<p>Methodology used peer review based on strength/effectiveness of teaching, research, and international reputation.</p>
<p>Worldwide Ranking:</p>
<li>Harvard</li>
<li>University of California at Berkeley</li>
<li>MIT</li>
<li>California Institute of Technology</li>
<li>Oxford</li>
<li>Cambridge</li>
<li>Stanford</li>
<li>Yale</li>
<li>Princeton</li>
<li>ETH Zurich</li>
</ol>
<p>US Ranking:</p>
<li>Harvard</li>
<li>University of California at Berkeley</li>
<li>MIT</li>
<li>California Institute of Technology</li>
<li>Stanford</li>
<li>Yale</li>
<li>Princeton</li>
<li>University of Chicago</li>
<li>UT Austin</li>
<li>Columbia</li>
<li>University of California at San Francisco</li>
<li>Cornell</li>
<li>University of California at San Diego</li>
<li>John Hopkins</li>
<li>University of California at Los Angeles</li>
<li>University of Pennsylvania</li>
<li>University of Michigan</li>
<li>University of Illinois</li>
<li>Carnegie Mellon</li>
<li>University of Massachusetts</li>
<li>Duke</li>
<li>Purdue University</li>
<li>Brown</li>
<li>Georgia Institute of Technology</li>
<li>University of Wisconsin</li>
</ol>
<p>If you look at the subcategories, you'll notice that we got almost all of our points in reserach. In peer reptuation we actually didn't do very well at all (I suspect that this is due to a small HSS department, comparatively. Even though our economics and political science are actually very strong, poly sci in particular is very small, so we aren't as well know), but we certainly took the cake in publications. No surprise.</p>
<p>Rankings don't really mean anything to me anymore... each one I see puts schools in different ranks, and sometimes the differences are very large. For example, as mentioned by fussball, UT as #9? US News doesn't even have it in the top 30 schools.</p>
<p>However, nice to know caltech is getting its points in research.</p>
<p>It gets even funnier down their batting order. It's all bats you know. Really. It's their favourite bats. Princeton, the big one, Oxford, the classic looker with a noticable forehead, Lausanne the developed sweetie who looks, you know, like "them" in Switzerland and even little Edinburgh gets in with the other favourite fourty-nine. It's the smallest and youngest.</p>
<p>There is something of a reasonable point. But most students get to experience teaching and study in one course and a small though significant percentage get to experience one or sometimes more further qualifications, usually somewhere else. Unless, the author means the uni. gym, cafes and bars, and whether or not the place is popular with socialists or conservatives, though none of this is even claimed to be ranked, whatever they do. So having seen one course of hundreds or thousands at one place, and then another course of so many at another, the degree of variety might be anything in normal probability. It's just teaching and study experienced by the same life, not a life-swapping exercise, and not part of a grand skipping game through lots of courses at each school. Who gets to see these apples and oranges? Who would the apples and oranges be for? The rankers? Or Midnight Shymalan?</p>
<p>Though the symbol does work to nicely rebuff what the rankers are trying to do wrongly and it may guide them in the direction of better comment about study institutions. If we get to see the objective criteria they use to do some standard grading with points and why (if these could ever be issued) and notes on the individual parts of courses, then we should be much happier. It would be great to return to doing away with figures altogether though, tables and points, as Z. Zwillinger suggests. </p>
<p>The same newspaper gives most of its points in its British tables for things like gyms, student entry grades(!), after exit employment rates, postgraduate student's research (rather than teaching, help or training here), so that for an undergraduate there is an annual table of nearly nothing. And too, there might have only been a visit for two days, as usual. Where I went in the U.K. the staff swapped timetabled lectures for the visiting reviewers (government markers) on the visited days. As a British person I can say these rankings are completely just a joke.</p>
<p>Too bad people actually pay attention to rankings. I must say though, I think those rankings to some degree reflect the judges' impression of the school overall, which is largely based on the school's research, i.e. undergrad doesn't matter.</p>
<p>However, I must say Caltech looks pretty impressive up there, as a tiny school among giants.</p>