What are US top 7 universities good at?

College Search & Selection
101

<p>
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but I didn't see a single Dartmouth department ranked in the top 20, 30, or 40 of any NRC ranking.

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<p>Well, that's really unfair. The fact is, the NRC rating only ranked departments that offered PhD's, and the fact is, Dartmouth simply doesn't offer PhD's in many departments. For example, Dartmouth doesn't offer PhD's in any of the humanities, nor in econ or sociology or polisci or many of the other common departments. So obviously Dartmouth wouldn't be included in the NRC rankings in those categories.</p>

<p>Look, the truth is, Dartmouth is basically a LAC that just happens to have a few graduate programs. But at the end of the day, it's really a LAC. The distinction between a research university and a LAC is highly artificial, because the fact is, some schools that are classifed as LAC's (like Bryn Mawr) offer PhD programs and hence could be considered to be research and some schools that are classified as research universities are really just LAC's. Nobody goes around castigating Williams, Amherst, Swarthmore, Wellesley, or any of the other LAC's for not appearing in the NRC ranking. So why single out Dartmouth? in fact you said it yourself that Dartmouth ought to be compared more to the Swartmores and Wellesleys of the world. So why not do just that?</p>

<p>Look, the fact is, LAC's and LAC-ish schools are very different from super-large research universities like Berkeley or Michigan. Some people prefer the LAC's to the superlarge research universities. For others, it's vice versa. I don't think you can say categorically that one is always better than the other for all people.</p>

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How can you claim that you're getting a quality education at a particular institution, when the departments are relatively weak? According to the NRC Report, the departments at Dartmouth and most other small, private universities are vastly outranked by those at Berkeley and Michigan. And that's an understatement

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<p>It's by the same argument that you could say that you might get a better undergrad education in English at Williams College than you would at Michigan, despite the fact that Williams does not have a highly ranked English department. The fact is, having a highly ranked department is only a minor consideration as to how good the undergraduate education is. Departmental rankings are highly linked to research, which is important if you're a graduate student, but far less so if you're just an undergrad trying to learn the subject. I don't think anybody would say that the elite LAC's are bad, and yet none of the elite LAC's have any top-ranked NRC departments. Surely you're not prepared to say that people who graduated from Williams, Amherst, or Swarthmore are poorly educated.</p>

102

<p>Yale, you keep mentioning quality of the student body. The Michigan student body is more talented than the numbers suggest. The top two thirds of the students at Michigan have SAT scores over 1300. At Brown and Cornell, it is 75% that have SAT scores over 1300. 25% have SAT scores 1400 and above. If you insist on hanging out with very intelligient and highly driven people, you certainly can and you won't have to look for them either. When you have close to 2,000 freshman coming in each year with SAT scores of 1400+, you will easily find the "smart" crowd. And the intellectual atmosphere at Michigan is unmatched. As for the resources, on average, classes at Michigan are no larger than classes at Cornell or Johns Hopkins. I really don't see how resources are scarcer at Michigan than at a private university. I never had a lack of resources. In fact, I had more resources than I knew what to do with. The quality of a university of an undergraduate institution is impossible to measure if all you look at are the abstract and intangible. But the quality of a university cannot be bent to suit one's purpose...it is, instead, a question of absolute. Certainly, one should chose a school based on fullfilling prioritized needs, but that merely makers a university better for you...not a university better absolutely.</p>

103

<p>Sakky, I truly didn't intend to be unfair to Dartmouth or the LAC's. I didn't know that Dartmouth completely lacked PhD progams. In fact, I suggested that it would be more appropriate to rank Dartmouth among the Swarthmores & Amhersts. Now I'm even more convinced that I'm right. Some posters on this thread were trying to compare the undergrad programs at Berkeley & Michigan to those at Dartmouth and smaller schools. I referred to it as comparing apples & bananas. Yet some still insisted on comparing the undergrad programs, although I claimed that it was bizarre. I wrote that it comes down to a matter of preference. Some prefer the larger undergrad programs with numerous highly regarded departments and world class research, while others prefer a more intimate, quality undergrad experience. Yes, it's a matter of preference.</p>

104

<p>Alexandre, we are not ranking universities, nor is US News. US News is ranking undergraduate colleges. If we can't make that distinction, there is no point in going on with this discussion.</p>

