<p>[National</a> University Rankings | Top National Universities | US News Best Colleges](<a href=“http://colleges.usnews.rankingsandreviews.com/best-colleges/rankings/national-universities]National”>http://colleges.usnews.rankingsandreviews.com/best-colleges/rankings/national-universities)</p>
<p>Not surprised!! There was a 5-way tie last year and UChicago had the greatest improvement in stats among the 5 tied schools.</p>
<p>It’s going to be a GREAT year for UChicago admissions!!</p>
<p>Not great for applicants in this cycle…</p>
<p>I couldn’t care less about these rankings because people who matter (the employers, other academic institutions, etc) are not going to care about these meaningless rankings. I know UChicago is one of the greatest institutions in the world, and that’s all that matters to me.</p>
<p>I agree. I don’t know what the point of rankings are…</p>
<p>…but then again. I’m going to have to join truth123’s enthusiasm 
It’s always nice to be recognized as little as it is worth!</p>
<p>Thank the heavens I graduated HS in 2012, I would NOT survive the 2012-2013 admissions season @_@.</p>
<p>Congratulations to UChicago! Its ranked in the top 10 in the new QS rankings too.</p>
<p>Interesting that the three most recent 2012 university rankings, QS World University Rankings*, Forbes and US News, all have UChicago at #4 .</p>
<p>*of schools in the US</p>
<p>Please… what is Chicago doing that Stanford and MIT isn’t, if not better?</p>
<p>So, surprisingly, Stanford lags in faculty resources rank (#12) and financial resources rank (#12 - on average spent per student).</p>
<p>UChicago, on the other hand, is #2 for faculty resources, and #7 for financial resources. These two metrics are 30% of the overall score. </p>
<p>I imagine this disparity is because Stanford is a larger institution (~20k students), and therefore perhaps spends less per student?</p>
<p>(Stanford also has more classes with above 50 students and fewer classes with below 20 students. Sort of silly metrics, but there you are.)</p>
<p>Either way, it’s very strange that MIT and Stanford lag in these rankings. I love UChicago, and I think Columbia is a great school too, but I’d imagine these are more in the #6-7 range, rather than in the top 5.</p>
<p>The question isn’t: what do Williams, Amherst, Swarthmore, Harvard, Yale and Princeton have that Chicago doesn’t have… they are all outstanding institutions with somewhat different flavors, and rankings need to be taken with a large grain of salt. Obviously, Stanford and MIT are not patently inferior to HYP, WSA or Chicago, although we all have our biases ;). Still it is always edifying to have one’s current institution or alma mater be thus recognized.</p>
<p>Nobel prizes:
University of Chicago: 87 (11% of all winners)
Columbia: 86 (11% of all winners)
MIT: 78 (9% of all winners)
Stanford: 55 </p>
<p>And let us not forget that UChicago and Columbia have a better core curriculum than Stanford and MIT. I don’t mean to suggest that what you actually learn in college should matter, of course. We know it’s all about prestige not substance, if you read CC.</p>
<p>Or the culture wars of the 90s in which Stanford became synonymous with shallow, political correctness. Don’t read Plato because he’s a dead white male, etc…</p>
<p>Believe me, UChicago will benefit from this ranking more than anyone and as its admit rate plummets the critics will have little to say–which is why they are so defensive. They feel threatened.</p>
<p>Yes, the rankings are just pr. I don’t need them to tell me UChicago has the best undergraduate education in the country. Still, they are helping UChicago. For instance, fairly recently UChicago has recruited faculty from Harvard, Yale, Stanford, Berkeley, and Columbia. Since the faculty is the basis for the the quality of your university, this bodes well for UChicago</p>
