<p>Its a great university, beautiful campus, great student body and faculty. Why o why – any thoughts?</p>
<p>'cause the peers didn’t like it. What’s to explain? (It’s higher than 1,500 other colleges and universities.)</p>
<p>I think its because although it has increased in selevtivity it doesnt have strong research and graduate programs - compared to other top schools - nor is it renowned for undergraduate focus.</p>
<p>nor is it renowned for undergraduate focus. - I respectfully disagree!</p>
<p>what’s its PA score? 0.5? anything above a 3.5 is pretty darn high.,…</p>
<p>Snuffles is more respectful about her dissent. </p>
<p>I think that statement is just a bunch of crap - Tufts is probably best known for how much it focuses on its undergrads. If Tufts isn’t undergrad focused, I really want to know what universities are focused on their undergrads. Hum… very short list of the ones which care more about their undergrads than Tufts does.</p>
<p>Yeah, you are right it is pretty undergraduate focused. These schools get dung relative to peers that are more research focused. For example, Dartmouth or Brown get 4.4s yet Columbia/ Penn get around a 4.7 and this is largely due to a research tilt at those schools. So Tufts, will get dung relative to its peers which have around a 4.0. Schools dont get any credit for great teaching, resources available to undergrads, classes all taught by professors, professor accessibility, etc.</p>
<p>Its too bad, I think undergraduate emphasis matters alot more than how much research the faculty have done. Who cares if you are in a lecture hall with 300 people and never get to see them.</p>
<p>A 3.6 peer rating is a strong score, comparable to other good, solid, traditionally regional, private universities such as Boston College, Brandeis, and Wake Forest.</p>
<p>I suppose you could quibble a bit over a tenth or two, but the peer assessement strikes me as reasonable.</p>
<p>The vast majority of “peers” remember that (30 years ago) Tufts is where the Harvard rejects go. They know none of the current students, little about the current offerings, and probably have never met a single Tufts faculty member. But Tufts gets some extra points for being in the northeast - whenever they come to Boston, the peers hang around the Square, thus enhancing H.'s reputation, and a little bit of it rubs off.</p>
<p>Much the same can be said of the rest of their “assessments”.</p>
<p>Mini:</p>
<p>That sounds about right. The Peer Assessment component serves the role of the US Senate (staid, slow to change, long institutional memory) compared to the here today/gone tomorrow House of Representatives, which is subject to more ephemeral trends such as mass-mailing marketing campaigns, merit-aid discounting, etc.</p>
<p>The Peer Assessment is very New England biased, as is much of the college admissions game.</p>
<p>Funny - I think that Tufts gets hurt becuase it’s in the shadow of giants.</p>
<p>We can all agree that Harvard & MIT are in a special class of their own, joined only by Yale, Princeton, and Stanford. Tufts is literally walking distance to two of those schools. The comparisons are inevitable, and all but a few schools (like, oh, a half-dozen) in the country cannot compete. Just my opinion, but I do think that Tufts is DC is Georgetown; in Texas, it’s Rice; in Illinois, it’s Northwestern. Heck, even stick Tufts in New Hampshire and it would probably have a different reputation.</p>
<p>“We can all agree that Harvard & MIT are in a special class of their own, joined only by Yale, Princeton, and Stanford. Tufts is literally walking distance to two of those schools.”</p>
<p>Why is that? Harvard’s survey of its 50-60% of its own students, undertaken through the Consortium of Financing of Higher Education, and which Harvard itself says they take seriously, indicates student satisfaction with academic quality and quality of campus life puts them at 26th. This is from students who actually experience the school, rather than the Dean at Montana State who has never been east of the Mississippi. What special class is that?</p>
<p>I’m almost too shocked to really answer that question.</p>
<p>Are you seriously questioning whether or not Harvard & MIT are uber-prestigious institutions, or are you just arguing for its own sake? I honestly find it too self-evident to argue the prestige of Harvard.</p>
<p>Education quality, I will debate - because I don’t think it’s that good for undergrads. Prestige - as I said, almost too shocked to respond. It’s the freakin H-bomb. What more do you want?</p>
<p>No disagreement about the prestige. And I think that’s precisely what is wrong with the question about “peer assessment” - folks take it as a measure of undergraduate educational quality, when what is actually being measured is overall academic prestige, based upon “scores” from people who have never been to more than three or four institutions, and couldn’t find many of the others on a map? And the folks doing the “assessment” are called “peers” - don’t know why - is the dean at South Dakota State Teachers College a “peer” of the dean at Wharton? And do you think the dean at Wharton knows the first think about SDSTC, other than that it is in South Dakota and trains teachers?</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>No, I find it accurate. UC Berk has the 6th highest score in peer assesment, higher than 5 ivy leagues. </p>
<p>…and there’s nothing wrong with having academic prestige in the picture. To many, that is an important part of the undergraduate.</p>
<p>Actually I’m a he :)</p>
<p>Tufts is 36th among privates in NAS members and 33rd in major faculty awards. Seems they have them pegged right.</p>
<p>um…biased against the midwest…idk. Michigan has a peer assessment of 4.6 on par with Cornell, Penn, Duke, JHU, Chicago. Chicago has a peer score of 4.6, not shabby. Northwestern 4.4.</p>
<p>definitely sounds like the whole peer assesment thing is bogus then as it is based on what “old school” deans think, perhaps a geographical factor, and the fact that lots of unqualified folks are assessing schools they have no knowledge of. Kinda funny that US News uses it, on the other hand, I’m not sure what I’d replace it with!</p>
<p>do we not think that Deans… whether old school or not, know their ****? Because if anyone has the credentials or credibility to “rank” universities, I hope it would be them… </p>
<p>Give the poll on the street and it would probably be:</p>
<ol>
<li>Harvard</li>
<li>Princeton</li>
<li>Yale</li>
<li>Nortre Dame</li>
<li>Penn State</li>
</ol>