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I don’t understand how having a handful of faculty members who have produced high-level research improves the school’s reputation. There are very few famous academic scholars that most educated people even associate with a certain school(Friedman-Chicago, Pinker-Harvard, etc.). Anyhow, at all of these schools, the number of faculty members who have famous awards/memberships constitute less than like 1% of the school’s overall quality. What about the remaining 99% of faculty members? How do we know how acclaimed they are? What if these acclaimed professors aren’t even good professors? My best instructor at Duke was a 3rd year PhD student…I kid you not. He had a knack for teaching and the small seminar-style classroom made the class incredible overall.</p>
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They have produced a great amount of nobel prize winners because they have been around for centuries and have like a 3 century headstart on a school like Duke. Besides, these individuals constitute a fraction of a fraction of a percent of the alumni of these five schools.</p>
<p>They are ranked top 10 in most graduate departments. How does this apply to the undergraduate level? Is there clear evidence that HYPSM students do more high-level research than Duke or Penn students?</p>
<p>The PA just reinforces the status quo. University presidents have grown up knowing that Harvard and Yale were the best schools in the country so they just mark 5 every time they get the form. Does the PA score reflect reality? It’s hard to tell.</p>
<p>I don’t really understand what the endowment has to do with anything. They have a high endowment since they’ve been around since the age of dinosaurs. Does a Harvard student have some sort of special resource that Caltech or Penn students don’t have access to? Please enlighten me o wise Alexandre.</p>
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Alright, so Wisconsin and Caltech are peers? Is it so Alex?</p>