Why isn't Rice higher on USNews?

Clendenenator · December 20, 2006, 10:25pm

I don’t have the USNews book in front of me, so i have to ask this online. And I’m not trying to say #17 is bad, but…everything i read about rice makes me wonder why it isn’t in the top 10. It’s #11 for selectivity, 5:1 student-fac ratio, 5th highest endowment per student, etc. Am i missing something? There must be some reason for them being #17 instead of 8 or 9.

JyankeesSS2 · December 20, 2006, 10:52pm

Peer assessment? All of the schools in the top 10 are more prestigious institutions than rice

Clendenenator · December 20, 2006, 11:02pm

What is rice’s peer assessment?

interesteddad · December 21, 2006, 12:15am

Houston, Texas

gomestar · December 21, 2006, 12:31am

“5:1 student-fac ratio”

yes, but this also includes a very small student body. It’s like asking why some LAC’s aren’t considered very prestige despite great student bodies, great numbers, etc. It’s tough to be a huge powerhouse with only 2,000 or so undergrads. Imagine if they had a 5:1 ratio with 8,000 undergrads (stronger alumni network, etc).

Also, look how competitive it is at the top. Not everybody can come out in the top 10 as I believe that there’s 14 or so schools that deserve to be in the top 10.

JWT86 · December 21, 2006, 2:07am

You could also argue Rice is actually overranked by USNews. The University of Texas at Austin is ranked higher than Rice in just about every academic discipline, yet ranked lower overall (at the undergrad level, at least) by US News because of its larger size and lower selectivity. Ironically, they both share the same peer reputation score - 4.1.

Tarhunt · December 21, 2006, 10:27am

OP:

The short answer is “because that’s where the US News formula places Rice.” It’s not quite as smartass an answer as it seems. ALL rankings, regardless of who is doing them, are useful ONLY in the context of the ranking formula.

Glancing at the US News rankings, it seems clear that the peer assessment is somewhat lower than Rice would like at 4.1. That’s not bad by any means, but public schools such as Berkeley (4.7), Michigan (4.5), UVA (4.3) UCLA (4.3) are higher. At the top, Princeton, Harvard, and Yale have 4.9s. And since peer assessment is 25% of the score, there you have it.

Peer assessment seems to me to be closely related to the research reputation of the faculty. Rice isn’t large enough to generate substantial amounts of research compared to a Michigan or Berkeley.

swish14 · December 21, 2006, 11:35am

Agree with Tarhunt re peer assessment. Definitely biased towards schools with top notch research rather than undergrad focus. This hurts Rice , William & Mary, Wake Forest, Tufts. Almost need another category for Small Universities.

US News did acknowledge this several years ago and rated Dartmouth, Brown , W&M as tops in undergrad education but I havent seen it since. I cant imagine a serious student turning down Rice for those aforementioned State U’s for any reason other than cost.

IsleBoy · December 21, 2006, 11:40am

Yeah…it is the methodology that USN uses…that is why one cannot rely on rankings to make school decisions. It changes depending on how the method is tweeked.

ag54 · December 21, 2006, 12:08pm

Interesteddad, OUCH! Why would you say that the peer assessment is low because Rice is in Houston, Texas. As a native Houstonian, I take some umbrage to that! ;)

In the paper today (Houston Chron):

Rice stakes its future on booming biomedicine

A building planned near the Med Center will unite experts from area institutions

By ERIC BERGER
Copyright 2006 Houston Chronicle 

Participation
Who’s involved Biomedical research is booming, and Rice University wants a piece of the action.

With the lines between the traditional academic disciplines of medicine, physics and chemistry continuing to blur, Rice announced plans Wednesday to build its largest-ever academic building directly across from the Texas Medical Center so physicians and physical scientists can share lab space.

Named the Collaborative Research Center, the building will rise 10 stories and encompass 477,000 square feet. Completion is expected in early 2009.

Rice will not bear the entire $280 million cost — more than Minute Maid Park — to construct and equip the building. It will lease floors of the facility to partnering academic institutions and hospitals in the Texas Medical Center.

The location, 2.9 acres of campus at the corner of Main and University Boulevard, is adjacent to the Medical Center, less than 2,000 feet from every partnering institution. That corner of the Rice campus points into the heart of the Medical Center.

“The symbolism of this location is huge,” said David Leebron, president of Rice.

Among scientists, the last century, with its splitting of the atom and such titans as Albert Einstein and Niels Bohr, is commonly viewed as the century of physics. But the coming decades likely will belong to biomedicine as scientists have unlocked DNA’s genetic code and begun to understand how the human body works on a molecular level.

An aggressive push
To thrive in the future, research universities such as Rice that lack a medical school must aggressively push into biomedical research, Leebron said. 

At the same time, as Medical Center researchers elucidate the function of human cells and genes, they are finding the need for powerful physical tools to image these tiny structures, computers to model their behavior, and engineers to design small devices and drugs to interact on the molecular level.

Texas Children’s Hospital, which has exhausted its existing research space, has leased a floor of the new building and intends to capitalize on Rice’s “outstanding intellectual capital,” said Mark Wallace, president and chief executive of the hospital.

