Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:The book notes 5 star UCLA's strongest programs as:

Computer Science, Engineering, English, Fine Arts, Mathematics, Performing Arts, Political Science, and Psychology.

UCLA seems like an interesting community.

Overall, this college guidebook loves the UC system with 4 UCs receiving the second highest academic rating (4.5 stars) and one (UCLA) receiving a full 5 star rating for academics.

Many seem to underestimate the quality of the University of Virginia. Univ. of Virginia is an outstanding university.

When I wrote the first two posts in this thread, I thought that there would be strong reaction to rating the academics of UC-Berkeley the same as for Boston University and the Univ. of Florida, and Boston College.

To really stir things up, I will list the SLACs that earned a 4.5 star academic rating (same as UC-Berkeley) :

Smith College, Wesleyan University, Bucknell University, Bates College, Univ. of Richmond, Scripps College, Colgate University, Colby College, Colorado College, College of the Holy Cross, Lafayette College, Union College, Vassar College, & Grinnell College.

Th three authors of the book all have earned doctorates--two PhDs and an EdD.

The thing is, a bachelor's degree is just not a big deal. Nearly any school has adequate resources to teach bachelors level material. If a student can find engaged faculty and peers and access to the programs that they are interested in, they can do great from anywhere. While I would never advise a kid to choose BU or UVA over Cal for a PhD program in most sciences, they can absolutely get just as good of an undergraduate education at any of these schools, and many, many others.

Regarding the assertion that "a bachelor's degree is just not a big deal", my response is that it can be depending upon the particular school and upon the particular major.

There are certain majors and certain schools which are "a big deal" at the undergraduate level.

My position is that if accepted to any of these schools, one should do everything within reason to attend:

Princeton, MIT, Harvard, Stanford, Yale, CalTech, Carnegie Mellon University, Harvey Mudd College, USMA at West Point, USNA at Annapolis, & the USAFA at Colorado Springs.

LOL wtf remove Carnegie Mellon University, Harvey Mudd College, USMA at West Point, USNA at Annapolis, & the USAFA at Colorado Springs

CMU is not it exept for CS.
only handful of people want to go to the military places and lifstyle

It is reasonable to assume that those who apply to the service academies and are accepted want to go there as evidenced by their yield rates.

Your suggestion to remove CMU & Harvey Mudd from the list suggests that you should examine further the graduates career results from both schools.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:The book notes 5 star UCLA's strongest programs as:

Computer Science, Engineering, English, Fine Arts, Mathematics, Performing Arts, Political Science, and Psychology.

UCLA seems like an interesting community.

Overall, this college guidebook loves the UC system with 4 UCs receiving the second highest academic rating (4.5 stars) and one (UCLA) receiving a full 5 star rating for academics.

Many seem to underestimate the quality of the University of Virginia. Univ. of Virginia is an outstanding university.

When I wrote the first two posts in this thread, I thought that there would be strong reaction to rating the academics of UC-Berkeley the same as for Boston University and the Univ. of Florida, and Boston College.

To really stir things up, I will list the SLACs that earned a 4.5 star academic rating (same as UC-Berkeley) :

Smith College, Wesleyan University, Bucknell University, Bates College, Univ. of Richmond, Scripps College, Colgate University, Colby College, Colorado College, College of the Holy Cross, Lafayette College, Union College, Vassar College, & Grinnell College.

Th three authors of the book all have earned doctorates--two PhDs and an EdD.

The thing is, a bachelor's degree is just not a big deal. Nearly any school has adequate resources to teach bachelors level material. If a student can find engaged faculty and peers and access to the programs that they are interested in, they can do great from anywhere. While I would never advise a kid to choose BU or UVA over Cal for a PhD program in most sciences, they can absolutely get just as good of an undergraduate education at any of these schools, and many, many others.

Regarding the assertion that "a bachelor's degree is just not a big deal", my response is that it can be depending upon the particular school and upon the particular major.

There are certain majors and certain schools which are "a big deal" at the undergraduate level.

My position is that if accepted to any of these schools, one should do everything within reason to attend:

Princeton, MIT, Harvard, Stanford, Yale, CalTech, Carnegie Mellon University, Harvey Mudd College, USMA at West Point, USNA at Annapolis, & the USAFA at Colorado Springs.

