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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]Dartmouth stem is terrible.  Brown is meh. Plenty of STEM oriented kids rightfully would choose Northwestern.[/quote]

This is true. You'd think for inclusion into the top ten, you'd have to be broadly good at everything. I don't think Brown or Dartmouth belong here precisely because they don't have much of a presence in engineering. Similarly, I don't think CalTech belongs here either because they have no presence at all in humanities or social sciences. Say what you will about MIT, but they have a great English department and a world class business school. It's obviously one of the world's best comprehensive universities.

But Brown, Dartmouth, and CalTech? No. If you can't compete in engineering or computer science in 2024, you shouldn't be included on any top 10 university list. Similarly, if you don't even have an English or History department, you are far too specialized to be ranked so high. Would replace those three with Cornell, Rice, and Berkeley, who are all good at everything and not notably weak in anything. 
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Hmmm...if well-rounded mattered---MIT and CalTech would not be T10.[/quote]

Precisely, if my kid were pre-law or politics or history I wouldn’t be looking at MIT or CalTech, but certainly Dartmouth and Brown would make the cut.  One of which has a med school and good bio and top public health. [/quote]

Clearly you don’t know anything about MIT.  It has a works class business school, Sloan.  It has joint MD PhD program with Harvard.  It has one of the top political science and economics departments.  Top biology and chemistry programs.  It’s much more than engineering.  [/quote]

This is what the previous poster was trying to say. MIT is a world class university in nearly every field, not just STEM. It's excellent in everything from English to economics. It has one of the best business schools in the world. It is nothing like tiny, little, highly-specialized CalTech. And it's a much more comprehensive university than Dartmouth or Brown.

Of course, comparing and ranking universities can be like comparing a Prius to a Mac Truck. If I'm only interested in a small EV, I'm probably not going to look at a F-350. Same with colleges. Until US News lets readers know what mysterious criteria there are using this year, it's all just pointless argument. Last year, as someone noted, US News was very clear that the quality of undergraduate teaching was NOT a factor in their rankings. So who knows what they're putting into this year's concoction.

Right now, it's just feelings. And people clearly have some feelings about CalTech, Brown, and Dartmouth because they don't match their own feelings about top 10 schools and the attributes and qualities that should be considered when making such lists. But, again, it's all pointless, not least because every school mentioned so far is a very good school.

Wait until we see where US News puts all the UCs this year. There were six in last year's top 30. That's what's really worthy of some arguments.[/quote]

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