WORLD rankings for universities

College Search & Selection
81

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And Sakky, just because people would rather go to one school rather than the other doesn't mean that one school is "better" than the other.

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<p>Well, actually, it does. After all, why would people be drawn to one school over another, if it isn't 'better'?</p>

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Harvard, Princeton, Yale, and Stanford are all more prestigious (and private), and I think kids are drawn to the most selective and prestigious schools just so they can say they got in. Thats not so say that everyone does this, and I'm definitely not saying that Berkeley is "better" than those schools I just mentioned, but I will say that no matter how many rankings put Berkeley above those schools, because Berkeley is a big public, people are going to choose the private school 8 out of 10 times. Its just human nature to want to go to the place that is percieved to be more selective and prestigious.

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<p>Uh, no, I think that actually has to do with the policitized nature of undergrad public school admissions in the US. For example, in many countries, particularly, France, Germany, and Japan, the most selective and prestigious schools are the public schools, far and away. Is it precisely the private schools that carry the stigma of being unselective and unprestigious - basically as being the dumping ground for those who weren't good enough to get into the top public schools. </p>

<p>Even in the realm of graduate schools, Berkeley often times hold the top position. Berkeley PhD programs, for example, are extremely prestigious and selective, to the point that often times it is the private school PhD programs that are seen as serving those people who seren't good enough to get into the Berkeley PhD program. Heck, speaking of the state of California specifically, UCSF is often times seen as the premier medical school in the state, with Stanford Medical seen as a school that takes those who weren't good enough to get into UCSF. </p>

<p>The point is, it is not that the people simply "want" to go to a private school. People just want to go to a good school, whether it is public or private. For example, the best students in Japan aspire to go to the public University of Tokyo, and it is those who can't get in who end up in private Japanese universities. It is the best students in France who end up in one of the public schools like one of the Ecole's or the University of Paris/Sorbonne, and those who can't get in who end up in private universities. </p>

<p>However, in the US, significant political pressure exists to create 'wider access' for public undergrad programs, which inevitably means lower admissions standards, which inevitably impacts the prestige of the school as a whole. Let's face it. If the University of Tokyo were forced by political pressure to lower its admission standards, then the standing of the school, in the eyes of the Japanese public, would drop. </p>

<p>Let me put it to you this way. Ever notice how it is precisely those Berkeley programs that suffer from the least political pressure also happen to be the ones that are regarded the highest? For example, you never hear about any protests around Sproul for Berkeley to 'widen' its access to, say, the English PhD or the Chemistry PhD program. Those programs never feel pressure to admit somebody with qualifications lower than the other applicants just because he/she is a resident of California. Interesting, it is precisely those programs that are the among the most highly respected at Berkeley. </p>

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For example, do you honestly think that Dartmouth or Brown would be nearly as popular if they weren't in the Ivy League? If they were just two old schools on the east coast, what would be thier draw? What programs do they have that are in the top 5 in the country? And don't get me wrong, I think both of those schools are AMAZING. Seriously, they are two great schools, but my point is that they get to piggy back on Harvard, Yale and Princeton. For example, when someone goes to Harvard they say, "I go to Harvard," but when people go to Dartmouth or Cornell or Brown, alot of times I hear "I go to an Ivy League school." Why is that?

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<p>That's no different from the Berkeley undergrads riding off the prestige of the undisputably strong Berkeley PhD programs. So it's the same thing.</p>

82

<p>Untilted:</p>

<p>Just wondering... Which school do you go to? :rolleyes:</p>

83

<p>I am not so sure I agree with your assessment Sakky. Cal, Caltech, Chicago and Michigan are all universally acknowledged to be top 25 universities nationally. Most members of academe and the corporate world would say that all 4 of them are top 10 universities. However, none of those have a yield rate that breaches the 50% mark. Michigan has the highest yield rate of those 4 schools at 45%. Caltech and Chicago have yield rates of 35% and Cal has a yield rate of 40%. Does that mean that they are weaker than or equal to say NYU or George Washington University, which have yield rates of 40%?</p>

84

<p>This list seems very suspicious... how is UCB better than the Ivies?</p>

85

<p>"Well, actually, it does. After all, why would people be drawn to one school over another, if it isn't 'better'?"</p>

<p>That's an interesting outlook you have there, saky. Does that hold true across the board or is it only colleges. Is the highest rated tv show also the best tv show? Is the #1 movie at the boxoffice going to win the oscar every year? I see it slightly differently. I think the public is often wrong. </p>

