<p>For those who keep putting those graduate rankings, I guess according to them, Dartmouth must be horrible and Duke must be ranked lower than Wisc too. For them, I’d suggest them to please look up graduate placement, WSJ ranking, law school placement, med school admit rate (isn’t wisc’s like only 50% or so on that?), fraction of students winning prestigious scholarships (Rhodes/Marshall/Gates/Fulbright)–all those UNDERGRAD stats.</p>
<p>Or they can look up the CEO’s produced, Nobel prize winning grads, Pulitzer winning grads, Who’s Who listed grads, Peace Corp grads, Teach for America grads, Oscar winning grads etc etc.
I have no idea where that med school item comes from as they don’t report that anywhere I know of. They do report that they send the 5th most to med schools of any university.</p>
<p>PSU is well below UW. UW is very close to and slightly above Illinois.</p>
<p>Ohio State or Minnesota? Which is better?</p>
<ol>
<li>Michigan and Northwestern</li>
<li>Illinois</li>
<li>Wisconsin</li>
<li>Penn State</li>
<li>Rest of them, who cares anymore.</li>
</ol>
<p>barrons, </p>
<p>I think you need to take schools’ size into account when looking at numbers. This is especially true if you are using them to laud Wisconsin, one of the largest U in the country and almost 4x the size of Northwestern (undergrad). I know how you love that CEO number for Wisc. But when normalized by the student population, NU is actually just slightly ahead of Wisc (are all of those that put “Wisconsin” on that survey went to the one in Madison anyway? I saw the table and some had Wisc-Madison but some had “Wisconsin”). The same goes for Peace Corps. I don’t know about the number of Putlizer Prize winning grads; my guess is Northwestern would be ahead, probably way ahead in the number when normalized by school size since it’s so strong in journalism (Medill is known for producing many), theater, and music. </p>
<p>Not that I think numbers like CEOs (we are talking about 15 CEO out of almost 300,000 Wisc alums for the last 4 decades; a number that pertains to ridiculously small fraction) carry as much weight as med school/law school admit rate/placement (NU has 90% admit rate for those who pursue further studies; 41% of them were premeds) or undergrad scholarships…etc anyway.</p>
<p>As for Who’s Who in America have graduated, NU is ranked 7th, not bad for a school of medisum size.</p>
<p><a href=“http://www.wcas.northwestern.edu/welcome/facts.html[/url]”>http://www.wcas.northwestern.edu/welcome/facts.html</a></p>
<p>My mistake on the med school number. I just found that I was confusing “UWM” with UW-Madision (it was Milwaukee). But 5-th most to med schools isn’t suprising considering Wisc’s sheer size.</p>
<p>There are lots of large schools out there as large or larger than UW and I was not picking on NU. To finish at or near the top in so many areas while maintaining a commitment to taking many instate kids is not that easily done. It’s much simpler to take a relative few wealthy smart kids and have then turn out well. The old scoring a run when starting out on third base comes to mind.</p>
<p>Groenveld, there are no undergraduate rankings for Political Science departments. In terms of graduate rankings, according to the last USNWR ranking of Political Science departments back in 2005, all but two CIC (Big 10+ Chicago) schools were ranked among the top 25, which is pretty amazing. Anyway, the Big 10 Political Science rankings are as follows (overall PS ranking):</p>
<ol>
<li>University of Michigan-Ann Arbor (#3)</li>
<li>University of Chicago (#8)</li>
<li>Ohio State University (#13)</li>
<li>University of Wisconsin-Madison (#16)</li>
<li>University of Minnesota-Twin Cities (#18)</li>
<li>Northwestern University (#21)</li>
<li>Michigan State University (#22)</li>
<li>University of Illinois-Urbana Champaign (#22)</li>
<li>Indiana University-Bloomington (#25)</li>
<li>University of Iowa (#25)</li>
</ol>
<p>Note that new Political Science graduate rankings will be coming out in 2 weeks.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>What about Penn State?</p>
<p>Dude! What are you doing on this thread! LOL!!! PSU was not ranked among the top 25 according to the last USNWR. But I did go to the online USNWR website to check the extended list and PSU was #35. Purdue did not make the top 50!</p>
