<p>The most heavily weighted factor (22.5% of the total) for national universities is “undergraduate academic reputation”, which is measured by a “Peer Assessment” survey. We don’t know for sure what criteria the individual Peers apply, but Berkeley does very well on this factor (with PA scores that rival the Ivies and other highly-ranked private universities). If PA scores favor anything, I suspect they tend to favor schools with high research output (like Berkeley), which would not particularly benefit private schools. </p>
<p>Another heavily weighted factor (20% of the total) is “faculty resources”. 35% of this factor comes from Faculty Compensation. Again, Berkeley compares very well with highly-ranked private universities on this criterion (with average full-time faculty salaries higher than Cornell, Duke, or WUSTL).</p>
<p>Berkeley does well on some of the other USNWR factors, too. Its freshmen retention rate is 97% (same as Vanderbilt’s). Its 4-year graduation rate (71%) is much lower than some private schools, but still fairly good (about equal to Carnegie Mellon’s).</p>
<p>So I don’t think it is true that the USNWR criteria favor private colleges, per se. They include a fairly balanced mix of criteria compared to some of the world university rankings (which tend to tilt more toward research output). However, when you add criteria like student selectivity, class size, and financial resources per student, some of the private schools pull way ahead. </p>
<p>Do those criteria reflect an unprincipled bias toward private schools? Maybe so, if you think those criteria are unimportant. Washington Monthly applies a completely different set of criteria (emphasizing social benefits) that favors public universities. However, if you applied criteria that emphasize undergraduate focus (student-faculty “engagement” metrics like the NSSE factors) you might see an even lower ranking of some big state schools (assuming “engagement” levels correlate at all with undergraduate class size, graduation rates, or financial resources).</p>
Correct. So, it’s now a matter of personal perspective on which country - for you - is the more desirable between the two of them. In the same way it’s a matter of personal perspective on which school is the more desirable one – Berkeley or smallish privates (Vanderbilt, Rice, Washington U, Notre Dame and such).</p>
<p>Again, which is the better school? It depends on your criteria.</p>
<p>“So I don’t think it is true that the USNWR criteria favor private colleges, per se.”</p>
<p>The problem is tk that one has to assume the objective numbers that private schools are sending to USNWR are accurate. Unfortunately, it has been proven in muliple cases that some top privates manipulate statistics to help their rankings. Public universities, being much more transparent, do not have this advantage.</p>
<p>Except when the public universities do NOT report their admission rates correctly to the USNews and confuse their ranking guesstimates with facts. For the two listed cases, feel free to use Berkeley as a prime example for reporting manipulated data for admit rates and selectivity of enrolled students.</p>
<p>ROFL! Any time anyone asks an honest question about comparing schools at this level, it is all that you can do to restrain yourself from leaping across the keyboard and proclaming that Berkeley is, like, indeed, just right below HYPSM, and “smallish privates” that just don’t make the cut in Asia (as if that’s meaningful in the least) can’t be any good unless they produce boatloads of i-bankers! Pick a side and stick with it! :-)</p>
<p>As far as I know there is no evidence that misreporting has significantly affected the rankings of UC Berkeley or higher-ranked private schools. Claremont McKenna is the highest-ranked school to admit misreporting, and it’s a LAC.</p>
Right, those public universities sure are transparent about all those transfer students who they let in every Fall and neglect to tell USNWR about. These former community college kiddos would drag the SAT/ACT averages of all the UC public schools down considerably.</p>
<p>In any case, why would SAT/ACT scores be all that relevant for junior level transfers who have college records to show? (and that applies to all schools, including private schools, that accept junior level transfers)</p>
<p>The transfer students are NOT relevant to the USNews rankings that are based on freshman admissions. On the other hand, obfuscating the Spring admits to lower the admit rate by around three percent to inch closer to 20 percent is entirely relevant to Cal’s gamesmanship.</p>
<p>Rjk is correct that about the transparency; the correct information is published by the UCOP. It just happens that Cal prefers to submit partial data to Morse and his clueless and duplicitous goons.</p>