<p>Harvard
Princeton
Oxford
Yale
Columbia (C/O 2017)
Cambridge
MIT
Stanford
Chicago
Caltech</p>
<p>
No way is Western Michigan one of the best universities in the world. Cal State Fullerton has at least as much academic prestige and is obviously far better for undergrads, even though I’ve never attended either and thus do not know how the professors interact with their undergrads. It’s easily a top five university in the Orange County area. Can Western Michigan say the same? No? Well then clearly CSUF is better.</p>
<p>UChicagoKid:</p>
<p>Actually, it’s even more a joke to compare Chicago to the likes of Caltech, and more so, HYPSM. </p>
<p>It may be is easier to get into Berkeley (specially to the College of Letters & Science) than it is to Chicago, but admissions alone do not picture the academic and / or school prestige. Look at Vanderbilt for example, which has admissions slightly tougher than Chicago, yet no one would ever think that Vanderbilt is a top 10 university worldwide. Even Brown and Dartmouth, both Ivy schools, both extremely selective schools, and are, by many accounts, more selective than Chicago, aren’t widely considered top 10 schools worldwide. </p>
<p>Like I said, US News measures “college convenience” rather than academic strength or school prestige.</p>
<p>
It is however, but I have CSUF at 12 right behind Utah Valley State.</p>
<p>Look at the average SAT score of the undergrads @ Berkeley. They’re not even close to the top US schools. This is silly.</p>
<p>^^^ And look at the SATs scores of Oxford and Cambridge, perhaps they’re zero. lol…</p>
<p>Berkeley, unlike most top privates, is putting emphasis more on HS GPA than SAT or ACT. Look at the HS GPA requirement of Berkeley and contrast it with Chicago’s and some top privates’.</p>
<p>There’s more to a school than average SAT scores. USNWR criteria is superficial.</p>
<p>Rankings given by ARWU is:</p>
<ol>
<li>Harvard</li>
<li>Stanford</li>
<li>MIT</li>
<li>Berkeley</li>
<li>Cambridge</li>
<li>Caltech</li>
<li>Princeton</li>
<li>Columbia</li>
<li>Chicago</li>
<li>Oxford</li>
</ol>
<p>It’s a joke to say that schools like Chicago and Berkeley don’t COMPARE to HYPSMC. Berkeley def deserves to be a very, VERY strong contender, at least, and based on rankings alone I actually wouldn’t mind putting it above Chicago at the graduate level. I’m obviously biased when it comes to Chicago, but to say that it can’t even be compared to other top ten schools seems like a bit of an exaggeration as well. Besides Econ, we have top (as in higher than top 10) programs in History, Sociology, Math, Physics and English Lit, at least according to US News Graduate Rankings. The fact that the main international rankings all put Chicago in the top 10 should be an indicator of its value. Nobody is trying to dethrone HYPSMC (no, not implying that they don’t deserve their reputation), but let’s not ignore other excellent institutions either.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>Agreed, you guys need to give Western Kentucky more credit.</p>
<p>Oxford
Harvard
Cambridge
Yale
Princeton
Stanford
MIT
Caltech
Columbia
maybe Imperial? or Upenn. </p>
<p>I dont think Berkeley undergraduate can be placed under top 10…</p>
<p>In no particular order</p>
<p>Caltech
Cambridge
Oxford
Yale
Princeton
Harvard
MIT
Stanford
Columbia
Princeton</p>
<ol>
<li>UCLA</li>
<li>UCB</li>
</ol>
<p>HUGE HUGE DROP</p>
<p>3.Harvard</p>
<p>RML
This one is for you!</p>
<p>“It may be is easier to get into Berkeley (specially to the College of Letters & Science) than it is to Chicago, but admissions alone do not picture the academic and / or school prestige. Look at Vanderbilt for example, which has admissions slightly tougher than Chicago, yet no one would ever think that Vanderbilt is a top 10 university worldwide. Even Brown and Dartmouth, both Ivy schools, both extremely selective schools, and are, by many accounts, more selective than Chicago, aren’t widely considered top 10 schools worldwide.”</p>
<p>Where are you getting your examples? From the 90s?</p>
<p>USNWR’s measures of selectivity put Chicago in the top 5 nationwide as based on acceptance rate, SATs, and high school GPA. Vanderbilt slightly more selective than Chicago? You’ve got to be kidding me. Chicago this year is set to have a 9% overall acceptance rate, and its entering freshman SATs are higher than those of Harvard, as per the most recent statistics that have yet to be written on the CollegeBoard and USNews websites.
