<p>This is a perfectly decent ranking for the hard sciences (and, to a lesser degree the biological sciences and economics) at the graduate/research level. It has little relevance for undergraduate education, and that is not what it purports to measure. Of course Berkeley or the University of Washington is a stronger research university than Brown or Dartmouth. Doesn’t mean that the former are better choices for undergrads than the latter (and, lets face it, undergrad education is what most people on this site are interested in).
US News is not a great ranking, but it is far more relevant for prospective undergrads, as undergrad education is what it is actually attempting to measure. And, just as an aside, a far higher percentage of students from places like Amherst or Brown will end up as the high-level researchers who influence this ranking when compared to places like Berkeley, UCLA, UW, etc, where those top researchers end up (as demonstrated in these rankings).</p>
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<p>What the…? Perhaps you meant “greatest private research universities,” because Berkeley’s ranked well above many of those.</p>
<p>Goodness. When I first posted here, I thought it was a discussion about ranking methodology. Now I see it’s … well … I’m not sure what it is. Some sort of axe to grind, I guess. </p>
<p>Let me just say that, using this methodology, the Rand Corporation might score very, very well, as might government agencies like NIST and NOAA. They don’t actually teach students the way colleges do, of course, and that’s my point. Theoretically, a school like, say, Wisconsin could decide to allow its professors to devote all their time to research, fill teaching slots with high school graduates who film all their lectures for their students, and Wisky would move up in the rankings.</p>
<p>Somehow, I don’t think I’d be getting my money’s worth out of that.</p>
<p>truazn:</p>
<p>You’re wrong. I have never heard anyone get all excited because someone attended, say, Ohio State, Indiana, UC Davis, Texas A&M, and the like. They’re all good research universities. The “Oh my God” factor tends to follow those schools with very selective admissions. If you got in, you must have had stunning high school credentials.</p>
<p>The ARWU ranking criteria are such that they favor research universities that are strong in particular subfields, namely natural sciences and medicine. Universities whose strength is mostly in social sciences or engineering/technology tend to be underrated. </p>
<p>As an attempt to correct that, Shangai Jiao Tong university also released last year separate rankings by [broad subject fields](<a href=“http://ed.sjtu.edu.cn/ARWU-FIELD.htm”>http://ed.sjtu.edu.cn/ARWU-FIELD.htm</a>), which are somewhat more reliable. </p>
<p>In any case, if you want a truly reliable world ranking, I’d suggest using the Times THES ranking, which combines most of the academic productivity measures from the Chinese ranking with the more subjective criteria from USN&WR.</p>
<p>these rankings are as flawed as any other. i agree with svalbardlutefisk.</p>
<p>BTW, if research is the most important factor you consider when picking a college to go to, I suggest you also look at Academic Analytics’ [Faculty Scholarly Productivity Index](<a href=“http://chronicle.com/free/v53/i19/19a00801.htm”>http://chronicle.com/free/v53/i19/19a00801.htm</a>), which is a much broader measure of research quality than the narrow ARWU ranking. </p>
<p>For example, Carnegie Mellon, which is ranked # 40 in the Chinese ranking, was actually ranked # 6 in the US in the broader productivity index from Academic Analytics. Vanderbilt on the other hand was ranked # 8 in the US (vs 40 something in the Chinese classification).</p>
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<p>Maybe, if you are talking percentages, maybe. But you really need to back that statement up, not just assert it.</p>
<p>“i don’t know. its very california/pacific bias. its not that spectacular.”
Except that many california schools are among the best. Although i don’t really agree with these rankings overall.</p>
<p>I question the credibility of all rankings, but this one very much so though. I think the most reliable would probably be the THES rankings.</p>
<p>I don’t really find this too credible just because it is by some random university that nobody has every heard about, and it is not by a big business either.</p>
<p>And i whole heartedly believe that all the UCs should not dominate in rankings.</p>
<p>Of all US publics, the only one i could ever see in top 10 is berkeley, and than at least UCLA and UMICH should be in top 30. And definitely UCSD,UWisconsin, and Uwashington should all be in top 50, but UCs like UCSB should not be so dominant as they are in this ranking.</p>
<p>Although i do think it is good how in world rankings, the top spots arent necessarily dominated by private universities. It is stupid USnews, that will never let a public into top 20.</p>
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Will this link suffice?: <a href=“Institutional Effectiveness, Research & Assessment :: Swarthmore College”>Institutional Effectiveness, Research & Assessment :: Swarthmore College;
<p>To be specific to the institutions I cited, Amherst and Brown both appear on the list of the top 40 to which I linked. Berkeley, UCLA, and UW (as my other examples) are nowhere to be found.</p>
<p>Obviously it’s different if you don’t use percentages. But it doesn’t take a genius to tell you that larger institutions will produce more future PhDs than smaller ones.</p>
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<p>That’s an interesting list. In terms of percentages, the story is pretty clear. I had heard anecdotally that Berkeley produced a huge number of graduates who go to PhD programs. However, my cursory web search has yielded no stats. With Berkeley’s size it could be a huge absolute number but still not a huge percentage. I would question though the implication, not the out and out statement, that it’s solely because of the graduates at the top of the list who end up at these other schools that these schools are ranked highly.</p>