<p>Dartmouth and Cal can be compared in this crucial sense: they both offer bachelor's degrees. Given students nationwide have the choice of applying to and maybe going to either college for their bachelor's degree, it makes sense to compare the quality of the undergraduate experience at both schools.</p>

<p>As someone who went to a school that paid for everything (summer fellowships to go abroad for research, money for clubs and journalism, money for art and drama production, money for independent science research, etc.), the resources available at large endowment colleges are crucial to the undergraduate education. A lot of this simply isn't available at schools with more students and smaller endowments. This is why financial resources are key.</p>

105

<p>Sakky, I disagree that a strong department is only of minor significance to undergraduate students. Just the opposite. It was the most important consideration for me in selecting a school. Sorry, but you'll never convince me otherwise...not in a million years. The Swarthmores & the Amhersts may very well have some strong departments, but I seriously doubt that most schools have as many highly regarded departments as a Berkeley or a Michigan.</p>

106

<p>Here is a link for NRC individual ph.d programs rankings: </p>

<p><a href="http://www.stat.tamu.edu/%7Ejnewton/nrc_rankings/nrc41.html#area12%5B/url%5D"&gt;http://www.stat.tamu.edu/~jnewton/nrc_rankings/nrc41.html#area12&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p>

<p>Dartmouth college does have lots of ph.d programs in these rankings, not well regarded though. You have to look carefully to find Dartmouth because most of its ph.d programs in sciences are ranked below 40. The following are some of the rankings related to Dartmouth and Brown.</p>

<p>Math: Brown (#16), Dartmouth (#49)
physics: Brown (#26), Dartmouth (#83)
computer science: Brown (#13), Dartmouth (#55)
Geoscience: Brown (#12), Dartmouth (#39)
chemistry: Brown (#56), Dartmouth (#54)
Neural science: Brown (#52), Dartmouth (?)
ecology: Brown (#42), Dartmouth (#74)
Cell biology: Brown (#57), Dartmouth (?)
biochemistry: Brown (?), Dartmouth (#65).</p>

<p>Since NRC ranking is highly regarded in academia, it is reasonable to conclude that Dartmouth is weak in science (I'm sure in engineering as well), although it is in top 10 by US NEWS college ranking.</p>

<p>Some people always argue that graduate program rankings have little to do with undergraduate program quality. I disagree totally. Within each department of any university, the same faculty members teach graduate students and undergraduates. I have never heard a school which separates faculty members into a "undergraduate" faculty group and a "graduate faculty" group. </p>

<p>Since US NEWS has both 'undergraduate' ranking and graduate school ranking in business and engineering only, you may want to look at the schools having both an undergraduate program and a graduate program in these 2 areas. You can easily find the universities with best graduate programs almost surely have the best undergraduate programs. For example, in business school rankings (both undergraduate and graduate), Penn, MIT, and Berkeley lead the way. In engineering school rankings (both undergraduate and graduate), MIT, Stanford, Berkeley, and Caltech top the list. So, a good graduate program usually implies a good undergraduate program (if it is existing).</p>

<p>I think US NEWS puts too much weight on criteria such as selectivity, SAT score, graduation rate, and alumni giving rate when ranking colleges. it almost ignores the quality of the individual programs and does not emphasize enough the reputation of the faculty members. Thus some of the great universites, such as Stanford, MIT, Berkeley, and Michigan are unfairly ranked low, while some of the privite universities are heavily over-rated (LIKE Dartmouth and Emory). </p>

<p>On my list,
Harvard, Stanford, Berkeley, MIT, Caltech, and Princeton
should be the top 6 (in that order).
Chicago, Yale, Columbia, Cornell, Penn, Michigan
belong to the second tier.</p>

107

<p>You guys are free to believe what you want. However, I will always point to the example of the LAC's - strong undergraduate schools with limited (or usually no) graduate programs to speak of, and certainly weak (or nonexistent) departmental rankings. Ask yourself - if departmental ranking is so important, then how can these LAC's offer such a good education? Surely you guys are not going to take the position that the LAC's offer terrible educations just because their departments have weak rankings.</p>

<p>Look, the fact of the matter is, the NRC rankings and all other graduate rankings are heavily, if not exclusively, weighted on research. Research matters if you're a graduate student. But research usually does not matter if you're an undergraduate. If you're an undergraduate, you just want to learn the stuff. If you're just an undergrad trying to learn the stuff, what does it matter if the guy teaching it to you is a Nobel laureate if he doesn't know how to teach well? The LAC's and the LAC-ish tend to emphasize teaching over research. The research universities tend to emphasize research over teaching. </p>

