<p>TheDad,</p>
<p>I don’t think many will agree with your unconventional ranking. This is a very conservative country after all and being in the maintream is the key these days. :)</p>
<p>While thedads list may not be perfect, it is very much along the right lines in my opinion of the best undergrad schools. Overrated for undergrad education certainly include Harvard, Yale and those top schools that don’t focus on undergrad. Underrated ivies are Princeton and Dartmouth, the two that do. Also overrated are large State schools such as Berkeley and UMich. Underrated are the handful of LAC like State schools.</p>
<p>The rankings we have seen are based upon personal preference which we all know is the eye of the beholder. If were to look at colleges as factories we would see that we are rating them on what goes into the factory:
1. Raw Materials (Number of applicants, average SATs, selectivity etc.)
2. Assets and Capital (Endowment, resources etc.)
We are not ranking them on what comes out of the factory. We could rate them somewhat objectively in some (but thank God) not all categories. For instance we might measure the difference is percentile rankings on the entering class with the rankings on the tests taken for graduate school: GREs MCATs LSATs etc. (Ask yourself, does a school that starts out with average SATs in the 97th percentile really do a superlative job in our Academic category if the senior class finishes with GREs in the 96th. Or did they just finish as expected. If a school starts out with SATs in the 85th percentile has a senior class in the 95th on the GRE wouldn’t we say it was doing a better job.
We might use the freshman retention rate to create a “truth in advertising” scale.</p>
<pre><code> I’m glad that all of these published ratings, like the colleges’ rating of our children, is subjective. Otherwise everyone would be disappointed that they didn’t get into the one “best” school. As I look at these schools with my D, my preference changes by the day. There are many wonderful schools.
</code></pre>
<p>Yemaya, dang it…this is why one should never post in haste. I hope everyone took more time care with their essays. 
Swat would be in the clump tied at #24.</p>
<p>Sam_Lee, I do NOT accommodate opinions. I just cranked the numbers according to my criteria. Then I had to re-set Harvard to #1 (see Rule #1 for Rankings), moving Dartmouth down to #2. And then I dropped Washington&Lee by 10 raw points because I think there’s waaaaaaaaaay too much emphasis on alcohol on that campus…makes Dartmouth look like a meeting of the Sobriety Society…and since it’s my rankings, I can do that.</p>
<p>Red Dragone, I didn’t get as far down as CMU on my list, though I cranked the numbers for about 62 colleges. CMU just missed the list I published and it indeed come in just a hair a head of Cornell.</p>
<p>Intl’85, the rankings are a product of (in essence) some nested IF<em>THEN</em>ELSE statements. Remove one statement and Bucknell drops below the range of the published list as does UVA, which ties with CMU.</p>
<p>I won’t reveal the methodology but it just shows how capricious rankings can be. The arguments about the pivotal IF<em>THEN</em>ELSE statement would be intense.</p>
<p>Why has Rice fallen off everyone’s radar screen???</p>
<p>X-posted with Mardad.</p>
<p>Except that colleges are not factories, though I think that metaphor underlies a lot of subconscious assumptions about colleges, as if professors were nothing but highly skilled mechanics pouring certain grades of knowledge into empty skulls. Your point #1 certainly feeds into any assessment of colleges and you can make a point for #2 to the degree that it affects an undergrad experience. However, you can very strongly make a case that one of the most relevant criteria is #3, what a student takes away from their undegrad experience…and <em>that</em> is difficult to measure, though I’m sure that some ****ant would try to nail it down with some foolish measure like starting salary or salary 10 years after graduation. Feh.</p>
<p>Jym, Rice didn’t fall off <em>my</em> radar screen. You can see it there, lurking in the bushes at #28, ready to pounce upon the unwary.</p>
<p>Jazzpiano, I am indeed ferociously focused on undergrad education.</p>
<p>Ahhh-- it peeks through the masses-- Anyone else think Rice should have its place in the “underrated” department???</p>
<p>so the big question arises… which is the last placed a.k.a worst college in AMerica ? Do you that college is overrated?</p>
<p>Most of the processes that occur in college are (again thank God) unmeasureable. The valuable parts cannot be measured.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>UCLA is a great academic school. It is very very underrated. So is UCSD. UCLA does quite well in many science/social science department rankings. Look again. Overall, its departments rank slightly better than Cornell if you take in both sciences AND liberal arts.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>Not to sound like a arse, but nobody outside of the US has heard of Northwestern. If you go to Korea/China/Japan and Europe and talk about Northwestern, everyone will be like… HUH? And think that you’re talking about a school in the state of Washington.</p>
<p>But U of CHicago is very famous around the world. The most famous worldwide universities are:</p>
<p>Harvard, Stanford, Yale, Berkeley, U of Chicago, MIT, UCLA, University of Michigan, Princeton and Cal Tech. If you notice, those are the best research universities in the US. Not Northwestern. Northwestern is not a research university. Sorry… but Northwestern is very well known in the Midwest, but not in the west coast and certainly not in the world. </p>
