Compare VT to these other universities

MD0058
Fri, 30 Jan 2015 00:50:33 +0000

@Emotive: I agree with you to a certain extent, e.g. I believe that it is possible to turn out better prepared with say a math or engineering degree from George Mason University than from UCBerkeley, depending on how one has approached the required coursework, and followed up on teaching oneself more after each semester and ultimately long after graduation. Curricula do not vary that widely across schools no matter what their “rank.” That might perhaps explain for example why a particular grad student at say UIUC with a BS from Bucknell does as well or better than another with a BS from UMich.

However, perceptions still linger, and when such perceptions are collated and codified, they are called “data.” To be fair some elements of “data” used for compiling ranks are indeed objective, e.g. amount of research funding, number of publications per year etc. But then again, getting larger federal grants or generating more papers does not necessarily imply better quality. So we fall back upon soft data such as translating peer-surveys to reputation scores (which again depends on “mere opinions”) and perhaps weighting them together with the aforementioned hard (but sometimes meaningless) data, to get composite scores. I don’t think these composite scores are better measures than the widely perceived faculty quality of various departments, when such perceptions are held and voiced by those actually working in the fields in question, and when there is good consensus among these perceptions. What’s more, these perceptions don’t seem to conflict very much with the ranking scores either!