idad

One ranking I thought was somewhat reflective of the true state of the colege world was Brian Leiter's University rankings. He was at the University of Texas at the time and was mostly known for his Law School Rankings. He goes to some length to explain the approach taken.

A RANKING OF UNDERGRADUATE SCHOOLS

Here are his rankings:

TOP 20 UNIVERSITIES NOT PRIMARILY SCIENCE/ENGINEERING

1. Harvard University
1. Princeton University
1. Stanford University
1. University of Chicago
1. Yale University
6. Columbia University
6. University of Pennsylvania
8. Brown University
8. Cornell University
8. Duke University
8. Emory University
8. Johns Hopkins University
8. Northwestern University
8. Rice University
8. University of California, Berkeley
8. Washington University, St. Louis
17. Brandeis University
17. Dartmouth College
17. University of California, Los Angeles
17. University of Michigan, Ann Arbor
17. University of Wisconsin, Madison

phuriku

That's a damn good ranking, idad. I like the tier rankings. Chicago actually ranks #2 in his rankings in overall score, but instead of pointing this out, he just listed the schools in tiers, which is how it should be. Any ranking having Caltech with the highest total score is one I can usually trust.

Cosmos

yeah that's pretty good. i like it.

Godsend

Where's MIT?

Noob rankings. US News seems to have hit it dead on.

Cosmos

"NOT PRIMARILY SCIENCE/ENGINEERING"

MIT is a science/engineering school.

Top 5 Universities That are Primarily Science/Engineering Schools

1. California Institute of Technology

1. Massachussetts Institute of Technology

3. Carnegie-Mellon University

4. Case Western Reserve University

5. Georgia Institute of Technology

BedHead

As distinct from the top 5 science and engineering schools:

MIT
Berkeley
Stanford
Georgia Tech
UIUC

phuriku

Putting UIUC and GT ahead of Caltech is a bit... misled. Even placing MIT and Berkeley ahead of Caltech is questionable.

Wneckid99

washu st louis behind arizona and ohio state- gimme a break

phuriku

Wash U St. Louis ISN'T behind Arizona and OSU. It just ranks low for faculty quality, which isn't that surprising.

jack4640

now thats what willis was talkin bout

Cosmos

how do you guys feel about rankings in general?

it really annoys me when people use rankings as an indication that harvard, yale, princeton, and mit are better than uchicago. it also bothers me when they say that those schools have more prestige than uchicago so they are academically better.

CNI

The THES bascially just seems like an international prestige ranking, with a few errors (stanford too low).

BedHead

Way too low for Berkeley and Stanford -- which leads me to think they called up a friend from the Ivy League who had never been to the West Coast to get their rankings, and that their rankings were that well thought out. Too high for Oxford, ICL, UCL (wow, what a surprise -- all British universities?!). And too high for several other international universities. Rankings tend to fall along two lines, emphasizing one or the other or blending both: 1) research output and quality (Shanghai Rankings, e.g.) or 2) undergrad selectivity of student admission. There is no evidence that either one of these measures was used -- or what exact measure was.

JHS

They must have used SOME objective measure, because otherwise how would Berkeley and Stanford go from top-6 to barely top-25 in two years? If they had called up a friend in the Ivy League, Berkeley and Stanford would have been much higher. (The Ivy League has no trouble acknowledging the existence and quality of Berkeley and Stanford. It has a lot more trouble with WashU or Northwestern.)

BedHead

Do universities change that quickly? The measure changed, of course, and I defy you to tell me what changed that would move Oxford and Cambridge up, a bunch of US schools down a bit and others (that are roughly comparable to the ones that moved just a bit except for their West Coast location) much more.

Agreed with the point about the midwestern u's, with some exceptions: Kellogg for NU, Med for Wash. U. But how non-Ivy League schools as a whole are viewed is really, really suspect. Stanford has the greatest breadth of quality across the widest spectrum of universities full-stop, IMO. Same for Berkeley, particularly at graduate level.