Princeton #78 in Washington Monthly rankings

Colleges & Universities Princeton University
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<p>a precipitous fall from #43 last year. texas A&M is the #1 university; presbyterian college the #1 LAC. the methodology of these rankings, which purport to measure “what colleges are doing for the country,” heavily favor large public schools, with categories like total research spending and number of ph.d’s awarded (when per capita numbers could easily be ascertained and used). obviously, make of them what you will.</p>

<p><a href=“http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/features/2007/0709.natlrankings.pdf[/url]”>http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/features/2007/0709.natlrankings.pdf&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

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<p>Hmmm you tell me. Would you rather go to Pton or Texas?</p>

<p>And why do you even care? The world knows which place is better.</p>

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<p>haha. a texas A&M degree is clearly more valuable than a princeton degree. It seems every week texas A&M is pumping out nobel winners.</p>

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<p>That study is a load of B.S. (and no - not bachelor’s of science) It purports to measure community service and other measures during college and not afterwards (and, as everyone knows, the Peace Corps is the only good form of community service in college…you don’t even have to travel or go anywhere!)</p>

<p>Pell Grants are kind of irrelevant since Princeton already awards so much money in grants to lower-income students.</p>

<p>PhDs awarded favors the largest programs. Most advances that come from that sophisticated level of research (i.e. research that leads one to obtain a PhD) aren’t numbers oriented. I.e. the top 5 PhD students in 1 field, over the course of their careers, will contribute more to that field than the next 1000 combined.</p>

<p>At Princeton and other such schools students are busy studying and being students in college; most don’t have time to volunteer for the Peace Corps. It’s ironic that Princeton is ranked so low since a lot of its graduates become prominent public servants to the nation, like Associate Justice Alito, Senator Sarbanes, Senator Frist, and General Petraeus to name a few.</p>

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<p>don’t let it get to you</p>

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<p>Oh no, I’m not angry, so don’t think that I was lashing out at the report in any way. I’m just pointing out some of its flaws, and using a bit of irony and sarcasm when I can.</p>

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<p>Yep, I’ve always thought that Caltech is about the 140th best college in the country. That must be why it has the highest average SAT of any university and why its students do better than graduates of any other college according to many measures, except maybe Harvard or Yale. </p>

<p>The only word to describe this ranking is… meaningless.</p>

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<p>I think they’re trying to generate controversy by picking ranking stats that deliberately put the undergrad schools with the highest academic rankings/reputations on the bottom in the hopes that the list will be noticed since it’s “different” (i.e. inaccurate.)</p>

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<p>No one is going to Texas because of this… Ignore it.</p>

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<p>Relax, folks. </p>

<p>The ranking was specifically created to be a counter-ranking to the (also controversial) USNWR rankings, arguing that USNWR doesn’t measure much of what it means to be a “good university”. They say so as much:</p>

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<p>Does it do a good job of this? Personally, I think not; I think a university’s contributions to society can be broader than the Washington Monthly rubric captures (or that any fixed criteria really CAN capture). But certainly, they admit that all they’re really trying to do is take a stab at an alternative approach to what USNWR is doing.</p>

<p>Not too many people in Nassau Hall are losing sleep, I bet.</p>

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<p>All of these universities contribute in some way to the “public good”, so in that sense the ranking is not totally inaccurate - they’re all “good.” </p>

<p>However, in addition to being inaccurate in all other respects, the ranking penalizes schools that focus “too much” on education, e.g., by having “too many” professors and not enough students. It rewards places that are basically diploma mills and penalizes those that have low student to faculty ratios, such as Caltech. </p>