<p>That is why you cannot treat graduate rankings and undergraduate rankings as the same. Grad students and undergrads are differnet people with different needs. A school that serves its graduate students well may not serve its undergrads well, and vice versa. Which is why I've always said - if you're an undergrad, then you should care about undergrad rankings. When you're a graduate student, now you should care about graduate rankings. </p>

<p>So I'll say it again. Elite LAC's like Swarthmore and Amherst do not have "strong" departments in the sense that their departments do not place highly in the NRC rankings. So? Plenty of people turn down admission to major research universities for an elite LAC. Are these people being stupid? Put another way, I know that very very few people would turn down Williams or Amherst to go to the University of Massachusetts or the University of Connecticut (except to save money). Why is that? UMass and UConn have far better departmental rankings than do the LAC's. So why are these people turning them down for the LAC's? Are you saying all these people are dumb?</p>

108

<p>What's the harm in majoring in a not-so-renowned program if it's an overall great school?</p>

109

<p>Sakky, UConn and UMass do not have many top 50 programs, let alone top 5 programs. Their department rankings are hardly significantly better than those at top LACs. Furthermore, the recources at those two schools are not that abundant. Their endowment is less than $500 million each. </p>

<p>Schools like Cal and Michigan have over 100 top 10 programs. Michigan's endowment currently stands at around $5 billion. Cal is rapidely approaching the $3 billion mark. You cannot compare the former two to the latter two. It would be like comparing Swarthmore to Wofford! Obviously, a student faced with the UMass vs Williams option, all things being equal, should opt for Williams. But when ot comes to chosing between Williams and say Michigan, things become a little more complicated.</p>

<p>Taddirose, department rankings can make a big difference...almost as important as the overall quality of the university. But that is not always the case. It depends on the field of study. For example, in Engineering and Business, it makes a big difference. I would almost always recommend Cal or Michigan over say Washington University or Notre Dame to students interested in majoring in Business or Engineering. On the other hand, for students interested in History or English, I would recommend one go to a university that is respectable and a good fit for the student. For students who desire close personal attention and a close knit environment, I would obviously recommend a LAC/LAC-type university. For students who want more academic and social variety, I would recomment larger, research universities. This is not a question of better or worse, but rather, of fit.</p>

110

<p>
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Sakky, UConn and UMass do not have many top 50 programs, let alone top 5 programs. Their department rankings are hardly significantly better than those at top LACs.

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<p>UConn and UMass don't have many top 50 ranked programs, but they do have many ranked programs (even if the rankings aren't that high), whereas the LAC's have almost no ranked programs. Yet that's the point - nobody castigates the LAC's for not having highly ranked programs. So why pick on Dartmouth, when Dartmouth is basically a LAC? </p>

<p>Let me put it this way. Take the 7 Claremont schools - 5 undergrad (Claremont McKenna, Pomona, Harvey Mudd, Scripps, and Pitzer, and 2 graduate programs - Claremont Graduate School (CGS) and the Keck Institute. The Claremont schools may be 7 independent schools on paper, but in reality because of all the cross-sharing and pooling of resources, all the cross-registering that goes on, and the intimate cultural bonding that exists across the 7 schools, they are basically just one unified school. Consider the fact that CGS isn't exactly the greatest graduate school in the world - its English and History departments are both only ranked #82 by the NRC. But so what? Just because CGS doesn't have highly ranked departments, does it then follow that Pomona cannot deliver a good undergraduate education? Again, lest anybody argue that they are different schools, the fact is while they may be different schools on paper, there is so much pooling of resources (CGS profs teaching Pomona classes, Pomona kids taking the short walk to CGS to take CGS classes, research projects being cross-run amongst all the campuses, etc.) that, in effect, they act like a unified school.</p>

<p>So here I see people castigating Dartmouth for having poorly ranked graduate departments. So let's say that, today, Dartmouth were to hive off its graduate programs from its undergraduate program. So you would have Dartmouth College, which would be just for undergrads, and you would have Dartmouth Graduate School. So on paper, you would have 2 separate entities. Now I think we can all agree that we would see the undergraduate-only Dartmouth College for what it really is, which is a LAC. DGS might have low-ranked departments, but that wouldn't affect our view of Dartmouth College just like our view of Pomona is not affected by CGS. </p>

