Is Dartmouth is a sub-standard school?

[spencer11111]

<p>Just wondering: does the low placement of Dartmouth in all the international university rankings suggest that it is highly overvalued in the US?</p>

<p>In the Times Higher Education Supplement, UC Berkeley is ranked #8 whereas Dartmouth is #61.</p>

<p>For Shanghai Jiaotong, UC Berkeley is #4 whereas Dartmouth is ranked in the #102-150 range (no specific ranking is given for school ranked behind #100).</p>

<p>For Newsweek, UC Berkeley is #5, and Dartmouth is unranked as it does not even made it to the top 100.</p>

<p>Dartmouth is viewed as a good school in the US due to the US News ranking, but internationally, it is viewed a a sub-standard school and a bad-egg of the Ivy League (eg, Harvard #1 in THES, Shanghai and Newsweek).</p>

<p>So is Dartmouth hugely over-valuated within the US?</p>

[Rister_Chutophs]

<p>Those rankings are based on research. </p>

<p>The Dartmouth faculty is rather devoted to teaching the undergraduate students than publishing research.</p>

[Abhi08544]

<p>I think, THES ranks NUS over caltech :S</p>

[aw5k]

<p>The OP already got some interesting replies on the Dartmouth forum … :)</p>

[Lakshya_M]

<p>THES is completely BS.</p>

[spencer11111]

<h2>Times Higher Education Supplement 2006</h2>

<p>** 1 Harvard University United States**
2 University of Cambridge United Kingdom
3 University of Oxford United Kingdom
4= Massachusetts Institute of Technology United States
4= Yale University United States
6 Stanford University United States
7 California Institute of Technology United States
8 University of California, Berkeley United States
9 Imperial College London United Kingdom
10 Princeton University United States
11 University of Chicago United States
12 Columbia University United States
13 Duke University United States
14 Peking University China
15 Cornell University United States
16 Australian National University Australia
17 London School of Economics and Political… United Kingdom
:::::
61= Dartmouth College United States</p>

[spencer11111]

<p>

@Lakshya M

THES is completely BS.

I don’t think it warrants your “completely bullshlt” condemnation. The THES got most things right. For example
-HYPS ranked higher than Chicago Cornell and Duke, commonly regarded as lower Ivies.

• Oxbridge tops for UK, follow closely by Imperial at #9 and LSE at #17. The general structure for UK universities ranking is 1/2 shared by Oxbridge and 3/4 shared by Imperial/LSE.</p>

[spencer11111]

<p>

@Rister_Chutophs

Those rankings are based on research.

While research is one of the criteria for THES (citation count), the ranking is more affected by “Peer Review”, which is basically a score for the entire university, undergrad included. The faculty-student ratio and international students are also mostly undergrad related criteria.</p>

[spencer11111]

<p>The Shanghai Jiaotong ranking is completely based on research, and Dartmouth falls flat on that.</p>

[Lakshya_M]

<p>Alright, it’s not completely BS. It got most of the top 15 right. Does that make it’s rankings credible? No. The fact that Dartmouth is 61 proves that. If you really believe Dartmouth deserves that ranking, then go ahead think what you will.</p>

[spencer11111]

<p>

@Lakshya M

Alright, it’s not completely BS. It got most of the top 15 right. Does that make it’s rankings credible? No. The fact that Dartmouth is 61 proves that. If you really believe Dartmouth deserves that ranking, then go ahead think what you will.

Dartmouth enjoys good students, high SAT entrance score, good reputation and so on because the of US News ranking, which place it damn high!</p>

<p>The question is whether US News has been over-rating Dartmouth all the time because it is commonly regarded as an Ivy League blah blah blah whereas in THES and Shanghai Jiaotong, Dartmouth is rated like nothing more than a crap school. And furthermore, THES and Shanghai utilize completely different criteria to arrive at the same result!</p>

[spencer11111]

<p>

@joshua007

I think so.</p>

<p>Dartmouth is a good school, but it is not as superb as UC Berkeley, in general. Dartmouth strengths are its undergrad education and its small-size student population. But this school has this reputation that enrolls HYPSM rejects. I’ve got many firends who went there and liked it. Some of them did not. But all of them went there because they could not get into Harvard, Stanford and the like, or they could not get into Berkeley as an OOS student.

