<p>Most if not all rankings of us colleges put yale as top 5 in the world. However, how come when they rank based on specific subjects such as chemistry, math, econs, yale usually do not get into the top 5? I know the specific subject rankings are rankings of the graduate schools, but surely graduate schools have an impact on undergraduate studies in that particular subject right? I'm actually confused why UC Berkeley is consistently ranked top 5 for specific subjects in sciences, econs but in the undergraduate ranking it's not even in the top 20... Can anyone clarify this?</p>
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<li><p>The only systematic grad school rankings out there are somewhat out of date. But Yale DID make it into the top 5 or top 10 in many, many fields. And no university makes it into the top 5 of every field, not Harvard, and not Yale, either. Yale and Harvard get ranked where they are in part because they are so strong in so many fields.</p></li>
<li><p>Of the ones you looked at, chemistry and math are ones where Yale is historically relatively weak (“relatively” meaning top 20, not top 5). In Econ, there is a pack at or near the top, including Yale. Knowledgeable people would laugh at the notion that Yale was weak in econ, even if it’s current true rank was >5. The difference between #1 and #6 is pretty negligible.</p></li>
<li><p>In terms of academic quality, Berkeley is absolutely ranked in the top 10, maybe even the top 5. It isn’t there in the USNWR ranking system because USNWR takes into account a ton of non-academic factors, many of which strongly favor private universities over public ones. In general, the low ranking of Berkeley and Michigan in USNWR is Exhibit A for the argument that USNWR rankings are useless.</p></li>
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<p>JHS-</p>
<p>Have you noticed, though, that Yale’s “peer review” score “slipped” to 4.8 several years ago in the USNews survey while its main competitors - H, P, S and M have stayed at 4.9. It is miniscule, I admit, and I just thought it was a bit of a rounding fluke at first, but it has been persistent.</p>
<p>This would suggest that more peer school administrators view Yale as trailing its competitors and the perception is sticking.</p>
<p>In Economics, it is clear, however. Yale is viewed as a very good program but clearly in a tier below Princeton, MIT, Chicago, Harvard, Stanford and Berkeley. Its peers are Columbia, Penn, Nothwestern and maybe Michigan and Cornell.</p>
<p>Yale used to be in the top tier, but its junior faculty have not really been able to match the professional influence wielded by James Tobin and his acolytes after his death. Yale very rarely wins cross-admit battles against H, P, M or C for the most drooled-over grad students.</p>