<p>my predictions for a few:</p>
<p>Brown: -1
Hopkins: -1 or -2
WUSTL: same
Cornell: same</p>
<p>You know, the whole ranking thing perrenially screws schools.</p>
<p>Large Public Schools and others like Tulane, etc, that are not as highly ranked as, say, Harvard or Yale, to begin with, will, undoubtedly turn off some top notch students simply with their rankings…thereby leaving their applicant pool with lower stats, their admitted students with lower stats, a lower yield rate, and etc etc. </p>
<p>It is all a DOMINO effect, leaving schools very little possibility of climbing without drastic measures. And the fact that the majority of the ranking has little to do with actual Academic caliber is not very re-assuring either.</p>
<p>If berkeley was ranked in the top 10 as it should be, I think we would see an explosion of applications, a MUCH lower admit rate, higher stats, etc, and the school would turn into another version of Stanford or Harvard. However, because of its ranking, many students use it as a safety/match, a back-up, and/or don’t even apply to it due to parental pressure.</p>
<p>And that is just one example.</p>
<p>I think PA should be used as the primary ranking source for USNWR for a few years :-P, and see how that effects all the stats and rankings when things settle down :D</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>I actually completely agree with this ordering of schools and wouldn’t change it whatsoever. This is how the top colleges in the nation break down. rank by rank.</p>
<p>The ranking’s are all relative.
Although I do think Berkeley should be ranked higher, it is definitely not top 10.
The rankings are based upon many many stats from these schools.
Berkeley is the one who has screwed itself because it’s a public school. don’t make it seem like they deserve to be on par with other top 10 schools because they don’t.
Since berkeley is public, their average SAT scores are much lower than other schools. Class sizes are much larger, student:faculty ratio is much higher, etc.
Berkeley is still a great school but the factors that i mentioned are just a few examples WHY it deserves to be outside the top 10/15/20. </p>
<p>Also, i would expect almost all ivy-acceptees to know what berkeley is. i doubt people don’t apply to berkeley based purely on their ranking. i highly, highly doubt that.</p>
<p>^ Berkeley is what it is…it shouldn’t be punished for providing top-notch education to the masses.</p>
<p>so if rankings aren’t based on factors such as student:faculty ratio, how much attention students receive from teachers, # of classes taught by TA’s, the average SAT score of the student body (since Berkeley gives in-state’s precedence), what should they base an academic score on?</p>
<p>professors? so whichever school pays the most money for a professor to come work can increase it’s ranking</p>
<p>students? oh wait, most students are in-state and aren’t put up to the same admissions standards as out-of-states (the same standards that ALL of the applicants at ivies face) </p>
<p>how about facilities? basically which school can spend the most money building things.</p>
<p>the rankings will never be fully accurate, but if you’re looking at the big picture and want a school with smaller lectures, more attention to students, a higher test score avg student body, then you have to let those factors come into play. I’m not saying it’s neither fair nor unfair, but it’s a factor that still has to be considered.</p>
<p>If USNews will remove the PA section, the ranking table will lose credibility for sure.</p>
<p>noob, so only the smallest, richest schools would be in your ranking…that’s fine. You can look at LACs too…perhaps they’d fit your criteria even better.</p>
<p>The same standards that all Ivys face? Does that include legacies too?</p>
<p>Smaller lectures, in reality, doesn’t mean jack. I’m sure schools like Kalamazoo or Clover U. or whatever have smaller lecture sizes than Cornell, Columbia, or even Brown, but does that make them better?</p>
<p>For more attention to students, you could go to some schools were the ration is 2:1, does that make it better than Harvard?</p>
<p>For higher test scores, etc, does Caltech surpass Harvard, Stanford, etc? Does WashU surpass UChicago?</p>
<p>PA is the most reputable part of USNWR. No one is saying class size, etc isn’t important, but compared to faculty quality and academic reputation/regior…those factors pale in comparison.</p>
<p>I would move UCLA up to 15th and drop UVA down to 19th. I want UCLA to be ranked within 10 spots of Berkeley, just to irk UCBChemEGrad a little. ;-)</p>
<p>Let me give you another example:</p>
<p>Stuyveseant High School in NYC is ranked as easily one of the top, if not THE top, high schools in the country, yet the student population is HUGE.</p>
<p>Why is is so good?</p>
<h1>1 The academics are TOP NOTCH</h1>
<h1>2 The students are of great caliber.</h1>
<p>There is no dithering over class size or “attention to each individual.” A school is supposed to be about both academics and student quality. If a school can provide top notch faculty and programs, it really doesn’t matter about the size of the classes so long as the job gets done adequately.</p>
<p>Of course, I’m not advocating 1000 person classes, but I’m saying it’s not as important as people make it seem to be.</p>
<p>In some of my liberal arts classes at Berkeley, the classes were very small (esp. upper division)…took a class with grad students and 15 students total.</p>
