<p>Are there any well-known American league tables for the various subjects at different universities?</p>
<p>as in… rankings of departments?</p>
<p>There are the departmental rankings issued by USNews annually in “America’s Best Graduate Schools”.</p>
<p>the one detriment (or depending on your view, positive aspect) of that ranking is that, in most cases, it just evaluates prestige of these programs. Having said that, the ARWU probably has some individualized data somewhere by dept. or field of study… which could also give you a hint as to the strength of individual departments at schools. Also, do note that the rankings we are discussing are generally - well, almost exclusively - geared at the graduate departments at these schools. So, if you want to translate that into what you will get at the college, you prob. also need to consider student/faculty ratio and check out the course bulletins and time schedules to see how often these top-notch professors teach in the college. NOTE: This will GREATLY vary from school to school.</p>
<p>… the reason for asking such a question in the first place may be a concern about the value of a degree obtained. </p>
<p>The value of such a degree, like it or not, may depend to a large extent on the (shudder) “prestige” of the program and the (shudder) “reputation” of the professors writing your letters of recommendation for graduate school.</p>
<p>Who produces league tables in other countries? </p>
<p>In the countries outside the United States that I know best, there is a national uniform college entrance exam system (with variations of detail in different countries) such that the highest-scoring students reliably end up at the most-desired colleges. That produces the virtuous cycle that the next group of high-scoring students knows which college has similar students, which pumps up that college’s reputation, so that the next group of high-scoring students . . .</p>
<p>
For Britain, [The</a> Times Higher Education Supplement](<a href=“http://www.thes.co.uk/]The”>http://www.thes.co.uk/) does a ranking every year. But the phenomeneon is the same in the US. The median / average SAT at Harvard and its peer institutions has steadily gone up, pumping up the college’s rep. 80% acceptance rate this year!</p>
<p>Harvard doesn’t have an 80% acceptance rate. They have an 80% yield rate.</p>
<p>Of course, 80% of those accepted accepted :p.</p>
<p>Byerly, I fully agree with you on the point about prestige being perhaps the more interesting data when it comes to grad school programs. That is why in my original post I said that to some people that could be a negative aspect of the ranking, yet for others it could be something positive.</p>
<p>No sorry I meant for undergrad. Along the lines of the THES which sonar brought up. Does the US have the same thing for individual subjects?</p>
<p>for undergrad that will prob. be hard to find. Again, my advice would be to look at the grad ranking and try to see how much of that you’ll get at the college (if the professors are the same, research opportunities, etc…)</p>
<p>There are various rankings of undergraduate programs in the United States. I’m generally aware of what the strong schools are in pure math (Harvard is definitely one) and in computer science (MIT is definitely one). There is always debatability at the margins, and even if two colleges are closely ranked for strength of their undergradute programs in a particular subject they may not be equally desirable on other grounds, but, yeah, Harvard has a lot of high departmental rankings in a lot of subjects.</p>
<p>tokenadult - where can I find these league tables?</p>
<p>Start with the </p>
<p>[Colleges</a> Rated by Ratings Guides](<a href=“http://learninfreedom.org/colleges_rated.html]Colleges”>Colleges Rated by College Rating Guides (Learn in Freedom)) </p>
<p>page for background, and then follow up with sources cited or linked to there. </p>
<p>Land on the department Web page for the particular department in some famous college if you think you know what you would like to study in college. For example, the Web site for the department of computer science at MIT lists most of the “peer” institutions, I think even providing links to the sites, and most of the peer institutions do the same.</p>
<p>I know the MIT department’s math site at some point listed five college departments which some gov’t entity considered the best ones… if someone knows where that is please post… I think that they mentioned the top 5… and in no particular order they were: Harvard, MIT, Berkeley, Chicago, and I forget who… but I think these four were there.</p>
<p>Ok, seeing as there don’t seem to be any league tables… </p>
<p>Could anyone rank these four schools:</p>
<p>Brown
Harvard
Princeton
Stanford</p>
<p>in terms of East Asian Studies (specifically Chinese), Economics and International Relations please?</p>
<p>from our perceptions? sounds fun lol… except I’ll avoid East Asian Studies, because I HAVE ABSOLUTELY NO IDEA –> though I’ll just go ahead and assume that Stanford is pretty good at that</p>
<p>well, here’s my 2cents, for all its worth:</p>
<p>Econ (well, im very biased… you don’t have the best econ dept. in the list, so I’ll just include it for your benefit :-):</p>
<p>-University of Chicago & Princeton
-Harvard
-Stanford
-Brown</p>
<p>International Relations (yet again, I feel that the best school has been omitted):
- The Walsh School of Foreign Service at Georgetown University (Clinton went there)
- The Woodrow Wilson School at Princeton University (you’re not guaranteed admission there, though… you have to apply after your second year at Princeton)
-Stanford & Harvard (do note that Harvard’s graduate school, the JFK School of Gov’t, is extremely reputable… and being a harvard undergrad is prob. not a bad thing if you’re eyeing the Kennedy school after college) - Brown</p>
<p>East Asian Studies: Harvard by a mile.</p>
<p>bump (10 char)</p>