What private schools would the top publics replace if USNWR ranked differently?

College Search & Selection
121

<p>Ifecollegeguy, here are two rankings. You tell me which one makes more "sense":</p>

<h1>1 Harvard University</h1>

<h1>2 Princeton University</h1>

<h1>3 University of Pennsylvania</h1>

<h1>3 Yale University</h1>

<h1>5 Duke University</h1>

<h1>6 Stanford University</h1>

<h1>7 Washington University-St Louis</h1>

<h1>8 Columbia University</h1>

<h1>9 Brown University</h1>

<h1>10 Northwestern University</h1>

<h1>11 California Institute of Technology</h1>

<h1>12 Dartmouth College</h1>

<h1>13 Massachusetts Institute of Technology</h1>

<h1>14 University of Chicago</h1>

<h1>15 Cornell University</h1>

<h1>15 University of Notre Dame</h1>

<h1>17 Emory University</h1>

<h1>17 Rice University</h1>

<h1>19 Vanderbilt University</h1>

<h1>20 Johns Hopkins University</h1>

<h1>21 Georgetown University</h1>

<h1>21 Tufts University</h1>

<h1>23 Wake Forest University</h1>

<h1>24 Lehigh University</h1>

<h1>25 Carnegie Mellon University</h1>

<h1>25 University of Virginia</h1>

<p>OR</p>

<h1>1 Harvard University</h1>

<h1>1 Massachusetts Institute of Technology</h1>

<h1>1 Princeton University</h1>

<h1>1 Stanford University</h1>

<h1>5 University of California-Berkeley</h1>

<h1>5 Yale University</h1>

<h1>7 California Institute of Technology</h1>

<h1>8 Columbia University</h1>

<h1>8 Cornell University</h1>

<h1>8 Johns Hopkins University</h1>

<h1>8 University of Chicago</h1>

<h1>12 University of Michigan-Ann Arbor</h1>

<h1>12 University of Pennsylvania</h1>

<h1>14 Brown University</h1>

<h1>14 Duke University</h1>

<h1>16 Dartmouth College</h1>

<h1>16 Northwestern University</h1>

<h1>16 University of Virginia</h1>

<h1>19 Carnegie Mellon University</h1>

<h1>19 University of California-Los Angeles</h1>

<h1>19 University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill</h1>

<h1>22 University of Texas-Austin</h1>

<h1>22 University of Wisconsin-Madison</h1>

<h1>22 Washington University-St Louis</h1>

<h1>25 Emory University</h1>

<h1>25 Georgetown University</h1>

<h1>25 Georgia Institute of Technology</h1>

<h1>25 Rice University</h1>

<h1>25 University of Illinois-Urbana Champaign</h1>

<h1>25 University of Southern California</h1>

122

<p>I like how one year they got a new leading statistician, and when what she considered to be a more statistically valid weighting put Caltech in 1st place, she was gone by the next year and new modifications put Princeton back on top.</p>

123

<p>Second ranking is strictly based on Peer Assessment. Amist all the great things we hear or lack thereof of most universities, these are the rankings of academic prowness as they should be based purely on research quality, publications output, and quality of faculty from the academic world. (although to say this particular survey by USNews will fully testify to this is difficult to say)</p>

<p>Second ranking generally lays out the rankings by PA as viewed by academics throughout America minus all the other miniscule factors that doesn't fully incorporate the intangibles of research quality, instituional impact on scientific community, and types of researchers produced by institution.</p>

<p>The first one is simply retarded. Where did you get that one from?</p>

124

<p>Let's drop Vanderbilt to 40.</p>

125

<p>Second rankings look pretty nice, except for the few schools I have a completely irrational hatred for, which really has nothing to do with the accuracy of the rankings. Bonus cookies to anybody who can guess all 4!</p>

126

<p>The first ranking would be the USNWR ranking without the PA.</p>

127

<p>Ah i see, and the 2nd is only PA? I mean.. the first is more "consistent" and the 2nd is more "erratic". I mean, Berkeley for Grad can make that argument but for Ugrad...I'm not sure it can compete with the likes of Stanford for Ugrad, especially with the cross admit data, selectivity, avg rank, yield, quality of incoming freshman, etc. </p>

<p>Also, you're probably going to hate it, but I can't say Umich for undergrad wins much crossadmit battles nor has the same quality of student body as Upenn for Ugrad. Basicaly the same argument as Stanford Ugrad vs Cal Ugrad. </p>

