<p>The difference, my friend, is that at Dartmouth or Duke that professor will teach 10 kids instead of 500.</p>
<p>I think it should be made a rule that anyone who starts talking **** about a school other than their won should automatically be banned.</p>
<p>It’s fine to say your school is just as good, or is stronger in certain areas, but if you outright start bashing its ranking, its student body, and try elevating your school by bashing it, this person deserves to banned :)</p>
<p>that goes for the person trying to convince everyone Chicago >>>> everything except HY and bashing the academics at other peer schools because of it.</p>
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<p>Since this is for undergrad ranking, I agree with this ranking except that I’d put WashingtonU and UNC on group 3.</p>
<p>The average class size at Wisconsin–29. Also I’m sure Duke and even Dartmouth intro level classes are FAR larger than 10.</p>
<p>ChoklitRain:</p>
<p>“you’re saying an entire university is trash based on positions that some of its faculty/administrators have on a small handful of issues, and ignoring its overall strength and breadth as a teaching/research university.”</p>
<p>I couldn’t have said it better. Well, maybe I could , but it would have to be in Spanish. I am fifty years old now, but not too long ago, I also used to be quite an extremist in my opinions, likes, and dislikes. I considered it “passion” and “frankness”." Now I consider it “exaggeration.” Morsmordre will probably learn not to do that at a younger age than I did. You know, “never say never, and never say always.” She sounds pretty bright, and she will discover that exaggeration disqualifies her arguments more often than it reinforces them…</p>
<p>Woahhhh… UC Santa Barbara got higher than UCI??? SB is a total party school!</p>
<p>I don’t see how being a party school precludes it from being very strong academically. Maybe the time Irvine students spend commuting back home on the weekends, UCSB students use that time to party, and both study just as hard on the weekdays. The stats of enrolled students at both schools is nearly identical, while UCSB probably has the stronger faculty (5 Nobel prize winners at UCSB vs 2 at Irvine, 29 vs 22 at the National Academy of Sciences, 27 vs 8 at the Academy of Engineering, etc)</p>
<p>That’s what makes UCSB so great, incredible social atmosphere and strong academics.</p>
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<p>The class size should not matter that much at college level. In high school, you can not teach any class with more than 10 IEP kids, but for honors class, it can go up to 25-30. I am sure those IEPs do not end up with the top 50 schools, at least most of them do not. It is the quality of the faculty matters the most. Penn has only 86% of full time faculty members, where Yale has 88%? I believe. So, you go there and taught by TAs, especially at lower level courses.</p>
<p>Ewho - I think you completely misunderstand the value of class size. My senior year at Dartmouth my average class size was around 7 people. This meant office hours, dinners at professors houses, incredibly attention for my thesis research, etc. In turn this meant getting into a top 5 graduate program (Columbia) with only a slightly better than average GPA. The intangible benefits of the top schools are significant.</p>
<p>^ Dartmouth is a special case, slipper. It ranked #1 in dedication to undergrad teaching in this year’s USNWR survey.</p>
<p>slipper12434 - If a school wants, it can hire 3000 high schoolers without pay to teach, and hence to reduce the class size to 2. On the other hand, school like Stanford has 99% full-time faculty members, will that make any difference to have a class size of 20-30?</p>
<p>Imagine that your professors were TAs, and you would have got into a school in Columbia. :)</p>
<p>^It does actually make a huge difference, especially on the introductory college courses where (IMO) the teacher’s abilities don’t matter as much. I’d argue that it’s just as important as the quality of the instructor. Being in a class of 5 or 7 is a completely different experience from that of 50 or even 20. Much more attention could be given to each student’s needs when the classes get that small. Of course, this is all under the assumption that the teacher is competent to teach the material. (Doesn’t have to be a stellar teacher.)</p>
<p>And, UCBChem, I don’t know if you’re being sarcastic, but among top schools it wouldn’t be weird for a senior to be in a class of 7.</p>
<p>Morsmordre is being dealt with because he posted highly inflammatory and bigotted commentary last night, now somewhat tapered after CC moderators stepped in. He is a ■■■■■. </p>
<p>As for your remarks that religious schools are necessarily restrictive of free speech, that is simply not the case at all. I note that the Ivy League schools all have religious origins, even Brown, which was Baptist at one point.</p>
