Top 25 Undergraduate Universities

[tokenadult]

<p>

hawkette was himself

</p>

<p>Surely someone with a screen name with a feminine ending is a woman.</p>

[hawkette]

<p>alex and ucb,
I don’t like the PA rankings or the classroom teaching rankings. They’re both completely subjective and I think that there is no way that these folks giving the grades know the schools in sufficient depth to assign accurate grades. I’d say get rid of both and just rank on objective factors that are actually relevant to undergraduates. </p>

<p>keefer,
Re the issue of whether one has attended a public or private university, I don’t think that one needs to attend a college to have informed views on what goes on on these campuses. On CC, I have commented on dozens of colleges and obviously there is no way that I attended all of them. IMO, one can see and evaluate these colleges from multiple vantage points, including student, alumna, parent, fan, colleague/friend, and in the work world. </p>

<p>Some, like you, may disagree with my conclusions and weigh certain factors more heavily and thus arrive at a different ranking. That’s fine with me. However, I have disclosed my “methodology” for my “Top 25” and I think it would be interesting to see how everyone else arrives at their numbers as well. It would reveal the preferences/biases of those posting their rankings.</p>

[keefer]

<p>If you get rid of PA scores, WUSTL might just take #1 on the USNEWS rankings and UPenn will probably be tied or number 2.! Furthermore, there’s no real objective factors, schools play around with their numbers.</p>

<p>I’ll take one part of the equation for example, Selectivity, which is 15% of the total score, 50% of that is SAT/ACT scores, some schools superscore(almost every single private school), some don’t.(ie. elite publics)</p>

<p>Acceptance rate(15% of Selectivity) can also be manipulated, some schools count incomplete/withdrawal applications in their totals, some also use extended waitlists to minimize acceptance rate and maximize yield. </p>

<p>Also, take faculty resources(20% of total score), 5% of that is student-faculty ratio, schools can, and has in the past counted more faculty than they should(ie. medical school faculty). “Class size under 20” comprises 30% of the faculty resource score, large sized Universities have a modal class size around 20-30. Is there really a difference between 18 students in a class or 22 students? </p>

<p>Many parts can be easily manipulated, if you think college deans and presidents aren’t trustworthy enough to evaluate undergraduate reputation, what would you think the individual colleges would do to promote itself?</p>

[vc08]

<p>

I think Notre Dame would get the nod over Michigan in every academic area besides maybe Engineering.

</p>

<p>MMk, no point in arguing this one, that’s just a lack of intelligence there.</p>

<p>

P.S. ND’s theology and philosophy departments are widely to considered #1 in the nation.

And, let me guess, BYU is #2? It’s a private Catholic school. As a Catholic, I’m thrilled for ND! But they should be that good, as they pour millions of dollars into that area, unlike non-religious schools (eg Michigan). </p>

<p>

Would you consider Oxford a “real top university”?

Yes. But you do realize that the VAST MAJORITY of top schools have Presidents/Chancellors who went to/taught at great schools, right? I mean, Harvard isn’t going to let someone who went to UTEP (no offense) suddenly become President.</p>

<p>Likewise, you’ll find this interesting:

Notably, given the long-standing rivalry between the University of Michigan and the University of Notre Dame, Coleman was invited to be the commencement speaker at the first separate commencement ceremony for the Notre Dame Graduate School on May 19, 2007, and received an honorary degree from Notre Dame.

[Mary</a> Sue Coleman - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia](<a href=“http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mary_Sue_Coleman]Mary”>Mary Sue Coleman - Wikipedia)</p>

<p>Notre Dame sure thinks highly of Michigan leaders, and vice versa. Hopefully you’ll share that respect after 4 years there as well.</p>

<p>As for the Berkeley leadership:

Before coming to Berkeley, Birgeneau served four years as president of the University of Toronto. He previously was dean of the School of Science at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where he spent 25 years on the faculty. He is a foreign associate of the National Academy of Sciences…March 18, 2006, Birgeneau received a special Founders Award from the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. President John Hennessy of Stanford University, and filmmaker George Lucas also received the Founders award the same date…Birgeneau received his B.Sc. in mathematics from the University of Toronto in 1963 and his Ph.D. in physics from Yale University in 1966. He served on the faculty of Yale for one year, spent one year at Oxford University, and was a member of the technical staff at Bell Laboratories from 1968 to 1975. He joined the physics faculty at MIT in 1975 and was named chair of the physics department in 1988 and dean of science in 1991.

[Biography[/url</a>]
Oxford, Yale, MIT, Toronto…pretty impressive, no?</p>

<p>UCLA:

A native New Yorker, Chancellor Block holds a bachelor’s degree in psychology from Stanford University and a master’s and Ph.D. in psychology from the University of Oregon. He completed a postdoctoral fellowship at Stanford, studying with Colin Pittendrigh, “the father of biological timing,” and Donald Kennedy, who later served as president of Stanford…The inventor of a number of devices, Chancellor Block holds a patent for a non-contact respiratory monitor for the prevention of Sudden Infant Death Syndrome. He is an avid collector of vacuum-tube radios and has restored a number of high-performance cars…Previously, Dr. Block served as vice president and provost of the University of Virginia, where he held the Alumni Council Thomas Jefferson Professorship in Biology and directed the National Science Foundation’s Science and Technology Center for Biological Timing…He served as the university’s vice provost for research from 1993 to 1998 and then as vice president for research and public service until his appointment as vice president and provost in 2001. In 1998, he received the Commonwealth of Virginia’s Outstanding Public Service Award for his work with Virginia’s business community.

[url=<a href=“http://www.chancellor.ucla.edu/biography.html]Biography”>http://www.chancellor.ucla.edu/biography.html]Biography</a> / UCLA Chancellor Gene Block](<a href=“http://cio.chance.berkeley.edu/chancellor/Birgeneau/biography/biography.htm]Biography[/url”>http://cio.chance.berkeley.edu/chancellor/Birgeneau/biography/biography.htm)</p>

<p>ND isn’t the only school that expects excellence. The sooner you learn that, the better off you’ll be.</p>

[thejoker0909]

<p>vc08, No offense, but every post you make in response to mine gives me the impression that you didn’t read my post, you made you what you thought I said, and proceeded to go of into a tangent teeming with incoherency and irrationality.</p>

<p>“ND isn’t the only school that expects excellence. The sooner you learn that, the better off you’ll be.”</p>

<p>Where did I state otherwise. My posts have simply been in response to the post by someone else who said that ND was only a football school that could not compare to any “real top schools”. My post basically was aimed at disproving that. I know ND is not HYPSM, but it is a top 20 institution nonetheless. I was merely defending it as such.</p>