<p>UChicago’s freshman retention rate and graduation rate are skyrocketing, its admit rate is plummeting. It’s always had a great student-faculty ratio. It’s faculty recruiting is improving. Since the peer assessment score is greatly influence by admit rate, as UChicago’s admit rate continues to drop and its ranking remains high, PA will go up. Rankings are very much a self-fulfilling prophecy, which is why universities take them seriously.</p>
<p>Cornell is in panic mode:
[Cornell</a> Ranked 14th Among World’s Best Universities | The Cornell Daily Sun](<a href=“http://cornellsun.com/blog/content/2012/09/12/cornell-ranked-14th-among-worlds-best-universities]Cornell”>Cornell Ranked 14th Among World’s Best Universities | The Cornell Daily Sun)</p>
<p>Update: U.S. News and World Report released its annual set of rankings early Wednesday morning, ranking Cornell 15th among the nation’s top universities for the fourth straight year. The Sun reported in September 2011 that the ranking is a significant setback for the University’s administration, which in its 2010-2015 Strategic Plan identified its “overarching aspiration” to make Cornell “widely recognized as a top-ten research university in the world.”</p>
<p>“If we’re not perceived to be in the top-ten, then the quality of students will decline, the quality of faculty will decline, and the resources [going] to the institution will decline,” Provost Kent Fuchs told The Sun in October 2010.</p>
<p>In last 20 years, even though Chicago lose the competition to Harvard, Yale, Princeton and some other schools in drawing the very top students, but Chicago provided the very best education and PRODUCED the very best graduates as its peers did. This is why Chicago deserves such a great reputation.</p>
<p>
I’m wondering the same myself. Chicago and Columbia are absolutely great colleges. Top 10, definitely. Top 5, maybe. Above Stanford, though?</p>
<p>US News rankings</p>
<p>Engineering #2 Stanford > #20 Columbia
Biology #1 Stanford > #13 Chicago, #15 Columbia
Chemistry #4 Stanford > #10 Columbia, #13 Chicago
Computer Science #1 Stanford > #17 Columbia, #35 Chicago
Earth Science #4 Stanford > #5 Columbia, #17 Chicago
Math #2 Stanford > #6 Chicago, #10 Columbia
Physics #5 Stanford > #7 Chicago, #11 Columbia
Statistics #1 Stanford > #6 Chicago, #22 Columbia
Economics #1 Chicago > #5 Stanford, #10 Columbia
English #2 Stanford > #4 Columbia, #7 Chicago
History #1 Stanford > #5 Chicago, #7 Columbia
Political Science #1 Stanford > #7 Columbia, #11 Chicago
Psychology #1 Stanford > #17 Columbia, #23 Chicago</p>
<p>Business #1 Stanford > #4 Chicago, #8 Columbia
Law #2 Stanford > #4 Columbia, #5 Chicago
Medicine #4 Stanford > #8 Columbia, #10 Chicago</p>
<p>Every single program at Stanford is ranked in the top 5. Some programs at Chicago and Columbia aren’t in the top 10 or even top 20.</p>
<p>**National Research Council rankings **</p>
<p>Programs in top 20: 27 Stanford > 24 Columbia, 18 Chicago
Programs in top 10: 22 Stanford > 14 Columbia, 11 Chicago
Programs in top 5: 12 Stanford > 7 Columbia, 6 Chicago
Programs in top 2: 7 Stanford > 2 Columbia, 2 Chicago</p>
<p><a href=“http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/princeton-university/1006939-princeton-2010-national-research-council-nrc-rankings-news-item.html[/url]”>http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/princeton-university/1006939-princeton-2010-national-research-council-nrc-rankings-news-item.html</a></p>
<p>Peer Assessment</p>
<p>4.9 Stanford > 4.6 Columbia, 4.6 Chicago</p>
<p>National Academies</p>
<p>AAAS (2003-2012) 244 Stanford > 154 Chicago, 132 Columbia
NAE 90 Stanford > 17 Columbia
NAS 133 Stanford > 49 Columbia, 41 Chicago</p>
<p>**Graduate placement **</p>
<p>Yale Law 34 Stanford > 15 Columbia, 13 Chicago
JHU Med 24 Stanford > 12 Chicago, 8 Columbia
PhD programs #6 Stanford > #7 Chicago, #15 Columbia</p>
<p>[Yale</a> University Bulletin | Yale Law School 2012?2013 | Law School Students](<a href=“Welcome | Office of the University Printer”>Welcome | Office of the University Printer)
<a href=“http://www.hopkinsmedicine.org/som/students/academics/catalog/SOMCtlg1011.pdf[/url]”>http://www.hopkinsmedicine.org/som/students/academics/catalog/SOMCtlg1011.pdf</a>
