<p>I suppose those rankings could be relevant if you’re trying to get a date with the kid of the Times higher education editor. Otherwise . . . :rolleyes:</p>
<p>I don’t understand your sarcasm.</p>
<p>My student has early acceptances to both Ga. Tech and UGA, and is leaning to UGA. Rankings aren’t everything.</p>
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<p>No, but they influence the employers on campus and the graduate school options available, so they are a major factor in the success of a graduate. Granted, ranking/prestige is one of several factors, but they should not be ignored, especially considering the significant difference between GT and UGA in every program the two schools share.</p>
<p>That’s completely false. I’ve spoken with the President of Bayer and she says that she hires more Pitt students than she does Cornell students. If you look more at the school a student comes from than what they did at the school, then you are as shallow as they come.</p>
<p>US News has University of Georgia ranked #62
<a href=“http://colleges.usnews.rankingsandreviews.com/best-colleges/rankings/national[/url]”>http://colleges.usnews.rankingsandreviews.com/best-colleges/rankings/national</a></p>
<p>Many of the colleges ranked on the times higher education are not in USA.</p>
<p>haha, so what are you guys trying to say? That UGA is no pushover?</p>
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<p>The problem with USNews is that it’s not a ranking of academics. They admit that. It’s a ranking of “best colleges to attend”. The most highly scored component is retention rate. Why might a school have a high retention rate? It could be because the school is excellent so students rarely leave willingly (i.e. Harvard, Stanford, Yale, etc) or it could be because the school has plenty of low-difficulty majors that struggling students can use. Or it could be because the school has severe grade inflation. You just don’t know. Regardless, Party Schools are notoriously severely over ranked by USN compared to other ratings services.</p>
<p>The ranking systems that take into account academics are very different. THE are shown above. QS is also widely used:</p>
<p>WUSTL #78
GT #84
Pitt #116
Vandy #131
UGA #386</p>
<p>Ranking systems should always be taken with a grain of salt.
Here is a solid article on “How Stuff Works” that might shed a little light on the positives and negatives of rankings: </p>
<p>[HowStuffWorks</a> “How College Rankings Work”](<a href=“How College Rankings Work | HowStuffWorks”>How College Rankings Work | HowStuffWorks)</p>
<p>Honestly, when it comes to choosing a school, the best way to go about it is to simply form your own opinion. Check out the school’s website, visit the campus, call the Admissions Office and ask questions, get in contact with alums or current students, etc. We can tell you all day long about the different ranking systems that we believe best list the schools and everyone would have different answers and opinions. </p>
<p>It’s hard to ask someone’s opinion on a school because you will ALWAYS get mixed reviews no matter what institution you are asking about, as you can see from all of the previous posts to this thread. I’m sure there are people who went to Harvard that would argue that they hated their experience and it’s not worth it, etc. </p>
<p>Bottom line: the best sources of information are those who have attended UGA and can give you their first hand experience. Anybody can make up an opinion about a school on the Internet. I’'d try speaking to actual students and alums for an accurate idea of what UGA is like outside of the basic information that the admissions office can provide.</p>
<p>Students and alumni are fine, but they’re biased. The students at UGA will obviously tend to strongly support UGA because, 1. that is the school they have experienced, 2. they made a conscious choice to attend UGA over Alabama or Tennessee, so they clearly liked the school at some point, and 3. they have a vested interest in others’ opinion of the school. </p>
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<p>That link does a good job explaining why USNews is a very weak system and biases towards private schools and party schools. However, the ranking systems based on prestige, hiring rates, and salaries (e.g. THE, QS) are still valid systems.</p>
<p>But let’s assume you don’t trust the rankings. If that’s the case, the best place to start is the career services department. Look at the actual job prospects and graduate schools students attend, compare the percentage of students with jobs / graduate school at placement, and look at the starting salaries. That sort of data can’t be manipulated and isn’t biased.</p>
<p>All students are biased toward their particular school, but that doesn’t mean that they will tell those who are interested exactly what they want to hear. Go to any college or university and ask a student about the pros and cons of their particular school and they will probably give you their honest experience coming from both sides of the fence (the positives and negatives). </p>