LOL wtf remove Carnegie Mellon University, Harvey Mudd College, USMA at West Point, USNA at Annapolis, & the USAFA at Colorado Springs

CMU is not it exept for CS.
only handful of people want to go to the military places and lifstyle

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:UVA is weak in STEM. So much for academic ratings. Another BS ranking.

Agreed. Berkeley blows away UVA in academic departments.

The book lists Berkeley's top programs as: Biological Science, Business, Chemistry, Computer Science, Economics, Engineering, English, and Psychology.

That’s a very small sampling of Cal’s strengths. Berkeley has top programs in almost all of its offerings. Way, way more than UVA. It isn’t even close. That is only gets a 4.5 star rating from this ranking is a joke.

Probably the impacted major thing plus the high % TAs teaching undergrads vs. profs

That and class sizes.

But I would think all this would apply to each of the big public universities. I personally don’t see UVA and UCLA offering a better academic experience than Berkeley. They are fantastic values, but that’s really a different thing. I would have all three at 4.5. And drop some of the other 4.5s to 4.0.

It’s worth remembering the authors of college guides want to sell books. And if all the top rated schools for actual academic experience are of small to medium undergrad size, they might have a reduced audience.

Maybe there should be different rankings for public universities vs private universities vs LACs. Similar to USNWR but with a category for national public unis. The trade offs and experiences are so different across the groups. Having different lists would force more reflection on what matters to a given student and family, rather than just automatically valuing the higher ranked thing when apples, oranges, and bananas are being compared.

+1

I started this thread. I agree with the above quoted post's suggestion that, among elite schools, Private National Universities should be viewed differently than Public National Universities for ranking purposes, and that LACs belong in a totally different category.

When all types of schools are combined, I think that the Wall Street Journal / Times Higher Education (WSJ/THE) rankings do a great job due to the focus on outcomes (heavier weighting for outcomes).

Also agree that families and students have different priorities for their undergraduate experience.

The problem with the THE/WSJ consolidated list is that their methodology was originally devised for comparing global universities where research is the priority. It’s really not well suited for LACs, which don’t exist in the UK (where THE is based.). This is why there are no LACs in their combined top 20 of US colleges. This should give pause when considering how LACs are entirely focused on undergrads, are half of the 20 best endowed colleges on a per student basis are LACs.

To be more specific, 30% of their weighting goes towards “Resources.” But that is weighted as 11% finance per student, 11% faculty per student, and 8% research papers per faculty. We know that papers per faculty is biased towards universities straight off. But the other 22% is also going to be misleading, because faculty and finances are not evenly split amongst grads and undergrads when both are present; there’s going to be far more money and faculty time spent on grad students than on undergrads on a per student basis. A compensating adjustment needs to be taking place but isn’t. (For me this was one of the key takeaways of the recent Columbia analysis of how their numbers were overstating undergrad investment… universities simply lack established conventions on how to do this; it’s less of an issue when comparing to other universities but distortions will be more pronounced when comparing to LACs where necessarily 100% of the funds and faculty focus go to educating the undergrad population).

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:The book notes 5 star UCLA's strongest programs as:

Computer Science, Engineering, English, Fine Arts, Mathematics, Performing Arts, Political Science, and Psychology.

UCLA seems like an interesting community.

Overall, this college guidebook loves the UC system with 4 UCs receiving the second highest academic rating (4.5 stars) and one (UCLA) receiving a full 5 star rating for academics.

Many seem to underestimate the quality of the University of Virginia. Univ. of Virginia is an outstanding university.

When I wrote the first two posts in this thread, I thought that there would be strong reaction to rating the academics of UC-Berkeley the same as for Boston University and the Univ. of Florida, and Boston College.

To really stir things up, I will list the SLACs that earned a 4.5 star academic rating (same as UC-Berkeley) :

Smith College, Wesleyan University, Bucknell University, Bates College, Univ. of Richmond, Scripps College, Colgate University, Colby College, Colorado College, College of the Holy Cross, Lafayette College, Union College, Vassar College, & Grinnell College.

