<p>Question in title.
Seriously. It's a really good school, just as prestigious or difficult to get into as the other ones CC has put into that category. I guess it's on the small side for a university, but really? Eh, I don't get it.</p>
<p>Bad and/or misguided judgement, maybe?</p>
<p>I always just thought that CC top University is never updated. Seriously. They have U of Michigan and UNC on there when Tufts is ahead of both on USNWR (though this isn’t the end all ranking, it seems to influence the CC top Universities). They also don’t have wake forest. I honestly believe it’s just a matter of them not updating or anything.</p>
<p>Though I agree that Tufts is a very good school and would be glad to attend it, it usually never makes the cut as a “top” school outside of the USNWR rankings. UMichigan and UNC (especially UMich), however, are regarded as top schools worldwide. USNWR is sometimes reliable, but it really should give more credit to public schools such as UCB, UCLA, UMich, and UNC. UCB should easily be in the top 10 of World Universities.</p>
<p>If it’s based on rankings, then I guess CC takes other websites, not just USNWR, into account.</p>
<p>But of course, it’s not like these rankings have to be accurate. I still believe that Tufts is a very good school (I am applying to it, after all) and that it’s constantly improving.</p>
<p>I live in Massachusetts so I’ve always seen Tufts as a top and great school. But how is it perceived outside of Massachusetts? Is it seen as equal to or below schools like Michigan, UNC, USC, Wake Forest?</p>
<p>I don’t even think they take the aggregate of rankings. If that were the case, Tufts would probably be included since it’s ranked 53rd in the world by Times Rankings of World Universities (ahead of both Brown and Dartmouth. Also note since it’s “world” rankings, it includes schools outside the US) and Forbes ranked it 34th, ahead of Duke, U of Virginia, U of Washington in St. Louis, U penn, etc (mind you, this also included liberal arts schools). Should someone blindly accept these rankings? Of course not. But I believe that if prominent rankings were used as a methodology for CC top Universities, then Tufts would be listed. Thus, i am pretty sure they don’t use them.</p>
<p>I honestly think it’s due to them not updating it. Those are just “set in stone.” Makes no sense otherwise because they would probably at least have USC or something.</p>
<p>As for the perception of the school–depends who you talk with and where you are from. There are some who have never heard of Tufts (then again, these people also don’t know what makes up the ivy league and/or don’t know what Columbia is). Then there are others who are like “Wow, you go to Tufts? You must be smart!” I also think those schools are all very different from one another. At the end, it’s all about fit because you are going to get a good education wherever. That being said, a lot of good prominent schools are in the northeast. Thus, these institutions regard Tufts pretty highly since they are all in the same region, more or less.</p>
<p>I think the fact that “Tufts Syndrome” has the name it does means that Tufts is deserving of a place on the CC Top Universities because clearly Ivy-qualified kids are applying (and thus going).</p>
<p>So why don’t the update it? With all the moderating they do, it doesn’t seem to me that changing where a link appears would be that much work.</p>
<p>Tufts Syndrome doesn’t exist. But stellar kids do go to Tufts. You will definitely find people who have turned down ivies for Tufts or some that get rejected from Tufts. </p>
<p>It’s interesting because while Tufts is one of the top most selective schools in the nation, they actually are more selective than people realize. About 15000 kids apply to Tufts compared to a school like Brown’s 30000 applicants. If you put things on an equal playing field, (i.e. imagine 30000 kids applied to tufts) their acceptance rate is more selective than a lot of the ivies. Makes sense though–Tufts stats are on par with ivies.</p>
<p>As for the reason they don’t change, I am not sure. They think it might cause an uproar? It’s better to keep the status quo? While they do have moderators, I think if they added Tufts, they would have to kick someone else out, which, in effect, would cause an uproar for supporters of that particular university.</p>
<p>I think appearance on the list may have more to do with forum activity relative to school size as it does with actual school quality.</p>
<p>For example, at the time of this post the Tufts forum has:
22,855 Posts | 2,596 Topics</p>
<p>whereas the lowest two schools on the list (based on number of posts) are higher:</p>
<p>California Institute of Technology ( 25,380 Posts | 2,149 Topics )
Vanderbilt University ( 24,776 Posts | 2,883 Topics )</p>
<p>The most active forums on the list are MUCH higher:</p>
<p>Stanford University ( 110,363 Posts | 8,960 Topics )
University of Michigan - Ann Arbor ( 116,090 Posts | 12,249 Topics )
University of California - Los Angeles ( 145,207 Posts | 13,521 Topics )
University of California - Berkeley ( 166,438 Posts | 18,320 Topics )</p>
<p>Other universities, such as</p>
<p>The University of Texas at Austin ( 46,866 Posts | 5,440 Topics )</p>
<p>may have more forum than some of the “CC Top Universities” but when size of the school is taken into account, UT has 1.228 posts per undergraduate student, whereas UMich (a smaller large university) has 4.430 posts per undergrad.</p>
<p>Beyond a numbers game, it’s likely that CC just hasn’t updated the section. As someone with experience in forum administration (though not of this magnitude), I DO know that depending on the systems you’re running it can be a headache to move boards to new categories without disrupting URL reliability and server uptime.</p>
<p>Just my two cents :)</p>
<p>^I think though that if Tufts was in the “top university” list, there might be more posts. Is it the chicken or the egg?</p>
<p>mathmom brings up a very valid point. </p>
<p>That being said, I don’t think it really matters that Tufts is not in the top university list because there needs to be a cutoff somewhere and getting down to slight variations in the USNews Rankings is useless quibbing imo.</p>