<p>The world looks at departmental rankings, and I don’t think Northwestern has a single department in the top 10 of any discipline. I could be mistaken though. If Northwestern did in fact drastically improve its departments, it could be world renowned though. I just remember that Northwestern is ranked 8 or 9 in economics, but it is sooo overshadowed by U of Chicago, that no one really knows that.</p>
<p>TheDad …</p>
<p>Are you having enough fun today? This thread is so enlightening, so telling, so revealing. Long live “TheDad Rankings.” Learn it well, young ones; become one with its essential teachings. And fear not, for TheDad Rankings, with its Rankings firmly grounded in TheDad’s double-top secret and proprietary rankings formulation, will never suffer the ignominious fate as such formerly trendy and ultimately baseless ratings like (shudder) the late, great “Gourmann Report.”</p>
<p>My D has now changed her list to conform to these new rankings. She was applying to 10 schools. And now, there they are – TheDad’s 1-10 – in that order.</p>
<p>But, one question: on another thread, on another board, far, far away, someone suggested that a couple of schools high on TheDad’s Rankings are shamelessly changing EVERYTHING about their college solely to “game” the systems and rocket into the stratospheric upper echelons of TheDad’s Rankings. Can this be true? Can the ranking be modified to penalize such gamesmanship? Who would want to go to such a school?</p>
<p>Dude, yes, this has been lots of fun. </p>
<p>Looking at the 1-10, your daughter could do far worse. ")</p>
<p>nomad-
I did a little research to answer your existential question. Now let me preface this by saying that my research is not based on the most current publication, but according to the 2004 USNews, your winner of the worst college is… (please – no angry posts-- put your grenades away… I am just reporting the “facts”)— the winner is… Arkansas Babtist College. Acceptance rate is 100%, but average freshman retention rate is only 35%. Peer assessment score is 1.6. It cost more for room and board ($4000) than tuition ($2900). However, I suspect these data are <em>skewed</em>, with an artifically low retention rate, by the fact that the school appears to be defunct. The last data reported to USNews is from 2002-3, and their website no longer works. However, I did find a link to an offshore bookie <a href=“Stop Spammers”>Stop Spammers;
who gives some basketball stats for Arkansas Babtist from just a few weeks ago… I’m baffled…</p>
<p>ok…so ive become trapped in this whirlpool of posts and couldnt pull myself away from the computer despite rolling my eyes and groaning quite a few times. now after reading 10 pages of posts, i feel i have a duty to post my 2 cents. yes its fun to discuss which colleges get too much or too little credit blablabla but justtake a step back and look at the big picture:
-there are hardly any low quality “bad” colleges in the u.s.; whether u go to a community college or harvard, its really the work U put into it that determines the level of education u recieve; so it is totally true that many colleges are underated. for instance, santa monica college(a community college in LA) costs about 11 dollars per unit, a chem class cost me 32 bucks–my professor taught the identical chem class at ucla in the morning and drove over in the afternoon to SMC. same material. people are obsessed with prestigous schools because of just that-the prestige, the name. although they are almost always provide a great education, its not to say that its at all better than another, “lower ranked” college.
-its impossible for usnews or anyone else to rank colleges esp labelling the top 10 because there are the best colleges for certain areas ie how can u decide whether brown or caltech deserves the number 8 spot?? its comparing apples and oranges! plus rankings from usnews and other news sources use nonrelevant details to rank ie amount of $ collected from alumni each yr(which is obviously going to be more at bigger, more expensive schools where richer students attended).
-from my own experience, my brother is a premed freshman at stanford; he turned down a full ride to usc and ucirvine(with a stipend). he likes stanford in general, despite the 42000 tuition, but the workload is exhausting–its obvious he doesnt have as much fun or freetime as he would at usc or a uc school. ppl kill themselves to get into these places and dont mind paying the heavy tuiton but sometimes theyre in it for the wrong reason ie the name, prestige. u have to look at social life and other factors as well. i got accepted ED to Penn, which i see many on this board say is overrated. among the ivies, yes it may not be the toptop but i didnt choose it for tht. im writing way too much so i wont get into all the reasons tho lol. u never know whre ur gonna be happy and just bc u get into yale, doesnt mean u gotta go there; it seems like ppl feel an obligation to go to the “best” school they get into<br>
-by saying a college in overrated or underrated, its saying tht its better or worse than ppl think it is(usually from the name). ehh it seems as though a few mayb bitter from rejections with the overrating(wont mention names of those who are ivy-bashing but who i saw a few months ago asking wht their chances are for tht school) and i totally agree with the fact tht many great schools dont get so much attention…but u know wht–whts the diff? as long as ur happy with ur education and the school, thts all tht matters bc the school name will only get u so far in life and ur career. at some point u have to prove urself worthy
wow ok…i went off on a tangent but i feel better…good night!</p>
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</p>
<p>LOL! West Side, how come you were aware of the possibility of being mistaken while didn’t bother to do any research?? 
