<p>
Uh huh…that’s why this is reflected in the peer assessment component (and IMHO makes a much better stand-alone ranking list). ;)</p>
<p>Stanford, MIT = 4.9</p>
<p>Caltech = 4.6
Penn = 4.5</p>
<p>
Or maybe it reveals something else about a school beyond its “perceived reputations” by individuals who are innately biased?</p>
<p>I think the latter.</p>
<p>UCBCheG, didn’t you mean to say:</p>
<p>Stanford, MIT = 4.9</p>
<p>UCB = 4.7
Caltech = 4.6
Penn = 4.5</p>
<p>^^ Very true, that’s why I said IMHO…your school PA = 3.7/3.8?, my school PA = 4.7 
</p>
<p>IMHO (again) there is no arguing with the collective opinion of ~2,000 academics.</p>
<p>Go Blue, I said I was being humble. :rolleyes:</p>
<p>^ Obvious PA envy. :p</p>
<p>
OK, let’s look at PA. Above Penn, we have…</p>
<ul>
<li>HYPSM (obviously)</li>
<li>Berkeley (which will never make the USNWR top 10 again)</li>
<li>Caltech, Chicago, Columbia (all of which are only 0.1 higher)</li>
</ul>
<p>Minor differences in peer assessment make an exceedingly poor indicator for school quality. I often site the decidedly odd ranking of Hopkins and Brown over Duke and Northwestern (respectively) as proof of this. </p>
<p>Penn doesn’t belong in the top 5; I think we can all agree on that. It does have a darned good shot at #6 or #7, though, along with 4 or 5 other schools.</p>
<p>^ Yes, but the schools above Penn all have more distinguished academic programs…that was the OP’s point. </p>
<p>
Umm, not to change the direction of this thread, but Hopkins has more distinguished academic programs than Duke. I don’t recall Brown having a higher PA score than Northwestern and Duke.</p>
<p>Penn’s Academic Reputaion used to be around 4.2-4.3, while CalTech used to be 4.7-4.8. Pretty soon, US News will let Penn replace Yale. </p>
<p>It has been executed in a sutble way over the past 20 year.</p>
<p>US News intentionally manipulate the data to make Penn look good, and other schools look bad. Has anybody audited US News data. Why do people using US News data to support their argument?</p>
<p>Student A: “I don’t think Penn is a top 4 or top 10 school. and I don’t think US News ranking is believable.”</p>
<p>Student B: “It is a top 4 or top 10.”</p>
<p>Student A: “How do you prove that Penn is top 4 or top 10.”</p>
<p>Student B: “Because it is ranked top 4 by US News. How do you prove Penn is not top 4 or top 10?”</p>
<p>Student A: “I have more objective data from various and independent sources to prove it.”</p>
<p>Student A: “Source # 1: Shanghai Jiao Tong’s university ranking. There is no reason for me to believe that Shanghai Jiaotong will ■■■■■ one particular school. Penn is not in top 10 there.”</p>
<p>Student B: “What other sources do you have to prove Penn is not top 10?”</p>
<p>Student A: “Forbes ranking. Even though the faculty ratting can be dubious, its rating on Who’ Who, student award, faculty award is much more objective than US News. Penn did not make the top 20 list on each of the component ranking.”</p>
<p>Student B: “What other source do you have to believe that Penn is not top 10?”</p>
<p>Student A: “QS does not rank Penn top 10. Penn is only 11th in 2008. It performed very bad before the 2008 ranking. When you look at history, Penn is not a top 10.”</p>
<p>Student B: “What other sources do you have to prove Penn is not top 10?”</p>
<p>Student A: “Wall Street Journal does not think Penn is top 10 or top 15 in placing students in prestigious medical, law and B0-schools.”</p>
<p>Student B: “That is because they have not included Penn’s law and med schools.”</p>
<p>Student A: “Because (1) penn’s law and med school is not the top 10 by objective measure. (2) Wharton with 800 new MBA’s is already included in the survey.”</p>
<p>Student B: “How come Wall Street Journal include Harvard Med, law and B-schools then. It is not fair.”</p>
<p>Student A: “Because Harvard med, law and Bschool are all top 3 in the nation. While Penn just can’t make the list.”</p>
<p>Student B: “It is not fair that we are ranked beyond top 15 in placement into elite professional schools.” </p>
<p>Student A: “How come MIT, Stanford, or Duke can make the top placement list while none or at most 1 of its prof schools are surveyed. How come they can make it while Penn cann’t make it?”</p>
<p>Student B: “Because all of our students went to Wall Street.”</p>
<p>Student A: “If all your top student went to Wall Street, how come Penn’s rating on PayScale is beyound top 20 when cost of living is adjusted (please check the complete component ranking on the web).?”</p>
<p>Student B: “I think that Penn is top 4 or top 10 because US News told me so. And it is the best ranking I can get from all different sources.”</p>
<p>Student A: “By the way, Penn’s placement into top PhD programs is not in the top 10 list, at best in the top 30 list.”</p>
<p>Student B: “Why do you hate Penn so much? What did Penn do to you.”</p>
<p>Student A: I do not hate Penn. I just want to tell you the truth so that you don’t just form your opinion or decison based on one US News data point.</p>
<p>Penn did not do anything to me.</p>
<p>It is pretty asinine to argue about a few spots in a given year. Take the three to five year averages and that is more indicative of the relative “rank” of the school.</p>
<p>
Running average doesn’t work for Penn because it was from the abyss in the 90s to 4 in 2009. And then there are Washu & USC.
