Why the vitriolic pushback against the Chicago/Columbia USNWR rankings?

Colleges and Universities A-Z University of Chicago ✅
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<p>swingtime: I read your analysis on Columbia’s board, and I would just like to thank you for such a thoughtful post. It is one of the most well-written posts I have read on College Confidential.</p>

<p>Posters, presumably mostly high-schoolers, waging vitriol against UChicago’s 4th-place finish on USNWR, don’t understand this school that well. They, as you put it, “seem to be under the delusion that reputation and quality are static fixtures that are impervious to change,” and they seem to believe that “what once was, must always be.” (I couldn’t say that better myself!) I think it’s these sentiments that drive much of the vitriol.</p>

<p>As a student who is studying here, I am dumbfounded at the acrimonious remarks on College Confidential and the anger on The Daily Pennsylvanian. My experiences here have been absolutely life-changing, and I am so grateful for everything this school has to offer and what it has done for me. It has unparalleled research offerings for undergraduates. I took up a research position three years ago, and just got published, as a first author, on the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences USA (I don’t honestly care whether people know who I am in real life), and I will soon be featured on the Tribune. This will greatly bolster my credentials for graduate or professional schools. </p>

<p>I also enjoy every moment of my experiences with the Core Curriculum. It is the reason why I picked this school over some Ivies, and I am happy to say that the curriculum surely didn’t disappoint. I have met amazing professors who care deeply about my learning. My social science professor didn’t mind spending an hour every week discussing dense, seemingly esoteric readings with me. Some of them even became my life-long friends. This place is ranked no. 1 on my ranking because it is the best school for me, and I can’t imagine myself being anywhere else.</p>

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<p>Institutions’ self-identified peers, or why the rants of certain posters are irrelevant and no longer worthy of comment. The statistics being offered as “evidence” are meaningless. What matters is which schools the universities themselves self-identify as their peers. Discussions of superiority? OVER.</p>

<p>Institutions that have formally and officially identified Chicago as a peer school include, among others: Yale (!), CalTech (!), Penn, Hopkins, Brown, Cornell, Dartmouth, NU…</p>

<p>Institutions that Chicago has formally and officially identified as peer schools include, among others: all the Ivies except Dartmouth (!), Stanford, NU, and several others, but NOT Duke.</p>

<p>Institutions that have formally and officially designated Columbia University as a peer school include, among others: Stanford (well, well goldenboy), Harvard, Yale, Princeton, the other Ivies, Chicago, Hopkins…</p>

<p>Institutions that Columbia has identified as peer schools? Well, haven’t found that yet!</p>

<p>To Poplicola: I can never, ever overestimate the profound impact that the University of Chicago has had on my life. I am forever grateful for the extraordinary, life-changing undergraduate education I received there. It was the BEST school for me.</p>

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<p>What is wrong with you people? No one is arguing that Chicago isn’t an excellent university-it most surely is. The problem most other CCers have with this school is that except for Cue7, every other Chicago student/alum brags about how intellectual the school is and how much more pre-professional the rest of its peer schools are.</p>

<p>I can’t speak for Penn but there are plenty of students at my alma mater Duke and my cousin’s alma mater Princeton who go on to great careers in academia. Out of the 15 or so Physics majors at Duke over the last couple of years that I know, 6 of them are getting PhDs (Harvard, Yale, CalTech, Princeton, Georgia Tech, and Illinois) respectively.
All of the top 15 American universities (the 8 Ivies, Stanford, MIT, Chicago, Northwestern, and Duke) are a lot more similar than they are different.</p>

<p>Chicago is no more of a great place if you want to pursue a career in academia than Northwestern or Brown is.</p>

<p>If Deloitte is recruiting on campus again, then that is a positive development for the U of C for sure. That McKinsey excuse is probably the most stupid thing I’ve heard–so all of those Harvard grads that work there aren’t intellectual?</p>

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<p>OK, boys and girs… listen… the top schools provide great opportunities to who seek those. Sure, the top 10 or so are little more competitive to get into… but for an undergraduate who is yet to master basic stuff these top schools all provide near similar opportunities. I understand that there is an element of pride and I guess that is healthy for one to feel towards his or her school.But if someone tells me Uchicago or Columbia is not upto Stanford, I will tell them to grow up and not bother to respond.</p>

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<p>It’s interesting to see how comfortable phuriku would tell lies or make up numbers.</p>

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<p>“Stanford is better than Columbia in every field of study and I mean every single one. There is no comparison to be made here. Chicago and Columbia alums need to realize that their peer schools are Cornell, Penn, Duke, and Northwestern. S&M are on another level.”</p>

