<p>According to some university rankings, UC Berkeley ranks even higher than ivy schools. For example, it is ranked the second best university in the world by Academic Ranking of World Universities. On the other hand, it is ranked 22th by US News. Many people say that Stanford and Johns Hopkins are absolutely better than Berkeley. While more than ten students from my school was accepted by Berkeley, only two students were accepted by Johns Hopkins. Why do some college rankings overprize Berkeley?</p>
<p>Berkeley is a great top research university with a solid presence worldwide. Berkeley is a public school with many students, so simply by volume it will be a more popular school to apply to and more students will be accepted (its acceptance rate is in the low 20’s). The US News rankings are biased towards the benefits that smaller private universities provide. All rankings have their own criteria, and Berkeley is a top school and beyond that you shouldn’t really worry about it. Don’t let rankings factor into your decision!</p>
<p>I’m relieved to hear that! I had been losing confidence in my choice until seeing your post.</p>
<p>Most worldwide rankings base their ranks on research output</p>
<p>ARWU is heavily biased towards top research institutions, so a school like Berkeley which is a research powerhouse gets a high ranking.</p>
<p>Also Berkeley is a fantastic school. Just because it’s easier to get into than Johns Hopkins doesn’t mean the quality of education that it provides is inferior. I have quite a few friends that attend Berkeley, and the way they describe the academic challenges, the quality of the professors, the vast resources, leads me to consider it one of the best universities in the world. </p>
<p>Look at the criteria the rankings consider, decide if they have any relevance to what you want from a college, and then toss out the numerical hierarchy that the rankings claim to reveal. After all, how ridiculous does the claim that UCLA is exactly three universities below Berkeley, or that Middlebury is eight LACs above Harvey Mudd sound?</p>
<p>a University’s prestige and rankings are significantly driven by grad schools. And Cal has as many top ranked grad programs as does Harvard. Of Cal’s 37 disciplines, 36 are in the top 10 nationally. (Dunno who the one slacker is – haha.) </p>
<p>And yes, USNews’ criteria tends to favor private colleges.</p>
<p>The schools that have the highest research expenditures in science/engineering/health are as follows</p>
<p>JHU - 2 billion. Clearly the outlier, or even what statisticians call the “King effect”</p>
<p>UCLA, UCSD, UWi, U of M, UCSF - about 1 billion each</p>
<p>Stanford, MIT, UPenn, Ohio state, UMn, WUSTL, Duke, Cornell, Penn State, and Berkeley for the next tier at around 700m-1bil</p>
<p>Interesting to note that almost all of the top universities by research expenditures have medical schools simply because health research is expensive. Berkeley is an exception. </p>
<p>Berkeley’s research in other fields aside from medical is probably the second or third highest in the nation.</p>
<p>As an institution, Berkeley ranks among the best universities in the world.</p>
<p>However, Berkeley’s undergraduate schools are decidedly third-rate and derive much of their popular esteem from folks who fail to consider that the whole having a quality does not imply its part having the same quality.</p>
<p>^not necessarily</p>
<p>its really all up to the student
in the words of a berkeley student “its better to stand 100 feet from brilliance than 5 feet form mediocrity”</p>
<p>OP, as what most people here are saying, each league table has its own criteria. The US News’ criteria are different from those international league tables’ where Berkeley ranked in the top 5 or so. USNews heavily favours private schools/unis. They put more emphasis on areas where State Universities (such as Berkeley, UCLA, Michigan, UVA, amongst others) are at their weakest, e.g. faculty-to-student ratio, grad rate, endowment per capita, etc, etc… That said, there really is very little that separates between schools in the top 30/40 considering that there are about 4-5 thousand schools across America.</p>
<p>Yeah. After checking the criteria of the ARWU, I found that it mainly focuses on the past accomplishments of the school, such as Novel Prizes, and quality of professors to decide the rank while US News focuses on undergraduate education.</p>
<p>A highly academically motivated student can get a top-notch undergraduate education at Berkeley. The large size means a large selection of advanced undergraduate and graduate level courses to choose from, as well as plenty of research opportunities with eminent faculty, while the motivated student probably won’t mind the huge lower division classes (or may skip many of them because s/he is already advanced or chooses the small honors courses).</p>
<p>But a student who needs more hand-holding may find the large bureaucratic nature of the campus and the mediocre to poor advising (depending on division and (intended) major) to be detrimental. And the less academically motivated students may be content to slide by without taking advantage of the pluses of Berkeley (while perhaps suffering the minuses).</p>
<p>As far as ranking goes, Berkeley will stand out among the top in faculty research (most important for graduate students and the more academically motivated advanced undergraduates), but fall down somewhat in selectivity-based rankings (due to large size and how its undergraduate admissions is done).</p>
<p>I would not be surprised if these characteristics were similar to most large flagship-level public universities.</p>
<p>I personally found Berkeley’s undergraduate program to anything but "third-rate. Maybe I’ve always been more independent, but I tried very hard and was able to find great research opportunities and talk with some of the best minds in my discipline. </p>
<p>It’s impossible to separate undergraduate education from the graduate programs because most classes have discussions/labs which are taught by graduates.</p>
<p>Yeah, but pretty much any PhD can teach an intro class in Economics; you don’t need to have Thomas Sargent teaching the class to learn the basics about supply/demand, the Phillips Curve, AS/AD, etc. This is why Berkeley’s lofty faculty has no more relevance to 99% of undergraduates than say Amherst’s cadre of professors.</p>
<p>What is most important at the undergraduate level is the level of student/faculty interaction, the strength of one’s peers, and the advising/research opportunities that are available. Berkeley’s undergraduate academic ranking would be somewhere between 15-25 when one considers this.</p>
<p>^^^ Oh O! I guess your beloved USNews would vehemently argue with you on that one. They ranked Berkeley in the top 10 for 2 years on a row now for best undergrad teaching… :D</p>
<p><a href=“http://colleges.usnews.rankingsandreviews.com/best-colleges/rankings/national-universities/undergraduate-teaching[/url]”>http://colleges.usnews.rankingsandreviews.com/best-colleges/rankings/national-universities/undergraduate-teaching</a></p>
<p>Again, two years on a row now.</p>
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<p>ucbalumnus – I could have quoted what you said, substituting UNC’s name for Berkeley, and it would have been a very apt description.</p>
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<p>Hmmm, better check your numbers golden boy. Cal has more top testers than Harvard. Yes, Cal has plenty of low scorers too. But the point is that is easy to find a group of strong academic types at any top public with which to hang out/interact.</p>
<p>(Since gpa is all over the map, SAT/ACT scores are the only thing we have to measure “strength of one’s peers”.)</p>
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<p>Cal also has more students</p>
<p>Singapore students - on average - are smarter than American students. But the USA has many more smart students than Singapore has. So, which country has the better students overall?</p>
<p>overall? Singapore
quantity wise? US</p>