<p>Once again, the downside to ALL ranking systems is that they tend to generalize and assume. Students look for different criteria in where they want to attend school. The ranking systems you mention highlight only a few of many different areas a school can be ranked for in the order of what company sees as being important. Prestige is relative for the most part outside of the Ivy Leagues, of course. Hiring rates…not really sure how those can be accurately cross-compared. For example, how do you compare a private school with 2,000 students in a large city with no graduate degree programs to a large school, like UGA, with multiple graduate level programs located in a college town. Of course hiring rates will be higher for the smaller school (no grad programs means greater likelihood to go straight into the job market). I would be very surprised if these ranking systems you speak of are able to take everything into consideration. Salaries, like the other two, are relative. I would have to see exactly where the ranking system was getting it’s information and how it is comparing the schools on a level playing field. </p>
<p>Finally, you’re assuming that all students want the same thing when applying to college: a job upon graduation with a good salary. Some students want great study abroad programs, others want research opportunities, and some are even interested in graduating with minimum debt (some meaning most!). While the career center is an important aspect of any college experience, it will ultimately come down to the student to make the best use of resources that a school has to offer in order to make themselves more marketable. In saying that, UGA has plenty of resources available to make that happen (shameless plug). The data might not be biased, but it’s also data that might not even be applicable to what a student is looking for, which then renders rankings systems effective to only a certain degree.</p>
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<p>Like any subjective judgement, you can quantitatively measure it by surveying a large sample. </p>
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<p>You calculate hiring rate as a percentage after you’ve removed the graduate school bound students from the sample. </p>
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<p>Then I guess you surprise easily. Because this isn’t rocket science.</p>
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<p>No, it’s not. $55,000 is more than $40,000. The ranking systems even adjust for cost of living to keep things on a level basis. </p>
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<p>You’ve got me there. If your goal is to have 4 years of fun then be unemployed, these ranking systems aren’t for you.</p>
<p>Look buddy, give it up! Like the person said earlier, go away!!! I try not to brag about my kids but I’ll put my son up against you any day; he chose UGA because he wanted a well rounded experience unlike what you will get at GA Tech. You must have been slighted by UGA in some way; that is the only reason that I can come up with that you continue to post rebuttals on the UGA forum. I hope that I don’t see a response from you to this post!</p>
<p>Why the vitriol? We’re discussing the validity of ranking systems.</p>
<p>No one is comparing UGA to GT, WUSTL, or Vanderbilt. WUSTL and Vanderbilt might be comparable, but GT is a STEM school (unlike the rest) and UGA is a third tier academic school (unlike the rest), making the comparison invalid.</p>
<p>You can always tell the difference between those who post in these forums to actually help students and parents and those who post in order to attempt to get in a internet-based “my school is better than yours” contest with other members over their respective schools. I didn’t post in this forum to debate the validity of ranking systems. I post to help get kids get accurate information so that they make an informed decision about where they spend the next 4 years of their lives. I don’t bad mouth schools, simply because every institution has something different to offer depending on what a student is looking for. Judging from your overwhelming superiority complex and unwavering support of GA Tech, I assume that you are a GT student or graduate which is sad because in trying to discredit UGA by applying various subjective rankings and labels, you are actually making the GA Tech student population look bad (personality wise). In saying this, maybe this was your plan all along and you don’t like GA Tech either? Regardless, here are some interesting things taken from THE that make me stand by my “take with a grain of salt” statement:
- The Top 400 list (with an overall criteria selected) has Arizona State University (127) ranked above University of Virginia (135) and Georgetown (138). Although they say size is not a factor in rankings, I’m not sure how you can ignore the fact that ASU is creeping toward 100,000 students (it’s almost an open enrollment institution). They still put out some awesome students but when you have over 70,000 total students, it only makes sense. Not really sure how that works out, but it looks like ASU has a higher score under citations (which they say have been normed to account for size).
