/Emory/UNC [27.7, 31.6]
27 Notre Dame/NYU [17.5, 24.5]</p>
<p>Tier5 (29-40)
29 GATech/Tufts/UIUC/USC/Wisconsin [7.7, 13.5]
34 BC/Brandies/Texas/Tulane/UCSD/W&M/Washington [1.3, 5.5]</p>
<p>from another thread)</p>
<p>The following is the High School Counselor Rankings from the 2008 edition of the U.S. News’ America’s Best Colleges issue released in september. Let me know what you guys think:</p>
<p>1: Harvard
1: MIT
1: Princeton
1: Yale
5: Brown
5: Columbia
5: Cornell
5: Stanford
9: Cal Tech
9: Dartmouth
9: Duke
9: Georgetown
9: Johns Hopkins
9: Northwestern
9: UC-Berkeley
9: UPenn
17: Carnegie Mellon
17: Univ. of Chicago
17: UVA
20: Rice
20: UNC
20: U Mich
20: Notre Dame
20: Wash U
25: BC
25: William and Mary
25: Emory
25: Georgia Tech
25: NYU
25: Tufts
25: UCLA
25: USC
25: Vandy</p>
<p>Not too bad I guess. I would probably move UCLA, Vandy, and Emory up before BC and William and Mary.</p>
<p>“Tier2 (6-16)
6 Caltech/Columbia/Berkeley/Brown/Chicago/Cornell/Dartmouth/Duke/JHU/Northwestern/Penn [63.2, 80.6]”</p>
<p>can be express as</p>
<p>Tier2 (6-16)
6 Berkeley/Brown/Caltech/Chicago/Columbia/Cornell/Dartmouth/Duke/JHU/Northwestern/Penn [63.2, 80.6]</p>
<p>There is no difference among them. They were all tied at 6. Due to the limited survey data collected, model couldn’t separate or untie them.</p>
<p>I kind of like counselor’s rankings. But I would move Caltech up to ranking 5 cateogry, and UChicago should be in ranking 9.
It seems like counselors don’t give much credits to relatively new schools such as WUSTL, Rice, or Emory.</p>
<p>thesecrtaznman,</p>
<p>Do you have a link to that ranking table? That looks acceptable to me.</p>
<p>thesecrtaznman:</p>
<p>You brought up a very interesting comparison. I was not too surprise regarding some similarity (typically for top 2 tiers or top 16) between our modeling results and those from high school counselors because I believe you (seniors at cc) became experts before you commit/invest 4 years of your lives and money to your targeted and/or dream universities. Congratulations to those who participated in this survey. The top25 survey you posted in cc were as solids as those of high school counselors (experts).</p>
<p>With a total number of 31 survey participants, generally speaking the modeling results represented their opinions. In fact, there isnt a list (of modeling results) which can fit everybody needs. Not even USNews or NRC can achieve the goal even though they keep updating their lists on regular basis. I didnt intend to make such a list. During the modeling exercises, my efforts were focused on technical issues e.g., scoring of the survey data, evaluation of undergraduate/graduate strengths data and handling of missing data instead of taking too much weight-in on professional peer-assessments. Therefore, I will let the modeling results speak for themselves. The differences between the two rankings were:</p>
<ol>
<li><p>To make it easier for visual comparisons, the High School Counselor Rankings from the 2008 edition of the U.S. News’ America’s Best Colleges (USNewsHSPeerRank) issue released in September is converted to or breakdown into a tiered format in Table1.</p></li>
<li><p>Upon first glimpse their numerical rankings, there were little differences between our modeling results (post# 186) and USNewsHSPeerRank (post# 188) but big differences in the tiered format between our modeling results (Table2) and USNewsHSPeerRank (Table1).</p></li>
<li><p>In tier1, we had 5 universities: Harvard/MIT /Princeton/Stanford/Yale, but USNewsHSPeerRank had 4 universities: Harvard/MIT /Princeton/Yale with Stanford down to Tier2.</p></li>
<li><p>In tier2, we had 11 universities: Caltech/Columbia/Berkeley/Brown/Chicago/Cornell/Dartmouth/Duke/JHU/Northwestern/Penn, but USNewsHSPeerRank had 12 universities: Caltech/Columbia/Berkeley/Brown/Cornell/Dartmouth/Duke/Georgtown/JHU/Northwestern/Penn/Stanford with Chicago down to Tier3, and joined by Georgetown from Tier3 and Stanford from Tier1.</p></li>
<li><p>In tier3, we had 7 universities: Michigan/Rice/UVA/WUSTL/Georgetown/Vanderbilt/UCLA, but USNewsHSPeerRank had 8 universities: Chicago/CMU/UVA/Michigan/Notre Dame/Rice/UNC/WUSTL with Georgetown ascent to Tier2, Vanderbilt and UCLA down to Tier4 and joined by CMU, UNC, and Notre Dame from Tier4 and Chicago from Tier2.</p></li>