(Source: <a href=“https://collegeadmissions.uchicago.edu/apply/classprofile.shtml[/url]”>https://collegeadmissions.uchicago.edu/apply/classprofile.shtml</a>)</p>
<p>Perhaps many could be forgiven for confusing acceptance rates with selectivity, but from someone like you who knows quite a bit about college admissions, it’s obviously willful ignorance. If we judge selectivity by acceptance rates alone, then College of the Ozarks attracts better students than Caltech. Even when Chicago had a significantly higher acceptance rate than Vanderbilt, Dartmouth, Brown, et al., it wasn’t really that debatable that Chicago was attracting better students, which could easily be seen from PhD production rates, the number of Rhodes/Fulbright scholars, etc.</p>
<p>Obviously, the success of an institution LARGELY depends upon the quality of students in attendance (and therefore, also often but not always dependent upon difficulty of admission). And as of late, Berkeley has been getting easier to get into, although through the years, it was never that difficult to enter anyway, at least UG. (The top tier of Berkeley students, on the other hand, has always been extremely impressive and successful.) Selectivity is a huge factor in a university’s success, and it’s certainly a relevant point in any discussion on university quality. Obviously, it’s just one element of quality, but certainly an important one that must be considered.</p>
<p>RML: HAHAHAHH thats the most outrageous thing I have ever heard. GPA doesn’t mean squat because, if you did your research, many kids can take classes like wood shop and foods and have a 4.0. Than there is the kid who took all AP classes and has an unweighted 3.4, but will score a 35 on his ACT because he took harder classes and the kid with the 4.0 scores a 22…NOT TO MENTION, the difference in difficulty of the school the student attends. I went to 3 different high schools and there was a huge difference between all three. One of them I could sleep through every class and have a 4.0 and others I had to work through the night to receive good grades…GPA doesn’t mean crap. Also, you can compare University of Chicago with any school in the world…and it’s not just US Weekly ratings…ITS EVERY SCALE</p>
<p>You guys are crazy, how do you not have Boise State on your lists?</p>
<p>
</a></p>
<p>Who cares? Harvard could probably fill its freshman class with students scoring perfect scores on the SAT. It doesn’t because it has broader interests than that in its undergraduates class (e.g. legacy admits, diversity admits, etc.)</p>
<p>top 10 in the world?</p>
<p>1.HYPSM
6.Caltech
7.Oxford
8.Cambridge
9.Berkeley </p>
<p>The universities I listed above except for Caltech (Caltech’s always the exception) have extremely strong national and international reputations and mostly a wealth of resources for their students. The last university is hard to describe. It would probably be between Chicago and Columbia. Due to its professional schools, i’d probably give the edge to Chicago.</p>
<p>There are hundreds of kids @ Berkeley who couldn’t sniff getting into a real top school. Don’t give me that garbage that scores don’t matter. That’s only true in LALA land.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>Chicago and Columbia are almost dead even in the professional programs they share (law, medicine, business, social work). </p>
<p>Additionally, Chicago has public policy and divinity. Columbia has international affairs/relations, engineering, journalism, nursing, dentistry, education, public health, architecture, and fine arts.</p>
<p>Personally, I’d take Caltech off the list and add both. That’d be a pretty solid top 10. Caltech is great, but it’s like including Rockefeller or UCSF…it’s just too small and specialized to qualify as a well-rounded university.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>I meant a slight edge. Chicago, if I recall correctly, has the better business school. I thought they had the better law school too, but it appears I was incorrect. </p>
<p>It’s really hard to call. My main concern with Chicago is that it’s young and doesn’t have the reputation, history, and perhaps geographical resources that Columbia does. But lately it has been consistently ranked among the top 5 universities in the U.S.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>I could be swayed into doing that. But I could also be persuaded into taking Berkeley off the list. I think only the top 7 or so are really clear. The other 3 spots are up in the air. </p>
<p>I understand you’re analogy, but disagree with it. The problem with Caltech is, for being what it is, it shouldn’t be mentioned with these others, but it is. UCSF and Rockefeller never are. That denotes something special about Caltech that makes it obligatory to be mentioned in any conversation about the elite universities; It arguably has the strongest students in the country, famous associations with prominent professors (e.g. Richard Feynman,) many Nobel prize winners in its short history, and probably gives the most student-focused education of any of these universities. But it is very weak in humanities and professional schools.</p>
<p>Perhaps you’re right that removing Caltech might be correct in order to add Chicago and Columbia. If I removed it though, i’d do so without strong confidence that I was making the correct decision.</p>
<p>Phiruku, where is it shown that “Berkeley has been getting easier to get into”? </p>
<p>Like most other US colleges riding a demographic wave known as Tidal Wave 2, Berkeley undergrad has gotten more difficult to get in. </p>
<p>Berkeley is a always a special case because it is a public university. However, nearly all of its academic programs are ranked among the top 5 and it has a faculty breadth and depth that only Harvard and Stanford can match.</p>