<p>you gotta be kidding me, Maryland and UT-Austin higher than UIUC?</p>
<p>Ranking by student Fulbright Winners</p>
<p>UIUC should be in the top 9 or 10</p>
<p>U Mass Amherst??? I'd have U of Fla and UGA ahead of Amherst for sure</p>
<p>CU Boulder is good, too! ...Not as good as like UCB, but still...</p>
<p>Yeah, i agree, UIUC deserves to be higher.</p>
<p>There's no definitive and it certainly isn't a list in a popular advertising paid-for magazine like US News. Most experts seem to agree that UC-Berkeley is first based on criteria like endowment, research expenditures, doctorates awarded, SAT scores of incoming students, etc. Beyond that there is some disagreement, to put it mildly.</p>
<p>Flopsy and Alexandre's lists are solid, except Virginia is overrated, Wisconsin underrated. Virginia rates high because it is a bit like a private school (alumni giving and so forth) but it's not in the top 3 in terms of pure academics.</p>
<p>everyone bashes on virginia :-(. </p>
<p>UVa may not be the best "university" in the literal sense of the word. Its ph.d. programs are not the strongest of the public schools - even though its professional programs are. Its not the research powerhouse that michigan, berkeley, or wisconsin happen to be. </p>
<p>But for undergraduate education, which 99% of the people on this site are interested in, UVa is just as good as Michigan and Berkeley. Just look at the stats. (I take most of this from cds data)</p>
<p>UVa has about 13,000 ugrads, has about 23,000, and michigan has about 25,000.</p>
<p>class size - (i included subsections in all 3)
Virginia has around 78% of its classes under 30.
Michigan has around 76% of its classes under 30.
Berkeley has around 74% of its classes under 30.</p>
<p>All 3 have student/faculty ratios of 15:1.</p>
<p>Endowment per student -
Virginia - 180,000
Michigan - 126,000
Berkeley - 61,000</p>
<p>Quality of student body
Virginia - SATs - 1220 - 1430, 86% top 10%
Michigan - SATs - 1210 - 1400, 90% in top 10%
Berkeley - SATs - 1200 - 1450, 98% in top 10%</p>
<p>and berkeley's top 10% is skewed...simply because 30,000,000 people live in california vs 7 and 8 mill in virginia and michigan respectively.</p>
<p>So what are people basing their assertations that Virginia is worse than all the other schools? Its student body is just as strong. It has comparable teaching faculty. It's funding is just as good. So why is it overrated for undergrad, while its peer public schools are underrated?</p>
<p>"Not I," said the fly... I never bash on UVA, it's an awesome place. It's the smaller scale of an Ivy (actually smaller, overall, than either Penn or Cornell), yet it's got a State school sticker price. It's got tradition, excellent, diverse students and quality, small school-oriented undergrad programs. Not to mention an awesome, classic campus centered on Thomas Jefferson's famed Lawn -- an architectural triumph that has been (mainly unsuccessfully) imitated by American campuses in one form or another. The Yale Insiders Guide to the Colleges (published by Yale Daily News staffers) wasnt just blowing smoke when they once claimed that UVA students/alums look upon the Ivy League as just another athletic conference. I see no reason why they shouldnt.</p>
<p>No, anyone to "bash" the University of Virginia is, frankly, off their rocker. I don't know where this is coming from.</p>
<p>its smaller than columbia too ;-)</p>
<p>Overall, I guess UVa is smaller than Columbia, but its harder go gage, exactly. I don't think of Columbia as being bigger because its undergrad colleges, and it's gorgeous Harlem/Morningside Hts campus are so small actually its undergrad colleges, Columbia College (LAC), Barnard, and Columbia Coll of Engineering, though adjacent, are segregated, self sufficient sub-campuses. Also, I think Columbia's overall enrollment roster is swelled by a lot of off campus grad students and continuing ed students. Thus, Columbia's not your avg traditional, single campus schools like Penn (about 10,000 undergrads) and Cornell (nearly 14,000 undergrads) -- with Cornell literally being part State school (as a land grant college)... That's why I only compare UVa to these schools and not Columbia.</p>
<p>im just playing - i don't think the size of a school matters that much. can you really notice the difference between 9,000 students and 12,000 students? or 5,000 and 6,000? UVa has 13,000 undergrads and if you just dropped me in the middle with no knowledge of that I probably wouldn't be able to guess accurately or even close to it.</p>
<p>flopsy listed:
UCB
Michigan
Virginia</p>
<h2>UCLA</h2>
<p>UNC-Chapel Hill
UW-Madison
UT-Austin
UIUC</p>
<h2>UCSD</h2>
<p>William and Mary
Georgia Tech
Penn State
Maryland
Washington
UMass-Amherst</p>
<hr>
<p>I would ADD Michigan State and Miami-Ohio, and REMOVE Maryland and UMass.</p>
<p>Also, I've always felt funny about including William & Mary on these public school lists. Yes, it is technically a state school, but it has little in common with what we consider a State university. I mean, what is in any way similar between W & M and Berkeley or Michigan or UCLA or you catch my drift. For most of its long history W & M was a prestigious LAC which was on par with the original Ivy campuses. It went broke and closed temporarily (2 decades, I think) after the Civil War, then reopened as a publicly-funded college. But because of it's strong traditions, it's remained small-ish and non-research oriented. I still look upon W & M as private school though, technically, it's not... W & M's an outstanding school, obviously, I just wish we could find a separate category for it.</p>
<p>Don't feel "funny" about including The College of William and Mary on your list. It appears on every list touting the top public universities. It is consistently ranked number one in the category of "small public universities in the country". I'm pretty sure that it is the first college to attain university status. William and Mary is one of the 8 original schools to be designated as a "public ivy". The prestigious honor society of Phi Beta Kappa was founded by William and Mary in 1776. The size and ivy feel of William and Mary is intentional on the school's part. It needs no separate category, and I say this to you respectfully as a current student full of pride for my school. I think it's a stand out on your list for all the reasons both you and I stated.</p>
<p>UGA is getting tougher every year. The in-state Hope scholarships have drawn top students from private universities to UGA, and the stats of admitted students have been steadily climbing. In a recent year, the undergrad class produced Rhodes, Marshall, Goldwater and Truman scholars, the only public Univ to accomplish that feat that year, joining Harvard, Yale and Brown as the only schools to make that list.</p>
<p>Out of curiosity, where does TCNJ fall?</p>
<p>Point well taken, pedsox. I guess for the reasons you (and I) state, it is almost like W & M has an unfair advantage over typical publics because it was founded and maintained, for most of its existence, as a top, private liberal arts college. And, I think, its powerful alumni has kept it LAC-like (esp in terms of scale) even though it receives Virginia state funding. So W & M is naturally going to have a leg up on institutions that were founded as State institutions with different missions from private schools (i.e., educating large numbers of state residents who lack the means to attend Ivy's and elite LACs) -- at least, a leg up in the tangibles we consider as indicators of "quality": small size, elite student body (grade-wise, financially, geographically, etc)... William & Mary has its feet in both public and private camps, but to consider it solely as a public is, automatically, going to put it at the top of the list as it really has nothing in common with top publics other than the source of its funding.</p>
<p>I think TCNJ stacks up well w/ schools on the list.</p>