The Best Public Colleges vs the 'worst' Ivy Leagues

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I find the list below interesting every year. It's the US News listing of top national universities with the Best Undergraduate Teaching. As far as the Ivies go, those with the reputation of a a strong undergrad focus all rank in the Top 7. Miami (OH) and Michigan are the only publics in the Top 10, nice to see William & Mary and UMBC in the Top 20.

To me, the focus on top universities often obscures what I'm looking for in my kid's college, which is a great undergraduate teaching environment. All the research accolades can wait to matter for grad school.

1. Princeton
2. Miami (OH)
3. Yale
4. Brown
5. Rice and Wake Forest (tie)
7. Dartmouth, Michigan and Notre Dame (tie)
10. Stanford and Vanderbilt (tie)
12. William & Mary
13. Purdue
14. Duke, Georgia State, Wisconsin, and Wash U. in St. Louis (tie)
18. Cal-Berkeley, UMBC and WPI (tie)

Thanks for posting this. It's an interesting perspective.

Mostly it's a way for USNWR to generate more attention/revenue. The endless proliferation of lists and rankings sliced various ways gives people something to talk about. Does USNWR actually have any insight into undergrad teaching? Is good undergrad teaching something that's consistent across a college? Does good undergrad teaching mean the same thing to different kids? Does it make sense to limit a list/ranking of undergrad teaching to "national universities"? No to all of the above.

[Anonymous]

Having studied at all three schools, I thought Harvard was a much better place for an undergrad (from a teaching/academic perspective) than Princeton or Berkeley. Not making a categorical judgment -- depends on type of student, on department/field -- just saying that this list isn't reliable. It may provide a talking point for parents who feel (or have been made to feel) defensive about sending their kid to a school that their peers don't consider prestigious, but it would be a really bad tool for identifying which schools to apply to.