<p>Wisconsin and UCLA aren’t elite schools Alexandre. Why would Brown grads study at Chicago and Michigan when can attend Harvard, Yale, Princeton, and Stanford for their graduate studies? </p>
<p>Not a single Princeton or Yale grad is enrolled in Chicago or Michigan’s PhD program LOL. That shows you how desirable and “elite” these doctoral programs really are. Maybe this is why the job placement for doctoral candidates in pretty much every Michigan PhD program lags its actual reputation. I know this is true in Political Science but wouldn’t be surprised if this was true across the board.</p>
<p>Princeton manages to keep the riff raff from Appalachian State, Middle Tennessee State, Northern Montana Central, or whatever regional colleges Michigan loves to accept students from out of its gothic grounds.</p>
<p>GB, that is pushing the envelope a bit far. In addition, the definition of elite could be subjective. For many, the schools listed in the first page of the USNews are absolutely elite. After all, how many schools are listed in the top 50? And how many schools are there in the United States. </p>
<p>We love to mess with one another here, and our playground is the rarefied air of the uber-selective schools. However, there is a world out there that would be shocked by some of our comments. </p>
<p>Wisconsin and UCLA might not be listed at the very top of the rankings --and surely not as high as their fans would love-- but they are extremely strong academic outfits, and this for both undergraduate and graduate schools. </p>
<p>The problem here is that the slotting of the elite schools for UG studies hardly pleases the bottom one-half of the USNews “elites.” Hence the need to bring up more convenient rankings from the four corners of our planet.</p>
<p>I agree there is (or should be) a link. However, for research to benefit undergraduates, they need access to faculty time and other resources. This ranking rewards some factors that may detract from that in some cases. It rewards high “staff-to-student ratio”, but not low average class size. It rewards a high ratio of doctorates to bachelors degrees. It rewards a high ratio of international to domestic students and a high ratio of international to domestic faculty. So its methodology can assign high scores to schools where undergraduates sit in big lectures taught by TAs with poor English language skills, while many faculty are preoccupied with cranking out grant proposals and journal articles. This is not necessarily the case at every high-ranking school, but I suspect it’s true of some of them.</p>
<p>I think it is good to have different perspectives on university quality. However, in my opinion, USNWR uses measurements that are more appropriate to the needs of most undergrads. Maybe it could be improved by replacing its Peer Assessment scores with some of the THE research quality measurements.</p>
<p>The problem with this particular ranking is its very concept: ranking universities across all their core missions. How could this possibly matter to anybody? It would certainly be stupid for anybody to consider such a thing in determining whether to go there for any specific program. USNews is bad enough when it comes to comparing apples to oranges, but this is really nonsensical. On what planet does it make sense to say that CalTech is a “better university” than Columbia? It’s like saying that a zebra is a better animal than a rhino.</p>
<p>Not surprisingly goldenboy8784 takes issue w/ this year’s THE rankings since Duke doesn’t fare as well well (funny how he didn’t raise such a ruckus for the previous years of the THE rankings).</p>
<p>So - the THE takes into account diff. factors than USNWR - so what?</p>
<p>USNWR uses such dubious factors such as alumni giving rate and ratings by HS counselors.</p>
<p>Furthermore, the USNWR formula takes into account undergraduate academic reputation as the largest factor, and even tho it says “undergraduate” there clearly is a bias in favor of research universities considering the relative low scores for schools like Dartmouth and Brown - which helps schools like Duke - and yet, we haven’t seen goldenboy remark about the unfairness of that.</p>
<p>And the HS counselor ratings are a joke and biased towards the NE schools (or those that get a lot of students from the NE) since majority of the top performing HS’s are in the NE.</p>
<p>And what does clinical, pre-clinical and health rankings have to do w/ undergraduate education (used in the THE rankings)?</p>
<p>This only helps the schools that do a lot of medical research (these schools’ overall research rankings are also boosted due to medical research).</p>
<p>goldenboy only has problems w/ dubious factors when Duke isn’t shown in a good light (btw, another thing in which Duke doesn’t rank in the top 10).</p>
<p>He sure has no problem using dubious sources/factors himself to push his agenda in making Duke look good and other schools look bad - such as the time he cited some fly-by-nite company that helped students get into “top” colleges.</p>
<p>“Wisconsin and UCLA aren’t elite schools Alexandre. Why would Brown grads study at Chicago and Michigan when can attend Harvard, Yale, Princeton, and Stanford for their graduate studies?”</p>
<p>For one, Harvard, Princeton, Stanford and Yale admit very few graduate students annually. It’s not like many Brown or Dartmouth grads get placed in those graduate programs. I counted 4 Brown alums and 1 Dartmouth alum in both Harvard and Princeton programs combined. Cornell has like 10 alums enrolled in Harvard’s Sociology department, but that is truly exceptional. Even Stanford only manages 2. For another, most people do not choose PhD programs based on the overall reputation of the university, but based on the strength of the department and, just as importantly, on where they can be paired with a faculty member with a similar thesis interest.</p>
<p>“Not a single Princeton or Yale grad is enrolled in Chicago or Michigan’s PhD program LOL. That shows you how desirable and “elite” these doctoral programs really are.”</p>
<p>I guess Brown, Columbia, Harvard and Penn grads must have missed the memo!</p>
<p>“Maybe this is why the job placement for doctoral candidates in pretty much every Michigan PhD program lags its actual reputation. I know this is true in Political Science but wouldn’t be surprised if this was true across the board.”</p>
<p>Do you have evidence of this wild claim? With virtually all of its departments ranked among the top 10, I would guess that Michigan PhDs do relatively well professionally.</p>
<p>“Princeton manages to keep the riff raff from Appalachian State, Middle Tennessee State, Northern Montana Central, or whatever regional colleges Michigan loves to accept students from out of its gothic grounds.”</p>
<p>Well, the current President of the ASA is a UW prof. The head of Yale’s Sociology Dept is a UW PhD. The ASA president a few years ago was a UW PhD. Princeton has a UW PhD in their dept as does Harvard. Brown has three. Stanford has 2 and the Chair is from Michigan. No Dukes at any of them.</p>
Well, to be fair, I think that’s true of any ranking. Some colleges do much better in US News than AWRU/THES, and some do much better in AWRU/THES. That a college or its students/alums should seize upon favorable rankings and reject unfavorable ones is as predictable as it is understandable. </p>
<p>Knee-jerk reactions should be avoided in these situations. Praising or criticizing a ranking based on its outcome (i.e. a college placing higher or lower than you think it should) is less valid than evaluating its methodology. This means looking at two things:
[ul][<em>]What factors is the ranking considering, and how relevant are these particular factors to the goal of that ranking? A ranking of campus beauty should consider things like architecture, gardens, landscaping, etc. A ranking of social mobility should include things like financial aid, percentages of poor/wealthy students, job placement, etc. If you’re seeing undergraduate test scores account for 20% of a ranking of research productivity, something is seriously off about that ranking.
