<p>Shouldn’t such numbers (including THES) be corrected for number of PhD students produced (in total or normalized per year)? Harvard certainly would do well in that regard, but Berkeley produces huge numbers of grads and has done so for a long time. I’m not sure how they would fare when measuring tenured profs as a function of total PhDs produced though they would certainly be in the upper group. I’m just not sure if Cal would be ranked in the top 3.</p>
<p>Actually, I don’t think so. Correct me if I’m wrong, but I doubt that Michigan allows free transfer into, say, engineering. Neither does Cornell. And CERTAINLY Berkeley and many of the other UC’s don’t. This I know for a fact. I know plenty of people who got quite respectable grades in engineering prereqs (i.e. a 3.3 in lower-division coursework) at Berkeley who nevertheless still were not permitted to transfer into engineering.</p>
<p>I think I have to agree with Not Quite Old and kk19131 when I say that these numbers have to be normalized for both population breadth and pure population size. Obviously Berkeley is going to be better represented among English professors than, say, MIT will, for the simple reason that MIT doesn’t even have an English PhD program. I agree that Berkeley has a braod suite of strong PhD programs. But that doesn’t necessarily imply that Berkeley is a better school to go to for your PhD. It depends on what discipline you are talking about, especially when compared to peer schools. </p>
<p>After all, when you’re talking about PhD programs, the strength of other departments are your school is largely irrelevant because you can’t switch. You can’t just enter a PhD program in electrical engineering and decide that you don’t like it and simply switch over to your school’s PhD program in English instead. Once you enter a PhD program, you’re pretty much restricted.</p>
<p>So take the case of MIT. Obviously MIT has weak or nonexistent PhD programs in the humanities. But who cares? As an MIT PhD student, you obviously want to study something technical. These schools should therefore be judged on the things that they do. If you don’t like those things, then obviously you shouldn’t go there. </p>
<p>And, like I said, if you’re an undergrad, you should pay careful attention to your ability to switch around. Who cares if Berkeley has a great engineering school if you, as an undergrad, are not going to be allowed to switch into engineering? To you, it is basically as if the engineering program doesn’t even exist. </p>
<p>None of this is to say that Berkeley is a bad graduate school. Indeed, I happen to think that Berkeley is one of the very best places to get your PhD. But I don’t know that there is clear evidence that it is really better than Stanford. </p>
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<p>Uh, I don’t know why you responded to this gambit. After all, the latest THES ranking (2005) actually says that Stanford is actually BETTER than Berkeley.</p>
<p>Now don’t get me wrong. I don’t particularly believe in THES. But the fact is, THES would have you believe that Stanford is better than Berkeley.</p>
<p>I believe the situation Sakky describes is typical of those colleges that organize themselves into separate schools for undergrads. Given the frequency with which undergraduates, given the choice, change majors, one has to conclude that these more rigid programs leave students forced to complete a program they do not really want, transfer, or lose valuable time trying to switch into a different school.</p>
<p>This system makes for predictability for the college, but it is hard to see it as anything but a disadvantage for the student.</p>
<p>When, sakky, one of di most trusted CCers, speaks, Manfred is listening.
But this is what I said in post #19:</p>
<p>For Ph.D though, Harvard and Berkeley each has a slight upper hand over Stanford in terms of all-around academic strengths</p>
<p>For Harvard, no one needs further explanation: Harvard is Harvard.</p>
<p>For Berkeley, I would just simpy quote this.</p>
<p>According to the National Research Council, Berkeley ranks first nationally in the number of graduate programs in the top ten in their fields (97%, 35 of 36 programs) and first nationally in the number of “distinguished” programs for the scholarship of the faculty (32 programs).[24] Berkeley is the only university in the nation to have all of its PhD programs ranked in the top five by US News and World Report.</p>
<p>And let readers decide which school has a slight upper hand in terms of all-around academic PhD strengths </p>
<p>I think schools like Cornell fit this description well. Cornell offers any major you could ever dream of and is in the top 25 or so in all of them (and much higher in many of them). It’s one the main reasons Cornell is at the top of my list, tied with Princeton.</p>
<p>Sakky, the transfer from LSA to Engineering at Michigan is guaranteed for students who meet the requirements (3.0+ GPA in the science pre-requisits). Obviously, a student who fails Calculus and Physics will not be allowed to transfer into the CoE. But a 3.0 LSA student who gets Bs in Calculus and Physics is pretty much guaranteed a spot in the College of Engineering. I have known dozens of students who applied to transfer from LSA to the CoE at Michigan, most of them were 3.0-3.5 students, and 100% of them made it. Transfering into Ross though, that’s another story…but that’s the only exception.</p>
<p>I personally think we should differentiate between the universities that are the best all-around academically and universities that give the best all-around education. I think those are two distinctly different topics. I think all elite universities provide very well rounded educations. But not all elite universities and colleges are equally well-rounded academically.</p>
<p>First, not sure why PhD programs are being discussed because I thought this was regarding undergrad</p>
<p>Well-Rounded and All around great schools include the Ivies, Stanford, Duke, Northwestern, Michigan, and UVA (great party scenes at many of these, especially the publics)</p>
<p>I’m hesitant to add Georgetown to that list, and UChicago is well-rounded academically but I wouldn’t say socially…so you can add that if you like</p>
<p>I want to commend you guys for soldiering on with such an important topic in the wake of Steve Irwin’s death. I, for one, haven’t been this surprised by a cause of death since Liberace died of AIDS.</p>
