<p>Seems like online Princeton Review… People who looked at blank also looked at blank, big deal, also known as “overlaps”…</p>
<p>OP, Thanks for sharing!! </p>
<h1>28 Ohio State sounds about right to me!!</h1>
<p>Go Ravens!! :p</p>
<p>Another pointless, ego-boosting study. What else is new?</p>
<p>it’s very different than princeton review though, this gives you a college’s perception of its peers, which is probably the best ranking out there!</p>
<p>“Go Ravens!!”</p>
<p>That teams was the Cleveland Browns. Cleveland should be celebrating tonight.</p>
<p>God hates Cleveland.</p>
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<p>The problem with your “tier” ranking is that it’s operating inside a bubble. There are three distinct clusters here: LACs compare themselves to other LACs, private research universities compare themselves to other private research universities, and public research universities (with rare exceptions) compare themselves to other public research universities. There is almost no crossover between these three groupings. So at best your “tier ranking” is going to give us a tier ranking within the private research university category. But that doesn’t tell us how the top public research universities stack up against the top private research universities, or for that matter how the top public rsearch universities stack up against the second-, third-, fourth- or Nth-tiered private research universities, because for understandable reasons private research universities are almost invariably going to put themselves in a private research university comparison group: they are “more like” other private research universities than they are like public research universities, or LACs. That’s not a statement about academic quality, it’s just an obvious category choice.</p>
<p>Any “ranking” (if you can call it that) that has Cornell and Michigan ranked in the top 5 among research universities is OK by me! 
But this is obviously not intended to be a “ranking” of academic institutions. Just look at the ranking of major research universities:</p>
<p>Princeton University 1
Stanford University 2
Yale University 3
Cornell University 4
University of Michigan-Ann Arbor 5
University of Pennsylvania 6
Brown University 7
Harvard University 8
Columbia University 9
Massachusetts Institute of Technology 10
University of Illinois-Urbana Champaign 11
University of Wisconsin-Madison 12
Dartmouth College 13
University of Chicago 14
Ohio State University 15
University of California-Los Angeles 16
University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill 17
Northwestern University 18
University of California-Berkeley 19
University of Minnesota-Twin Cities 20
Johns Hopkins University 21
Pennsylvania State University-University Park 22
University of Texas-Austin 23
Duke University 24
Indiana University-Bloomington 25
Carnegie Mellon University 26
Michigan State University 27
University of Washington 28
Washington University St Louis 29
Texas A&M University-College Station 30
Purdue University-West Lafayette 31
New York University 32
Georgetown University 33
Emory University 34
University of Pittsburgh 35
University of Virginia 36
California Institute of Technology 37
University of Southern California 38
University of Maryland-College Park 39
Rice University 40</p>
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<p>If that were the only problem! </p>
<p>The true problem is more basic as it relates directly to the “data” used in that so-called research. GIGO at its best. </p>
<p>If there are a handful of schools that forwarded the list with a modicum of integrity, it is obvious that it is nothing more than an afterthought, and one that reminds us of the best manipulations by the cheating officials who completed the USNews at Wisconsin and Clemson. There is a twilight zone in higher education!</p>
<p>Tiered and repackaged or not, the result is pure unaldulterated horse manure, especially when trying to elevate the silliness to the equivalent of a ranking.</p>
<p>I’m usually mesmerized by unusual studies such as this, but the research is total junk requiring nothing more than a passing glance of disbelief at the insecurity and ego-boosting nature of so many colleges.</p>
<p>Apparently, the study is interesting enough for inclusion in a Cornell University Information Science blog. The course description alone sounds tailor-made for a CC discussion topic:</p>
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<p><a href=“http://www.infosci.cornell.edu/courses/info2040/2012fa/[/url]”>http://www.infosci.cornell.edu/courses/info2040/2012fa/</a></p>
<p>A bit circular, don’t you think? Failed to notice the link in the OP was to the blog to … that course.</p>
<p>Does that give it some “respectability?” Hardly when considering some of the subjects covered by classes at our colleges. How many references to Bieber or Snooky would you estimate are part of a “class” in our … institutions of higher learning?</p>
<p>Cluster studies have been around since forever; they are a basic social science tool. Indeed, corporate America, of which Justin Bieber is an entirely appropriate avatar, would be clueless without them:</p>
<p>[Cluster</a> analysis - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia](<a href=“http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cluster_analysis]Cluster”>Cluster analysis - Wikipedia)</p>
<p>Moreover, I think it ill-behooves the foremost - nay, shall I say, - most tireless - proponent that the IPEDS data bases be made public “so that people can make their own rankings” to suddenly take umbrage the moment their advice is taken. True, the original study was published with an interactive feature that placed the various colleges spatially in relation to each other, rather than a strict ranking. But, in view of your past - nay, ceaseless - championing of the USNews, I fail to see the problem with ranking the schools according to their scores. The colleges that did best were the ones with a well-defined sense of themselves that is widely held by a coterie of peers. This study does nothing more than measure how accurate they are in their self-assessment.</p>
<p>Who seeks to remain unrecognized might be well-served by hiding a path of burning bridges.</p>
<p>Although I hardly miss your unfortunate habit to misquote and your unabated love for the strawman, I am happy to see you did not vanish entirely. Wesleyan’s forum would not be the same without its eponymous self-anointed leader --regardless of the latest incarnation. </p>
<p>As far as my views on the IPEDS and the USNews, I’d like to suggest to invest a bit of time in refreshing your memory, or perhaps read what I actually wrote before your revival. </p>
<p>Be well!</p>
<p>It is funny how Harvard only considers 2 other Ivies to be peers.</p>