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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]The gender imbalance is not surprising for a LAC, which is what it is closer to than anything else. Virginia Tech, on the other hand, has a 57% male undergrad population[/quote]

Perhaps that's a factor, but there are simply more qualified female applicants than male applicants these days and more women are choosing to go to college.  Only VMI and Virginia Tech are majority male.  The rest of the Virginia public colleges and universities are majority female.  Overall the Virginia higher ed system was 56% female for 2018 enrolled class and the U.S. was 57%.  Here are the percentage of females at Virginia schools for fall 2018 new enrolled students:

Longwood 69%
MWU 66%
Norfolk State 65%
VCU 64%
Radford 64%
JMU 59%
W&M 59%
UVA 57%
United States 57%
State of Virginia 56%
CNU 56%
ODU 53%
UVA - Wise 53%
G[b]MU 50%
Virginia Tech 45%[/b]
VMI 17%[/quote]

Interesting.  women seem to dig these schools.  But maybe not George Mason so much.  Shocker.[/quote]

Both GMU and Va Tech have lower attraction rates because their strongest fields are research ([b]GMU is the no. 1 research university in VA[/b]), engineering (xlnt at both), STEM, cyber security (GMU), game design (GMU), computer science (both), architecture (Va Tech), animal husbandry (Va Tech), math, etc.  A lot of female students want the liberal arts SLAC experience which is not Va Tech or GMU[/quote]

Based on what measure is GMU #1 in Virginia?  For 2017, GMU was 146 in R&D expenditure, VT was 46, UVA was 51, VCU was 97 according to NSF data.    Research per se is not a factor anyway.  UNC Chapel Hill was 11 in R&D yet is over 60% female.  Engineering does tend to have a higher percentage of males.  [/quote]

I said top tier for research in VA.  Right here:  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Mason_University.  And also if you google George Mason and research you will learn this:  Mason, rated a top-tier (R1) research university by the Carnegie Classifications of Institutions of Higher Education,[/quote]

No, you said "GMU is the no. 1 research university in VA", not "top tier for research in VA".

UVA, VT, VCU, and GMU are R1 classifications.  Of the 4, GMU has the lowest level of research, which isn't surprising given it doesn't have a medical school.  ODU and W&M are R2 classifications.[/quote]

W&M only has a tiny handful of grad programs, but this ends up putting it in the "research university" category in this system rather than "national liberal arts colleges".  [/quote]

To be classified as R1 by Carnegie, significant research activity much occur. Simply offering graduate programs does not guarantee this. [/quote]

That wasn't my point.  I'm saying W&M is educationally a lot more like a "national liberal arts college" than a research university, but they are classified as the latter because they have a small handful of graduate programs. [/quote]

William and Mary is  [b]hard to classify[/b].  It used to call itself the best small public research university in the country.  I think that’s still the case. [/quote]

I think the "hard to classify" is an issue for William & Mary, but I'm not sure what they can do about it.  US News just has two relevant categories:  [b]National Universities[/b] and [b]National Universities. [/b] William & Mary is more or less between the two, but it is of course included in National Universities because of its Carnegie classification.  It is too big and has too many programs and research for a National University.  (William & Mary does about $60M in research a year vs $5M at Williams College.)  But against the National Universities, William & Mary is typically much smaller than the top public universities.  It is closer in size to schools like Brown and Princeton.  William & Mary doesn't have a medical school, which brings in a lot of research money that helps with the resource inputs in US News (even though they don't really have much to do with undergraduate education).  I think this is one of the reasons William & Mary considered merging with Eastern Virginia Medical College a few years ago.  In the end, they decided it didn't make sense.  I'm sure if Eastern Virginia brought in more research like UVA Health or MCV, they would have gone ahead.[/quote]

[b]What??[/b][/quote]

Not the PP, but I think they mean "National Universities" and "National Liberal Arts Colleges" here.  The point being that W&M falls between the two so it's hard to classify.

Acquiring a medical school is a way to move up in the rankings because it will generate research expenditures.  It doesn't necessarily generate funds because med schools are expensive to operate.  Medical schools regardless of ranking have a lot of research only faculty and do replication studies etc. so just by their everyday business have factors that will generate research expenditures.  This is different than the rest of the academic departments where you have to be a top, active scholar  to get research grants and they are usually relatively small compared to medicine/health sciences.  [b]Really any ranking system should separate out universities with medical schools vs. not or treat these research expenditures differently. [/b] Having a rating of high research activity at a school without a medical school is more impressive.[/quote]

They should, but I don't think they do.   UCLA ranks higher in resource categories than Berkeley, and I would I would bet this is a primary reason UCLA is now is ranked higher than Berkeley.  UCLA has a medical school and Berkeley does not.  USNWR uses government IPEDS data, which shows UCLA's "Instruction" spending per student is $50K per student vs. $20K per student at Berkeley.  I doubt that either figure is really accurate, but I really can't see that UCLA would spend significantly more on undergraduate education than Berkeley.  Tuition is similar, state appropriations are similar, endowments are similar.  The difference is all in the medical school health side.  The reason UCLA has more "Instruction" is because schools can count time spent creating research proposals, leave to do research, etc. as "Instruction".  It is counter-intuitive, but it is allowed by the accounting rules they follow. [/quote]

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