<p>I am not sure why some of you are debating this ranking so much. It is a ranking of how popular universities are in the eyes of high school students. It does not measure academic quality or reputation. Academic quality is 100% derived from the quality of the faculty and the various departments and reputation can only be derived from academic peers (top professors, researchers and university administrators) and corporate recruiters. </p>
<p>I personally find it silly to get so emotional…or to place so much importance on such an meaningless study. Let us start by examining a few concepts:</p>
<p>1) Is there such a difference between #7 and #20 in that particular ranking? Is there such a difference between 2400 and 2200? I don’t think we need to get bent out of shape for such a small difference.</p>
<p>2) Does it matter what the top 200,000 students think of your university? Why? Most of those students will change their opinions of what constitutes a top university by the time they are 25.</p>
<p>3) What difference does it make whether 10,000 top students or 200,000 top students think the world of a university? Does it matter? Not really since no university can accommodate more than 7,000 freshmen!</p>
<p>In the grand scheme of things, only four people’s opinions really matter when it comes to universities:</p>
<h1>1, and most important of all, the student in question. Let us face it, education is a personal mission. One should not care so much about what others think.</h1>
<h1>2, top professors and educators around the nation. Nobody knows more about universities than those guys. They are the experts…they know.</h1>
<h1>3, corporate recruiters. Where do Procter and Gamble, GE, Microsoft, JP Morgan, McKinsey, Ford, IBM, Cisco, Pfizer etc… recruit from the most?</h1>
<h1>4, graduate school adcoms. If you cal Yale Law admissions or Johns Hopkins medical school admissions or Wharton MBA admissions or MIT graduate Engineering admissions and ask the director of admissions where do most of their successful candidates apply from, what will they say? Which undergraduate institutions continuously send them the best students?</h1>
<p>Sorry to say it folks, high school students, undergraduate students and even graduate students do not make the list of people that are either qualified…or important enough to matter.</p>