<p>And the thing is, when people refer to one school being “better” than another, there is the notion that having a degree from school X is better than school Y in terms of seeking out a job or grad school. That might be true about Harvard vs. UC Riverside in the most generic sense (ie. same GPA), but getting a degree from Davis doesn’t make you any more or less capable as a grad school applicant or job applicant. It’s what you do AT the school that makes the difference. I could argue that someone graduating from Merced will get into Stanford’s law school whereas someone from Berkeley won’t (sports rivalries aside) because that someone at Berkeley might have a 2.0 with no extra curriculars and that someone at Merced might have a 4.0 and negotiated a peace treaty in the Middle East. There are just too many things to be left to a generic US News ranking, which carries very noticeable biases of its own.</p>