<p>Sorry, still not impressed… but then again, did I say anything about being impressed with UCLA or not? :)</p>
<p>I did not say that NUS did not game the ranking. Neither did I dispute that UCLA should comes up tops in a ranking exercise with NUS.</p>
<p>My only point was that your criticisms of NUS gaming the rankings to appear higher than they should on paper also rings true for a lot of U.S. universities, though I will be hard-pressed to provide evidence on any specific college. However, I believe there’s a recent scandal involving USC (see: <a href=“http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/university-southern-california/727030-ranking-rigging-usc.html[/url]”>http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/university-southern-california/727030-ranking-rigging-usc.html</a> ) and UF (see: <a href=“http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/college-search-selection/732180-uf-president-cooks-usnews-rankings.html[/url]”>http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/college-search-selection/732180-uf-president-cooks-usnews-rankings.html</a> )</p>
<p>As for UCLA,</p>
<p>1) As you said, the “crazily different backgrounds” of internationals only account for 10% of the student populace, making it difficult for me to concede that “the fact that you (will) interact with people from soooo many different countries with different values, different traditions and ways of life!” is indeed a fact.</p>
<p>2) Again I did not dispute that UCLA may have a more prominent faculty than NUS, nor did I say that the international faculty criteria is a valid factor in assessing faculty quality. But guess what, Terence Tao has not taught a single undergraduate course since 2005.</p>
<p>3) Please…I have never said anything to the effect that NUS and UCLA should be ranked equally, so you don’t have go on the defensive and impress me that precious UCLA is great. You enthusiasm in being a Bruin is commendable but try to rein it in lest you appear arrogant.</p>
<p>Therefore, in saying to me “wow! that’s some allegation!”, please read carefully on what I’m actually alleging before commenting. I don’t think I made any amazingly surprising allegation that merited astonishment.</p>
<p>P.S. UCLA do receive some criticisms of being higher on some rankings than they should, due to the selectivity criteria where UCLA has the advantage of being the most applied to undergrad college in the U.S., making its selectivity percentage a lot lower. Though I wouldn’t say this is gaming the rankings, it’s simply the factual situation; same as NUS having a huge number of foreign students is a factual situation. Some criterions on rankings just don’t convey an accurate or adequate picture of what they allegedly convey, NUS, UCLA, BU or otherwise.</p>