<p>In many rankings(prominently...Newsweek)...
Georgetown is extremely underestimated...
I was reading a ranking about poli-science major...
and G-town grad school was ranked at 42nd place...
under such schools as:U of Iowa, U of Colorado, and Penn State...
and in US NEWS WEEK undergrd. ranking...
G-town is ranked at 21st(is it?...somewhere around that...)...
I have absolutely no idea why this is happening...</p>
<p>Georgetown's undergrad ranking isn't really unmerited, but I do think it should be a top 20 school. As endowment is a relatively important factor in the USNews formula and Georgetown's endowment is low for a prestigious university, it's ranking is understandable.</p>
<p>i have no idea...but gtown should be higher than it is...</p>
<p>Maybe its ranking dropped because big bill went there and the us news guys are republican...really i dunno.</p>
<p>Wikipedia is not the best source, but here are the endowments for Gtown and the five schools above and below it:</p>
<p>Vanderbilt - 2.9 billion
Emory - 4.4 billion
Notre Dame - 3.7 billion
Carnegie Mellon - 940 million
Berkeley - 2.2 billion
Georgetown - 950 million
University of Virginia - 3.6 billion
Michigan - 5.65 billion
UCLA - 1.7 billion
UNC - 2.3 billion
USC - 3.1 billion</p>
<p>Other than Carnegie Mellon, which some may also consider somewhat low ranked, schools in this range have a lot of money. GTown is lagging by quite a bit.</p>
<p>Speaking about endowments, just imagine where William and Mary would be if they had a 1 billion dollar endowment.... They would be ranked very close to or maybe above UVA in that case. I think theirs is only about 450 million.</p>
<p>Yes, W&M should have been great (as in near the top, IMO), but evidently things went bad back in the day.</p>
<p>I think W&M's fate was spelled once they were recharted in 1888 as a public university. Given that UVA was the flagship school at the time, and always will be. VT is considered to be VA's second best school, and fitting W&M in the middle isn't right, nor can it be placed as UVA's equivalent either... </p>
<p>Another turning point was in the late 60's-early 70's when UVA really tried to go hardcore towards research... this helps rankings quite a bit. UVA is behind Berkeley because they jumped on the research bandwagon later than they did. W&M however decided not to pursue research as vigorously, though it did add a few PhD programs in physics, education, and the like. Thus when you don't try to do research, you get less dough, and a lower endowment. Though W&M is a great college, as a whole, I don't know if W&M wants to be a full blown research institution like UVA (recently, it looks like they are attempting to do that, or if it wants to be a liberal arts college with limited graduate programs, such as the University of Richmond. Until then, rankings can't truly say where a unique school like W&M fits in.</p>