- “No project that seeks to reduce the amazing variety of university activity into a single ranked list can ever be perfect, but Times Higher Education can make bullish claims for the sophistication and utility of its annual World University Rankings.” -Phil Baty; Rankings Editor
- Georgia Health Sciences University is ranked (197). I’m not going to lie, I didn’t even know that they had undergraduate programs available. Probably because they have 7 undergraduate degree programs (all in specified medical fields). Once again, straight from the horse’s mouth:
“Universities are excluded from the Times Higher Education World University Rankings if they do not teach undergraduates; if they teach only a single narrow subject; or if their research output amounted to fewer than 1,000 articles between 2005 and 2009 (200 a year).” Article: [Change</a> for the better](<a href=“http://www.timeshighereducation.co.uk/world-university-rankings/2011-2012/analysis-rankings-methodology.html]Change”>World University Rankings 2010-11 methodology | Times Higher Education (THE))</p>
<p>The main thing I note is the “if they teach only a single narrow subject”. Clearly they made an exception in this case, because GHSU is pretty much a medical school from what I gather on their website and degree offerings</p>
<p>4) My final point from a Washington Post article that backs my second point: “It’s purely subjective opinion,” said Phil Baty, editor of the rankings. “But it’s a really good, quality sample.” Article: [Six</a> colleges dominate in research stature - College, Inc. - The Washington Post](<a href=“http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/college-inc/post/six-colleges-dominate-in-research-stature/2012/03/27/gIQA1gUFeS_blog.html]Six”>http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/college-inc/post/six-colleges-dominate-in-research-stature/2012/03/27/gIQA1gUFeS_blog.html)</p>
<p>Like I said, take ranking systems with a grain of salt. </p>
<p>CFB53B, feel free to send me a message if you want to have a longer dialogue about rankings. I feel as though your time would be better spent promoting your school in it’s own forum, rather than attempting to downplay others. More than likely you will post after this in order to get “the last word” which is completely fine. </p>
<p>Sorry to everyone for the digression from the original question that was asked.</p>
<p>I would “like” your response if I could. I’m afraid to see what’s coming…</p>
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<p>You can argue ad infinitum all you want, but this thread was tagged “Georgia Tech” which gave me a hit on my browser and brought me in. I get that you don’t like to recognize some of the facts, but that doesn’t change the situation.</p>
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<p>It’s not student size that caused this, it’s faculty size. When you have a massive school like ASU, you’re going to need a massive faculty population, and that population is going to publish like crazy. This leads to a large number of well known faculty at ASU with high h-indexes. Faculty prestige is a ranking used my many systems.</p>
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How you define a narrow focus is subjective. With undergraduate degrees in radiology, nursing, therapy, administration, dental hygiene, and lab science, I would argue that it has a pretty broad offering. If it offered only nursing, for example, I would argue it has a narrow scope.</p>
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<p>Ranking systems aren’t subjective. The inclusion of criteria might be, but the actual rankings are not. And regardless of your opinion, people use these ranking systems to determine where to hire. These rankings (notably THE) is extremely important if you ever leave the US for employment. Unless the school is well known, employers will pull the school’s ranking.</p>
<p>A few quick questions to make sure I understand your overall view on the THE rankings: Do you believe that U of Arizona, ASU, U Maryland, U Utah, Purdue and IU are stronger colleges than places such as UVA,Wake Forest, W&L, and Clemson, as the THE rankings indicate? Can you respond to the quotes given by the THE editor so I can understand your point better? Do you feel that the THE rankings are impacted by a college being a STEM college or having a Medical College associated, and how does that impact your view of this ranking system? Do you see colleges not in this list (Davidson for example) that are strong colleges but do not have a focus on certain fields, and can you explain why they would be considered lower in the view of THE but not in the overall view of people? Can you please list, if you have it, the comparative information on matching majors at UGA vs GT, so we can better understand the GPA, salaries, etc. on an equal footing look (leaving off Nuc. Engineering and Journalism, for instance). I think this would help in understanding your point of view more clearly.</p>
<p>I didn’t read all of these posts, so this may be redundant, but I saw that you didn’t want to pay $35K a year for Rutgers?
I was in a similar situation with another school that I adored. But what you <em>really</em> don’t want is to graduate from undergrad with a lot of debt, because you are going to have more to worry about when you go for Grad and PhD. I suggest knocking out your undergraduate in the most cost-effective manner (without sacrificing a good education) so that you can have more wiggle room with tuition on the graduate university you attend. UGA is a great school with the CURO research program that you can do even as a freshman. It also has a lot of connections, especially in Georgia.</p>