I guess it just seems convenient for you to trash a school you feel no love for (it’s not in California, LOL!). Someone in my church was asking me about Northwestern’s Kellogg when I went back to Hong Kong few years ago. Anyway, you could have easily found the following from the US News site (free): :)</p>
<p>B-school
Northwestern: 5th (actually lower than I thought…damn US News! lol!)
UCLA: 12th</p>
<p>Law-School
Northwestern: 10th
UCLA: 16th</p>
<p>Med School
Northwestern: 20th
UCLA: 14th</p>
<p>Engineering School
Northwestern: 20th
UCLA: 16th
But UCLA has no individual program in the top 10 (<a href=“http://www.engineer.ucla.edu/stories/2004/rank.htm[/url]”>http://www.engineer.ucla.edu/stories/2004/rank.htm</a>) while Northwestern has 3 in material science, civil engineering, and industrial engineering.</p>
<p>So speaking of top 10 for Northwestern, I’ve already given you 5 different disciplines here by considering just biz, law, med, and engg.</p>
<p>Anyway, for B/L/M/Engg, UCLA and Northwestern look pretty even; yet, it looks to you that UCLA is a world renowned research university while “Northwesten is not a reserach university”.</p>
<p>Because of all the variables in these rankings & equations, I’ll re-post a list of “bell curve” schools from a couple of months ago. Based on several guides, rankings and CC comments, it’s ranked by a “grade” – with hopefully no inflation – and by difficulty of admission, among other criteria:</p>
<p>A+
Harvard
MIT
Princeton
Stanford
Yale</p>
<p>A
Amherst
Brown
Cal Tech
Columbia
Dartmouth
Duke
Georgetown
Penn
Pomona
Swarthmore
U Virginia
Williams</p>
<p>A-
BC
Bowdoin
Cal Berkeley
Carleton
CMU
Chicago
CMC
Colgate
Cornell
Davidson
Emory
Grinnell
Harvey Mudd
Haverford
JHU
Michigan
Middlebury
Northwestern
Notre Dame
Rice
Tufts
Vassar
WUSTL
Washington & Lee
Wellesley
Wesleyan</p>
<p>B+
Barnard
Bates
Brandeis
Byrn Mawr
Bucknell
Case Western
Colby
Colorado College
Connecticut College
Dickinson
Franklin & Marshall
Furman
GWU
Georgia Tech
Gettysburg
Hamilton
Holy Cross
Illinois U-C
Kenyon
Lafayette
Lehigh
Macalester
Maryland
Mt. Holyoke
NYU
Oberlin
Reed
Rochester
St. Lawrence
Scripps
Skidmore
Smith
Texas
Trinity
UCLA
UCSD
UNC
USC
Vanderbilt
Villanova
Wake Forest
Whitman
William & Mary
Wisconsin</p>
<p>From the above list, those that maybe overrated:
Harvard
Amherst
Penn
BC
Emory
WUSTL
W&L
Brandeis
GWU
Lehigh
NYU
Skidmore
Vanderbilt
Villanova</p>
<p>Those that maybe underrated:
Princeton
Stanford
Duke
Georgetown
Middlebury
Hamilton
Holy Cross
Wake Forest</p>
<p>Schools to watch:
Dartmouth
Swat
Colgate
Davidson
Northwestern
Tufts
Maryland
Bucknell
F&M
Furman
Kenyon
Oberlin
St. Lawrence
UNC
USC</p>
<p>Others to watch, not on the Bell Curve:
Delaware
BU
Penn State
UConn
Denison
Missouri
St. Olaf’s
Clemson
Elon
JMU
Tulane</p>
<p>As with all such lists, am sure there’s something there to spark comments.</p>
<p>As a graduate of <em>both</em> MIT and Lehigh, I think you are sadly mistaken to call Lehigh overrated. On the other hand, it’s just a pointless list on an internet board, so why do I even bother responding?</p>
<p>lol i dont think princeton and stanford are underrated collegeparent–they enjoy the proper prestige</p>