<p>Let us leave Michigan out of this, shall we xiggi! ;)</p>
<p>I’ll send a PM to Rjkofnovi and the Duke boys. And a CC to Clinton! :)</p>
<p>No PM is necessary for me xiggi. </p>
<p>“We all have our favorites and … non-favorite schools.”</p>
<p>Except some spend a lot more of their time here denegrating their non favorite schools instead of boosting their favorite ones.</p>
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<p>Problem is that two wrongs do not make one right. </p>
<p>Excessive boosterism is actually more annoying than the occasional denigrating because the first transgression is often repetitive. And, fwiw, the denigrating usually is fueled by the excessive boosterism, and not the other way around.</p>
<p>And as last comment, some around here have found a way to balance the two in a very subtle manner; usually with “look we are just as good as XXX” on this obscure and irrelevant ranking. Oops, I realized this is one such thread!</p>
<p>“Excessive boosterism is actually more annoying than the occasional denigrating because…”</p>
<p>…you say so.</p>
<p>“And, fwiw, the denigrating usually is fueled by the excessive boosterism, and not the other way around.”</p>
<p>Nonsense.</p>
<p>OK, to paraphrase BlueBayou …</p>
<p>Let me correct that:</p>
<p>I find that the excessive boosterism is actually more annoying than the occasional denigrating because the first transgression is often repetitive. And, fwiw, from my perspective define by close to 10 years here, the denigrating usually is fueled by the excessive boosterism, and not the other way around.</p>
<p>Indeed, that is what I am saying! And, no, that is not non-sensical, but I can see why a person who loves them pompons might disagree!</p>
<p>Waving my pompons as I type.</p>
<p>One school that always stands out in these more research-centric world rankings vs. its U.S. News rank and reputation within the U.S. is Washington. It’s held in VERY high esteem in the research world, but ranks relatively poorly according to U.S. News and it doesn’t seem like it attracts the same quality of OOS applicants like other top notch publics like Michigan, Berkeley, UVa, or even Wisconsin, IL, etc. I wonder why it fares relatively poorly on national rankings, while the other top-notch publics do not. I think more people should consider Washington if great research programs is high on their priority list.</p>
<p>Udub used to have a 10% limit on out of state and did not recruit. Now they do. Its rank is right with Wisconsin so I don’t think it is hurt anymore than similar large R-1 publics. Overall it is like a Wisconsin clone.</p>
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<p>Technically speaking, a research university is simply a university that conducts research. Now, THE’s criteria in no way specify that an RU needs to be a well rounded (or very well rounded RU) just that it needs to do well in teaching, citations, research, etc.</p>
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<p>That’s a bit of an exaggeration imo. Caltech does have a humanities division, and several minors in humanities, and conducts research within them. For example, although Caltech has no philosophy major, the faculty adviser for the minor is a ranker on the Philosophical Gourmet Report. These rankers include some of the most esteemed philosophers within the nation, and i don’t doubt that Caltech students get a good foundation in philosophy (even if it’s focused on phil. of science or w/e) I’d imagine that the same would hold for the other humanities minors that Caltech has.</p>
<p>Caltech is nowhere near the quality as many of its peers, but humanities don’t tend to draw that much in research funding. That’s probably why Caltech’s largely unaffected by its weak programs within the humanities.</p>
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<p>Perhaps it’s due to the subjective PA score, which is partly based upon selectivity in which Udub lacks compared to others imho.</p>
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<p>Better watch out. Alexandre might confiscate them for his future Wolverine offspring.</p>
<p>I don’t think so xiggi. I have a boy, and in my culture, pom poms are for girls! We are hoping that the next one is a girl though (we are spacing them four years apart, that wayy I have an excuse to visit Ann Arbor 8 years in a row), so it may be a good idea to plan ahead and strike pre-emptively. Hand 'em over rjk!</p>
<p>I am envious of such a strategic plan. I’ll be rooting for you and the little ones.</p>
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Right, but Caltech lacks too many areas of study to really be considered a university (in my opinion). I guess it’s more like a university than Juilliard is, but I don’t think any school that lacks (for example) majors in foreign languages or the arts can really be a university. It’s a fine school of course–my point is not to denigrate CalTech, but to point out that this list is silly.</p>
<p>How is the “International Outlook” data in this ranking determined? Here are some of the scores assigned to some well known American schools:</p>
<p>Northwestern - 33.8
University of Chicago - 55.3
Princeton - 54.5
Yale - 54.7
Duke University - 45.8
University of Pennsylvania - 38.1</p>
<p>How do Princeton, Yale, and UChicago who either lack highly ranked engineering programs and/or highly ranked MBA programs score higher in International Outlook than Northwestern, Duke, and Penn who have highly ranked programs in both areas?</p>
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Am I the only one who read the methodology? 
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<p>International outlook accounts for 7.5% of the ranking. It is broken down as follows:
[ul][<em>]Ratio of international:domestic students - 2.5%
[</em>]Ratio of international:domestic faculty - 2.5%
[li]Percentage of faculty citations with at least one international collaborator - 2.5%[/ul]</p>[/li]
<p>This is one of those cases in which my earlier point about the focus of a ranking comes into play. These criteria are perfectly fine if you’re only looking at international draw. If you’re more concerned with the quality of a college’s academics, these factors are more problematic…research performed only in one country could be significantly more important than a research project with an international collaborator, and the use of professors with indecipherable accents is a persistent complaint at many universities. Additionally, a significant population of international students often says more about cost and the desirability of a college’s location than its academics. A place like Birkbeck can look surprisingly attractive if you only care about being in London. Many colleges in Europe have extremely high numbers of “international” students primarily because they charge the same fees for students from any member of the EU or, in some cases, no fees at all.</p>
<p>Regardless, it’s clear that having MBA programs or engineering programs does not particularly affect a college’s score - unless those programs draw an unusually large percentage of international students and faculty, at least.</p>
<p>rereading the quote in my OP i noticed something:</p>
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<p>He’s right. If you examine the other four universities within the top 5 (O,S,H, and P,) with the exception of Oxford, they all performed worse this year than last year. H and S went from 93.9 to 93.6 and 93.7 respectively; O went marginally increased from 93.6 to 93.7; and P went from 92.9 to 92.7</p>
<p>Caltech, on the other hand, increased from 94.8 (a nearly 1 point advantage against its top competitors in 2011-2012) to 95.5 (a now near 2 point advantage.)</p>
<p>I agree with baty that it is very impressive. </p>
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<p>This is an excellent segway into my next point: In a sense though i agree that the game’s a bit rigged in Caltech’s favor. Caltech doesn’t need to worry about programs that aren’t powerhouses in research (professional schools, humanities, etc.) like the other four do. As a result of that i imagine that it’s much easier for Caltech to solely focus on its research. So yes, Caltech is a research powerhouse. Perhaps we shouldn’t say that Caltech is a research university but the research university.</p>
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<p>Seems pretty pertinent considering comments like this keep popping up - </p>
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<p>…as Marsian has noted in making Duke look bad.</p>
<p>And let’s not forget gb’s arguments about CFB conferences - which have all been totally debunked.</p>