Reply to The Top 50 National Universities by Average Rank from the 8 Most Influential Rankings

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]If you take the average ranking from US News, WSJ/THE, Niche, Forbes, Washington Monthly, Money, Wallet Hub, and Degree Choices, you get an overall ranking of:

1. MIT
2. Stanford
3. Princeton
---Big Gap---
4. Harvard
5. Yale
6. Duke
7. Penn
---Big Gap---
8. Caltech
9. Northwestern
10. Columbia
11. Vanderbilt
12. UCLA
13. Berkeley
14. UMich
15. Dartmouth
16. Georgetown
17. Johns Hopkins
18. Cornell
19. Notre Dame
20. WashU (tie)
20. UChicago (tie)
22. UNC
23. UF (tie)
23. UVA (tie)
25. CMU
---Big Gap---
26. Georgia Tech
27. UCSD
28. USC
29. Emory
30. UIUC
31. UCD
32. UCI
33. UW Seattle
34. BC
35. Wake Forest
36. UT Austin
37. UW Madison
---Big Gap---
38. W&M
39. UCSB
40. Lehigh
41. Purdue
---Big Gap---
42. Texas A&M
43. UMD
44. Virginia Tech
45. BU
46. UGA
47. NYU
48. NCSU
49. BYU
50. GW[/quote]

Very interesting. No Tufts? What ranking did it do bad on to remove it from the top 50?[/quote]

I went to Wash. U. I think that it’s strange to see Wash. U. here without Rice, Tufts, Rochester, Tulane and Case Western being here at all. The idea that Vanderbilt is ranked so much higher seems puzzling.[b] I’m sure it’s a fine school, but I’ve always thought of it as being similar to Emory and Tulane. [/b]

I also think that, if this list is about research, the absence of places like Penn State, Ohio State and Maryland is odd.

If it’s about undergraduate education, the idea that a lot of overcrowded UC schools are here and places like Williams aren’t here is odd. [/quote]

You’ve hit upon the fatal flaw of USNWR rankings. You went to WUSTL,  yet you seem to have no first hand knowledge of Vanderbilt or Tulane or Emory to make any assessment that they are or are not similar to each other, other than your general impression. The single biggest factor by a long shot in USNWR: a college’s reputation among its peers (most of whom know next to nothing about the “peer” universities they are assessing). The one thing they do know is, you guessed it, prior rankings, which are of course based on the similar flaw. It just keeps perpetuating the same legacy universities. There is no true or objective ranking.

They tweak the methodology to create some shuffle to sell more magazines.  And we f course we know the games all universities play to raise their ranking that has no bearing on educational excellence.  Many of the factors have nothing at all to do with education, they are just loosely associated proxies (e.g., percentage of alumni donating).

Ranking colleges is folly especially among the ones listed in this thread.  There is no possible way to know if Chicago is better or worse than Hopkins or if Case Western is better or worse than RPI.  Is gelato better than cake?  Is purple better than green? I truly do not understand the obsession here with rank ordering these top universities. [/quote]

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