<p>andy, although I agree that the QS ranking (and all international rankings for that matter) is totally unreliable…and although I certainly do not agree that Chicago is better than Duke for undergraduate studies, I also think the WSJ graduate placement ranking is totally unreliable. When it comes to graduate school placement, very few (like a handful) schools truly have a leg up on schools like Chicago and Duke is not one of them. HYPS do, but that’s about it.</p>
<p>Furthermore, I do not see how you can honestly say that Duke is better than Cornell. Duke is on par with Chicago and Cornell, but it is not better.</p>
<p>andy, and others, before you denigrate the QS study, maybe you should read the methodology. Why should I follow USNWR, or, for that matter, the WSJ ( ?journalistic integrity in a financial rag? )</p>
<p>I also suggest you try to read my postings a bit more closely, if you’re going to attack it. All I said about the QS rankings was that JHU is ranked high, and thus should garner some points in some people’s minds about being “elite”. That’s all. I never said it was the last word in college rankings. I never said its low ranking of Stanford was justified. All I said was that we should see how the rest of the world sees us…or maybe you just don’t care about that.</p>
<p>It’s your loss if you turned down UC for Duke. You can’t use the fact that you chose D over UC to say that one is better than the other. </p>
<p>And JHU isn’t in the same group as emory, or G-town. It’s above Cornell. But these are general rankings. I would look at each school for its individual academic strengths as well as national prestige. And the WSJ grad school placement rankings don’t mean a lot to me. To me, placement is this…do well, work hard. You should go to the grad school you’re the most fit for. Getting into Harvard Bschool, just because you’re from a "great"UG, but don’t have the grades spells failure, in general. But you all will interpret what I say in your own myopic lenses, and proclaim you’re all geniuses ( genii?), because , heck , this is some anonymous little internet board, and you’re all the greatest in world, the best CC has to offer… and we don’t need manners in cyberspace, do we??</p>
<p>The QS methodology is not all that different from USNWR’s. Both use Peer Assessments as a major ranking factor. QS adds citation density and s:f ratio, which in my opinion say more about educational quality than alumni giving rates. QS has no metric for selectivity; I’m ambivalent about that (it would be hard to measure this for an international pool, but I think it’s an important element of quality).</p>
<p>I don’t know if the QS PA scores are any more or less reliable than USNWR’s. One might think that it is more reliable to constrain the PA to schools in the peer’s own country (how can anyone be expected to knowledgeably assess schools all over the world - it’s challenging enough just to be informed about US schools alone). However, it appears the QS survey is constrained by discipline. I don’t know if that’s the case with USNWR, because I’ve never seen the form they use. QS at least deserves credit for the relatively clear and thorough information about methodology they post on their site.</p>
<p>Why does andy think Duke is soo much better than Cornell? He goes to Duke. </p>
<p>International rankings are HORRIBLE… If I were to rank the rankings, I would place international rankings as a peer with the Forbes rankings… they are heavily (understatement) biased towards large universities which do a lot of graduate research. Hence, schools like Purdue and even Texas A+M are sometimes ranked above the likes of Dartmouth, Brown, Emory and Rice. All rankings have their problems but most international rankings are extremely questionable.</p>
<p>But alam, if you ask Cornell students or alums, they would not claim that they are superior to Duke. Somehow, it seems like some universities breed elistism to an unealthy degree. Going by posters on CC, Duke is one such university. There are some Duke studens and alums who are extremely even handed, but many of them genuinely believe that their school is better than the likes of Cal, Chicago, Cornell and Rice.</p>
<p>^ Yes, Dukies tend to dismiss other universities as inferior a little too quickly. I, too, have noticed that. I think the difference is that some Duke students feel the need to put down other universities to lift theirs. However, they don’t need to do that because Duke’s education should speak for itself. I, on the other hand, like to point out the positives of Emory when there is a “Emory vs X” thread rather than point out the negatives of X. However, Alexandre you must not have seen the elitist CC Princetonian calling NU “mid level” couple of days ago. That sort of pretentious nature far exceeds Andy’s.</p>
<p>The answer lies, I think, in overcompensation for doubt. If one is certain of one’s quality, this sort of chest-beating is completely unnecessary, not to mention embarrassingly bad form. For example, I have met very few alums of Yale (in my mind, arguably the best undergraduate program in the country) who engage in this sort of thing.</p>
<p>Any ranking function will reflect limitations of the objectives and the input data.