[National</a> University Rankings 2012 | Washington Monthly](<a href=“http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/college_guide/rankings_2012/national_university_rank.php]National”>http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/college_guide/rankings_2012/national_university_rank.php)</p>
<p>Awards production</p>
<p>Rhodes (2003-2012) 21 Stanford > 13 Chicago, 7 Columbia
Marshall (1954-2012) 87 Stanford > 30 Columbia, 23 Chicago
Marshall (2003-2012) 27 Stanford > 7 Chicago, 5 Columbia
Truman (1977-2012) 61 Stanford > 27 Chicago, 26 Columbia
Truman (2003-2012) 14 Stanford > 10 Chicago, 4 Columbia
Fulbright (2005-2012) 148 Chicago > 142 Stanford, 138 Columbia
NSF (2001-2010) 320 Stanford > 124 Chicago, 94 Columbia</p>
<p>[Northwestern</a> Data Book: *Administration and Planning - Northwestern University](<a href=“http://www.adminplan.northwestern.edu/ir/data-book/index.htm]Northwestern”>http://www.adminplan.northwestern.edu/ir/data-book/index.htm)</p>
<p>^^ Wow, I didn’t realize there were so many people who can’t believe the name on their diploma suddenly got devalued…by such a silly thing called US News “rankings.” It’s a pity.</p>
<p>hippo2718-It’s a ranking. Chill out. Why are you analyzing this so much and telling up that UChicago is pretty much “worse” at life that other schools? Take it up with US News. This putting down of UChicago+Columbia doesn’t need to happen here.</p>
<p>hippo has a point. Stanford is clearly outperforming Chicago and Columbia, so why should the latter be ranked higher? US News is a numbers game, and Columbia/Chicago know how to perform well in it. Not that there’s anything wrong with that.</p>
<p>The US News rankings don’t really prove anything, and are more of a bragging point than anything. It’s also used to attract fickle 18-year-olds to the college. For that reason, I’m glad that Chicago is performing well in the rankings. However, I’d like to see Chicago not only beat Stanford in the rankings, but also beat it in actual performance as well. Chicago has been greatly improving in actual performance over the last 5 years, which I’m happy to see, but since we’ve finally achieved #4 in the rankings, I hope the administration starts to focus all its attention on boosting our performance in reality.</p>
<p>That was an uncharacteristically mature comment. Haha, no offense intended.</p>
<p>phuriku couldn’t have said it better. i wholeheartedly agree.</p>
<p>To Hippo:</p>
<p>Just the rankings game:</p>
<p>I’m not sure how to treat the other USNWR/NRC rankings in terms of graduate placement. What I can say is that for several of the categories (not things like Computer Science and Engineering) such as Mathematics, Economics and History, Stanford and the UofC are all considered the elite schools you would go to. And in terms of graduate application, no one should be going to Stanford because the graduate placement in a particular ranking is higher but rather there is a set of particular faculty members that can mentor/share research interests, etc. Even in terms of quality assessment, I’m not sure that there exists clear delineation.</p>
<p>As far as the National Academies placement, I do not find this surprising as I am sure we have greater emphasis in other departments such as economics.</p>
<p>And finally for Graduate placement and Awards production, I wouldn’t be surprised to see if the numbers are a lot closer if we control for total student population. Stanford has 1500 more undergraduates than the UofC at any given time but if you project that out for 10 years you’re receiving 15,000 more students … </p>
<p>Which is all to say, it is great that the UofC is getting publicityjust as we would credit Apple Computers in the early 2000s for making a great brand or Harvard in the last 400 years of establishing a brand. I think truth in advertising is not necessarily something we shouldn’t strive for, but something that respectfully … Just doesn’t matter in the sense that you know what quality of education you are getting. The rest is really up to you.</p>