<p>For sure, my point is simply that it is impossible to divorce the effects of the graduate school from the college itself, as well as those factors that are considered not necessarily translating directly to a qualitatively positive experience.</p>
<p>There are many rankings around. Our ranking on US News is actually better than that on other league tables, such as THES.</p>
<p>I wish they'd do a college ranking. There're already rankings for individual grad schools so why not just a pure college ranking? Graduate school excellence doesn't necessarily translate into a great college education.</p>
<p>guys:</p>
<p>ranking-schmanking.</p>
<p>Eat well and be merry.</p>
<p>
[quote]
Well put. Actually I always liked the fact that RI was founded by athiests, Catholics, Quakers-- misfits who fled puritan MA.
[/quote]
</p>
<p>According to none other than Brown itself it was founded by Baptists...</p>
<p>Well, RI was founded most promiently by the Baptists. Still though, there was as well a sizable number of migrants from MA who fled like Quakers.</p>
<p>wow, usnews is so ambiguous and incorrect. it is such a pity that they have so much weightage on people's decisions.</p>
<p>first, lets just think about the schools ranked higher than brown.
would you rather go to duke, uchicago, washu, northwestern or cornell over brown? are you serious? brown is ivy, has an incredibly low acceptance rate, meaning its drawing in the best students, has a much higher yield than any of the aforementioned schools(which means its more desirable).</p>
<p>a recent study of thousands of high school graduates showed that Brown is more desirable than every single ivy other than harvard, yale and princeton.</p>
<p>plus, look at the criteria with which us news 'evaluates' these schools. Who the hell cares about, Peer assessment scores, Average freshman retention rate, actual graduation rates, Faculty resources ranks, % faculty who are full time,Alumni giving ranks.</p>
<p>what the hell do those mean to an undergraduate student anyways??
They mean nothing. But sadly, those criteria mentioned above, are easily manipulable by admissions officers reporting information to USNEWS. Hence, schools like Washu and Northwestern, Uchicago(with a ridiculous accpetance rate), can rank higher than brown. Im glad brown doesnt care about these phony rankings. </p>
<p>Plus, would you really want to go to Washu, cornell, northwestern, uchicago or duke over brown? how bout NO!!!</p>
<p>^ Wow. If your major is economics for example where do you wanna be?
Brown?????? I don't think so. UChicago all the way....
See. it all depends on your goals</p>
<p>Actually I'd prefer Brown over Chicago if I wanted to work in business. Chicago econ only matters if you want to go to econ grad school or work at an econ think tank, and I'd argue Brown would serve you just as well.</p>
<p>If one wants to be taught by Nobel laureates in econs, then surely Chicago is the choice, bar (almost) none. </p>
<p>Selectivity, brand power, alumni prominence ... it all matters, these 'face' issues. Especially so in Asia where the mere mention of Harvard elicits instantaneous jaw dropping.</p>
<p>this post ends any worries on this thread</p>
<p>wow, usnews is so ambiguous and incorrect. it is such a pity that they have so much weightage on people's decisions.</p>
<p>first, lets just think about the schools ranked higher than brown.
would you rather go to duke, uchicago, washu, northwestern or cornell over brown? are you serious? brown is ivy, has an incredibly low acceptance rate, meaning its drawing in the best students, has a much higher yield than any of the aforementioned schools(which means its more desirable).</p>
<p>a recent study of thousands of high school graduates showed that Brown is more desirable than every single ivy other than harvard, yale and princeton.</p>
<p>plus, look at the criteria with which us news 'evaluates' these schools. Who the hell cares about, Peer assessment scores, Average freshman retention rate, actual graduation rates, Faculty resources ranks, % faculty who are full time,Alumni giving ranks.</p>
<p>what the hell do those mean to an undergraduate student anyways??
They mean nothing. But sadly, those criteria mentioned above, are easily manipulable by admissions officers reporting information to USNEWS. Hence, schools like Washu and Northwestern, Uchicago(with a ridiculous accpetance rate), can rank higher than brown. Im glad brown doesnt care about these phony rankings.</p>
<p>Umm...does it matter?
No one considers Duke, WashU, Cornell or some of the other higher schools better than Brown.</p>
<p>I'd say we're on par with Duke. Cornell's selectivity (or lack of) might put it at a disadvantage in bragging rights.</p>
<p>I think its fair that certain schools can be placed in the very top tier. By 'schools', I mean the whole get-up, from college to graduate school. HYP, MIT, CalTech and perhaps Stanford are in the very top tier. Let's call it 1A.</p>
<p>The rest of the Ivies, Duke, Northwestern and perhaps half a dozen other schools can be lumped in 1B.</p>
<p>But how are they ranked? A plausible list of criterion should include quality of faculty (always a hard one - are oft-citated profs necessarily good teachers? should student evaluation and satisfaction be taken into account?), quality of curriculum (again, pretty subjective. How does our freestyle curriculum compare with programmes such as The Core?), alumni accomplishments (Problem: Are they great or did we make them great? Many Brown alums proceed to prestigious grad schools and are known better as their alumni rather than our's) .... My mother, for one, claims few Brown grads appear in the news - a measure of success for her. I replied that many HBS corporate leaders were from Brown. Their MBAs are the brightest things on their CVs though.</p>
<p>At the end of the day, I guess its safe to say that though hardly anyone breaks a school's worth down to lists of statistics and ratios, most people have a rough idea what league a school is in. From my experience, most tend to think in terms of the tiers described above.</p>
<p>When US News atempted to rank the schools undergrad's programs separately, which schools came on top? Brown and Dartmouth....!!! They had to stop doing it because of "pressure" from the other "big" universities...</p>
<p>Tiers by groups are more sensible than individual ones. After all, let's not forget that personal taste and bias play a very important role here too.</p>
<p>Aye, aye. What is the difference between no.11 and no.14 or even no.1 and no.2? Its not like a sports league table, where points are accumulated by performance. The business school rankings have a much more relevant ranking methodology.</p>
<p>IIRC, Dartmouth, Princeton, Brown and Chicago (and others, I'm sure) have a particularly good reputation for college instruction.</p>
<p>Any Given Sunday.</p>
<p>Brown is alongside Penn, Columbia, Duke, Amherst, and Williams in my opinion. Better than Chicago, Northwestern, Rice, Cornell, and JHU. Worse than Harvard, Yale, Princeton, MIT.</p>
<p>i agree with slipper.</p>
<p>The world agrees too. Its one of those things everyone knows without explaining.</p>
<p>Only minute things seperate the schools in the top 15. 1 vs 2? Forget about it, they might as well be ranked the same. </p>
<p>Furthermore, things like endowment and alumni donations rates (which in my opinion do not make or break a school) are big factors in these rankings. So they are skewed.</p>