<p>It also penalizes schools that happen to have a larger proportion of their classes from wealthier areas of the United States (e.g., Long Island), but that’s wrong IMHO because obviously wealthier students are statistically more likely to be prepared for top colleges and therefore are likely to concentrate at the best schools, in part so they can go to the best graduate schools afterwards but also because they want to meet other smart people like themselves (from all different backgrounds). It’s kind of like penalizing restaurants for attracting the best chefs rather than hiring chefs who have names starting with each letter of the alphabet. If they want to measure socioeconomic diversity, they’ve taken the wrong approach. Schools that attract a lot of students with Pell Grants also often attract a lot of students who got in because they could pay, and also, not all students on Pell Grants are necessarily representing the lowest income groups out there. Also, diversity “on paper” means absolutely nothing. Just because you have 30% of students on Pell Grants doesn’t mean those 30% actually interact with the other 70% of (rich) students! A school with a lower % of students on Pells, but that actually has frequent, meaningful interaction between those students and the others, is more diverse in my book.</p>

<p>Finally, the ranking penalizes schools that attract students with very high SAT scores. It also rewards schools that have high ROTC participation, which is a pretty random, lame measure of postgraduate “citizenship” if you ask me. There are many other ways that smart, motivated college graduates can contribute to the future of our country, e.g., through Teach for America, Americorps, entrepreneurship, to name just a few.</p>

<p>Those are a few reasons why it is worthless.</p>

<p>Of course, the USNWR rankings are highly questionable as well, for various reasons. However, even though some of the data that they collect is completely flawed, on an overall basis the rankings are at least accurate to within 10 or 20 places.</p>

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<p>I will be going to Texas A&M next year, and it’s finally nice to get some recognition. It doesn’t matter anyway, though, because all of our students already are aware that we’re better than Princeton and Harvard students, who are a bunch of idiots in comparison with the students here. It’s just not been nationally recognized until now.</p>

<p>We need to promote this ranking system more. DOWN WITH USNWR!</p>

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<p>^ give me a break lol</p>

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<p>***. How does this ranking measure anything? The scientists and leaders of orginizations such as the Red Crosss will most likely come from the ivies and other top 15 schools. Such bs and lol at the texas a&m ■■■■■.</p>

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<p>I have a son that recently graduated from highly ranked university and leave near Princeton (which is why this thread caught my attention). I am also a UCLA graduate. I am happy with both rankings and with neither.</p>

<p>There is no need to dismiss the WM ranking off hand because a particular university is not placed high enough. Princeton, Harvard and Yale have a place and a contribution to society, but they serve a rather small segment. How many more of their graduates do we really need? A few more for sure but not many thousands. The same can be said about Caltech and MIT, although there I would argue we can use many more highly educated scientists and engineers.</p>

<p>Texas A&M, UCLA and the large schools serve a much larger segment of the student population and from that perspective have a greater impact on society. I don’t know if the WM uses the right methodology but it is not surprising, or disturbing, to see UCLA more than 100 spots higher than Caltech. Its like comparing apples and oranges. USWNR attempts to measure the quality of the education offered to a student. WM tries to measure the contributions of a university to society at large. Two very different things. No need to get upset and dismissive.</p>

<p>I once argued in this forum that FOR SOME STUDENTS Berkeley or my beloved UCLA offer a better education than Princeton and I almost got voted off the CC island so let me have it…</p>

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<p>Size is irrelevant, as cornell and penn state made it on the list pretty high. The margin between harvard and princeton despite their similar student population, also makes your arguement somewhat questionable.</p>

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<p>if you honestly think that Princeton/Harvard have similarly sized student populations you obviously missed the part of this ranking that deals with PhDs- Harvard’s grad schools are much bigger, thus the significantly larger amount of both PhDs and research dollars in grants</p>

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<p>additionally the data has a glaring and obvious flaw- they have predicted grad rates over 100- how can that be?</p>

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<p>How does that disprove my asserrtion that size seems to be for the most part irrelevant in the ranking, which was stated considering the list of colleges in a much broader context(rather than comparisons b/w just harvard and princeton, which was solely used for example, or phd criteria for that matter)?</p>

<p>^ Does the same apply to the other prestigious or public institutions that received a decent ranking? Using that logic, A&M should actually be on the bottom of the list, as they had less grants than harvard.</p>

<p>The size of a college’s grad school is probably a factor, but is it really an underlying or absolute determinant of a school’s size, as you seem to imply? I wouldn’t think so, unless you could clarify…</p>

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<p>rock on U of Alaska-Fairbanks!!! yeaaaahhhh!</p>