Th three authors of the book all have earned doctorates--two PhDs and an EdD.

The thing is, a bachelor's degree is just not a big deal. Nearly any school has adequate resources to teach bachelors level material. If a student can find engaged faculty and peers and access to the programs that they are interested in, they can do great from anywhere. While I would never advise a kid to choose BU or UVA over Cal for a PhD program in most sciences, they can absolutely get just as good of an undergraduate education at any of these schools, and many, many others.

Regarding the assertion that "a bachelor's degree is just not a big deal", my response is that it can be depending upon the particular school and upon the particular major.

There are certain majors and certain schools which are "a big deal" at the undergraduate level.

My position is that if accepted to any of these schools, one should do everything within reason to attend:

Princeton, MIT, Harvard, Stanford, Yale, CalTech, Carnegie Mellon University, Harvey Mudd College, USMA at West Point, USNA at Annapolis, & the USAFA at Colorado Springs.

LOL wtf remove Carnegie Mellon University, Harvey Mudd College, USMA at West Point, USNA at Annapolis, & the USAFA at Colorado Springs

CMU is not it exept for CS.
only handful of people want to go to the military places and lifstyle

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:The book notes 5 star UCLA's strongest programs as:

Computer Science, Engineering, English, Fine Arts, Mathematics, Performing Arts, Political Science, and Psychology.

UCLA seems like an interesting community.

Overall, this college guidebook loves the UC system with 4 UCs receiving the second highest academic rating (4.5 stars) and one (UCLA) receiving a full 5 star rating for academics.

Many seem to underestimate the quality of the University of Virginia. Univ. of Virginia is an outstanding university.

When I wrote the first two posts in this thread, I thought that there would be strong reaction to rating the academics of UC-Berkeley the same as for Boston University and the Univ. of Florida, and Boston College.

To really stir things up, I will list the SLACs that earned a 4.5 star academic rating (same as UC-Berkeley) :

Smith College, Wesleyan University, Bucknell University, Bates College, Univ. of Richmond, Scripps College, Colgate University, Colby College, Colorado College, College of the Holy Cross, Lafayette College, Union College, Vassar College, & Grinnell College.

Th three authors of the book all have earned doctorates--two PhDs and an EdD.

The thing is, a bachelor's degree is just not a big deal. Nearly any school has adequate resources to teach bachelors level material. If a student can find engaged faculty and peers and access to the programs that they are interested in, they can do great from anywhere. While I would never advise a kid to choose BU or UVA over Cal for a PhD program in most sciences, they can absolutely get just as good of an undergraduate education at any of these schools, and many, many others.

Regarding the assertion that "a bachelor's degree is just not a big deal", my response is that it can be depending upon the particular school and upon the particular major.

There are certain majors and certain schools which are "a big deal" at the undergraduate level.

My position is that if accepted to any of these schools, one should do everything within reason to attend:

Princeton, MIT, Harvard, Stanford, Yale, CalTech, Carnegie Mellon University, Harvey Mudd College, USMA at West Point, USNA at Annapolis, & the USAFA at Colorado Springs.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:The book notes 5 star UCLA's strongest programs as:

Computer Science, Engineering, English, Fine Arts, Mathematics, Performing Arts, Political Science, and Psychology.

UCLA seems like an interesting community.

Overall, this college guidebook loves the UC system with 4 UCs receiving the second highest academic rating (4.5 stars) and one (UCLA) receiving a full 5 star rating for academics.

Many seem to underestimate the quality of the University of Virginia. Univ. of Virginia is an outstanding university.

When I wrote the first two posts in this thread, I thought that there would be strong reaction to rating the academics of UC-Berkeley the same as for Boston University and the Univ. of Florida, and Boston College.

To really stir things up, I will list the SLACs that earned a 4.5 star academic rating (same as UC-Berkeley) :

Smith College, Wesleyan University, Bucknell University, Bates College, Univ. of Richmond, Scripps College, Colgate University, Colby College, Colorado College, College of the Holy Cross, Lafayette College, Union College, Vassar College, & Grinnell College.

Th three authors of the book all have earned doctorates--two PhDs and an EdD.

