<p>^ And when you factor in strength of student body…</p>
<p>Columbia, Penn, Caltech (really should be in a category of its own) and maybe Chicago should be in a separate tier.</p>
<p>Brown, Dartmouth, Northwestern and Duke rising up to join UCB, Cornell and Johns Hopkins.</p>
<p>^ Hmmmm…nah, high scoring SATers are a dime a dozen at all top college campuses. Distinguished academic programs and research are what set these institutions apart.</p>
<p>
Nope, not necessarily. It depends on what features you value and want to emphasize.
I don’t know, certainly Berkeley is big, but I don’t see it as more “world-class” than all of the others. To take Chicago (just because I’m more familiar with it), it was the site of the world’s first man-made, self-sustaining nuclear chain reaction; the birthplace of chemotherapy, radiocarbon dating, behavioral economics, and improvisational comedy. It had the country’s first departments of Sociology and Linguistics. Chicago scientists discovered REM sleep and the jet stream. The university runs the second oldest business school in the world and the largest university press in the country. 82 Nobel prize winners are affiliated with the University of Chicago, more than any university in the world other than Cambridge. The Times Higher Education - QS World University Rankings ranked it 8th in the world in 2008. It ranked Berkeley 36th (behind CalTech, Chicago, Columbia, Penn, Duke, Hopkins, Cornell, Brown, UCLA, and Northwestern, in that order, among schools highlighted in the last few posts). So I don’t know what makes Berkeley alone “world class”.</p>
<p>^ Tk, I would include Chicago as “world class”. </p>
<p>Reread the history of the Manhattan Project…Berkeley (and Chicago) played huge roles. Berkeley’s contributions to chemistry are well known. </p>
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</p>
<p>Right-o, ChemGrad. I’m o.k., you’re o.k.</p>
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</p>
<p>In that case, all the top LACs must not compare to well-regarded research institutions such as Wisconsin, Illinois, etc.</p>
<p>And there is a thing to be said that students learn as much from their peers as they do their instructors.</p>
<p>Let’s get real, it is better to look at BOTH academic programs as well as the strength of the student body.</p>
<p>Harvard would not be Harvard if we switched their student body w/ the University of Arizona (no offense to UA).</p>
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</p>
<p>And I suppose YOU are the proper person to do so?</p>
<p>“Hmmmm…nah, high scoring SATers are a dime a dozen at all top college campuses. Distinguished academic programs and research are what set these institutions apart.” Amen brother, when you get to the elite colleges SAT scores are moot when you realize that they are all primarily the same, some schools just look like there’s are lower because of their large student bodies (Berkely, Cornell, etc…). But seriously, actually look at the schools programs not just there acceptees</p>
<p>
Below is the averaged ranking of both NRC ranking sets (all 41 scores and non-zero scores). </p>
<ol>
<li>Berkeley 2</li>
<li>Stanford 3.5</li>
<li>Cornell 6.5</li>
<li>Harvard 7.5
Michigan 7.5 </li>
<li>Princeton 9<br></li>
<li>Columbia 9.5
UCLA 9.5</li>
<li>Wisconsin 10</li>
<li>Chicago 11</li>
<li>Penn 11.5
UT Austin 11.5
Yale 11.5</li>
<li>MIT 12</li>
<li>UIUC 13
Washington 13</li>
<li>UCSD 15.5</li>
<li>Minnesota 18</li>
<li>Duke 19
Johns Hopkins 19</li>
<li>Northwestern 21.5</li>
<li>UNC Chapel Hill 23</li>
<li>Caltech 24.5</li>
<li>Penn State 25.5</li>
<li>Brown 26</li>