<p>I, too was deeply shocked and saddened by the tragic and sudden death of Steve, aka the Crocodile Hunter. Steve was beloved by millions of fans and animal lovers around the world and was arguably one of our planet’s most passionate conservationists.</p>
<p>May he rest in peace…
O angels Open the heaven gate wide & let steve in….immolate stingrays NOW>>>></p>
<p>“I, for one, haven’t been this surprised by a cause of death since Liberace died of AIDS.”</p>
<p>I mean, he’s the CROCODILE hunter. I’m sure people wanted to hear he died wrestling a croc, not being stabbed in the chest by a stingray. Tragic, nonetheless….</p>
<p>By “cause” I meant death by generic deadly seacreature. People on collegeconfidential are talking about what a conservationist he was. I’m sure he was, but why was he called the crocodile HUNTER? They didn’t call Mother Teresa “The Butcher of Calcutta.”</p>
<p>probably because he hunted crocodiles down in dangerous areas where they were prone to being shot from residents and re-located them to a safer place in the wild</p>
<p>Yeah, but that’s precisely the point. What if you don’t meet those requirements? As we both know, it’s VERY easy to end up with a sub-3.0 GPA in science prereq’s at Michigan (and at Cal). Plenty of people do. </p>
<p>The part I really don’t understand is why is it that the engineering schools at Michigan (or at Cal) not allow people to switch in who don’t make the GPA cutoff, but continue to allow their own students who perform terribly to stay in the school. For example, why is somebody from Michigan LSA who has a 2.9 in science prereqs barred from entering EE, but a current EE student with a 2.1 allowed to stay? What SHOULD happen is that that EE guy with the 2.1 should be kicked out of engineering to make room for the LSA guy with the 2.9, because, frankly, that LSA guy is better than that EE guy. The same is true at Cal - they continue to allow EECS students with terrible grades to stay in the major, but they bar people from L&S with 3.5’s from getting in. </p>
<p>Of course, ideally, both schools should have enough slack capacity to accomodate all students into all majors, the way that Stanford does. But if you don’t have that, you can at least try to solve the inequity where bad incumbents get priority treatment over better outsiders.</p>
<p>Yeah, that quote is pretty good marketing, and I would expect nothing less from Berkeley’s marketing department (or any other school’s marketing department). After all, the job of a marketing department is to make a school look good. Just like Coca Cola’s marketing department wants to make Coca Cola look cool. </p>
<p>But if you look at the paragraph, you will see that while everything is factually true, there is more there than meets the eye.</p>
<p>For example, consider the following statement:</p>
<p>“Berkeley is the only university in the nation to have all of its PhD programs ranked in the top five by US News and World Report.” </p>
<p>This is a true statement. But it is true because there are certain programs that Berkeley doesn’t even have. Take Petroleum Engineering. Stanford is ranked #1 in PetE for PhD programs. Berkeley doesn’t even have a PhD Petroleum Engineering program. Not anymore, anyway. In fact, in the old days, Berkeley actually did have a Petroleum Engineering program, but it got shut down from lack of interest (it was folded into CEE). But the fact that Berkeley no longer has an independent PetE PhD program means that Berkeley can now say that all of its PhD programs are ranked in the USNews top 5 (because the program was not a top 5 program when it existed). But come on, I think we can all agree that Berkeley shouldn’t really “benefit” from shutting down a program. </p>
<p>Basically, the reason why Berkeley can say that they are the only school with all PhD programs in the top 5 in USNews and Stanford can’t is because Stanford has one program that is #6 (Sociology). That’s it. ONE program that just missed the top 5. On the other hand, like I said, Stanford has certain PhD programs that are ranked #1 that Berkeley doesn’t even have at all. Hence, if Stanford simply decided to shut down its Sociology program, then it too could say that it has all of its programs in the top 5. But come on, that’s not evidence that Berkeley is really better than Stanford. </p>
<p>Now, let’s take the first part of the quote, which is this:</p>
<p>“According to the National Research Council, Berkeley ranks first nationally in the number of graduate programs in the top ten in their fields (97%, 35 of 36 programs) and first nationally in the number of “distinguished” programs for the scholarship of the faculty (32 programs)”</p>
<p>Actually, if you look at the NRC data, out of the 41 programs that are rated, Stanford has 40 of them, Berkeley has 36. Basically, Stanford gets hurt by having some programs in the NRC that aren’t that highly rated, but in which Berkeley doesn’t even have a program at all.</p>
<p>For example, Stanford is ranked #16 in pharmacology. But Berkeley doesn’t even have a pharmacology program. Stanford is #19 in religion, and Berkeley doesn’t even have a religion program. So that basically means that you’re punishing Stanford for having a program, but rewarding Berkeley for not having a program. Stanford has a #18 ranked oceanography program (with a rather mediocre 2.98 score), but Berkeley doesn’t even have an oceanography program, etc. </p>
<p>So Stanford shouldn’t be ‘punished’ just because it chooses to have some programs that (relatively speaking) aren’t that good, when Berkeley doesn’t even have programs at all. While I don’t want to do the math, I believe that if we were to take the top 36 programs at Stanford (whatever they are), and compare them to the 36 programs at Berkeley, the score differences would be negligible. </p>
<p>The point is, Berkeley shouldn’t be rewarded for simply not having a program at all in a certain field. Yes, Berkeley has 35 out of 36 programs ranked in the top 10 in the NRC, but that’s because Berkeley simply doesn’t have any programs at all in certain fields. Let’s face it. If Berkeley did have a program in Oceanography, it would probably not be a top 10 program, at least in the early years while the program was being built out. But because Berkeley doesn’t have one at all, Berkeley can just say that out of its 36 existing programs, 35 are in the top 10. It’s a true statement, but misleading.</p>
<p>Now don’t get me wrong. I am not saying that Stanford is better than Berkeley at the PhD level. I am simply saying that I see no convincing proof that Berkeley is better than Stanford. It looks pretty even to me, if you were to actually use fair criteria.</p>