The small liberal arts college is an American phenomenon, so naturally an international ranking won’t be optimized to assess the salient, desirable features of those schools.</p>
<p>Forbes has a different bias. It’s a money magazine. So, unsurprisingly, it takes costs into account.</p>
<p>The QS ranking method strikes me in some respects as more rigorous, and more appropriate to serious academic interests, than the USNWR rankings. I’d take issue with using international student and faculty ratios as a quality metric; I think it ought to consider selectivity, somehow; it’s hard to say how much noise is in their data. But it provides an interesting perspective.</p>
<p>Yea, all Duke students are the most pretentious people in the world. Seriously it sounds like you are sitting by a fire wearing a monacle and sipping on chardonnay.</p>
<p>andy, show some respect for your equals and you will receive some respect in return. Just because you were ignorant about Cornell in the past does not make you right. And nobody is generalizing. Duke students and alums on this forum often claim their school is better than its peers. With the exception of a handful, the majority have claimed that Duke is a definite top 10 university, superior to academic giants such as Cal, Chicago, Cornell and Rice. Do you know how ignorant and unjustifiably arrogant that sounds. In a country that has 8 Ivy League universities, private elites such as Caltech, Chicago, Emory, Georgetown, Johns Hopkins, MIT, Northwestern, Notre Dame, Rice, Stanford, Vanderbilt and WUSTL and public elites such as Cal, Michigan, UCLA, UNC and UVa, (to say nothing of the LAC elites) for anybody to claim that their school is definitely among the top 10 and suprior to schools like Cal, Chicago and Cornell is outrageous…anybody that does not attend a school in Cambridge, Princeton, New Haven or Palo Alto that is!</p>
Oh, come now. I don’t think any university offers Elitism 101. It’s simply an unfortunate fact of life that elite universities tend to attract elitists. I’d like to think that Duke has a relatively small contingent of such students, but of course I have no way to make such a comparison. I could point fingers if need be, but Duke is not the only school on here with posters with somewhat unhealthy amounts of school spirit.</p>
<p>Anyone visiting the Duke subforum would find the posters there quite helpful and evenhanded (as I strive to be). There are only a couple of bad apples on the main forum, and there is no need to take them as representative of the university. One must also make allowances for those who were recently admitted or have only been there for a year or two - they’re suffering from the zeal of the recently converted, as it were.</p>
<p>For the most part, Dukies are rather nice people. Y’all should come visit. ;)</p>
<p>Besides highly questionable methodology, the THES-QS World University Rankings lack credibility due mostly to its enormous volatility. For example, Stanford University which is currently ranked 19th was ranked 7th, 5th and 6th from 2004-06. </p>
<p>Others have disapproved of this unreliability:</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>Here are additional criticisms of the THES-QS: </p>
<p>As a fan of Duke, it pains me to agree with the negative comments about some Duke posters. I also agree with warbler that they aren’t truly representative of the school. Duke is a pretty darn good place, but sometimes this reality gets overshadowed by an excess of exuberance by some Duke posters for their school and versus others. Unnecessary because this school has so much good stuff to sell. </p>
<p>IMO, Duke is the closest thing there is to Stanford and I would take either over any of the Ivies for their ability to combine a terrific undergraduate academic experience with a superb undergraduate social life and a real and nationally relevant athletic life involving major sports and minor sports alike.</p>
<p>QS ranking is a joke. period. Berkeley was ranked 2nd initially, but 36th currently. If you check out the historical data, you will discover that QS is shamelessly and intentionally manipulating the methodologies to increase the rank of UK, Australian and HK universities. So, I won’t be surprised that other criteria, eg " # of UK students", will be introduced in the future.</p>
<p>it can be used only to fool uneducated.</p>
<p>IMO, it is absurd to rank and compare the world’s universities in terms of UNDERGRADUATE experience. Because nobody can provide standard criteria to measure the quality of undergraduate educations over different countries, cultures and traditions.</p>
<p>I would have to agree about the Duke posters pretentiously over-backing their schools. Any bit of a negative comment results in an attack. While this may not be necessarily representative of their school, it is not a good sign. For instance, when I had made some negative comments about U Chicago’s admissions process, I was met with only helpful replies, you should check 'em. Not a single negative remark from a Chicago alum/student/hopeful. I think that speaks a lot , knowing that my remarks were somewhat ornery. There’s a definite level of maturity there that is not present with some of these “Dukie” posters.</p>
<p>And the QS rankings are definitely flawed…not many people believe Stanford and McGill are Peers…plus how does a school go from 52 to 11 in a single year? (Duke 04-05)</p>
<p>I live in California, and people ranging from doctors to common jocks here respect Duke a lot.
The jocks here for example haven’t heard of Brown, Dartmouth, or Cornell or even UChicago. But they know Harvard, Stanford, and even Duke.</p>
<p>I just want to point out that Duke isn’t as bad as you guys think. Its got a reputation for a reason.
That said, we should all chill out. The schools we’re discussing are all excellent schools. They will impress employees.</p>