<p>
[quote]
I don't think you're giving enough credit that HS students have at least a modicum of analytical skills when it comes to choosing a college that is right for them.
[/quote]
</p>
<p>I gave more credit before I read this board for three years.</p>
<p>While I think endowments are important to the college experience, it is also important to look at endowment per student, i.e. Columbia's 4 Billion starts to look pretty small compared to Princeton, Dartmouth, etc when you consider that most of that goes to graduate education as opposed to undergrad.</p>
<p>Any ranking that puts speciality schools like Juilliard and Curtis Institute of Music on a national ranking scale with all normal schools I judge to be worthless.</p>
<p>Schools like this don't require test scores, grades, or teacher recs. It's all about the music, and therefore, not comparable at all to an undergraduate institution.</p>
<p>No ranking is perfect, but I think US News is the best of what's out there. They seem to have the most comprehensive ranking methodology.</p>
<p>I am not a fan of the USNWR, but the "Peer Assessment" rating is pretty accurate.</p>
<p>4.9/5.0
Harvard
MIT
Princeton
Stanford
Yale</p>
<p>4.8/5.0
Cal-Berkeley</p>
<p>4.7/5.0
CalTech
Columbia</p>
<p>4.6/5.0
Columbia
Cornell
Duke
Johns Hopkins University
University of Chicago
University of Michigan-Ann Arbor
University of Pennsylvania</p>
<p>4.5/5.0
Brown University</p>
<p>4.4/5.0
Dartmouth College
Northwestern University</p>
<p>4.3/5.0
Carnegie Mellon
UCLA
UVA</p>
<p>4.2/4.0
Rice
UNC-Chapel Hill
Wisconsin-Madison</p>
<p>4.1/5.0
UT-Austin
Vanderbilt
WUSL</p>
<p>4.0/5.0
Emory
Georgetown
Georgia Tech
University of Illinois-Urbana Champaign</p>
<p>I also like Fiske. It is more of a rating than an actual ranking, but I think it is pretty accurate.</p>
<p>Fiske ***** Universities:
Amherst
Brown
CalTech
Cal-Berkeley
Carleton
Chicago
Columbia
Cornell
Dartmouth
Duke
Harvard
Haverford
Johns Hopkins
Michigan-Ann Arbor
MIT
Middlebury
Northwestern
Pomona
Princeton
Stanford
Swarthmore
Texas-Austin
UCLA
UIUC
UNC-Chapel Hill
U Penn
UVA
Williams
Wisconsin-Madison
Yale</p>
<p>Gourman is interesting, but too literal and absolute.
Undergraduate rankings:</p>
<h1>1 Princeton</h1>
<h1>2 Harvard</h1>
<h1>3 Michigan-Ann Arbor</h1>
<h1>4 Yale</h1>
<h1>5 Stanford</h1>
<h1>6 Cornell</h1>
<h1>7 Cal-Berkeley</h1>
<h1>8 Chicago</h1>
<h1>9 Wisconsin-Madison</h1>
<h1>10 UCLA</h1>
<h1>11 MIT</h1>
<h1>12 CalTech</h1>
<h1>13 Columbia</h1>
<h1>14 Northwestern</h1>
<h1>15 Penn</h1>
<h1>16 Notre Dame</h1>
<h1>17 Duke</h1>
<h1>18 Brown</h1>
<h1>19 Johns Hopkins</h1>
<h1>20 Dartmouth</h1>
<p>putting Michigan #3 is ridiculous; the main types of people that go to Michigan from my school are probably top 30%. The smarter ones go to Brown, Dartmouth, and other Ivies.</p>
<p>Your school must be amazing Gatsby. Over 70% of Michigan's student body graduated in the top 5% of their high school class and 90% of Michigan's students graduated in the top 10% of their HS class. On average, Ivy League schools have slightly high SAT scores because Michigan only lists the highest combined score (the Ivies list their averages according to the highest independent Verbal and Math), because Michigan has several non-Academic departments and because Michigan de-emphasizes the SAT/ACT. But if you think that Michigan has singnificantly weaker students than the Ivies, you are incorrect.</p>
<p>This said, I agree that Michigan, Wisconsin and UCLA are ranked about 5-10 spots above their deserved spot. That is why I said that Gourman is too "literal and Absolute." He only looks at academic excellence and does not factor in intangibles. That is why Michigan, Wisconsin and UCLA are so highly ranked. Academically, they are ranked correctly, but there is more that goes into rankings than pure academics. Other than those three schools, I agree with Gourman's rankings.</p>
<p>THEDAD, I agree with you. Most high school students, including the best and the brightest, don't really know what constitutes a great university. This forum only confirms and reinforces my belief.</p>
<p>i never said signficantly lower, but just lower.</p>
<p>can someone give me a link to these rankings?