<p>"That's no different from the Berkeley undergrads riding off the prestige of the undisputably strong Berkeley PhD programs. So it's the same thing"</p>

<p>I agree...to an extent. Grad schools at Berkeley cast a very large shadow. More than Harvards?</p>

86

<p>flopsy, read GentlemenandScholars's response................................</p>

<p>also, i will not comment on this ranking anymore, i'm pretty much speechless.</p>

87

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That's an interesting outlook you have there, saky. Does that hold true across the board or is it only colleges. Is the highest rated tv show also the best tv show? Is the #1 movie at the boxoffice going to win the oscar every year? I see it slightly differently. I think the public is often wrong.

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<p>Yet the inherently contradicts your past statements. I seem to recall reading one of your posts in the past where you said that Berkeley has more public name recognition than other schools do. Yet now you are saying that the public is often wrong and how something that is well-known to the public may not be the best thing. So where does that leave Berkeley? </p>

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I agree...to an extent. Grad schools at Berkeley cast a very large shadow. More than Harvards?

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<p>I would say so. After all, consider this thought exercise. Starting today, both Berkeley and Harvard cleave off their undergrad programs away from their graduate programs and packaged them into LAC's. Both of these new "colleges" would suffer from a dropoff in fame, but I would argue that Berkeley would suffer from more of a dropoff. Harvard College, all by itself, would be a top-ranked LAC, arguably the best LAC. From a resources-per-capita and selectivity standpoint, it would blow the doors off of Williams or Amherst. But "Berkeley College" would most likely not be able to vie for the title of being the best LAC. It would be a good LAC, but probably not the best in the country. Heck, it might not even be the best LAC in the state - that distinction might go to Pomona.</p>

88

<p>
[quote]
I am not so sure I agree with your assessment Sakky. Cal, Caltech, Chicago and Michigan are all universally acknowledged to be top 25 universities nationally. Most members of academe and the corporate world would say that all 4 of them are top 10 universities. However, none of those have a yield rate that breaches the 50% mark. Michigan has the highest yield rate of those 4 schools at 45%. Caltech and Chicago have yield rates of 35% and Cal has a yield rate of 40%. Does that mean that they are weaker than or equal to say NYU or George Washington University, which have yield rates of 40%?

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<p>Obviously yield rates cannot be viewed separate from other factors. It is not a simple monotonic function where higher yield rates always means better school. Self-selection plays an important role as well. Any school can try to artifically boost its yield rate by simply convincing those people who probably aren't going to come to simply not apply in the first place, or it they do apply anyway, to reject them. This is Tufts syndrome.</p>

<p>Nevertheless, let's not kid ourselves. Yield rates don't tell us everything. But they also don't tell us nothing. They tell us something. In general, higher yield rates means more desireability. Not every time, but in general. </p>

<p>The truth is, at the undergraduate level, Berkeley has a serious Stanford problem, and to a lesser extent, a HYPM problem, in that a lot of people who apply to Berkeley would rather go to Stanford or one of those other schools and so are basically treating Berkeley as a 'safety'. Caltech has a serious MIT problem. Yet these problems tend to disappear as the programs increase in desirability and repute. For example, the Berkeley Haas MBA program and the Berkeley Boalt Law School also have a Stanford problem, but not as much as the undergrad program does. And many Berkeley PhD programs have no problems with Stanford or anybody else. This is a simple testament to the fact that those Berkeley PhD programs are Berkeley's crown jewels. If Berkeley could make its undergrad program as good as its PhD programs are now, then the yield would rise and it wouldn't have a problem with Stanford or anybody else.</p>

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<p>"Yet the inherently contradicts your past statements. I seem to recall reading one of your posts in the past where you said that Berkeley has more public name recognition than other schools do. Yet now you are saying that the public is often wrong and how something that is well-known to the public may not be the best thing. So where does that leave Berkeley?"</p>

<p>Where does that leave Berkeley? Exactly where it is. Berkeley does have a ton of name recognition, but thats doesn't mean its better than the schools that have less recognition. Besides Harvard, I'd say Notre Dame has the best name recognition among Americans, but its certainly not the second best school in the country.</p>