[</em>]How valid are the ways of measuring each factor? For example, I think we can all agree that teaching effectiveness should be included in any ranking of academics. How does one go about doing so? Forbes hilariously uses ratemyprofessors.com as a measure of teaching effectiveness, and this accounts for a whopping 17.5% of a college’s score. The problems with this are obvious.[/ul]</p>
<p>Others are correct in pointing out that this ranking is not favorable toward colleges that focus on undergraduates. In fact, it arguably rewards those who neglect them. Two of the factors are having a high percentage of grad students relative to undergrads and having a high percentage of grad students relative to faculty – not exactly what many of us consider an ideal undergraduate experience! :rolleyes:</p>
<p>That said, bclintonk is correct in that it’s not a ranking of undergraduate academics and (unlike USNWR) does not claim to be. If anything, it’s a crude approximation of the amount and quality of research going on at each university - and for that, I think it’s a reasonably good ranking.</p>
<p>I’ve never quite understood how international rankings aren’t in the interests of undergraduate students. Given that the United States has a huge influx of international students (which obviously has to do with the fact that it has the ‘best’ universities) how universities perform on a global scale is clearly within the interests of many undergraduate students within the U.S. This is the case whether an American wants to go live abroad, or whether an international student wants to factor in the world reputation schools that they’re considering matriculating to. </p>
<p>There’s no doubt, In the U.S. and beyond, that Caltech is on international students radars, which is ironic since it performs poorly in ‘international outlook.’</p>
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<p>I can’t help but laugh at the irony of a person who goes to a school that’s ranked below my alma mater (on multiple rankings) call my school ‘non-elite.’ Apparently you didn’t realize that a school that’s lower ranked than a non-elite school is also non-elite. Or did you fail to notice that UCLA is ranked 13 on here whereas Duke is ranked a full 10 spots lower; since it seems you can’t make basic inferences, that would put Duke in the 23rd position.</p>
<p>Also, there isn’t a person on here who doesn’t suspect that your tantrum is the result of Duke failing to crack the top 20.</p>
<p>Furthermore, Duke actually shows itself to be a fairly well within the rankings. Given that reputation is such a high score within the THE ranking, and Duke is ranked 33 for reputation, it shows how strong Duke is overall as a well-rounded university.</p>
<p>True, but in those cases, posters bring up legitimate (and non-hypocritical) reasons and few have gone out of their way to make their schools look better by denigrating other schools like gb has.</p>
<p>That kind of stuff is what gets Duke ranked as the “d<strong>chiest school” by GQ magazine (well, actually the 2nd d</strong>chiest since the rankers didn’t want to give Duke the no.1 ranking for anything).</p>
<p>This ranking really isn’t that stupid. It’s more like saying that animal X is more “valuable” (ore useful) than animal Y, to some population of people, when you assess all the contributions that each one makes (meat, hides, horn, etc.) From that perspective I can say with some confidence that horses have been more valuable/useful over time to human beings than hamsters. I wouldn’t be so confident in saying horses have been more valuable/useful than dogs (or vice versa); it kinda depends on the people and their needs (herding sheep? pulling plows and carts? etc.)</p>
<p>The “use” that THE is measuring, primarily, is research. Research output is measurable (although there are important issues of quality v. quantity that citation metrics may not treat very well). I do think THE gets off track when it mixes in the international v. domestic ratios (which I don’t happen to care much about … but clearly somebody else does).</p>
<p>How can Caltech even be tops for research when it doesn’t conduct any research in many fields of academia? This list is really a list of the “best” universities for STEM research. That is a far cry from the “best university.”</p>
<p>Time to let that go. The Duke versus the world or Duke versus Michigan have been toned down in the recent past. Let’s stay clear from reigniting those silly battles. We all have our favorites and … non-favorite schools.</p>