<p>Alexandre, there are errors in any system. I found PR to be the most useful of all the guides back when actually evaluating colleges.</p>
<p>I don't know, I find PR is very misleading if you ask me. I agree that every system has its flaws, but PR seems to be mostly incorrect rather than mostly correct.</p>
<p>You know I think what we really need to agree on is that everyone will like the rankings that rank their that they personally like higher and screw over the rest. Hence, Alexandre likes rankings that put Michigan ridiculously high and screw Dartmouth over, I like rankings that put Dartmouth high, etc. etc.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>Of course it matters who's deciding on the prestige. USNews surveys presidents, provosts, and deans of admission, NRC surveys departmental faculty. Brody, which creative_name sites, is based upon the experiences of college counselors at their schools and their experience counseling applicants, as well as from a number of primary and secondary sources. It should not seem strange then that Brody's prestige rankings are similar to the Revealed Preference Ranking that has been discussed extensively on another thread (<a href="http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/showthread.php?t=20854%5B/url%5D">http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/showthread.php?t=20854</a>). The Revealed Preference Ranking is based on which school an applicant matriculates to, chosen from their acceptances. Essentially, a head to head competition to what amounts to a popularity contest judged by the accepted students. Their final choice is probably, to a great degree, decided on things very to those used by Brody's interviewed counselors.</p>
<p>Hence, the Revealed Preference Rankings:</p>
<p>1 Harvard 2800
2 Yale 2738
3 Stanford 2694
4 Cal Tech 2632
5 MIT 2624
6 Princeton 2608
7 Brown 2433
8 Columbia 2392
9 Amherst 2363
10 Dartmouth 2357
11 Wellesley 2346
12 U Penn 2325
13 U Notre Dame 2279
14 Swarthmore 2270
15 Cornell 2236
16 Georgetown 2218
17 Rice 2214
18 Williams 2213
19 Duke 2209
20 U Virginia 2197
21 Northwestern 2136</p>
<p>vs the Brody prestige 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>Thus for better or worse, some would say worse, kids make their college selection based largely on prestige and largely ignore the 'other factors' such as weather, specific programs, vibe, resources, etc. that Brody's college counselors also choose to ignore. In the end, it is a debate on which factor is more important in contributing to a college education, the results would seem to indicate that most kids/people, perhaps unfortunately, choose prestige. This is why, in the words of TheDad, most rankings result in "another bogus ranking, the same old baloney re-sliced" because in the end, most rankings are based on prestige.</p>
<p>XANATOS, you are partly correct, but not entirely. I fully admit that I do not trust the Gourman Report. It is too one dimentional. No other ranking really gives Michigan a "ridiculopusly" high ranking. And I do not believe Dartmouth deserves to be screwed either. Any ranking that places those two universities between #6 and #17 seems fair to me. If you go to the "Most overrated/underrated" thread, you will see that I never mentioned Dartmouth. I have nothing against Dartmouth. I do not like its location, but as far as academics go, I believe it is a great university.</p>
<p>Furthermore, it takes more than just one error for me to think a ranking is flawed. I usually require several major mistakes to disregard a ranking.</p>
<p>I still think as far as the prestige ranking goes, I will be safe with USNews peer review scores.</p>
<p>Hopeman, I tend to agree with you. As much as I dislike the USNWR, the Peer Assessment score is pretty accurate.</p>
<p>Public opinion is the best measure of prestige - a good gauge is the academic column reputation in the USNews. This measure is THEEEEE best! Everything else is contrived by adjusting weights, fractions, throwing in meaningless data etc. Whatever the public thinks is presitigious is the only thing that counts.</p>
<p>Also, if you include world-wide recognition, some universities truly stand out!!