<p>The Terms of Service of CC require members to treat others with respect even if you disagree. Slander and bigotry have no place here, nor in the college community. And anyone who uses slander and bigotry to malign religious schools because they perceive them to be restrictive of free speech are acting out in such a hypocritical fashion as to be laughable. Free speech means free speech for all.</p>
<p>Again, I state that people who use such tactics are only maligning their own character and seriously harming the reputation of the schools they attend. Character counts.</p>
<p>As to the content of the slander, that schools ranked lower than the school where the offending member is attending are inferior, its not even worth responding to comments like that.</p>
<p>so out of the top 20, i really think brown (and penn to some extent, if anyone wants to defend it as well) is overrated and washu is VERY overrated. honestly im sure part of my unimpressed feelings can be blamed on ignorance. thoughts? id like to see some people argue as to why brown and washu deserve to be in the top 20. don’t cite admissions rate, don’t cite selectivity, don’t site student body stats. talk about the school and their programs. talk about quality of academics. I want to know what those schools are known for (awards, departments, top grad schools, etc.).</p>
<p>thanks! and im not trying to be offensive, im just confused about their popularity and some of the respect they are given.</p>
<p>I’m the ■■■■■ with over 500 posts, algorescousin? You know what I mean by that. I’m letting you have free speech, didn’t stop you from spouting your incorrect views. I’m correcting you. You on the other hand are trying to curtail my free speech and if you don’t recall some of your posts were censored too.</p>
<p>I’m sure because of me Stanford will stop being seen as a world class university and cutting edge research will suddenly stop. Fordham will replace Stanford on CC’s list of top universities. In addition, I won’t be able to get a job, because algorescousin thinks I am being mean to his university. In fact, who knows, the world may just blow up.</p>
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<p>Why are you posting on the CC USNews thread then? Clearly USNews thinks Fordham, and in fact nearly every other school is inferior to Stanford.</p>
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<p>Dartmouth is very LAC-like.</p>
<p>In advanced courses, I don’t see a difference in a class of 7 versus a class of 15-20. If you feel you’re not going to get the attention you need in a class of 15-20, I believe something is wrong with you.</p>
<p>I had courses at Berkeley with 15-20 students…typically they are very specialized upper-division liberal arts courses. A class of 7 may be too small to have a variety of opinions to foster meaningful discussion/debate.</p>
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<p>Oh please. When I matriculated, Chicago was ranked behind Hopkins. #14 vs. #15. Then Chicago officials decided to “dine” with USNews officials and manipulate it’s data and jump to #9 place in 2008. +6 spots? Only because you guys had a 2% increase in Student retention rates (#22 to #20?) </p>
<p>Yes, Chicago has in the past been tied with Hopkins or been ranked below Hopkins. Wahhh Wahhh. ;)</p>
<p>Ring<em>of</em>fire: As an academic institution, Johns Hopkins has lead the nation as the #1 recipient of peer reviewed research and development federal grants than any other university in the nation for the last 29 years in a row. JHU has consistently been rated among the top 10 for PA scores since the inception of USNWR rankings came out in 1983.</p>
<p>Last year, Hopkins was tied with Chicago, Columbia, and Cornell in terms of PA scores. </p>
<p>Academically, Hopkins has more Nobel Laureates than Duke. (32 for Hopkins versus 12 for Duke) One of them technically doesn’t count because Duke stole Nobel Laureate Peter Agre (the dude who discovered ‘aquaporins’ from Hopkins) by throwing gobbs of money at him and promising that he run some institute or something. He later returned back to Hopkins a year later since he said he felt “at home” here. :D</p>
<p>Phead – a question for you. The son of one of my schoolmates, Wen Shi, graduated from Hopkins in just 2 and half years. I knew that he had a lot of APs, but still how did he manage that? I am sure you know who Wen Shi is, correct?</p>
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<p>It was reporting data incorrectly, if you’d actually look at the facts. Read the Chicago Tribune article on it. Morse, the man who manages the rankings, said that he was shocked that the administration had been reporting its data so incorrectly. Of course, once Chicago actually starts sending in the correct data sets, everyone gets pis*y and starts complaining about data manipulation because the sleeping giant awakens and moves up 6 spots. Go cry somewhere else, Phead.</p>
<p>As opposed to how it is now reporting SAT scores correctly? Just saying…</p>