<p>So just by one fell swoop, Dartmouth would vastly improve the image of its undergrad program just by quarantining it from its graduate school. But why should Dartmouth need that? It would be just a cosmetic change. It would be just a change on a piece of paper. In reality, nothing has actually changed about the undergraduate program. It's just that, on paper, things have changed. </p>

<p>That just seems silly to me. Dartmouth is basically a LAC that just happens to have some graduate programs too. Sure, maybe the graduate programs aren't that good. But for the purposes of undergrad education, so what? Who cares? We don't penalize Pomona and Harvey Mudd for the problems of CGS. So why should we penalize the undergrad program at Dartmouth for the problems in the graduate school? To say that we should penalize is to basically say that Dartmouth really should spin off DGS on paper. I am deeply skeptical of any notion that implies that any school will deliver a better education just by changing some words on a piece of paper. Dartmouth as a unified grad+undergrad school is a bad place </p>

<p>
[quote]
department rankings can make a big difference...almost as important as the overall quality of the university. But that is not always the case. It depends on the field of study. For example, in Engineering and Business, it makes a big difference.

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<p>Once again, I would invoke the example of the LAC's and say that I don't think anybody would agree that just because, say, Harvey Mudd or Rose-Hulman don't have strong departmental rankings, then that automatically makes them bad schools to go to for engineering. In fact, I seem to recall reading somewhere that 40% of Harvey Mudd alumni have PhD's, which is a higher percentage of doctoral attainment than the undergraduate alumni of any other school except possibly Caltech (and I think it's possible that they have Caltech beat). </p>

<p>Look, I'm not trying to say that the LAC's are great for anybody and everybody. What I am saying is that we ought to have more respect for LAC's and LAC-like schools. Just because a school doesn't have strong departments doesn't mean that the education you get there must be bad, as the LAC's vividly demonstrate. And some schools that are classified as research universities are similar enough to LAC's that they really ought to be treated like them. Dartmouth is one of them.<br>
Let's face it. Dartmouth is far more similar to Williams, Amherst, or Pomona than it is to Michigan. And I think we can all agree that some people are indeed better off at Williams than at Michigan. So then is it really so hard to believe that some people would also be better off at Dartmouth than at Michigan?</p>

111

<p>I totally agree Sakky. Some people are indeed better off at a school like Williams or Dartmouth than at a school like Michigan. Overall, all three of those institutions give excellent opportunities, but vary vastly in what they off and how they offer it. That's what I have been saying all along. It is others who continuously say that Dartmouth and Williams (and other LACs) are better than large research universities. That's where I have a problem.</p>

112

<p>Datalook, I couldn't have expressed it better. This is the primary point I was trying to make. The USN&WR undergraduate poll largely ignores the quality of academic curriculum as well as the overall quality of departments at the universities. Many of the undergrad programs listed among the top 20 (and beyond) in the USN&WR National Universities poll are primarily placed so high based on selectivity in addition to grad rate, alumni giving, etc. Yet many of these schools lack the highly regarded departments & programs of top public universities such as Berkeley & Michigan. They also lack the quality libraries & world class research among many other resources. </p>

<p>USN&WR desperately needs to put more weight on the academic offering of each university. Prospective undergraduate applicants have the right to ask what some of these alleged top undergrad programs can offer them. Several of the undergrad programs listed in the top 20 of the National Universities poll have relatively weak departments across the board. Is this USN&WR's idea of a quality education? The criteria & methodology used by USN&WR clearly favor the small, private undergrad program. In effect, USN&WR is erroneously & deceptively telling prospective undergraduate applicants that they need to spend more money to get a top notch education. More money? Yes. Top notch education? Probably not. Note that I'm not referring to the top Ivies, Stanford, MIT, or Cal Tech here. </p>

<p>Many of these schools even lack the international reputations for academic excellence of a Berkeley or a Michigan. Actually both Berkeley & Michigan were consistently listed among the top 10 undergraduate programs in the USN&WR poll until the latter 80's, when the publication dramatically changed its criteria & methodology. Yes, I reject the USN&WR poll as biased & invalid. The NRC Report is the most prestigious & respected source of academic ranking. Commercial polls like USN&WR have questionable validity to say the least.</p>

113

<p>Datalook, although I agree with what you wrote, I'm not completely in agreement with your personal ranking of the top undergrad programs. Also Michigan is tied with Berkeley for 3rd in undergrad business and appears in the undergrad engineering top 10 in the USN&WR polls. I just wanted to add this as a post statement.</p>