e.g.</p>
<p>1) Ivy League
2) Stanford/MIT
3) Oxford, Cambridge
4) ...</p>
<p>All these "pretend" rankings don't mean anything whatsover. For example, many people on this board pretend as if some LACs are the most prestigious schools on Earth, more than Harvard/Oxford. However, 6 billion people beg to differ.</p>
<p>Major problems with
1) Revealed preference - the test group is cherry-picked!! How many people in the world even know of Pomona enuf to compare it to Berkeley? Every single person in the revealed preference survey is chosen because they know the majority of these schools...making it a non-random poll, which makes it biased from the onset.</p>
<p>2) USnews - Is extremely contrived. Different weights can pull rankings apart.</p>
<p>3) Brody - Is almost illegal. These are paid conselors who'll tell you Deanda is the best college if they think you'll pay them for it.</p>
<p>4) NRC - probably the best of the bunch, but doesn't consider ugrad quality.</p>
<p>Those who decide on colleges by prestige are letting others making their decisions for them instead of deciding on fit according to their own observations and needs. People who do this go on to buy the cars that others think most highly of, live in the places others think most highly of, marry and have affairs with those that people think most highly of, and in general can often drift through a very "successful" life without ever having had an original thought.</p>
<p>If all the students who have sat scores over 1300 and decent extra credit experience decided that this year they would apply to one obscure Liberal Arts College, I would expect by the time they graduated the school would be on the map and they would get a great education. So much of what we get out of a learning situation is the company we keep. Just a thought regarding prestige.</p>
<p>
[quote]
XANATOS, you are partly correct, but not entirely. I fully admit that I do not trust the Gourman Report. It is too one dimentional. No other ranking really gives Michigan a "ridiculopusly" high ranking. And I do not believe Dartmouth deserves to be screwed either. Any ranking that places those two universities between #6 and #17 seems fair to me. If you go to the "Most overrated/underrated" thread, you will see that I never mentioned Dartmouth. I have nothing against Dartmouth. I do not like its location, but as far as academics go, I believe it is a great university.
[/quote]
</p>
<p>But whenever somebody asks you for your opinion on the Ivies, you manage to rank Dartmouth last or next to last.</p>
<p>Sorry golubb_u, for <em>world-wide recognition</em> (not prestige mind you) only Harvard, Yale, Stanford, Berkeley, and MIT may represent US universities, other Ivies are only free-riders.</p>
<p>That is correct XANATOS, among Ivies, I consider Brown and Dartmouth to be the most limited and as such, the weakest. But there is very little difference between the best Ivies (H,PY) and the rest of the Ivies, so we are not talking about night and day differences. even the weakest Ivy League is one of the nation's top 15-20 university. People often confuse what I say. I am not referring to the quality of education. That, I always maintain, is impossible to measure. I believe that when it comes to learning, once a student is past a certain age (10th grade ot 11th grade), the onus lies squarely on the student...not the university. As such, I only speak of the quality of a university as a whole. In short, the quality of the faculty, departments, research etc...</p>
<p>rtkysg - i would have to agree. The most well-known schools outside of the United STates would definitely have to be Harvard,Yale,Stanford,MIT and Berkeley.. and maybe Princeton. Other than those 6, most internationals know very little about U.S. schools.</p>
<p>Well, consider that prestige has only a loose correlation with quality of undergrad education and what people outside the US know about US colleges says nothing about any reality.</p>
<p>more materials in the library does not mean multiple copies of the same thing...</p>
<p>that's why you check out materials early, or you can probably find out who has the book checked out that you want, and can borrow it from that person.</p>
<p>The toughest schools to get into in order are:</p>
<ol>
<li>MIT</li>
<li>Princeton</li>
<li>Cal Tech</li>
<li>Yale</li>
<li>Harvard</li>
</ol>
<p>Total R&D expenditures at universities and colleges,
ranked by fiscal year 2002 total R&D expenditures
[Dollars in thousands] </p>
<p>Institution and ranking 2001 .... 2002 </p>
<p>2 UCLA 693,801 .... 787,598 </p>
<p>3 MIchigan 600,523 .... 673,724 </p>
<p>8 Stanford 482,906 .... 538,474 </p>
<p>9 U. Pen 469,852 .... 522,269 </p>
<p>10 Cornel 443,828 .... 496,123 </p>
<p>13 Berkeley 446,273 .... 474,746 </p>
<p>15 MIT 435,495 .... 455,491 </p>
<p>16 Duke 375,133 .... 441,533 </p>
<p>22 Columbia 354,497 .... 405,403 </p>
<p>23 Harvard 372,107 .... 401,367 </p>
<p>30 Yale 321,514 .... 354,243 </p>
<p>41 Northwestern 257,933 .... 282,154 </p>
<ol>
<li>Caltech 215,085 .... 220,004 </li>
</ol>
<p>79 Princeton 149,411 .... 164,408 </p>
<p>103 Brown 91,636 .... 109,482</p>
<p>Those numbers are a bit misleading. It would be more appropriate to divide the amount of dollars by the amount of students; for instance, CalTech gets the shaft when you look at dollars alone.</p>
<p>Nope.</p>
<p>Swiss's Per Capita Income is much higher than US's.</p>
<p>It doesn't mean Switzerland is richer than US.</p>