i've never seen them before, thanks.</p>
<p>Gatsby, I was not intending to get into a debate on this thread. The difference between Michigan students and students at Brown or Cornell is negligible. I would say you will only see a difference at the bottom 20%-30% of Michigan's student body. But the remaining 70%-80% of Michigan's student are not much different from their counterparts at other schools you seem to value so greatly. </p>
<p>Like I said, I personally agree that Gourman is a little extreme. I personally like Fiske best. </p>
<p>The USNWR and Gourman are very limited. For university reputation in academe, I would look at the Peer assessment of the USNWR and for sheer academic quality, I would look at Gourman. </p>
<p>But in terms of overall rating, Fiske takes the cake as far as I am concerned.</p>
<p>I don't get the fiske rankings - is it just enumerating all the top college?</p>
<p>Fiske gives a detailed writeup on roughly 300 top universities and rates it them according to three different criteria:</p>
<p>Academic Excellence
Quality of Life
Social Life</p>
<p>Only 30 or so universities get a ***** rating for academics. But he does not rank. I personally prefer rating to ranking because it is impossible to rank accurately. Let us face it. We all knitpick to the extreme but at the end of the day, is there a significant difference between any of the top 20 universities in the nation?</p>
<p>His quality of life and social life ratings are outdated, but his academic ratings are pretty accurate.</p>
<p>hormesis3 - first of all, you missed Lawrenceville in your list of top private school endowments. Second of all, your idea is interesting, but you need to do endowment per student for it to really make sense. Case in point - let's say there are a hundred thousand students enrolled at any given time (a conservative estimate given <a href="http://www.utsystem.edu/bus/ksr/FEB1998/Students/133.pdf%5B/url%5D">http://www.utsystem.edu/bus/ksr/FEB1998/Students/133.pdf</a>). Brown's enrollment is around 6,000. Texas's endowment is roughly six times as big as Brown's, but its enrollment is close to 17 times as big. Can Texas, then, really allocate as many resources for each individual student as Brown?</p>
<p>Not all resources need be allocated per student. You only need one great library, one great chemistry building, telescope, computer, etc. Some costs are fixed and some others are variable based on enrollment.</p>
<p>Well most of these schools have a lot more than one library. How would you like it if 5 people needed a particular book for a report and there were 2 copies in the school library?</p>
<p>Princeton Review's THE BEST 351... does a similar rating, with 1-4 stars for Academics, Selectivity, Campus Life, and Financial Aid.</p>
<p>62 schools have 4-star ratings for both Academics and Selectivity and only 17 of those are also ranked 4 stars for Campus Life. Of the 17, the only universities getting three 4-star ratings are Harvard, Dartmouth, McGill, and U/Virginia; the rest are LAC's. (The four military academies and Deep Springs omitted from this list.)</p>
<p>There are a few notable omissions from the broader 4/4 group: U/Texas-Austin gets dinged to 3 stars on Selectivity, UCLA gets dinged to 3-stars for Academics due to large classes and slightly lower ratings for accessibilty to professors. The list includes a specialized engineering school (Cooper Union) but does not include specialties like Julliard or Curtis.</p>
<p>I consider attempts at precise rankings to be a Fool's Game, though one that can enrich the publisher of said rankings. (Here's a test: "A __________ and their __________ are soon parted." Ready...set...go! You have five minutes. <test stolen="" from="" national="" lampoon's="" bored="" of="" the="" rings=""> ).</test></p>
<p>But looking over this compilation of 62 4/4 schools, there's only one I hadn't heard of and it's on the opposite coast, and there are a few that I'd quibble with at the boundaries...which is where the quibbling is always going to occur. But for the most part, assuming that one is attending for the right reasons, no one should feel any sense of "having to settle" for the schools on this list...different schools fit the needs of different students. It's all about "fit", not some arbitrary ranking or perception of prestige.</p>
<p>Guys. Don't you understand that these "ratings" are futile and ridiculous? I hear myself and I sound old, but it is true: each college is different, and provides different experiences for different people... THAT is truly, seriously, what is important. For a lot of these comparisons, it is like comparing apples and oranges; the colleges have different focuses, environments, etc... Sure, perhaps you can calculate the "overall" rating of a college, but that would be ridiculous, because you don't experience an institution as a "whole," rather, only certain elements/programs of it which suit YOU...</p>
<p>If there is any "ranking" which is even slightly worthwhile for an INDIVIDUAL, it is the "prestige" rating... After all, only YOU can decide what is best for YOU, but you need a rating to decide what other people perceive to be best... The prestige rating measures "which schools garner the most respect, in a general sense, from employers, graduate schools, and the American public"... this is the only thing that matters which is not within your control...</p>
<p>Here are the rankings:</p>
<ol>
<li>Harvard </li>
<li>Princeton </li>
<li>Yale </li>
<li>Stanford </li>
<li>Dartmouth </li>
<li>MIT </li>
<li>Amherst </li>
<li>Williams </li>
<li>Columbia University </li>
<li>California Institute of Technology </li>
<li>Brown </li>
<li>Duke </li>
<li>University of Pennsylvania </li>
<li>University of Chicago </li>
<li>Swarthmore </li>
<li>Northwestern University </li>
<li>Cornell University </li>
<li>Johns Hopkins </li>
<li>University of California-Berkeley </li>
<li>Bowdoin </li>
<li>Georgetown </li>
</ol>
<p>Of course, even in this there are flaws, because, for example, certain programs at certain colleges listed garner much more respect from recruiters than the overall college reputation, but this is the essence of what is wrong with rankings... this ranking is the only valuable "overall" college ranking, however, because it measures what kind of weight your degree carries with the public, employers... but when you get more detailed than that, it becomes so complex, and so concerned with the collective rather than the individual, it is pointless...</p>
<p>the rankings came from <a href="http://brody.com/college/resources/college_rankings.php%5B/url%5D">http://brody.com/college/resources/college_rankings.php</a></p>
<p>there is one library--it might be in 10 buildings but it is one library. Here is a little example. Both schools have 100 books per student. A has 1500 students for a total of 150,000 volumes. B has 35,000 students and 3.5 MILLION volumes. Which is likely to have more depth??</p>
<p>THEDAD, the Princeton Review is not very accurate. They make a lot of errors. And their ratings are highly questionable. </p>
<p>XANATOS, endowment is not very telling in terms of spending per student. Budgets are more telling. Take Brown and Michigan for example. Brown has 7,500 students and has a budget of $600 million ($70,000 per student). Michigan has 40,000 students and a budget of $2.5 Billion ($60,000 per student). I don't think there is such a significant difference between the two schools.</p>