<p>“What makes you think you’re more knowledgeable than people working at the USNWR whose very JOB it is to research higher education?”</p>
<p>Because it is my job too, and I am better at it than they are.</p>
<p>“I feel like you’re selling these esteemed individuals short.”</p>
<p>Not really, they are ignorant, irresponsible and incompetent, which explains why their ranking is completely unacceptable to the majority of the academic community.</p>
<p>“I feel like the educated individuals you talked to only informed you of the reputation of universities based on their graduate prestige, which I deem to be very different from undergraduate excellence. Most of those high-level businessmen and academicians did years of graduate school and did grad school most recently, so they are more well-versed on grad school reputations.”</p>
<p>Nobody separates graduate from undergraduate “prestige”. A university either is prestigious or it isn’t. </p>
<p>“I believe that my friends and I are more informed than the Goldman Sachs CEO and some MIT PhD about the quality of undergraduate education offered across American universities. I have relevant, first-hand accounts of undergrad at every top 50 school based on friends and cousins who have RECENTLY attended.”</p>
<p>You are entitled to your opinion ring<em>of</em>fire. I guess I could have asked my fellow high school classmates and recent high school graduates for their opinions, but I was more interested in the opinions of professors at PhD programs I may (and did) one day apply to or CEOs of IBanks I was planning on working for (and did) after college. To each his own I suppose.</p>
<p>“Then how come USNWR(premier US college ranking system), the QS World Ranking(premier European college ranking system), the Hangzhou Ranking(premier Chinese college ranking system) all agree that Duke is superior to all those schools?”</p>
<p>First of all, those rankings are all pathetic. But according to the QS, Johns Hopkins and Cornell are practically tied with Duke. But that ranking would lead one to believe that Cornell, Duke, Johns Hopkins and other peer schools are equal to Stanford, and that is not the case. And I never heard of the Hangzhou ranking. The only Chinese ranking I was aware of is the Jio Tong rankings, which again ranks Cal, Cornell, Johns Hopkins and Northwestern on par with Duke. According to those two international ratings, Duke is peers with the following universities:</p>
<p>QS (ranking among US universities):</p>
<h1>4 Chicago</h1>
<h1>7 Penn</h1>
<h1>9 Duke</h1>
<h1>9 Johns Hopkins</h1>
<h1>11 Cornell</h1>
<h1>13 Michigan</h1>
<h1>15 Brown</h1>
<h1>17 Northwestern</h1>
<h1>18 Cal</h1>
<p>SJTU Ranking (ranking among US universities):</p>
<h1>3 Cal</h1>
<h1>8 Chicago</h1>
<h1>10 Cornell</h1>
<h1>13 Penn</h1>
<h1>17 Johns Hopkins</h1>
<h1>18 Michigan</h1>
<h1>23 Northwestern</h1>
<h1>25 Duke</h1>
<p>Neither ranking is good if you ask me, but neither one proves that Duke is “clearly” better than the rest of the peers listed.</p>