<p>@GB: I haven’t read all the comments in this (I believe) nearly pointless thread, but the dismissiveness is coming from you as well (if not particularly, as seen on the first page). I think it’s quite a stretch to say Northwestern and Duke (And company) aren’t peer institutions of Chicago. They are peers. But so are Harvard and Stanford, etc. As for your physics peers at Duke, I am suggesting as a math/physics person at the UofC, that you should go ahead and ask them what institutions they applied to and considered the “elite crapshoot” schools: anyone who is going through or has gone through the graduate school process in mathematics, physics and most certainly economics would declare UofC,Harvard,Stanford,Cal,Princeton in the top grouping—these schools are insanely difficult to get into at the graduate level.</p>

<p>And at the undergraduate level … I don’t understand what is wrong with every “other Chicago student/alum brags about how intellectual the school is and how much more pre-professional the rest of its peer schools are.” I mean for god sakes, Stanford alums brag about entrepreneurs changing the world all the time and for all I know that is true. Brown alums brag all the time about the creativity that their lack of a set curriculum creates. Harvard alums brag about their network. There are entrepreneurs at the UofC. There is a lot of creativity and course freedom at the UofC. There is a professional network at the UofC. But we think it’s the quirkiness and the intellectualism that distinguishes us. You haven’t been at the UofC. We have. We’ve read Foucault in Harper and discussed Nietzsche at 4 in the morning in Snitchcock and wrote proofs at 6 in the morning in the Reg, while discussing urban Chicago education and Boyer’s mustache and grabbing $1 milkshakes in -5 degree February weather. Maybe you’re right—all other schools produce great graduate numbers too. But is it worth going on the UofC thread and openly dismissing UofC as having “no comparison” to Stanford and MIT? You don’t need whatever rankings, whatever numbers, whatever publications to simply go around and ask us current UofCers or the current professors or the alums. Or the alums, professors and students at Stanford or MIT or Duke or Northwestern. Congratulate Boyer for doing things like raising the alum giving rate and branding our school by sending out t-shirts. This is what Harvard has been doing for years. I’m proud we joined the party. We don’t need to accuse one another of lying and making claims that “there is no comparison.”</p>

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<p>As for McKinsey, I talked to the CCIB/UCIB advisors and they told me that McKinsey stopped recruiting owing to low yield numbers for a couple of years. They gave people offers but people went to Goldman, JPM (and other BBs). They also told me they’re actively encouraging people to apply for consulting positions (Bain and BCG still heavily recruit) so that McKinsey will return. Again, McKinsey still goes to Booth.</p>

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<p>

And Duke has?..</p>

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<p>

LOL! Are you serious? To be fair, none of Duke’s academic programs besides BME are really promoted on this site but the list of strong subjects at Duke is lengthy. Here is a list of areas of study at Duke where the latest NRC Rankings gave Duke either a R-Rank High or an S-Rank High of at least “5” as an outerbound interval.</p>

<p>[NRC</a> Rankings Overview: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology - Faculty - The Chronicle of Higher Education](<a href=“http://chronicle.com/article/NRC-Rankings-Overview-Ecology/124723/]NRC”>http://chronicle.com/article/NRC-Rankings-Overview-Ecology/124723/)</p>

<p>Anthropology
Biomedical Engineering
Classics
Comparative Literature
Ecology
French
German
Microbiology
Molecular Biology
Pharmacology
Philosophy
Religion
Sociology</p>

<p>Political Science and Statistics at Duke are top 10 programs as well though perhaps not “top 5”.</p>

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<p>^ Thanks for that. And for comparison sakes, Chicago only has Economics as an academic program in Top 5 of NRC S-Rank or R-Rank and Stanford has everything else?</p>

<p>I’m just “establishing relevant criteria which we can use to evaluate the quality of American universities”. :-)</p>

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<p>That was a stupid statement on my part I admit but Stanford is literally ranked higher in every other field LOL. I guess you could say Chicago or Stanford are peers in most academic fields but if someone pointed a gun to your head and asked you to pick one, Stanford would win by a trivial to a nontrivial margin every time.</p>

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<p>Not according to USNWR.</p>

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<p>I find this all quite amusing. So much angst over so little difference.</p>

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<p>^^</p>

<p>Indeed. Shall we say, “The Blue Devil is in the details”?</p>

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<p>Eh, its all relative.</p>

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<p>Studies have shown that it is much more the individual than the institution attended that determines later success in life/career trajectory, etc. I.e. if you are accepted to both Harvard and Penn State (or, god forbid, U Chicago ;)) and attend Penn State, you will attain the same future station in life as if you’d attended Harvard. Therefore, go for the flavor and fit of the undergraduate institution- you’ll have a more intellectually rigorous and intense experience, on average, at a Chicago or Swarthmore than pretty much anywhere else, and that may be what you want. Rankings are alot of fun, and college quality can probably be sorted in to some general tiers, but nit-picking between top 10 universities and LACs is just that.</p>