<p>william and mary isnt even on that list</p>
<p>Here are my rankings:</p>
<ol>
<li>UC Berekely</li>
<li>U-VA</li>
<li>UNC- Chapel Hill</li>
<li>Univ. of Michigan</li>
<li>U-Texas</li>
<li>UCLA</li>
<li>Univ. Wisconsin</li>
<li>U. Illinois</li>
<li>Penn State</li>
<li>U-Washington/GA Tech (can't decide)</li>
<li>Rutgers</li>
<li>U. Iowa</li>
<li>U-Conn</li>
<li>U- Maryland</li>
<li>U-Minnesota</li>
<li>Indiana</li>
<li>SUNY</li>
<li>Missouri</li>
<li>Florida</li>
<li>UVM</li>
<li>CU-Boulder</li>
<li>U-Mass Amherst</li>
<li>Arizona. </li>
</ol>
<p>Even though you didn't mention it, I think a lot of people would consider Miami University in Ohio a really good school. Although it is stereotyped as "J.Crew University", the academics there are really strong.</p>
<p>This comment is going to enfuriate many Californians but I think beyond UC and UCLA, your schools are not that special, at least not highly regarded. If someone told me they went to UC-Davis, I would not think much of them and would compare that to someone going to UW-Eau Claire in Wisconsin, for instance. Just my opinion.</p>
<p>I don't think it's going infuriate, it's just a lot of people think of the UCs as other state systems. 1 (or 2 in the case of UCs) flagship state schools and then a bunch of other school. However, the UC system is quite different</p>
<p>People whose lists have 4 or 5 UC schools on the top 10 are very very biased and should know that here in the midwest, we don't care at all about your UC's besides Berkeley and UCLA.</p>
<p>Wouldn't that make you very biased? Rankings aren't supposed to be based on popularity or name recognition, they're based on how good the school is.</p>
<p>I am not denying my bias. I stated that we all have a little inkling towards our regional schools. I just have a very hard time believing that UC-Santa Barbara or UC-Irvine are much better than UW-Lacrosse in academic rigor. They are just bigger schools so their names are more well-known but somehow they make their way onto the top public school list.</p>
<p>I'm sure I'm biased too :) And it's not just out of staters, many in California regard Santa Barbara as purely a party school and don't acknowledge its academic side.</p>
<p>As far as comparisons, the UCs are almost all research behemoths and have very highly regarded professors. For example, UCSB has 24 professors in the National Academy of Engineering and 25 professors in the National Academy of Sciences (the two UW schools you mentioned have 0 in each). </p>
<p>Maybe it's just a factor of size, since many other states have huge flagship universities with a lot of smaller secondary universities, unlike with the UCs, which are all fairly large. It seems in Wisconsin, Madison takes all of the spotlight (18 NAE/43 NAS), but in the UCs, you have it spread out through all of them.</p>
<p>Of course UVa only has a small number of members each in the NAE and NAS and that does not seem to hurt their ranking.</p>
<p>the distance between the mid-tier UC's and UCB/UCLA is much closer than the distance between probably every other state school and its flagship. </p>
<p>i remember someone from the northeast once asked what's so great about UC's? someone else responded that it's hard for him/her to understand from their perspective because, well, UConn, UMass, and SUNY just isn't the same as the UC's. for some other states, yeah, their flagship is good enough to be in the national rankings, but the rest of the state schools aren't. i contend california is an exception to the rule, that a lot of the other UC's are as strong as some of the state flagships out there. </p>
<p>of course, this is overlooked because we tend to focus on flagships only. on the other hand, US News shows 4 of the UC's in the top 10 publics, 6 in the top 50 overall, and 8 better than half the state flagships in the USA. </p>
<p>but basically, the mid-tier UC's aren't your typical second-rate state school that's several notches below its flagship.</p>
<p>"1. UC Berekely
2. U-VA
3. UNC- Chapel Hill
4. Univ. of Michigan
5. U-Texas
6. UCLA
7. Univ. Wisconsin
8. U. Illinois
9. Penn State
10. U-Washington/GA Tech (can't decide)
11. Rutgers
12. U. Iowa
13. U-Conn
14. U- Maryland
15. U-Minnesota
16. Indiana
17. SUNY
18. Missouri
19. Florida
20. UVM
21. CU-Boulder
22. U-Mass Amherst
23. Arizona. "</p>
<p>Are you kidding!?</p>
<p>What would you suggest Maverick, though I do not agree with that list 100%, I'd like to know what you think.</p>
<p>UCLA definitely higher, Florida definitely higher, UGA should be on the list AT LEAST, ohio state and purdue should be on there, UCSD should be on there, plus i think the order needs to somewhat shuffled</p>
<p>And you forgot William and Mary, the second oldest college in the US.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>Well, even though I attend Berkeley and I may be biased towards it, I'm not Californian and it's not my home state. I was an out-of-state applicant and Berkeley was my first choice.</p>
<p>But I have to admit I base much of my rankings off USNews's rankings and various other ones. And I still contend that Berkeley, Mich, UVA, and UCLA are the top ones. I haven't heard of most of the rest of the list and it seems these names carry better internationally than the rest.</p>
<p>thumbs down for everyone who leaves W&M off their list of like top 20 publics.</p>
<p>My Revised Top 10 Rankings:</p>
<ol>
<li>UCB</li>
<li>Michigan</li>
<li>UCLA</li>
<li>Virginia</li>
<li>UNC-Chapel Hill</li>
<li>UW-Madison</li>
<li>UT-Austin</li>
<li>UIUC</li>
<li>Georgia Tech</li>
<li>UCSD</li>
</ol>
<p>hook 'em horns!!</p>
<p>does anyone think UT's academics are overshadowed by their athletics? or schools like Michigan, Duke, UNC?</p>
<p>Ummm. FLOPSY??????? you forgot Penn STATE. </p>
<p>PROBABLY THE BEST SCHOOL IN THE ENTIRE WORLD. How about Billions of dollars in funding, a wonderful student body (which will include me )</p>
<p>Here, I'll re-post my ranks just to make everything clear.</p>
<ol>
<li>Penn State</li>
<li>PSU</li>
<li>Pennsylvania State</li>
<li>Penn State-University Park</li>
<li>Penn State- Main Campus</li>
<li>Pennsylvania State -University Park</li>
<li>Pennsylvania State -Main Campus</li>
<li>PSU-Main Campus</li>
<li>PSU- University Park</li>
<li> The College that I am going to - (penn state)</li>
</ol>
<p>who want's to go to a Freaking Dumb-A## Liberal UC berkley anyway.</p>
<p>Your post speaks wonders for PSU.</p>
<p>hahahahahah now THAT is school spirit</p>
<p>Who knows. It's probably a factor as to why they're looked upon highly. Branding is key.</p>
<p>Lol I would call Joey a bit fanatic
but PSU is a great school which seems to be neglected(I think its because its used as a safety for a lot of people in the Northeast)</p>
<p>point is we are all gonna have a biased opinion I mean I didnt even think about wisconsin, ill, or TX before I started "really" looking for schools. So a list would do better than rankings as location can greatly affect rankings :)</p>