<li><p>USNewsHSPeerRank had 4 tiers in total. Its 4th tier combined most universities in our models 4th and 5th tier which included BC/Emory/Georgia Tech/NYU/Tufts/Vanderbilt/UCLA/USC/William and Mary. </p></li>
</ol>
<p>Table 1 USNewsHSPeerRank</p>
<p>Tier1 (1-4)<br>
1 Harvard/MIT/Princeton/Yale </p>
<p>Tier2 (5-16)
5 Brown/Columbia/Cornell/Stanford
9 Berkeley/Caltech/Dartmouth/Duke/Georgetown/JHU/Northwestern/Penn </p>
<p>Tier3 (17-24)
17 Chicago/CMU/UVA
20 Michigan/Notre Dame/Rice/UNC/WUSTL</p>
<p>Tier4 (25-33)
25 BC/Emory/Georgia Tech/NYU/Tufts/Vanderbilt/UCLA/USC/William and Mary</p>
<p>Table2 Our modeling results </p>
<p>Tier1 (1-5)<br>
1 Harvard/MIT /Princeton/Stanford/Yale [96.8，100]</p>
<p>Tier2 (6-16)
6 Caltech/Columbia/Berkeley/Brown/Chicago/Cornell/Dartmouth/Duke/JHU/Northwestern/Penn [63.2, 80.6]</p>
<p>Tier3 (17-23)
17 Michigan/Rice/UVA/WUSTL/Georgetown [47.1, 54.8]
21 Vanderbilt/UCLA [37.4, 39.4]</p>
<p>Tier4 (24-28)
24 CMU/Emory/UNC [27.7, 31.6]
27 Notre Dame/NYU [17.5, 24.5]</p>
<p>Tier5 (29-40)
29 GATech/Tufts/UIUC/USC/Wisconsin [7.7, 13.5]
34 BC/Brandies/Texas/Tulane/UCSD/W&M/Washington [1.3, 5.5]</p>
<p>In response to RML:</p>
<p>I don’t have a link to those rankings because i got it from their magazine. you might be able to find it in their online archives though. </p>
<p>Those rankings were compiled by sending the survey to “1600 different public high schools nationwide in 40 different states made the December 2007, U.S. News & Report’s America’s Best High School Rankings.” Of those who received this survey, 27 percent of the counselors responded.</p>
<br>
<br>
<p>Yes, that seems much more plausible to me, too.
I’ve tried combining a variety of ranking metrics in different ways. I would be hard pressed to come up with any set of appropriate, objective metrics and averaging methods to make Georgetown rank higher than Chicago. </p>
<p>Moreover, I’ve taken many classes at both schools. In my opinion, Chicago is significantly stronger than GU (smaller classes; a much more distinguished faculty across the board, with the possible exception of a few areas of GU strength; much better facilities; a more democratic, engaging, and challenging teaching style; more thought and discussion about curriculum design and the aims of education in general; a better record of grad school placements; higher average SAT scores; a more diverse student body; a more serious and interesting intellectual atmosphere; higher faculty salaries; a record of high achievement by alumni in a broader variety of fields; a much stronger international reputation for research and scholarship …).</p>
<p>Mind you, Georgetown is good too, and for some students I’m sure it’s a better fit than Chicago. But I think I could make an objective case that Chicago should be as high as the #5s (in the post 188 rankings), and that GU is more like one of the #17 or #20 schools.</p>
<p>I agree. Chicago, JHU, and Rice should definitely be higher than 20-25. Chicago is arguablely better than the “other” 5 ivies and it’s ranked number 8. Tied with Duke and Columbia. Chicago is also ranked ahead of Yale and Princeton in the world rankings.</p>
<p>^ Agreed. Gtown should be in #17 schools.
It’s par with UVA, rice, or WUSTL not with Duke or Northwestern.
(I’ll attend gtown this fall - I planned to attend somewhere else but I changed my mind very last minute -, but I wouldn’t deny it.)</p>
<p>W&M should be ahead of every public school for undergrad rankings.</p>
<p>^^^^^Why, because it’s so small?</p>
<p>B/C the student body is so strong and, yes, smaller is better, IMO for actually teaching undergrads how to read, write and think. Something that is in woefully short supply. W&M is like a large Amherst rather than a small UVirginia. If judges in the proper context, W&M is the best public school for undergrad teaching.</p>
<p>We learn how to read, write, and think in elementary school. College is for the workforce.</p>
<p>Obviously, not very well. Real college is not trade school. It also shouldnt be cubicle training for Dilbert-land either. Real college is to prepare you to go in any direction you choose. No Leisure-studies, Parks & Rec management, or Communications majors here. Good luck in the real world, Dawg.</p>