UT. austin vs ucla vs penn state?!??

JWT86
Wed, 29 Apr 2009 22:26:00 +0000

UT is a notch below UCLA. UCLA is a top tier public whereas PSU and UT are 2nd tier publics. I would opt for UCLA.



If UT is a “2nd tier public”, then so is UCLA. Per all the individual academic department rankings, UT and UCLA are ranked almost identically, with each having slight strengths in various areas. There is NO data supporting that UCLA is measurably stronger than UT. The NRC rankings over 10 years ago showed this and the USNWR grad program rankings still show it today. In fact, you could almost argue that since UCLA has one huge prestige advantage against UT - an on campus medical school - it should perform measurably better than UT given the halo effect. As the academic department rankings show, it clearly does not.