<p>I love UVA and I definitely love Berkeley. If people insist on proving that one is better than the other, leave the US News Rankings out of the discussion. The peer assessment score is always cited as the major flaw, but another problem is in the data reported. Someone brought this to my attention last year and I tucked it away…</p>
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4059 were freshman in Fall 2005 at Berkeley
<p>260 admitted students are athletes (according to the [2005</a> Athletic Admissions Policy](<a href=“http://academic-senate.berkeley.edu/committees/pdf_docs_consolidate/Athletics_Admissions_Policy_2005.pdf]2005 ”>http://academic-senate.berkeley.edu/committees/pdf_docs_consolidate/Athletics_Admissions_Policy_2005.pdf ))http://www.berkeley.edu/ncaa/report.shtml]this ”>http://www.berkeley.edu/ncaa/report.shtml ))</p>
<p>There’s some funny wording on those documents, but a reasonable conclusion might be that 208 incoming students last fall didn’t meet the admission criteria. That’s 5% of the incoming class. I think reporting 99% of the class as ranking in the top decile of their high school class is a problem.</p>
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Please find NCAA Self Study Academic Standards 2.1.2, C, Part I-B and Part I-C, documenting the institution’s admissions profiles of student athletes who received athletics grants-in-aid with the entering freshman students in general for the three most recent academic years: 2003-2004, 2004-2005, and 2005-2006.
Unfortunately, the document with the hard data isn’t online. At some point, someone will make a “Freedom of Information Act” request to get the raw numbers and analyze them. Until then, we have another reason to be wary of US News’ rankings.
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