<p>
On the contrary, the NRC rankings are more useless than most for undergraduate quality. At the graduate level, they are undoubtedly more accurate – though equally useless.</p>
<p>Of the 20 criteria used for the survey, precisely three are of interest to undergrads - publications per faculty member, citations per publication, and awards per faculty member. The other 17 criteria (time to degree, GRE scores, percent international students, percent with funding, health insurance, etc.) are of virtually no interest to an undergrad, as they have no bearing on his/her education.</p>
<p>I haven’t bothered to look at the new NRC rankings except for my own field, but I’d find any ranking with Penn State #1 in math highly dubious. A leap of 35 spots in 10 years with a comparatively small endowment seems questionable. Certainly when you consider only the undergraduate-pertinent aspects of the rankings (research productivity and faculty quality), Duke has a slight edge over CMU – as it does in the old NRC ranking and the US News ranking in math, which are based solely on faculty views of quality.</p>
<p>[Mathematics</a> Rankings — PhDs.org Graduate School Guide](<a href=“http://graduate-school.phds.org/rankings/mathematics]Mathematics”>http://graduate-school.phds.org/rankings/mathematics)</p>
<p><a href=“http://grad-schools.usnews.rankingsandreviews.com/best-graduate-schools/top-mathematics-programs/rankings[/url]”>http://grad-schools.usnews.rankingsandreviews.com/best-graduate-schools/top-mathematics-programs/rankings</a>
<a href=“http://www.stat.tamu.edu/~jnewton/nrc_rankings/area31.html[/url]”>http://www.stat.tamu.edu/~jnewton/nrc_rankings/area31.html</a></p>