<p>I mean I would expect MIT to place higher on the list. Basically every other world rankings seem to place MIT at top 5 in the world at the very least. </p>
<p>Is it the methodology that is weird? Like placing more importance on many many non-important aspects like graduation rates or such rather than actual quality of the academics. Or is it because they prefer colleges that are more well rounded?</p>
<p>Why do obsessive high school students care about the US News rankings so much?</p>
<p>no offense but you’re a moron if you think #7 is a low ranking. Maybe you should look at the schools above it: Harvard, Princeton, Yale, Columbia, Penn, Stanford.</p>
<p>this might give you a clue for the USNWR ranking:</p>
<p>MIT</p>
<p>98 - Undergraduate Reputation Index - combination of Peer and Counselor Assessment (highest, along with Harvard, Princeton and Stanford. Yale’s was a 97)</p>
<p>10th - Graduation and Retention Rank
16th - Faculty Resources Rank (mostly due to larger classes)
3rd – Student Selectivity Rank
6th – Financial Resouces Rank
10th - Alumni Giving Rank</p>
<p>Classes with fewer than 20 students
80% - Harvard
79% - Yale
73% - Princeton
68% - Stanford
65% - MIT
64% - Caltech</p>
<p>6-year Graduation Rates
98% - Harvard
98% - Yale
96% - Princeton
95% - Stanford
91% - MIT
89% - Caltech</p>
<p>^ and of course, what US News would fail to consider is that schools like MIT and Caltech have a STEM focus, and STEM majors have inherently lower rates for graduation and their rates are, in fact, very high with that consideration.</p>
<p>Also, as for class size, I don’t think MIT concerns itself with small classes (freshman GIR classes can get huge) because the culture promotes forming study groups to complete p-sets and the school offers smaller recitation sections for many of its classes. Personally, I’m not worried about large classes next year and am looking forward to the anonymity of it :D</p>
<p>You need to understand that the US News rankings are deceptive in many ways. Most importantly, an “honest” set of rankings would change very slowly, maybe only once every five years or so (it is simply not possible for a university to change drastically in a single year), but it wouldn’t sell very many magazines if US News were to put out the same rankings every year.</p>
<p>There is no one set of rankings that holds true for every student. So much depends on your own individual situation. For example if your career goal is to become a classical pianist then MIT is probably not the right school for you. (To be sure, MIT’s music department is extremely good and very underrated, but it’s no comparison to Juilliard.) Conversely, if you’re interested in science or engineering, then Juilliard makes no sense. Thus even if the US News rankings were able to achieve the theoretical optimum accuracy (which they do not), the headline number would still mean much less than what your own academic interests indicate for your situation.</p>
<p>I think most knowledgeable people without a financial interest in the matter would say that MIT is at or near the very top for most fields of study within science and engineering.</p>
<p>@Jalmoreno: I did my undergrad at MIT and my Ph.D at Harvard, and I can certainly shed some light on the issue of class size. At Harvard, the core courses in STEM are mainly taught by graduate students. Specifically, a calculus class (say) might have one faculty member and nine graduate TAs, teaching a total of ten sections. One of the sections is taught by the faculty member and the other nine sections are taught by the grad TAs. The faculty member does the prepwork (lesson plans, exams etc.) for all ten sections, but only teaches one of them. So most Harvard students will never get to see the faculty member in their class, since for nine out of ten sections the grad TA is the “main” instructor and in fact the only instructor for that section. By contrast, at MIT you’ll have one huge class taught by the faculty member, together with smaller recitations led by graduate students. It’s not clear which system is better, and in fact I actually prefer the Harvard system because I think the small class sizes are worth the drawback of never seeing a faculty member (the grad TAs at Harvard are quite good – of course I was one of them, so I may be biased). The reason I mention this is because I want to point out that “small class sizes” is not the end of the story; Harvard and others have to make certain trade-offs in order to achieve those small class sizes, including the pretty big trade-off that most students never get to see a faculty member, and in my opinion US News really performs a disservice to the student by using numerical rankings such as class sizes without providing the full context behind how those numbers are achieved.</p>
<p>^^^^very interesting, thanks</p>
<p>I don’t think class size is that important, unless you absolutely need the attention of a professor to focus. I find that rather childish. I’d rather be 100 ft away listening to a brilliant professor rather than 10 ft away from a mediocre professor. And I don’t learn most of my knowledge from lecture anyways. As a science/math student, most of your knowledge will be built working through those psets, and going to office hrs/discussing the material in study groups. It’s not a spectator sport.</p>
<p>If the intelligence of the students, academic rigor, and the quality of faculty and departments determined the rankings, MIT would be in the #1-#2 range every year. However, as LadyGaga showed, these aren’t the only factors. </p>
<p>Interestingly, Caltech was #1 in 2000 or 2001. I believe MIT was #3 that year. The next year Caltech dropped down to #4-#6. So, one year they weighed the academic factors more heavily, it gave them a result that perhaps they found objectionable, and so they changed the methodology. </p>
<p>Perhaps Caltech and MIT need to turn out more people who write for magazines?</p>