<p>Both rankings would make "sense" to me.</p>

128

<p>You think the first list is more consistent? Tell me, do you honestly believe that Penn and Duke should be ranked ahead of Stanford and MIT? And WUSTL at #7 makes sense to you? Caltech at #11 and MIT at #13 makes sense? JHU at #20 is reasonable? Cal at #31 and Michigan at #38 makes sense? </p>

<p>That is not to say that the second ranking is more accurate mind you. As you say, both rankings would make "sense". The second ranking has its own eccentricities. But I don't see how you can say that the first ranking is more consistent than the second. </p>

<p>Personally, if you ask me, rankings tend to be accurate at the top, but once you leave the upper echelons, things get murky. Same goes with any rating/ranking. Take Le Guide Michelin for example. With only a dozen or so exceptions, the 300 or so Three and Two starred restaurants (the two highest ratings in the guide), are believed to be fairly rated. However, once you get passed the three and two star ratings, things start to get very irregular and inconsitant. With universities, I think the top universities are generally rated fairly. However, once one gets past a certain level, differences become much harder to justify.</p>

<p>And by the way, although I never saw official cross-admit data (they are pretty much meaningless since popularity does not equal quality), according to the Princeton Review, students only "sometimes (not often) consider and prefer Cornell, Northwestern and Penn" to Michigan. It so happens that those three, along with Cal, UVa and Wisconsin are Michigan's closest peers.</p>

129

<p>Keefer,
For the record, re your statements in various posts:
1. “hawkette likes private schools that have big greek scenes”-perhaps my absolute favorite school in the group that I mention is Rice. They have no Greeks.
2. “thinks she knows more about undergraduate teaching than deans and presidents of Universities”-nope. I don’t know what’s actually going on and neither do the academics. But the students who attend/have attended do and many employers have a pretty good idea of the level of preparedness that they see in graduates from ABC College
3. “thinks they are ranking graduate programs and research output”-you got this one right. And from my reading, this is probably the majority view on these boards.
4. “hawkette loves are small schools”-Stanford, Duke, Northwestern, Vanderbilt and Notre Dame are all major universities and all have undergrad populations of 6500+. These are “small” only when compared to a huge public with 25,000+.</p>

<p>Alex,
For your rankings in #121, I think lfecollegeguy says it best, “both make sense.”</p>

<p>If they are going to keep privates and publics together in the national university category, USNWR rankings with and without PA scoring would be a step in the right direction and is a win-win. Publics who rely heavily on their PA score to get their high rankings would get even higher rankings in a PA-only ranking while those of us who object strongly to PA and prefer more objective, quantifiable data points, would finally get a ranking free of the toxic influence of PA. </p>

<p>Despite the above, I still think that a stronger argument can be made that the privates and publics should be ranked separately.</p>

130

<p>Hawkette, I like quantifiable data points, but they must be valid (same weight assigned to SAT/ACT, no superscoring, class sizes properly and relevantly broken down, etc...). And then, those numbers must be audited to make sure there are no errors or inconsistancies. For now, none of this is in place. So I agree, separate rankings would be best.</p>

131

<p>I'm astonished that so many people posting here who have never attended a top public institution like Cal-Berkeley or Michigan can be so confidently dismissive of the quality of undergraduate education there. I've attended and taught at public and private research universities, including, it is my good fortune to say, some of the most distinguished in the country. In my experience, the differences in the classroom experience are negligible. Are there some professors who are indifferent to undergraduate education? Sure, but no more at the top publics than at the Ivies. Are some leading scholars bad or ineffective teachers? Sure, but there are just as many of them at the Ivies as at the top publics. Worst professor I ever had was in an upper-level undergrad course at a top-ranked Ivy, taught by an utterly inarticulate full professor who was the chair of a very distinguished department. On the other hand, at least in the humanities and social sciences fields I know, it's far more often the case that the leading scholars are also highly effective and engaging teachers, because it's precisely the same qualities of mind that make them outstanding scholars that also make them provocative, inventive, and challenging teachers.</p>