The thing is, a bachelor's degree is just not a big deal. Nearly any school has adequate resources to teach bachelors level material. If a student can find engaged faculty and peers and access to the programs that they are interested in, they can do great from anywhere. While I would never advise a kid to choose BU or UVA over Cal for a PhD program in most sciences, they can absolutely get just as good of an undergraduate education at any of these schools, and many, many others.

Regarding the assertion that "a bachelor's degree is just not a big deal", my response is that it can be depending upon the particular school and upon the particular major.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:UVA is weak in STEM. So much for academic ratings. Another BS ranking.

Rankings are BS. No doubt about that. But why do DCUM people say UVA is weak in STEM? I’m not saying it is strong, I just don’t know. The same way I dint know about 99% of colleges.

I think there’s more than one way of determining whether a university has strong STEM programs at the undergrad level.

One is to look at STEM PhD production rate as a percentage of students completing their undergrad there. I don’t think UVA is in the top 100.

Another is to look at UVA grad program ranks and extrapolate to undergrad. I don’t think any are in the top 20.

Another is to look at the percentage of majors in STEM (the idea being students tend to self sort into the strongest depts.) UVA is around 27% for traditional STEM (ie not counting social sciences.) Not a low number but not a high one either.

There are other indicators but those are usually the things I first consider when getting a sense of a school’s strength in STEM.

That said, it could still be a perfect STEM school for some.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:UVA is weak in STEM. So much for academic ratings. Another BS ranking.

Agreed. Berkeley blows away UVA in academic departments.

The book lists Berkeley's top programs as: Biological Science, Business, Chemistry, Computer Science, Economics, Engineering, English, and Psychology.

That’s a very small sampling of Cal’s strengths. Berkeley has top programs in almost all of its offerings. Way, way more than UVA. It isn’t even close. That is only gets a 4.5 star rating from this ranking is a joke.

Probably the impacted major thing plus the high % TAs teaching undergrads vs. profs

That and class sizes.

But I would think all this would apply to each of the big public universities. I personally don’t see UVA and UCLA offering a better academic experience than Berkeley. They are fantastic values, but that’s really a different thing. I would have all three at 4.5. And drop some of the other 4.5s to 4.0.

It’s worth remembering the authors of college guides want to sell books. And if all the top rated schools for actual academic experience are of small to medium undergrad size, they might have a reduced audience.

Maybe there should be different rankings for public universities vs private universities vs LACs. Similar to USNWR but with a category for national public unis. The trade offs and experiences are so different across the groups. Having different lists would force more reflection on what matters to a given student and family, rather than just automatically valuing the higher ranked thing when apples, oranges, and bananas are being compared.

+1

I started this thread. I agree with the above quoted post's suggestion that, among elite schools, Private National Universities should be viewed differently than Public National Universities for ranking purposes, and that LACs belong in a totally different category.

When all types of schools are combined, I think that the Wall Street Journal / Times Higher Education (WSJ/THE) rankings do a great job due to the focus on outcomes (heavier weighting for outcomes).

Also agree that families and students have different priorities for their undergraduate experience.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:UVA is weak in STEM. So much for academic ratings. Another BS ranking.

The book lists the top academic programs at Virginia as: Biomedical Engineering, Business, Computer Science, Economics, English, Global Studies, History, and "Political Philosophy, Policy, and Law".

The academic ratings are composed of ten factors: SAT /ACT of incoming students (a weakness at Berkeley), percentage of incoming students in top 10% of their high school class, student-to-faculty ratio (another weak area for Berkeley), class size (another weak area for Berkeley), full time faculty %, Faculty with terminal degrees, mean faculty salary, freshman retention rate, six year graduation rate, and "graduation performance"--includes several factors including Pell Grant recipient graduation rates.

Which makes it kind of useless, given that many schools are test optional which skews the SAT part, only public high schools have class rank, so that skews the top 10% part, faculty salary will vary by region and cost of the college plus endowments which has nothing to do with academics, and I'm not sure how useful separating out the graduation performance of Pell grant recipients speaks to academic quality of schools versus the economic reality of the students.

We need to stop pretending that shcool are bad or not worth attending if these lists don't cherry pick them. It is counterproductive to the country as a whole and to the mental health of our young adults.

