2010 ARWU College Ranking

bluedog
Fri, 13 Aug 2010 11:41:17 +0000

Who cares what the rest of the world thinks? Faculty and academics are soooo overrated. Schools should be ranked mostly by the results of a few hours test by 17-18 year olds. After all, what does the rest of the world know about which universities are truly great?



Not saying I completely disagree with your sentiment, but the ARWU rankings certainly have severe limitations. Do you honestly think, for example, that Dartmouth is somewhere in the 77-100 range of the best universities in the US? Equivalent to George Mason, LSU, and University of Alabama at Birmingham? And weaker than UMass, Miami, UC-Santa Cruz, Oregon State, and Arizona State? Not to mention that Washington, Illinois, and Minnesota are at least 120 spots ahead of Dartmouth. Personally, I’d choose to go to Dartmouth over any of those schools. In the end, this ranking penalizes schools that are undergrad dominated and disregards strength in the humanities, which is something many US students LOOK for when choosing a college. I chose Dartmouth somewhat randomly…I could have made the same point with Brown as another example. This ranking seems more applicable for *science *grad programs, in my opinion.