LAC-wise, we have Middlebury. ;-)</p>
<p>
I, not any of the other pro Penn posters, say that Penn is without a doubt the 4th best school in the country. However, we all say that it has a fair spot in the top 10 along with maybe 15 other universities.</p>
<p>
Penn is 13 in the US on that ranking. It is right behind UCLA and UCSD (the ranking might have a California bias, but oh well). It is still ahead of Duke, Dartmouth, Northwestern, Hopkins, Brown, and other schools you claim are better than Penn.</p>
<p>
Well 10>>>>>>>>11… You also realize that there is something called improvement where a university works to better itself and its programs. Doing stuff like that raises your ranking. Penn isn’t allowed to improve? If you’re going to bash Penn in this ranking be fair and bash UCL for making similar jumps? The ranking as a whole has a lot of fluctuation and I’m pretty sure nothing at these universities changes so drastically from year to year. Maybe they are just arbitrarily changing rankings to fit public perception more.</p>
<p>
If we say the top med schools are Harvard and Hopkins, you’re saying without a doubt that WashU, UCSF, Columbia, Duke, Stanford, Yale and other med schools are without a doubt and no arguments from top medical professionals and professors better than Penn med? I strongly doubt that. Penn med has strong arguments as a top 5 med school, and is certainly a top 10 med school in the country. Penn also has the #1 dental, veterinary, and nursing schools in the country.
Penn is also widely considered a top 14 law school ([Law</a> school rankings in the United States - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia](<a href=“Law school rankings in the United States - Wikipedia”>Law school rankings in the United States - Wikipedia)). If we say that Harvard and Yale are the top 2 and Columbia, NYU, and Stanford round out the top 5, you’re saying that among Chicago, Georgetown, Duke, Northwestern, Cal, Michigan, and UVA all, without a doubt, are better than Penn Law?</p>
<p>
Well, if you actually look at the numbers, It’s tough to say if the difference between Penn and colleges that rank ahead of it (Columbia, Chicago, Brown). They also comment that Penn med is riddled with Penn undergrads. Kind of a useless comment not made with other schools if it weren’t for the fact that Penn med is highly respected and gobbles up a lot of Penn’s top premeds from say Columbia and Yale.</p>
<p>
Can you show me where you get Penn’s placement into top PhD programs from aside from pulling numbers from Caltech physics and questionable ones from Harvard physics?</p>
<p>You can make stronger arguments if you acknowledge that Penn is a strong university with many strong programs. You don’t have to say that it’s top 4 (a number you’re fixated with) and can even argue that it’s not top 10. You do, however, have to acknowledge that it is a top research university. I know that you believe Penn is so much worse than any other top private, but at some point, you have to let your biases go and see that it’s a pretty good school.</p>
<p>
Actually, a running average works very well for Penn: #4-#7 for the last 13 years (including 4 times at #4), and if you want to go back even further, #11-#16 for the 7 years before that (not exactly “the abyss”).</p>
<p>^average Penn rank from 1990 through 2009 is 8.85.
Rank from 1990-1999 is 12.5. That still doesn’t put it as the lowest Ivy League school, and doesn’t make it a lowly ranked school.</p>
<p>
Actually, a running average implies stability. Ex: Duke ranking goes from 7 to 9 to 8 to 7 to 8 to 9, etc… So a running average would make sense.</p>
<p>For Penn, it’s going up and up and up. Thus, it doesn’t make any sense to ask for a running average.</p>
<p>
Penn’s US News rankings for the last 13 years</p>
<p>1998: #7
1999: #6
2000: #7
2001: #6
2002: #5
2003: #4
2004: #5
2005: #4
2006: #4
2007: #7
2008: #5
2009: #6
2010: #4</p>
<p>Now, what is it about this that you don’t get? :rolleyes:</p>
<p>^From 1990-1998 Penn was usually ranked in the top 15. It then jumped to 7 and hasnt looked back since. In one year Columbia jumped nearly 10 spots too and hasn’t looked back, being ranked about 9th place every year. No one talks about Columbia’s sudden jump because it’s been in steady state maybe 5 more years than Penn.</p>
<p>Y7ongjun, can you present data in a per capita format?</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>Even DUKE, Ms. Middsmith’s paragon of stability, jumped 7 places (the most that Penn ever jumped) in one year, going from #12 in the 1989 ranking to #5 in the 1990 ranking. Methinks that Ms. Middsmith (and some others on CC) needs to do a bit more homework on this subject. :)</p>
<p>Duke was neither unranked nor out of top 20.<br>
1989 was a fluke. The ranking also corrects itself for Duke.</p>
<p>Me thinks someone is desperately trying to make a case when there is no case.</p>
<p>^ Indeed, the one who keeps IGNORING THE LAST TWENTY YEARS!</p>
<p>FYI, Penn was never out of the top 20, either, and was only unranked in the early “proto-rankings” of 1983 and 1985. And guess what? DUKE was also unranked in 1983; CalTech, MIT, and Cornell were unranked in 1985; and COLUMBIA was unranked in BOTH 1983 AND 1985.</p>
<p>You really do need to get your facts straight. :rolleyes:</p>