Yes that’s quite true. Besides, HYPSM receive a lot more press coverage on a day-to-day basis because they are doing so many life-changing and ground-breaking research everyday, while Dartmouth produce practically nothing. </p>

<p>In my opinion, while Dartmouth is the most overvalued school in the US, Berkeley is the most undervalued. It is superb in research, has extremely good reputation overseas and offers challenging undergraduate experience. Yet it receives less able students in the US, just because of that US News ranking…</p>

[Lakshya_M]

<p>First, your assumption that everybody applies to US universities based on US news rankings or any other rankings, for that matter, is false. Even if they do factor in rankings when choosing colleges to apply to, very few actually decide to go somewhere just because it is ranked higher. </p>

<p>

The question is whether US News has been over-rating Dartmouth all the time because it is commonly regarded as an Ivy League blah blah blah

</p>

<p>This is how US News does their rankings:</p>

<p>

Peer assessment (weighting: 25 percent). The U.S. News ranking formula gives greatest weight to the opinions of those in a position to judge a school’s undergraduate academic excellence. The peer assessment survey allows the top academics we consult—presidents, provosts, and deans of admissions—to account for intangibles such as faculty dedication to teaching. Each individual is asked to rate peer schools’ academic programs on a scale from 1 (marginal) to 5 (distinguished). Those who don’t know enough about a school to evaluate it fairly are asked to mark “don’t know.” Synovate, an opinion-research firm based near Chicago, collected the data; of the 4,089 people who were sent questionnaires, 58 percent responded.</p>

<p>Retention (20 percent in national universities and liberal arts colleges and 25 percent in master’s and comprehensive colleges). The higher the proportion of freshmen who return to campus the following year and eventually graduate, the better a school is apt to be at offering the classes and services students need to succeed. This measure has two components: six-year graduation rate (80 percent of the retention score) and freshman retention rate (20 percent). The graduation rate indicates the average proportion of a graduating class who earn a degree in six years or less; we consider freshman classes that started from 1996 through 1999. Freshman retention indicates the average proportion of freshmen entering from 2001 through 2004 who returned the following fall.</p>

<p>Faculty resources (20 percent). Research shows that the more satisfied students are about their contact with professors, the more they will learn and the more likely it is they will graduate. We use six factors from the 2005-06 academic year to assess a school’s commitment to instruction. Class size has two components: the proportion of classes with fewer than 20 students (30 percent of the faculty resources score) and the proportion with 50 or more students (10 percent of the score).</p>

<p>In our model, a school benefits more for having a large proportion of classes with fewer than 20 students and a small proportion of large classes. Faculty salary (35 percent) is the average faculty pay, plus benefits, during the 2004-05 and 2005-06 academic years, adjusted for regional differences in the cost of living (using indexes from the consulting firm Runzheimer International). We also weigh the proportion of professors with the highest degree in their fields (15 percent), the student-faculty ratio (5 percent), and the proportion of faculty who are full time (5 percent).</p>

<p>Student selectivity (15 percent). A school’s academic atmosphere is determined in part by the abilities and ambitions of the student body. We therefore factor in test scores of enrollees on the SAT or ACT tests (50 percent of the selectivity score); the proportion of enrolled freshmen (for all national universities and liberal arts colleges) who graduated in the top 10 percent of their high school classes and (for institutions in the universities-master’s and comprehensive colleges-bachelor’s categories) the top 25 percent (40 percent); and the acceptance rate, or the ratio of students admitted to applicants (10 percent). The data are for the fall 2005 entering class.</p>

<p>Financial resources (10 percent). Generous per-student spending indicates that a college can offer a wide variety of programs and services. U.S. News measures the average spending per student on instruction, research, student services, and related educational expenditures in the 2004 and 2005 fiscal years.</p>

<p>Graduation rate performance (5 percent; only in national universities and liberal arts colleges). This indicator of “added value” shows the effect of the college’s programs and policies on the graduation rate of students after controlling for spending and student aptitude. We measure the difference between a school’s six-year graduation rate for the class that entered in 1999 and the rate we predicted for the class. If the actual graduation rate is higher than the predicted rate, the college is enhancing achievement.</p>

<p>Alumni giving rate (5 percent). The average percentage of alumni who gave to their school during 2003-04 and 2004-05 is an indirect measure of student satisfaction. To arrive at a school’s rank, we first calculated the weighted sum of its scores. The final scores were rescaled: The top school in each category was assigned a value of 100, and the other schools’ weighted scores were calculated as a proportion of that top score. Final scores for each ranked school were rounded to the nearest whole number and ranked in descending order. Schools that receive the same rank are listed in alphabetical order. Our rankings of accredited undergraduate business programs and engineering programs are based exclusively on peer assessment data gathered from the programs’ deans and senior faculty members.

</p>

<p>I’m not saying US News rankings are the end-all-be-all of rankings. I’m just saying that out of all that are out there, they’re by far the most credible. But you’re free to choose to believe whatever you wish to.</p>

[cellardweller]

<p>The position of Dartmouth in these international rankings is largely meaningless for US students, unless you plan to seek a job as an expatriate. Dartmouth is really a large LAC only slightly bigger than schools such as Middlebury. As the smallest Ivy with a very small graduate enrollments it simply won’t get much visibility internationally. Any school with similar enrollment would fair poorly in the rankings. 90% of international students come to the US as graduate students and therefore schools that have large numbers of them will reflect better in international rankings. </p>

<p>Characterizing it as a school for rejects for HYPSM is also besides the point. All lower Ivies, Chicago, Duke, Berkeley and others are in the same boat, some even more so.</p>

[Big_Brother_1984]

<p>

But this school has this reputation that enrolls HYPSM rejects.

