<p>OK, So I'm not a big fan of rankings either but I need to know more regarding this fact.</p>
<p>In engineering and sciences, I agree that these two could not be more equal but when comparing the overall universities, what gives GTech an edge over UIUC ? What makes it get ranked some 10~15 places higher than UIUC ?
After all, UIUC is a much bigger university with a much broader range of departments and programs + it has a much better outside-the-classroom scene.</p>
<p>In a nutshell, engineering aside, what sets Tech apart (and makes it better) from UIUC ?</p>
<p>1) USNWR rankings are easily manipulable and based on smoke and mirrors.</p>
<p>2) In ranking systems that insist on putting all institutions into a strict numeric order, the difference between #1 and #20 could be the difference between 1.000000 and 1.000002: in other words, not statistically significant.</p>
<p>For the longer answer, you would have to get your hands on the specific formulae for the various ranking systems themselves, and claw your way through all of their smoke, mirrors, and numbers.</p>
<p>Having said all that, there is the possibility that the evaluators have spent one too many brutally cold winters or brutally hot summers in central Illinois. For climate alone, GTech wins, hands down.</p>
<p>You can look at the US News rankings (in the magazine or if you pay for the online data) and see what the differences are - small increments of first-to-second year retention and graduation rates, average SAT/ACT scores of admitted students, percent admitted, percent in the top 10% of their HS class, class size, etc. I wouldn’t say that they’re smoke-and-mirrors - each criterion has some intrinsic value - but happymom is correct that the difference between ranks might be very small. A student certainly couldn’t detect a difference between a 92% retention rate and a 90% retention rate, but that difference might place one school a couple slots ahead of another.</p>
<p>In Tech’s case, they have an unusual advantage for a major public university in that they have only 14,000 undergrads. I don’t have the data in front of me, but I think it’d be easier to have higher SATs, smaller classes, higher proportions of top 10%ers, etc. when your entering class is limited in size.</p>