<p>^I’m not big on ranking, but a least there’s some scintilla of justice; that Penn State and Purdue weren’t Top 50 in poli-sci; these are 2 tech-oriented schools and to rank them high in a liberal arts-y/social science-y area like political science would have exposed USNWR to being a total fraud (as it is, it’s still largely fraudulent). … much like the one survey ranking of Indiana U’s engineering college and MSU’s architecture school, when neither school has either… that kind of stuff…</p>
<p>Penn State, excellent in many aspects of engineering; very good in business, gets such a free ride in many of its programs simply because its admissions standards to its main campus in State College is high; and that’s because of its position in such a large state, it really lacks the competition of any other large flagship, residential school (it has Pitt, to a degree, but Pitt, though very good, is still largely a local commuter school). Penn State also, for years, sits pretty in its Ivy League-dominated region of the nation – the Northeast USA, where there traditionally has been a lack of high quality state schools, flagship or otherwise – Rutgers being the sole exception in this, the oldest, most populous region of the nation.</p>
<p>Any input on Ohio State vs Minnesota? These are the two schools I’m trying to decide between, the cost for both are about equal after scholarships.</p>
<p>Ohio State for everything but chemical enginering</p>
<p>am i about right… btw i also can’t stand minnesota or twin cities for some weird stupid reason but it just is there… so … how 'bout them Dolphins ?</p>
<p>I plan on studying History and English. Anyother input for my decision between Ohio State and Minnesota?</p>
<p>As much as I hate saying this, I would probably go with Ohio State. Academically, Minnesota is slightly better, but OSU has a more lively and spirited campus and a more loyal alumni network. Plus Columbus has that “college town” feel and it is a tad bit warmer than the Twin cities.</p>
<p>I love Michigan–dearly–but I’m surprised so many people want to tie it with Northwestern. I’d give Northwestern the edge. I’m not going to dare wade into the murky waters of ranking the other nine.</p>
<p>I go to northwestern so i am obviously biased but coming from long island, the mecca of college prestige/ranking obsessed students, i can say with absolute certainty that northwestern is held much higher than any of the other state schools that are in the big 10. personally i turned down columbia, duke, tufts, hopkins, emory, wash u, nyu, and uchicago for northwestern for its integrated science program which is totally unique (money also wasnt an issue). by the way, NU’s organic chemistry program is one of the most intense in the nation, we wont even accept credits from harvard anymore. i never thought there could be such a debate- just the caliber of people i know that go to northwestern and the other state schools, umich (honors mind you) included, there is no comparison. none at all.</p>
<p>NowWhat, I turned down many of the schools you did, including Chicago, Columbia, Duke and Northwestern to attend Michigan. I am not sure I understand your point.</p>
<p>“…just the caliber of people i know that go to northwestern and the other state schools, umich (honors mind you) included, there is no comparison…”</p>
<p>As for your claim that Northwestern students are of a much higher calibre than Michigan Honors students, I don’t know what to say. You do realize that the mean SAT score of honors students at Michigan is close to 1500 (old style) and the range is between 1400 and 1600? If I am not mistaken, that’s equivallent to the top 50% of the students at Northwestern.</p>
<p>Iowa is getting seriously underrated on this board. I see a lot of people putting it last or in a group at the bottom which I think is harsh. I will agree with NW, Mich, and UW being unquestionably higher, but none of the other schools are unquestionably better. I saw somebody put Iowa at no. 8 for humanities which is laughable considering there english dept. is one of the nation’s best, probably without peer in the Big 10; NW and Mich. are the only schools that could possibly compare on that front. Iowa doesn’t draw as many OOS apps as other Big Ten schools because of perceived location problems, but anybody who has been to Iowa city esp. on a football weekend can tell you Iowa City is a sweet college town.
That being said, my rankings:
1.Northwestern
2.Michigan
3. UW-Madison
4. Penn State
5. Iowa/Ohio State/Illinois (tie)
8. Minnesota
9. Indiana
10. Purdue/Mich St.</p>
<p>Northwestern
Michigan
Wisconsin
Illinois
Penn State
Ohio State
Indiana
Iowa
Minnesota
Purdue
Michigan State</p>
<p>Northwestern
Michigan
Wisconsin
Illinois
Penn State
Indiana
Minnesota
Purdue
OSU
Iowa
Michigan St.</p>