<li>UVA 26.5</li>
<li>Ohio State 27.5</li>
<li>Rutgers 29</li>
<li>Arizona 30</li>
<li>NYU 34</li>
<li>UCSB 35</li>
<li>Stony Brook 35.5
WUStL 35.5</li>
<li>Rochester 36
UCI 36</li>
<li>Purdue 37</li>
<li>Indiana 37.5</li>
<li>Colorado 39.5
UCD 39.5</li>
<li>Iowa 42
Maryland 42</li>
<li>Massachusetts 42.5</li>
<li>Florida 44
Pittsburgh 44</li>
<li>CUNY 46
USC 46</li>
<li>NC State 47</li>
<li>Rice 48.5</li>
<li>Texas A&M 49</li>
<li>Vanderbilt 50.5</li>
</ol>
<p>
This does not seem to match up very well with the NRC list. Michigan should be in the first tier, and Duke and Hopkins belong in the same tier.</p>
<p>"Quote:
Hmmmm…nah, high scoring SATers are a dime a dozen at all top college campuses. Distinguished academic programs and research are what set these institutions apart. </p>
<p>In that case, all the top LACs must not compare to well-regarded research institutions such as Wisconsin, Illinois, etc.</p>
<p>And there is a thing to be said that students learn as much from their peers as they do their instructors.</p>
<p>Let’s get real, it is better to look at BOTH academic programs as well as the strength of the student body.</p>
<p>Harvard would not be Harvard if we switched their student body w/ the University of Arizona (no offense to UA). "</p>
<p>K&S, I think you are missing the entire point of what we were saying. Your UA/Harvard analogy is correct, but we were discussing how SAT scores should not be used as a deciding factor between two colleges who are in the same peer group or tier as this is often skewed by size of the student body</p>
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</p>
<p>PA scores and NRC rankings are meant to gauge undergraduate and graduate programs respectively am I correct? No wonder NRC list does not align with PA scores…</p>
<p>You forgot to mention that Caltech is on the same tier as Duke and Johns Hopkins… Caltech should be bumped down. MIT should belong with Penn, Chicago, Berkeley and the likes in the “first tier” according to your NRC list. In my opinion, using the NRC list doesn’t make sense :)</p>
<p>^^^^That’s because JH is below Michigan of course. ;-)</p>
<p>IBclass, I want to be clear on what you mean by “both ranking sets” (and how you assigned scores to each school’s unranked departments)</p>
<p>Is the following what you did?</p>
<ol>
<li><p>calculate an arithmetic mean of each school’s rankings, using only the subset of the 41 rankings for which a score is assigned to that school (“non-zero scores”)</p></li>
<li><p>calculate a second arithmetic mean of each school’s rankings, but in this case include a “zero” score for each department in which it had no rank, e.g. many schools get a zero for Oceanography. (By comparison, in these cases I assigned a number one less than the lowest recorded rank, not a zero)</p></li>
<li><p>calculate the arithmetic mean of 1 & 2 for each school, then sort the results to generate your list above</p></li>
</ol>
<p>Phead- That still doesn’t make sense. In terms of undergraduate selectivity and placement, Duke is at least on par with and arguably better than Hopkins. This is just one example of why I find peer assessment a dubious gauge of quality.</p>
<p>As for Caltech, I was willing to make an exception for peer assessment.</p>
<p>1) It’s arguably the most selective university in the nation, partly due to its size.
2) It scores extremely well in the fields it does have (#12 in biological sciences, #4 in engineering, #3 in physical sciences).
3) It’s #1 for PhD production.</p>
<hr>
<p>tk21769- I averaged the two lists here. I suspect the author used your approach, given the outcome.