<p>All research universities apply economies of scale when it comes to teaching based on the subject matter. More fact based subjects, such as math, science and economics are taught in large lectures…there is less need for intimate discussion… Social science classes were much smaller to foster discussion/debate.</p>
<p>
Like I said, “rearrange anyway you see fit”. ;-)</p>
<p>RML
</p>
<p>Maybe to you. That’s not what a lot of University Presidents, Deans and Chancellors think. I notice that you keep ignoring the quote from U Penn Law School’s former Dean.</p>
<p>^ How sure are you?</p>
<p>There are several league tables out there, but they’re nowhere as popular as USNews’ because for one, they do not picture the real academic quality of the institution. </p>
<p>Look at the Princeton review as an example. It ranks Chicago as the number 1 school in America. Do you think Chicago is better than HYPSM?</p>
<p>If PA section was removed from the rankings table… then you will have a bunch of journalist intend on selling a product manipulating ranking factors with no general oversight or input from people in the academic community… It’s almost like… driving with your eyes closed… it’s dumb.</p>
<p>Do you honestly think removal of the PA system will equalize everything. Above all, the PA system helps public schools that get shafted by the ranking methology…</p>
<p>The rankings overall favor endowment rich schools with low student population ratios and high selectivity… Berkeley is widely respected because it can supply large masses with A grade education on a tight financial state budget… It should definitely be commended for committing to it’s role in higher education to provide quality education to students. </p>
<p>The PA system simply supports conventional wisdom… that WUSTL is not tied with MIT for #6…</p>
<p>WUSTL with it’s huge wads of cash can easily game the system to it’s advantage… but academics in the REAL WORLD give a relatively low PA score for WUSTL… I am not surprised that MIT’s PA score is higher than that of WUSTL… yet somehow without the PA system… they are TIED? LOL</p>
<p>Here are my criteria for ranking schools.</p>
<p>Main Criteria:</p>
<p>30% - Academic reputation </p>
<p>20% - Faculty Resources
a. Caliber of faculty
b. citations received by faculty
c. degree level of faculty
d. Students per academic staffmember</p>
<p>15% - Student selectivity/Student quality
a. high school GPA
b. Class rank of admitted students
c. SATs scores
d. student achievements</p>
<p>15% - Research/Research output
a. Scientific contributions of the school to society
b. inventions/innovations of the program
b. Citations in international journals</p>
<p>10% - Facilities
a. libraries
b. science laboratories
c. Internet bandwidth</p>
<p>5% - Financial Resources
a. annual budget of the university for purposes of teaching
b. annual budget of the university for purposes of research
c. annual budget of the university for school maintenance</p>
<p>Phead128 or anybody,</p>
<p>can you post what the outcome of the ranking will be minus the PA?</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>This ranking minus PA is produced by Wilmingtonwave in 2006. <a href=“http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/college-search-selection/220855-peer-assessment-free-rankings.html[/url]”>http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/college-search-selection/220855-peer-assessment-free-rankings.html</a></p>
<p>WUSTL TIED WITH MIT???</p>
<p>USNews rankings MINUS PA:
Harvard University 1
Princeton University 1
University of Pennsylvania 3
Yale University 3
Duke University 3
Stanford University 6
Massachusetts Inst. of Technology 6
Washington University in St. Louis 6
Dartmouth College 6
Northwestern University 10
Brown University 10
California Institute of Technology 10
Columbia University 10
University of Notre Dame 10
Rice University 15
Cornell University 15
University of Chicago 17
Johns Hopkins University 17
Emory University 17
Vanderbilt University 17
Tufts University 21
Georgetown University 21
Wake Forest University 23
Carnegie Mellon University 23
University of Virginia 23
Lehigh University 23
Univ. of Southern California 27
University of California-Los Angeles 28
University of Rochester 28
U of North Carolina-Chapel Hill 28
Brandeis University 28
University of California-Berkeley 28
Case Western Reserve Univ. 33
University of Michigan-Ann Arbor 34
College of William and Mary 34
Boston College 34
Yeshiva University 34
New York University 38
Tulane University 38
Univ. of California-San Diego 38
Rensselaer Polytechnic Inst. 41
Univ. of Wisconsin-Madison 42
Georgia Institute of Technology 42
Univ. of California-Santa Barbara 42
Syracuse University 42
University of California-Irvine 46
U of Illinois-Urbana Champaign 47
University of Florida 48
University of Washington 49
Pennsylvania State University 50
University of California-Davis 51</p>
<p>versus</p>
<p>USNEWS PA ALONE:</p>
<ol>
<li>Harvard, Stanford, MIT</li>
<li>Princeton, Yale</li>
<li>Berkeley</li>
<li>Chicago, Caltech</li>
<li>Penn, Columbia, Cornell, Johns Hopkins</li>
<li>Duke, Michigan</li>
<li>Brown, Dartmouth, Northwestern, Virginia</li>
<li>UCLA</li>
<li>UNC, Wisconsin, WUSTL, Carnegie Mellon</li>
<li>Texas, UIUC, Georgia Tech, Rice, Vanderbilt, Georgetown</li>
<li>USC, Notre Dame, Washington</li>
</ol>