90% of the colleges/universities in the US should be removed.
That should be much more productive to the country.
Too many worthless and uselss schools and money is wasted.

Only 37.9% of adults in the U.S. have a bachelors degree. How much lower do you think it should be?

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:UVA is weak in STEM. So much for academic ratings. Another BS ranking.

The book lists the top academic programs at Virginia as: Biomedical Engineering, Business, Computer Science, Economics, English, Global Studies, History, and "Political Philosophy, Policy, and Law".

The academic ratings are composed of ten factors: SAT /ACT of incoming students (a weakness at Berkeley), percentage of incoming students in top 10% of their high school class, student-to-faculty ratio (another weak area for Berkeley), class size (another weak area for Berkeley), full time faculty %, Faculty with terminal degrees, mean faculty salary, freshman retention rate, six year graduation rate, and "graduation performance"--includes several factors including Pell Grant recipient graduation rates.

Which makes it kind of useless, given that many schools are test optional which skews the SAT part, only public high schools have class rank, so that skews the top 10% part, faculty salary will vary by region and cost of the college plus endowments which has nothing to do with academics, and I'm not sure how useful separating out the graduation performance of Pell grant recipients speaks to academic quality of schools versus the economic reality of the students.

We need to stop pretending that shcool are bad or not worth attending if these lists don't cherry pick them. It is counterproductive to the country as a whole and to the mental health of our young adults.

90% of the colleges/universities in the US should be removed.
That should be much more productive to the country.
Too many worthless and uselss schools and money is wasted.

Only 37.9% of adults in the U.S. have a bachelors degree. How much lower do you think it should be?

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:UVA is weak in STEM. So much for academic ratings. Another BS ranking.

The book lists the top academic programs at Virginia as: Biomedical Engineering, Business, Computer Science, Economics, English, Global Studies, History, and "Political Philosophy, Policy, and Law".

The academic ratings are composed of ten factors: SAT /ACT of incoming students (a weakness at Berkeley), percentage of incoming students in top 10% of their high school class, student-to-faculty ratio (another weak area for Berkeley), class size (another weak area for Berkeley), full time faculty %, Faculty with terminal degrees, mean faculty salary, freshman retention rate, six year graduation rate, and "graduation performance"--includes several factors including Pell Grant recipient graduation rates.

Which makes it kind of useless, given that many schools are test optional which skews the SAT part, only public high schools have class rank, so that skews the top 10% part, faculty salary will vary by region and cost of the college plus endowments which has nothing to do with academics, and I'm not sure how useful separating out the graduation performance of Pell grant recipients speaks to academic quality of schools versus the economic reality of the students.

We need to stop pretending that shcool are bad or not worth attending if these lists don't cherry pick them. It is counterproductive to the country as a whole and to the mental health of our young adults.

90% of the colleges/universities in the US should be removed.
That should be much more productive to the country.
Too many worthless and uselss schools and money is wasted.

This has to be one of the dumbest comments I've read on here in a long time.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:UVA is weak in STEM. So much for academic ratings. Another BS ranking.

The book lists the top academic programs at Virginia as: Biomedical Engineering, Business, Computer Science, Economics, English, Global Studies, History, and "Political Philosophy, Policy, and Law".

The academic ratings are composed of ten factors: SAT /ACT of incoming students (a weakness at Berkeley), percentage of incoming students in top 10% of their high school class, student-to-faculty ratio (another weak area for Berkeley), class size (another weak area for Berkeley), full time faculty %, Faculty with terminal degrees, mean faculty salary, freshman retention rate, six year graduation rate, and "graduation performance"--includes several factors including Pell Grant recipient graduation rates.

Which makes it kind of useless, given that many schools are test optional which skews the SAT part, only public high schools have class rank, so that skews the top 10% part, faculty salary will vary by region and cost of the college plus endowments which has nothing to do with academics, and I'm not sure how useful separating out the graduation performance of Pell grant recipients speaks to academic quality of schools versus the economic reality of the students.

We need to stop pretending that shcool are bad or not worth attending if these lists don't cherry pick them. It is counterproductive to the country as a whole and to the mental health of our young adults.