</p>

<p>I agree with this actually. Although I’m sure that a lot of Dartmouth students end up very happy at the college and can’t imagine a place that would fit them better, I’m pretty sure a lot of Dartmouth students are/were HYPSM rejects, and would’ve gone to HYPSM had they been accepted. But so would most people. And Dartmouth is no different from places like Duke, Cornell, Brown, Berkeley, Columbia, etc. Infact, a lot of colleges have a “reputation” for being a place for HYPSM rejects, if that is even emphasized.</p>

<p>

But all of them went there because they could not get into Harvard, Stanford and the like, or they could not get into Berkeley as an OOS student.

</p>

<p>And I would expect that from most Stanford/Harvard applicants. But Berkeley? That’s going a little too far don’t you think? Ceteris paribus, if a person applied to both Dartmouth and Berkeley, he is going to choose Dartmouth. Berkeley’s a fine school, but it just doesn’t boast the opportunities that Dartmouth can give.</p>

[Lakshya_M]

<p>I wouldn’t go so far as saying a person would definitely choose Berkeley over Dartmouth. But lets not make this a Dartmouth Vs Berkeley thing. This is about telling off the ■■■■■ who thinks Dartmouth doesn’t deserve to be where it is.</p>

[Big_Brother_1984]

<p>

I wouldn’t go so far as saying a person would definitely choose Berkeley over Dartmouth. But lets not make this a Dartmouth Vs Berkeley thing.

</p>

<p>Hence my statement, ceteris paribus - everything else being the same. If a person applied to a certain college, we can assume that he had a sufficiently good enough reason to do so. This argument breaks down when students apply to one college, but not the other. </p>

<p>Unfortunately, this isn’t a perfectly economic world. There are some people who just like Berkeley better, and are successful cross-admits. It’s like how some people I met at Dartmouth actually chose it over both Harvard and Yale - and yes, they were successful cross-admits. So I guess that statement is my bad, Lakshya.</p>

<p>

This is about telling off the ■■■■■ who thinks Dartmouth doesn’t deserve to be where it is.

</p>

<p>Well, this should be about having productive discussions. I don’t think that’s the case this time, however. I think we can all agree that the THES and Jiaotong rankings are extremely flawed. If you were to tell any educated American here that you would choose to go to UT Austin over Dartmouth, he would probably laugh in your face. Dartmouth is simply the more desirable college. But that’s not what those rankings would have you thinking.</p>

[sefago]

<p>Things have radically changed since I last came here. The last time I came here Dartmouth was a dream school for most internationa students now it is a crap school that is being compared to Berkeley. Now I have nothing against berkeley but truth be told I don’t think berkeley students can touch dartmouth students. Berkeley is a public school. That means it caters for the general public. Dartmouth is an ivy- it caters for the elite few.Who cares about research anyway. Do you plan to go into academia. The school I attend- georgetown- even has a crappier ranking than dartmouth on the THES ranking and I would still not select berkeley over it. Berkeley won’t get me the connections I need.</p>

[sakky]

<p>

Dartmouth is a good school, but it is not as superb as UC Berkeley, in general. Dartmouth strengths are its undergrad education and its small-size student population. But this school has this reputation that enrolls HYPSM rejects. I’ve got many firends who went there and liked it. Some of them did not. But all of them went there because they could not get into Harvard, Stanford and the like, or they could not get into Berkeley as an OOS student.

</p>

<p>That’s interesting that you would say that. Sure, Dartmouth gets a lot of HYPSM rejects. But as cellardwellard said, frankly, so does Berkeley. Let’s be honest. There are a LOT of Berkeley students who would rather be going to (especially) Stanford but didn’t get in. </p>

<p>Frankly, I’m not sure whether Dartmouth really is better than Berkeley. The way I would characterize it is that Dartmouth caters to a different kind of student. Berkeley is very much a sink-or-swim environment. Some students do well in such an environment. Others do not. Dartmouth, on the other hand and as has been stated by others here, is basically a LAC. It’s a LAC with a bunch of graduate programs, but it’s still basically a LAC. So if you can believe that some students are better off going to, say, Williams or Amherst rather than Berkeley (and such students certainly exist), then it is equally true that there are some students who are better off going to Dartmouth than to Berkeley.</p>

[sakky]

<p>

Now I have nothing against berkeley but truth be told I don’t think berkeley students can touch dartmouth students. Berkeley is a public school. That means it caters for the general public. Dartmouth is an ivy- it caters for the elite few.

</p>

<p>Well, I don’t know that that logic holds. After all, Berkeley’s PhD programs are also “public”. Yet I think there is little dispute that Berkeley’s PhD programs in practically all disciplines are better than their counterparts at Dartmouth. Similarly, I think there is little dispute that the UCSF Medical School is better than Dartmouth Medical School despite the fact that UCSF is public. Whether a program is public or not is actually a separate question from whether a program is ‘good’. Some public programs are arguably the best in the world (i.e. Berkeley’s Chemistry PhD program).</p>