114

<p>I think the USN&WR rankings are the best for the following reasons: they are the most transparent, they are flexible (they respond to users and their concerns) and they have a good balance of student and educator concerns. Compare it to a ranking like Gourman, whose methodology is a complete mystery. Some have said that NCR rankings are better because they are allegedly considered more prestigious by academicians. But USN&WR gives the most weight in its rankings to the evaluation of a university's program by peer academicians (and if I am not mistaken, all the weight to graduate program rankings). Someone was outraged that alumni giving was considered. What's wrong with that? I think that it a very clever assesment of student satisfaction. So what is the problem with USN&WR rankings? Just the fact that it is published by a commercial magazine?</p>

<p>On another matter discussed, I am a bit familiar with Claremont and agree that it is really one university. It is supposed to be designed along the Oxbridge structure but I don't know why they cannot go all the way like Oxbridge and become Claremont University (or some such name) simply granting degrees under that name and marketing themselves much better without giving up any of the individual institutions' independence. I think they will rank in the top 20 national universities under such a scenario. And CGU is a much better institution than implied in this discussion. Almost all its programs are ranked and many of them pretty well: Religion (21), Fine Arts (34), English (39), Math (47), PolSci (48), Econ (54), Education (55) ..etc</p>

115

<p>UClaw, alumni donation has little to do with student statisfaction. It has to do with the size of the alumni base and how easily accessible they are. LACs almost all have alumni donation rates over 50% because their alumni bases are fewer than 15,000. Last state schools with over 300,000 living alumns cann't possibly keep up with so many alumns. But that does mean that LAC alumns are more satisfied. </p>

<p>Furthermore, private universities have been following alumns for generations...centuries. It is the only way they could raise money. State schools have not needed to ask alumns for money until the 1990s. That's just the way things were/are structured. </p>

<p>In short the alumni donation rate measures very little. Neither do most of the subfields used by the USNWR.</p>

116

<p>Alexandre, I think that if state schools could get their numerous alumni to contribute they would have done so already. And in the top 50 you could see a range from UVA's 29% (close to that of Columbia, Northwestern & Chicago) to UCI's 9%. It would cost a few tens or hundreds of thousands dollars to hire professionals to go after the tens of millions dollars that they could collect from alumni if it were reasonably likely. No state school wants to be dependent on the ups and downs of state coffers and state politics. Thus I think it is probably due to satisfaction. But, regardless of whether I or you are right, USN&WR gives only 5 points out of 100 to this catagory. Many of the seemingly unimportant categories are also similarly weighted. Would it be ridiculous to use this category, for example, in a case where two similar schools are neck-and-neck in all other areas? Sure, the weighting could be adjusted in many different ways depending on what one wants to accomplish. But fundamentally I think the current ranking methodology is reasonable and logical.</p>

117

<p>USNEWs has the faculty resource criteria which takes into account the faculty:student ratio AND the percentage of classes over 50 and under 20. For example, some compare Penn to State schools, even though Penn has 75% of classes under 20, while Williams only has 74%. On the other hand, UCB only has 58% under 20; Michigan 46%. </p>

<p>It has been shown that class size is the most direct correlator with educational quality and that is taken into account by US news.</p>

118

<p>^^^Where has this been shown? Please link to the data.</p>

119

<p>UCLaw, would you believe that I have never been contacted by Michigan regarding donations? Nor have most of the dozens of Michigan alums I continuously and regularly keep in touch with. My friends who graduated from schools like Stanford and Cornell and Notre Dame get letters from their universities constantly. I would say close to 100% of students from smaller pivate universities get direct contact regarding donations comparted to about 40%-50% at large public universities. I do not think that alumni satisfaction is very reliable indicator of student satisfaction.</p>

120

<p>I can agree with Alexandre to the extent that the alumni-donation rates between public and private schools are not comparable for various structural and historical reasons. A far more fair way to compare things the donation rates of just the public schools. For example, it's clearly unfair to expect a state school to have as high of a donation rate as a tiny LAC or an Ivy. But I think it is fair to ask why that state school can't have the kind of donation rate that a Virginia or a North Carolina can get.</p>

<p>And in any case, I agree with uclaw73 in that it's only 5 percentage points in the ranking. So even if you take that category away, it's not like it would change a whole lot. So public schools can't blame their rankings on that one category.</p>