<p>That’s debatable. I mean, is Cornell necessarily more distinguished academically than Michigan? I’m not sure. The resolution of the metric is good at capturing large gaps, but it’s far too coarse to really tell us why Cal Tech is less academically distinguished than Princeton, considering the large differences in the schools.</p>
<p>I’ve heard at least a few people who submitted the PA who have admitted that they weren’t able to really provide accurate scoring. How many people actually have the encyclopedic knowledge necessary to differentiate between schools with such fine detail?</p>
<p>You put words in my mouth. I never actually said that, “Deans are out of touch with the university scene.” That’s disingenuous.</p>
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<p>Sure, but that doesn’t give them the ability to weight hundreds of universties. As USNWR states:
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<p>How many of those surveyed will actually be able to provide a high-resolution assessment of schools? Given the high non-response rate, what kind of sampling bias will there be? Furthermore, given that many deans and administrators are older, there will probably be a bias in favor of schools they “know” relativ to “up-and-coming” schools. To that end, UCSD will certainly be trumped by UCLA and Cal despite its strong academic programs-- not everyone knows UCSD’s academic strength, including other academics.</p>
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<p>I actually did some stuff with admissions at my graduate program. You’d be shocked how many gaps there are in knowledge about other programs. </p>
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<p>But to what degree? Will they be able to say that Harvard is a 5, but Yale is a 4? Is Princeton a 4 or 5? What about Stanford?</p>
<p>This is not as easy, even for experts, as you make it out to be.</p>
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<p>You act like I don’t know this. But so what? That doesn’t mean that a dean can sit down and give a good analysis of EVERY school amongst the hundreds of schools ranked. </p>
<p>Besides, you forget that PA doesn’t ask only deans, but also other administrators. Different positions will introduce different biases.</p>
<p>Phead, do you even know anything about WashU? People regularly turn down ivies for it and in fact this year’s group of transfers includes people coming from Columbia/Penn. Furthermore, you cannot argue with the caliber of students it brings in. Am I biased, yes. But I do not understand why you have such a strong beef with the school. You seem to have some predetermined bias against it. And in terms of the schools you mentioned, I DO think it is in that league.</p>
<p>It was a rough metaphor. The idea being that a Lexus is roughly comparable to BMWs, but that BMW’s cheapest auto is by no means as cheap as a Yaris. This doesn’t make either automaker “better” or “worse.”</p>
<p>Caltech is absolutely top-notch in the programs it has. Its “lack” of programs doesn’t mean that it’s less academically exceptional. I mean, along those lines, Princeton isn’t as good as Berkeley because it lacks both a med school and law school!</p>
Well that’s true, but this is supposed to be an undergrad ranking. ;)</p>
<p>Sure, Caltech’s programs are “top-notch”. Physics at Caltech is top-notch…so is physics at Princeton. English at Princeton is “top-notch”…Caltech’s English program is not “top-notch”.</p>
<p>But who actually goes to Caltech with the intent of studying English? That’s a red herring, IMO. Schools should be analyzed ON THEIR OWN MERIT, not based on the poor 10 English majors in the world who would like to study English there. </p>
<p>Caltech is not the same type of school as Princeton. It’s like calling a netbook bad because it lacks a RAID array.</p>
<p>The PA is a brute force, aggregate measure for breadth and depth of academic programs. I think Caltech gets lower scores because it doesn’t offer the same breadth and depth of a Harvard, Princeton, or even MIT.</p>
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Like I said before, the PA is "not at all reliable for choosing a college, but accurate for what it is supposed to be measuring - “DISTINGUISHED ACADEMIC PROGRAMS”. "</p>
<p>As a member of a university faculty, let me also say that in the fields I’m most familiar with, and among academics generally (as far as I know), the prestige of a faculty appointment would roughly follow list B, certainly much more closely than list A. Which means the most sought-after faculty are generally going to gravitate toward these schools in roughly this order, mitigated only partially by the ability of some schools to pay higher salaries or otherwise offer more attractive benefits—but for most really serious academics, academic prestige weighs a little most heavily than money.</p>
<p>Boo… UCB ignores that I made his argument from the other direction early on :(.</p>
<p>Everyone should read his shorter version though-- PA is not reliable for choosing a college. That’s 100% correct. So is the statement that its a proxy of “distinguished academic programs”, for which it’s not terrible. Of course, people like Phead will argue that the latter leads to a better experience in the former, but that’s not only far from universal, but its also the antithesis of the stated purposes for building these programs in most places.</p>