“They have the people in math, physics and informatics that are just not represented in the Texas Medical Center,” Wallace said. “We feel the yield from this investment could be very high indeed.”

The research fields that straddle the physical sciences and medicine, including nanotechnology and biotechnology, are seen as important to Houston’s future economy, also. The chairman of Rice’s Board of Trustees, Jim Crownover, said he predicts biomedicine will create up to 30,000 jobs in Houston in the next five years.

Rice is not alone, locally, in recognizing the trend.

A year ago, the University of Houston opened a $56 million science building on its campus dedicated to biomedical research at the molecular level. It, too, has forged collaborations with the Medical Center, including physicians at The Methodist Hospital Research Institute.

Speeding up research
For patients, the new collaborations ultimately could lead to applications including improved drug delivery systems — such as tiny cancer-busting drugs that bypass healthy cells and deliver their lethal payload to tumors — as well as regenerated tissues and organs. 

“We’re going to get answers to the basic research questions faster,” said Dr. John Mendelsohn, president of the University of Texas M.D. Anderson Cancer Center, a partner in the new building. “And, ultimately, the research that’s being done at the laboratory level is going to get into the clinic faster.”

Mendelsohn said collaborations between Rice and Medical Center institutions have increased steadily in the decade he has been at M.D. Anderson.

The addition of a centralized meeting place should spark further discussions among scientists in disparate fields, he said.

To that end, the new Rice building will have 10,000 feet of space for a restaurant, shops and common meeting space to foster such conversations.

“When you’re trying to build collaborations,” Leebron said, “coffee bars can be as important as labs.”

Rice’s location in Houston, adjacent to the Medical Center, doesn’t seem like a detriment to me.

Pulkit · December 21, 2006, 12:10pm

hey swish, about htat comment about turning down rice for the “aforementioned” schools. I would turn down Rice for Berkeley and I live in Texas. In fact, I did. I consider myself a serious student. First of all, I would argue that berkeley is more prestigious than rice (others may argue otherwise, but berkeley is known globally. Just look at the THES or the shingtao report, berkeley is rated in the top 10). YOu could argue again that the reason why it is is in the top 10 is because of its research again, but then in the long run, it doesn’t matter how it gets its prestige, just that it is more name brand globally than rice. Then, there is the thing that rice is in houston, that blows, really it does. and then I do enjoy doing considerable amounts of researc h, making berkeley a WAY better choice. I am currenlty researching at the lawrence berkeley national lab in cancer biology, an opportunity I just would not have recieved at Rice. Berkeley has way more course offerings, it has a plethora more stuff to do. I am not saying berkeley is perfect in any way, however, I am simply saying that between berkely and rice I do see reasons why people would choose berkeley over rice even when money is not a factor.

lolabelle · December 21, 2006, 2:28pm

TOTALLY agree with Swish14 when h(s)he said:

snoopyiscool · December 21, 2006, 2:30pm

Hopefully everyone here knows that college rankings mean absolutely nothing.

slipper1234 · December 21, 2006, 3:26pm

I just don’t understand why people care about GLOBAL prestige. Nice that some Chinese scientist might know Berkeley, but I think the real benefits of grad placement, recruiting, and US undergrad reputation trumps those benefits.

HeavenWood · December 21, 2006, 3:32pm

Aw, #17, such a terrible ranking.

Let’s take a middle ground between snoopyiscool and the OP. The former is wrong in dismissing college rankings as meaning absolutely nothing. They can give you rough (and I mean rough) of the overall prestige and academic quality of a college institution, but is #1 much better than say, #10, or #20? This is where it gets blurry. I mean, Rochester (#34) is obviously overall a better school than Clark Atlanta (4th Tier), but is there really much of a difference in overall quality between Tulane (#44) and Penn State (#47)?

Tarhunt · December 21, 2006, 3:52pm

snoopyiscool:

No. I don’t agree that college rankings are meaningless. I believe they are very meaningful within the limitations of the formula used to make the ranking. That is all they are.

snoopyiscool · December 21, 2006, 5:07pm

Perhaps :rolleyes:

I meant my comment to be understood as you should look at colleges in terms of what you are looking for, not necessarily what is good in the eyes of USN&WR.

a778999 · December 21, 2006, 6:22pm

<a href=“http://www.wcbstv.com/topstories/topstories_story_353063314.html[/url]”>http://www.wcbstv.com/topstories/topstories_story_353063314.html</a>

HeavenWood · December 21, 2006, 7:22pm

That I agree with, snoopy.

Clendenenator · December 21, 2006, 7:35pm

Hey, sorry, i think people misunderstood my question. I didn’t want this to be a debate about * reasons * why rice isn’t as good as other schools. Rather, I wanted to know how the formula for USNews works (I don’t own the book), since each individual criteria piece i know about it makes it sound like it would be higher based on whatever method they use to compile the overall ranking. I guess the peer assessment is the problem (though it looks about the same as WUSTL, so go figure).

Why isn't Rice higher on USNews?

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