<p>Obviously the ranking focuses on the research end of the activities of reseaarch universities. It is not directed at the choice of an undergrad institution, but instead at quantifying how much the respective universities push the boundaries of human knowledge.</p>
<p>I noticed someone had mentioned UCSF’s ranking before. Since UCSF, a separate bio-med program was like Berkeley, a flagship UC institution, it could be counted as being the functional equivalent of Berkeley’s med school (Berkeley doesn’t have a med school, unlike UCLA, UCSD, UC Davis); I wonder how much the rankings would change at the top if Harvard/Stanford didn’t have med schools or Berkeley/UCSF were counted together. Ah, it’s academic.</p>
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<p>you are absolutely clueless about what goes on at this school.</p>
<p>bedhead,
I believe Berkeley is #1 in absolute numbers of future PhDs produced(according to NSF data). And I’m sure that it would do quite well when compared to other large state universities (perhaps even #1 per capita) as it is an excellent undergrad institution. But, the PhD per capita numbers show that going to a school with no graduate programs is in many cases more likely to make a particular student get a PhD later. This would imply (though I’m admittedly speculating) that the quality of research going on at a school has little direct effect on whether undergrads are likely to be doing research of their own. Logically this makes sense. At Berkeley, far more undergrads will be serving as “data-slave” RAs, basically another cog in the data-producing machine, whereas at a small school with more faculty/student interaction (and fewer grad students) undergrads are far more likely to be co-authors on papers, and will be making greater intellectual contributions to research.</p>
<p>garbage (10 char)</p>
<p>Honestly, this ranking uses a different methodology, different metrics. There are many rankings where the top privates don’t show up as ‘top.’ Simply because it’s different doesn’t mean that it’s useless. This ranking even adjusts for size, so I’d say it’s thought out – but obviously research-focused.</p>
<p>I like the list. My first choice (berkeley) is ranked pretty damn high up there. A bit too high in fact. Might hurt my chances…admission to these school always gets harsher after they make the top of the list.</p>
<p>why is it that America supposedly has one of the worst education systems for k-12 (we are nearly last in knowing our geography, only ahead of Bangladesh), yet we have such dominating colleges?</p>
<p>The large research schools do send the most students on to PhD’s. UCB, Michigan, Wisconsin and a couple of others. Using percentages always favors the smaller groups as they only need a few to get a decent %. UCB alone graduates enough people a year to fill most of the good Phd programs in the entire country.</p>
<p>SSobick, </p>
<p>You seem quite taken with the value of hard numbers and there are certainly lots of hard numbers in this ranking. Unfortunately, Im sure you realize that attaching those hard numbers accurate though they might be to a fallacious premise does not negate the fundamental fallacy. </p>
<p>I dont question the math. These schools are research powerhouses and this ranking is a reasonable reflection of research output. Unlike several confused posters on this thread, however, it makes no claim to assess undergraduate educational quality. Hopkins and WashU may both be excellent universities, for example, but their appearance on this list is nothing other than a reflection of the strength of the research sections at their respective medical schools and hospital systems. </p>
<p>Of course all these productive researchers had to come from somewhere PhDs dont develop in utero and suddenly emerge from the womb to enter post-docs. But while they may come from every corner of the collegiate universe, they proportionately are most likely to derive from LACs, yes LACs. The very same artsy, wimpy kids you seem, for whatever reason to so disdain, are most likely to become those researchers you so admire. So much for your Schwarzenegger impersonation, </p>
<p>And by the way, on this list you misunderstand yet hold so dear, its # 1 school, Harvard, this year made clear it aspires to even greater goals it hopes to revise its curriculum and teaching style to more closely resemble you guessed it a LAC.</p>
<p>(From: <a href=“http://www.collegenews.org/topliberalartscolleges.xml[/url]”>http://www.collegenews.org/topliberalartscolleges.xml</a>)</p>
<p> even though only 3 percent of American college graduates were educated at a residential liberal arts college, alumni of these colleges accounted for:</p>
<p> 8 percent of Forbes magazines listing of the nations wealthiest CEOs in 1998
8 percent of former Peace Corps volunteers
19 percent of U.S. presidents
23 percent of Pulitzer Prize winners in drama, 19 percent of the winners in history, 18 percent in poetry, 8 percent in biography, and 6 percent in fiction from 1960 to 1998
9 percent of all Fulbright scholarship recipients and 24 percent of all Mellon fellowships in the humanities
20 percent of Phi Beta Kappa inductions made between 1995 and 1997 </p>
<p>On a per capita basis, liberal arts colleges produce nearly twice as many students who earn a Ph.D. in science as other institutions. Liberal arts graduates also are disproportionately represented in the leadership of the nations scientific community. In a recent two-year period, nearly 20 percent of the scientists elected to the prestigious National Academy of Sciences received their undergraduate education at a liberal arts college.</p>
<p><a href=“http://www.springerlink.com/content/5672012246786l8j/?p=f626fbbfd9c040a1808e14e4d82a27c6&pi=2[/url]”>http://www.springerlink.com/content/5672012246786l8j/?p=f626fbbfd9c040a1808e14e4d82a27c6&pi=2</a></p>
<p>Irreproducibility of the results of the Shanghai academic ranking of world Universities</p>
<p>It doesn’t necessarily mean the ranking is forged, but I would say it definitely is bull*****.</p>