<p>I'm also astonished that people could possibly think the academic excellence of a school's graduate program in a particular field has bearing on the quality of undergraduate education. Who do you think teaches the undergraduate courses? It's the very same distinguished academics who make the graduate program so good. Now for my money, if I want a good education in a particular field, I want to be taught by the very best people in the field. Yet some posters here almost seem to assume that there's an inverse correlation between academic excellence and teaching ability. Why should that be? There's simply no basis for it in reason or in empirical fact.</p>

132

<p>Rice at number 25 is a travesty.</p>

<p>Name one other school that has such a great combination of friendly, noncpetitive atmosphere, sat ranges, selectivity, beauty, small classes, getting to know the professors, and a national champion baseball team.</p>

<p>I rest my case.</p>

133

<p>Not to mention the fact that it has a residential college system and an undergrad experience second to alsmot none.</p>

134

<p>A national champion baseball team?</p>

<p>Is that part of PA?</p>

135

<p>The Owls came thru again today!! They beat Texas A&M 9-7 and if they win one of the next two, it's on to Omaha!!</p>

<p>bclinton,
In case you never saw it, USNWR did a teaching excellence survey in 1995. Granted, that was a long time ago and perhaps things have changed, but the view then was that a lot of colleges that have excellent PA scores didn't exactly carry that reputation over to a general perception of their classroom offering. As I have said many times, the research function and the teaching function are not necessarily mutually exclusive, but academia clearly favors and rewards one while most students (and probably most employers), by and large, favor the over. </p>

<p>Here are those results for great classroom teaching (which I would love to see USNWR update): </p>

<pre><code>NATIONAL UNIVERSITIES
</code></pre>

<p>1 Dartmouth
2 Brown
3 W&M
4 Rice
5 Princeton
6 Stanford
7 Duke
8 Miami U (OH)
9 Notre Dame
10 Yale
11 U Virginia
12 U Chicago
13 Emory
13 UC Santa Cruz
15 Vanderbilt
16 Boston College
17 Harvard
18 Northwestern
19 Caltech
20 Wake Forest
20 U North Carolina
22 BYU
22 Wash U
24 Georgetown
24 Tufts</p>

<p>Prominent PA colleges that didn't make this ranking were MIT, Columbia, U Penn, Cornell, Johns Hopkins, UC Berkeley, Carnegie Mellon, UCLA, and U Michigan. </p>

<pre><code>LACs
</code></pre>

<p>1 Carleton
2 Swarthmore
3 Williams
4 Grinnell
5 Amherst
6 Earlham
7 Haverford
8 St. John's
9 Colorado College
10 Davidson
11 Oberlin
12 Pomona
12 Wellesley
14 Bowdoin
15 St. Olaf
16 Bryn Mawr
16 Macalester
18 Bates
18 Middlebury
18 Reed
21 Kenyon
21 Spelman
23 Smith
24 Sewanee
25 Centre</p>

136

<p>


</p>

<p>BClintonK, I have to admit that I could **not **agree more with your statement quoted above. </p>

<p>;)</p>

137

<p>"As I have said many times, the research function and the teaching function are not necessarily mutually exclusive, but academia clearly favors and rewards one while most students (and probably most employers), by and large, favor the over."</p>

<p>Hawkette, care to explain your statement above? I find your comment intriguing, if not misleading. Not that academe favors groundbreaking research and innovation or that students favor personal attention. In my opinion, the two are not mutually exclusive in the least. In fact, my most entertaining and inspiring professors have been those at the forefront of their field. I think many students, myself included, would rather be taught by a leader in the field than by a professor who's sole purpose is instruction. </p>

<p>What I find intriguing or misleading about your sentense is the content you carefully added in your parenthesis, linking employers to the equation. If anything, the corporate world would be aligned with the academe. But either way, employers have never been surveyed, so it would be speculative either way. </p>

<p>At any rate, I am not surprised that Cal, Columbia, Cornell, Michigan, Penn and UCLA somehow ended up in the same list. Those are all peers. In fact, the only peer school that made the top 25 was Northwestern.</p>

138

<p>Xiggi, you are without shame! LOL!</p>

139

<p>
[quote]
1 Dartmouth
2 Brown
3 W&M
4 Rice
5 Princeton
6 Stanford
7 Duke
8 Miami U (OH)
9 Notre Dame
10 Yale

[/quote]
</p>

<p>This is juicy</p>

140

<p>
[quote]
Xiggi, you are without shame! LOL!

[/quote]
</p>

<p>Moi? Looks right. Looks left. And smiles.</p>