Worldwide University Rankings

ay_caramba
Thu, 02 Dec 2004 12:48:45 +0000

Well that’s the problem. There is no such thing as a “standard” ranking mechanism. (I’m not trying to put down Berkeley by saying this. The NRC departmental rankings are closest to a “standard”, and Berkeley does very well in them. Unfortunately these rankings are not compiled very frequently, granted departments don’t change that rapidly.) Different places do it in different ways. I would argue that, like resonance structures in chemistry for example, all are not equally accurate but rather equally inaccurate since the entity in question cannot be completely described using that medium; just as delocalized pi bonds cannot be portrayed completely using Lewis Electron Dot structure, the quality of a school cannot be portrayed completely with such rankings. In other words, using only one source, you can grasp part of the concept, but by using different sources in juxtaposition, you can hope to gain a more consummate understanding of a school. A visit to the campus, touring the facilities, talking with professors and students, and alas, I will admit, rankings to a degree, can help you make the decision about which college is the “best” for you.