<p>I agree with ^^ question.</p>
<p>I think Brown should get more recognition in US News. Its faculty may not be as strong across the board as the other ivies (except Dartmouth) but there are several excellent departments (e.g. applied math and CS) that compare favorably with schools like WUSTL and Duke. </p>
<p>I’m sure WashU gets a boost for its prominent professional schools, including of course the world-class med school.</p>
<p>" Just how much of the benefits of a strong research base will actually trickle down to undergrads? (this is not a challenge, this is a serious question)"</p>
<p>Depends on the school and the undergrad, I suppose. But if you work in a lab, you’ll be working right alongside PIs, graduate students and post-docs, for whom these benefits were directly intended.</p>
<p>“Do undergrads really need Nobel Prize winning professors in order to master a field and master it well? With the advent of the internet, knowledge travels quite fast…”</p>
<p>They don’t NEED it. Will your experience under a Nobelist PI be different from a middle of the road PI? You bet it will. If you thrive in a high-profile lab will it help you down the road much more? Yes, definitely.</p>
<p>“Do undergrads really need state-of-the-art-research facilities?” </p>
<p>Your first question and the previous question underscore a fundamental misunderstanding about the research process. You don’t NEED fancy equipment to do research, or to learn how to do research. The real question you should be asking is “Does it help?” And the answer is yes, it does. And the “depth” of a research project doesn’t scale with how state-of-the-art the required facilities are, it scales with innovation and creativity.</p>
<p>“Could they actually be doing research that is so in-depth as to require such facilities?”</p>
<p>Yes, undergrads can and do participate in research that heavily benefits from state-of-the-art facilities. Just because you’re an undergrad doesn’t mean you won’t be part of a research team that’s on the cutting edge, esp if you’re proactive and know how to work.</p>
<p>Brown students don’t care about rankings, period. They are the Happiest Students for a reason. Let’s keep the energy and focus where it should be - learning, experimenting with the curriculum, looking at the future and not being afraid to reach for the stars because very likely we will get to them!</p>
<p>I am applying ED to Brown and I don’t care about the ranking.</p>
<p>US News Ranking calculation is not really clearly expressed on their website. It doesnt matter-though at ALL, im guessing. Brown is an excellent school regardless, and obviously we know harvard is good-we dont need to look at rankings to definitively say one school is better than another.</p>
<p>does it really matter if brown is highly ranked or not? brown is a superb school, period. that’s all that matters, not what usnews says.</p>
<p>I chose the number 15 school over the number 4 school. Guess what? Won’t make one iota of a difference in my life. Brown does everything well that matters. In my opinion the rankings are as follows regardless of what USNEWS deciphers:</p>
<ol>
<li>HYPS</li>
<li>MIT, Caltech </li>
<li>Brown, Dartmouth, Columbia, Penn, Duke</li>
<li>Chicago, Northwestern, Cornell</li>
</ol>
<p>I also chose Brown over the #4 school, admitone. And I completely agree. I also think those ranking are a little silly, because Brown is better in my program than any college ranked above it by far. The other college that is great for my program was ranked at #34 I think. Those ranking do not keep in mind that not everyone has the same major, and not everyone will benefit from the same experience. Just my opinion, of course! :)</p>
<p>I’ve heard from elsewhere, but it would actually make a lot more sense to rank specific things, rather than having some “formula” for figuring out which school, based on certain hard data, is best. You may as well take an opinion poll (oh wait, that’s what the PA score is). Unfortunately, “rankings” and “prestige” sells magazines (isn’t that basically all that Forbes Magazine is?). But yeah, the Princeton Review, while having somewhat laughable methodology in a lot of its categories (like Happiness. Really, you have a way of accurately measuring that? And a poll is going to do that/ they definitely don’t poll the whole student body), it makes sense to give rankings in categories, rather than across the board. Look, these schools have the highest test scores. These schools reject the most seemingly well-qualified applicants. These schools have the most research dollars awarded to them, etc.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>Great inspirational words, but would have been better if you could have worked a rainbow in too…</p>
<p>Duke is ranked higher then Chicago…</p>
<p>It’s really mostly useless on a year to year basis.</p>
<p>I mean, did Columbia get an international space station or something without telling anyone? Because otherwise I can’t imagine how it suddenly went from being the eight best college in the country to being the fourth best in just one year.</p>
<p>It’s more important on a five or ten year tracking basis, I suppose.</p>
<p>Otherwise, it just generally lets you know which schools are good or not.</p>
<p>Or at least which schools were good two years ago.</p>
<p>Basically, my decision on where to go to as a senior in High School determined that the ranking that then-Sophomores will use when applying, because they use 2009 stats.</p>
<p>I didn’t know any Sophomores. Seems kind of pointless to me.</p>
<p>Brown’s ranking seems about right to me. For undergraduates it is easily among the top 5-6 (along with Dartmouth/Princeton/Yale/MIT) places to be. But as a national university I can see why Duke, with good med/business etc. graduate schools is ranked higher.</p>
<p>Only Brown, Princeton and Dartmouth have managed to stay among the top schools by virtue of (mostly) their undergraduate programmes.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>Thank you for this bold insight, person who has yet to start freshman year.</p>
<p>Feel free to disagree with guitarclassical’s assertion, but there’s no need to be snappy.</p>
<p>I’m just saying that they don’t have like 10 graduate schools each. I don’t need to be there to know that.</p>
<p><em>edited after thefunnything’s comment</em> You’re spot on thefunnything</p>
<p>I like the way that we’ve decided time and time again on this thread and OTHERS OF ITS KIND that the whole college rankings thing is pointless, especially once we get beyond the Tier I, Tier II, Tier III distinctions, and yet we continue to debate incessantly.</p>
<p>Come on, CC. Brown has its strengths. It has its weaknesses. It’s good for undergrad, and most of us here are current Brown undergrads, prospective Brown undergrads, or Brown undergrad alumni. Its graduate programs are not as stellar, and we all know that the strength and availability of graduate programs contribute to the US News rankings.</p>
<p>Just a thought. No need for ad hominem attacks on a thread already deemed futile.</p>
<p>One counterpoint is that rankings do matter. </p>
<p>When you apply to undergrad or med school, your counselor or dean has to rank you against other students in your year. When you apply to PhD programs, your prof/research advisor has to rank you against other students in class or undergrads in the lab.</p>
<p>Why shouldn’t universities be held to the same exacting standards? And I agree that the methodology is not ideal in USNWR, but for whatever reason, it has gained traction as the most credible rankings for US universities over the past two decades.</p>
<p>If there are rankings out there that prospective applicants and their parents consider, it is incumbent on the university president to place her institution as high on the list as possible. Being ranked 15-17 for the better part of the past decade is problematic for a university that ranked as highly as 9th in the late 1990s.</p>