90% of the colleges/universities in the US should be removed.
That should be much more productive to the country.
Too many worthless and uselss schools and money is wasted.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:The book notes 5 star UCLA's strongest programs as:

Computer Science, Engineering, English, Fine Arts, Mathematics, Performing Arts, Political Science, and Psychology.

UCLA seems like an interesting community.

Overall, this college guidebook loves the UC system with 4 UCs receiving the second highest academic rating (4.5 stars) and one (UCLA) receiving a full 5 star rating for academics.

Many seem to underestimate the quality of the University of Virginia. Univ. of Virginia is an outstanding university.

When I wrote the first two posts in this thread, I thought that there would be strong reaction to rating the academics of UC-Berkeley the same as for Boston University and the Univ. of Florida, and Boston College.

To really stir things up, I will list the SLACs that earned a 4.5 star academic rating (same as UC-Berkeley) :

Smith College, Wesleyan University, Bucknell University, Bates College, Univ. of Richmond, Scripps College, Colgate University, Colby College, Colorado College, College of the Holy Cross, Lafayette College, Union College, Vassar College, & Grinnell College.

Th three authors of the book all have earned doctorates--two PhDs and an EdD.

The thing is, a bachelor's degree is just not a big deal. Nearly any school has adequate resources to teach bachelors level material. If a student can find engaged faculty and peers and access to the programs that they are interested in, they can do great from anywhere. While I would never advise a kid to choose BU or UVA over Cal for a PhD program in most sciences, they can absolutely get just as good of an undergraduate education at any of these schools, and many, many others.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:UVA is weak in STEM. So much for academic ratings. Another BS ranking.

The book lists the top academic programs at Virginia as: Biomedical Engineering, Business, Computer Science, Economics, English, Global Studies, History, and "Political Philosophy, Policy, and Law".

The academic ratings are composed of ten factors: SAT /ACT of incoming students (a weakness at Berkeley), percentage of incoming students in top 10% of their high school class, student-to-faculty ratio (another weak area for Berkeley), class size (another weak area for Berkeley), full time faculty %, Faculty with terminal degrees, mean faculty salary, freshman retention rate, six year graduation rate, and "graduation performance"--includes several factors including Pell Grant recipient graduation rates.

Which makes it kind of useless, given that many schools are test optional which skews the SAT part, only public high schools have class rank, so that skews the top 10% part, faculty salary will vary by region and cost of the college plus endowments which has nothing to do with academics, and I'm not sure how useful separating out the graduation performance of Pell grant recipients speaks to academic quality of schools versus the economic reality of the students.

We need to stop pretending that shcool are bad or not worth attending if these lists don't cherry pick them. It is counterproductive to the country as a whole and to the mental health of our young adults.

90% of the colleges/universities in the US should be removed.
That should be much more productive to the country.
Too many worthless and uselss schools and money is wasted.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:UVA is weak in STEM. So much for academic ratings. Another BS ranking.

Agreed. Berkeley blows away UVA in academic departments.

The book lists Berkeley's top programs as: Biological Science, Business, Chemistry, Computer Science, Economics, Engineering, English, and Psychology.

That’s a very small sampling of Cal’s strengths. Berkeley has top programs in almost all of its offerings. Way, way more than UVA. It isn’t even close. That is only gets a 4.5 star rating from this ranking is a joke.

Probably the impacted major thing plus the high % TAs teaching undergrads vs. profs

That and class sizes.

But I would think all this would apply to each of the big public universities. I personally don’t see UVA and UCLA offering a better academic experience than Berkeley. They are fantastic values, but that’s really a different thing. I would have all three at 4.5. And drop some of the other 4.5s to 4.0.

It’s worth remembering the authors of college guides want to sell books. And if all the top rated schools for actual academic experience are of small to medium undergrad size, they might have a reduced audience.

Maybe there should be different rankings for public universities vs private universities vs LACs. Similar to USNWR but with a category for national public unis. The trade offs and experiences are so different across the groups. Having different lists would force more reflection on what matters to a given student and family, rather than just automatically valuing the higher ranked thing when apples, oranges, and bananas are being compared.