<a href=“http://www.stat.tamu.edu/~jnewton/nrc_rankings/nrc1.html#TOP60[/url]”>http://www.stat.tamu.edu/~jnewton/nrc_rankings/nrc1.html#TOP60</a></p>
<p>IBClass:</p>
<p>Your NRC classification makes no sense. You can’t simply average scores over the 41 departments for schools with zero scores. How can a school be ranked for a department it does not have? Take MIT for instance. It is generally top 5 in most departments it supports, but because it is only represented in about half the NRC categories listed, the average across all 41 fields drops dramatically. It gets even worse with Caltech. As per the list below, the PA will correlate very closely with the NRC average for non-zero NRC scores which makes sense. Nobody evaluates the reputation of a school based on non-existent departments.</p>
<p>Based on non-zero scores the NRC averages are:</p>
<p>1 MIT 8.70
2 Berkeley 8.50
3 Harvard 8.20
4 Princeton 8.03
5 Caltech 8.00
6 Stanford 7.95
7 UChicago 7.73
8 Yale 7.60
9 Cornell 7.47
10 UCSD 7.34
11 Columbia 7.32
12 Michigan 7.24
13 UCLA 7.19
14 Penn 7.09
15 Wisconsin 6.95
16 UTexas 6.78
17 UWashington 6.70
17 Illinois 6.70
19 Northwestern 6.63
20 Duke 6.61
20 Johns Hopkins 6.61</p>
<p>
That’s why there’s two separate lists.</p>
<p>1) The non-zero list measures depth. This is how strong universities are in the fields they offer. This is the list you prefer (which of course has nothing to do with MIT being at the top).
2) The average of all fields measures breadth. This is how strong universities are across a wide range of fields.</p>
<p>I simply averaged the two together as a rough measure of both breadth and depth. Wouldn’t you agree that the best possible scenario is to have a university that’s extremely strong in a wide number of fields instead of a few? Universities like Berkeley and Stanford have science and engineering programs on par with MIT but also have dozens of other top-notch programs.</p>
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</p>
<p>No, I don’t agree at all. </p>
<p>If I want to study neuroscience what do I care if the school offers anthropology? Should MI’Ts quality be affected by the fact that it does not have a near-eastern study department? Is Harvard any worse because it has no biological engineering department? </p>
<p>The NRC ranks departments not universities. It is purely a depth ranking by speciality. Similalrly, the PA ranks academic reputation and faculty in fields based on actual academics and a real faculty, not in areas where they don’t even exist. </p>
<p>Think of the Olympics. You get medals and ranked based on achievement in specific disciplines. You don’t get medals because you do OK across the board but simply don’t cut it at the top level. </p>
<p>Again, I maintain that averaging the two rankings is nonsense, and that is precisely why nobody does that. Just look at the inconsistency of your ranking and that of pretty much any other ranking. If some ranking is the outlier it is certainly not mine.</p>
<p>what the heck are you guys trying to do here? I haven’t read all 16 pages but I’ve flipped through a few pages and it all seems like nonsense haha</p>
<p>To back up the support for Caltech, I’ll give some subjective opinions that maybe you guys can find hard support for.
-Out of all the schools I’ve done “research” on (including schools like Princeton, Berkeley, Stanford, and even MIT) Caltech seemed to have the most to offer in terms of pure academics and research. This includes stuff like undergraduates doing research, phd production, etc.<br>
-Caltech is notorious for having an extremely tough curriculum, with quite possibly one of the hardest cores in the nation. But, despite this, the students’ emphasis is not on grades, but on collaberation with their peers.</p>
<p>Honestly, Caltech’s academics simply blew me away. They give an amazing pitch on their tours. It’s a shame it’s so small and non-diverse.</p>
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<p>Hopkins’ SAT scores are depressed because of Peabody music students. The best thing that Duke can throw at Hopkins is Biomedical engineering and even then, Hopkins is #1 in that subject on both the undergraduate and graduate playing field and Duke is #2…</p>
<p>Duke has the advantage because in addition to a top 10 med school, they have a really good law school and business school. It also has a huge endowment. 
Hopkins pwns all over schools in areas such as research, international affairs, music, public health, nursing, and a whole host of other top tier programs that are ranked among the top 10 in the nation.</p>
<p>That is why… Hopkins is good. We can argue about Duke vs. Hopkins all we want. I chose Hopkins over Duke for premed and that’s what matters most to me :)</p>
<p>Phead, just curious how many people are exactly in JHU’s music school?</p>