<p>^^^Wisconsin has always been a top graduate program. I’m surprised you’re surprised.</p>
<p>Seven of the top 22 schools are part of the CIC-Big Ten. That is very impressive!</p>
<p>
Nope, UCR is currently developing its own med school. UCLA has its own med school. We’ve been over this before.</p>
<p>
The SF Bay Area and Boston are true academic supernovas.</p>
<p>“Nope, UCR is currently developing its own med school. UCLA has its own med school. We’ve been over this before.”</p>
<p>Well until that time…:-)</p>
<p>^ Hey, my way of “gaming” Cal’s grad rankings like some do for the other rankings. Just presenting Cal’s case in the best, and IMHO, most accurate light. ;-)</p>
<p>Though we should also add Davis’ grad programs as well since that was originally Berkeley’s agricultural school…long before the southern branch campus came to exist.</p>
<p>
Uh, no it doesn’t. It ranks one humanities discipline (English). The others are social sciences. Major humanities fields like philosophy, art history, religious studies, and classics are completely ignored.</p>
<p>There is nothing more useless than graduate rankings. Undergraduates shouldn’t be using them because 70% of students change their majors at least once, and any prospective graduate student who relies on rankings to make his/her list deserves to be rejected everywhere. What good are they?</p>
<p>[Never</a> mind, I figured out who uses them.](<a href=“http://berkeley.edu/about/rank.shtml]Never”>http://berkeley.edu/about/rank.shtml)</p>
<p>^lol Berkeley phail</p>
<p>
Very true. However, if a college offers breadth and depth in many academic departments, isn’t that important and beneficial for an undergrad?</p>
<p>So says the student whose schools don’t do that great in these rankings…:rolleyes:</p>
<p>warblers, those are the old NRC rankings. </p>
<p>
I’m sure Penn touts that #1 ranking in graduate business…oh, right…it’s not. Just for undergrad. What a joke.</p>
<p>But everyone knows only the number of Rhodes winners really matters. All the rest is just so–academic. It makes my head spin–all these numbers.</p>
<p>
So says the student whose undergraduate and graduate fields are not ranked by USNWR and couldn’t care less. If you want to get into a “mine is bigger than yours” competition, my school has 5 professors in my field to Berkeley’s 1 and HSPM’s 0, so I’m not exactly insecure over here. </p>
<p>I do wonder why they’re made. Law and medical school rankings, sure. Those are more one-size-fits-all. But graduate rankings? Not so much.</p>
<p>
Naturally. To what extent, however, should that be used? People manage to select LACs without relying on program rankings - why is it so difficult to do the same for universities? I have no problem with people using them as a tool; I do have a problem with people who use them as a crutch.</p>
<p>Because it helps break down a monolithic place with maybe 2000-3000 profs and 100 depts into things you can actually use. You’ll take the most classes in your major(s) so it might be nice to know if that group is known or unknown. Is the dept doing new things or just marking time until retirement. A great engineering school won’t help a future English/History major much. Probably will never enter one of their buildings if it’s a big school.</p>
<p>
Maybe you should ask the National Research Council why they spend so much time and effort measuring graduate programs…and no effort at all in measuring undergrad programs…which is more trivial?..hmmmmmmmm</p>
<p>Funny how barrons touts US News when it serves UW’s purposes but dismisses US News as a “second rate magazine” when it ranks UW’s undergrad school below where he thinks it should be.</p>
<p>when do the 2011 LAC/National University rankings come out?</p>
<p>August …</p>
<p>
Considering it’s been 17 years since the data for the last set of rankings was collected and 15 years since its release and we still have no updated rankings, I’d say it’s not too high on their list of priorities either.</p>
<p>I’m skeptical of the usefulness of graduate rankings regardless of who creates them. Especially at the undergraduate level, it’s foolish to rely on them. Take my own undergrad school, for example. Duke splits anthropology into biological and cultural, which are two entirely separate departments. The NRC, however, lumps them together. What does that mean for a student? Similarly, Duke’s art history program (which certainly exists) is not even listed/ranked. Should a student assume it is inferior to UGA’s at the bottom of the list? Continuing with art history, look at NYU. It’s ranked #1 for art history, but 90% (an estimate) of those faculty members don’t teach undergrads. Undergraduates interested in marine science at MIT or USCD would be similarly disappointed, as those programs are simply not intended for undergraduates. Granted these are the exceptions rather than the rule, but the ratings are certainly not fool-proof.</p>
<p>Furthermore, not all of the criteria that go into the NRC ratings are useful for undergrads. The length of time taken to complete a PhD, for example, is of little interest, as is the number of graduate students. An undergraduate would be more concerned with finishing his/her bachelor’s on time, and the number of majors or students in the undergraduate classes would be more significant than the number of graduate students.</p>
<p>The NRC rankings are interesting for administrators and faculty, which is really who they’re intended for.</p>
<p>Stanford’s rankings:</p>
<p>professional schools
business #1(tied with Harvard)
law #3
medical school #11
education #3
engineering #2</p>
<p>sciences
math #2 (tied with Berkeley, Harvard, Princeton)
physics #1 (tied with Caltech,Harvard, MIT)
computer science #1(tied with Berkeley, CMU, MIT)
biology #1
statistics #1
chemistry #4
earth science #3</p>
<p>humanities and social sciences
English #2 (tied with Yale, after Berkeley)
economics #5
sociology #5
political science #1 (tied with Harvard, Princeton, after MIT)
psycology #1 (tied with Berkeley)
history #1(tied with Berkeley, Princeton, Yale)</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>I think the answer would not be because it is trivial, but because it would be virtually impossible. What is the basis for the graduate peer assessments by either the NRC or US News? It would seem to be a combination of research output (primarily publication quantity, quality, impact) and the halo effect of past rankings. How would anyone isolate the quality of undergraduate department research output from graduate department output to perform an undergraduate assessment on the same basis? What would be the basis for LAC department scores? Teaching quality? Nope. I don’t think anyone knows how to assess that by any method but unreliable student surveys.</p>
<p>rjk: “Seven of the top 22 schools are part of the CIC-Big Ten. That is very impressive!”</p>
<p>Impressive Indeed!! And I do not see either USC or NYU made the list! ;p</p>
<p>Go Big Ten! lol</p>
<p>
And grad students. It is after all a graduate ranking.</p>
<p>Sure, it has some issues. All ranking methodologies do. However, the grad rankings are an excellent proxy for department and faculty strength. These issues can be important for a prospective undergrad.</p>