<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>