<p>As for the Berkeley/Harvard LAC example, I fully agree. Harvard is probably the best school in the world with the best and the brightest students at every level and in every program, so yeah, they'd have a pretty great LAC...for a while. They'd live off the name for a while (as would Berkeley), but both schools would have to make a bunch of changes to make these new LACs viable. Listen, I'm not really trying to say Berkeley is a "good" or whatever as Harvard. I've only been a student at Cal, thus I can't fully compare the two. I do have a good friend at Harvard though, and she often complains about the same things Berkeley students complain about (teachers who don't care about UG students. etc). But the thing that you fail to realize is that having an outstanding grad school does help its ungergrad counterpart. Great grad programs bring star faculty to the school, many of which teach a class or two for undergrads. Great grad programs bring money, recognition, and unbelievably talented grad students who then become unbelievably talented GSIs (at least most of the time). The fame that all of these things bring give Berkeley (or Harvard) the name recognition and fame that interest smart highschoolers, which makes it competitive to get in, which just makes people want to go even more. Think about it, the most famous LACs in the country are not even a tenth as famous as the best research schools. Why do you think that is?</p>

90

<p>now i understand why all you people in the college admissions process tend to get stresses out and bald. :D</p>

91

<p>
[quote]
But the thing that you fail to realize is that having an outstanding grad school does help its ungergrad counterpart. Great grad programs bring star faculty to the school, many of which teach a class or two for undergrads. Great grad programs bring money, recognition, and unbelievably talented grad students who then become unbelievably talented GSIs (at least most of the time). The fame that all of these things bring give Berkeley (or Harvard) the name recognition and fame that interest smart highschoolers, which makes it competitive to get in, which just makes people want to go even more. Think about it, the most famous LACs in the country are not even a tenth as famous as the best research schools. Why do you think that is?

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<p>I fail to realize it? I don't think so. I agree that having strong graduate programs can help the undergraduate program. </p>

<p>However, one of my central points here on CC has always been that I don't think that strong graduate programs help the UG program as much as a lot of people THINK it does. From what I can tell, it is only a minor to moderate benefit. Harvey Mudd, for example, has little name recognition and only has a very tiny graduate program (basically, a few master's degree students), yet is extremely successful at both getting its students into graduate school and finding them high paying jobs. Heck, the average Harvey Mudd graduate is actually making a HIGHER average starting salary than are the Berkeley engineers, and the Harvey Mudd grads include a number of students with lower-paying natural science and math degrees. </p>

<p>"ManyHMC alumni head directly to graduate and professional programs — 43 percent from the class of 2004.Another 43 percent accepted offers to work in industry with an average starting salary of $59,000"</p>

<p><a href="http://72.14.207.104/univ/hmc?q=cache:fdcY5wJcEuUJ:www.hmc.edu/admin/ps/specs_with_photos.pdf+starting+salary&hl=en&gl=us&ct=clnk&cd=4&ie=UTF-8%5B/url%5D"&gt;http://72.14.207.104/univ/hmc?q=cache:fdcY5wJcEuUJ:www.hmc.edu/admin/ps/specs_with_photos.pdf+starting+salary&hl=en&gl=us&ct=clnk&cd=4&ie=UTF-8&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p>

<p><a href="http://career.berkeley.edu/CarDest/2004Majors.stm%5B/url%5D"&gt;http://career.berkeley.edu/CarDest/2004Majors.stm&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p>

<p>Don't get me wrong - that doesn't mean that I think HMC is necessarily better than Berkeley. It just means that public prestige is not the decisive factor that it is sometimes made out to be. Mudd isn't famous, yet Mudd students evidently do quite well. </p>

<p>What I often times find deleterious about large graduate programs is that they tend to suck away a massive amount of resources and faculty attention, leaving the undergrads with the drabs. Famous research professors are often times quite poor teachers, and that is because they often times don't want to be good teachers, because they'd rather be in their labs. </p>

<p>Now of course I obviously agree that having strong graduate research and bad undergraduate teaching is better than having bad research and bad undergraduate teaching. Some schools out there are bad at everything. So it is clearly true that Berkeley is better than those schools. However, that still doesn't mean that Berkeley (or any other research-oriented school) ought to just rest on its laurels and hide behind its research as an excuse to not improve its undergraduate teaching.</p>

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<p>I didn't mean to say that having great grad programs make everything fine and dandy for the undergrad counterparts. There are pluses as well as minuses when it comes to strong grad programs. And I agree, and have always agreed, with alot of your points on making research schools better for undergrads. It just seems that some people unfairly carp on Berkeley for its research, yet fail to realize that one, all research universities concentrate on grad programs, and two, that there are many good things that come along with high quality research and grad programs.</p>