Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:While acknowledging that this is a silly, navel-gazing exercise bereft of any empirical basis, below are my personal set of tiers, which are very loose. I honestly don't know how one can claim, as a very general matter, that Princeton is "better" than Harvard, Duke better than Brown, or Amherst better than Pomona. People get really upset because of a ridiculous obsession with ordinal numeration. Anyhow:

Tier 1: HYPSM

Tier 2: The remaining Ivies, Duke, CalTech, JHU, Northwestern, Rice, WASP

Tier 3: UCLA, Berkeley, Michigan, UVA, CMU, Georgetown, Notre Dame, WashU, Vanderbilt, Emory, USC, Bowdoin, Wellesley, Carleton, Mudd, CMC.

Tier 4: A bunch more really good schools that are very close to the Tier 3.

To be clear, all of the schools above are really, really good. Any kid who gains admission to any one of them is blessed. But people here always forget this as they take extreme positions in an effort to distinguish nearly identical schools.

Is Univ of Chicago tier 4?

Anonymous wrote:While acknowledging that this is a silly, navel-gazing exercise bereft of any empirical basis, below are my personal set of tiers, which are very loose. I honestly don't know how one can claim, as a very general matter, that Princeton is "better" than Harvard, Duke better than Brown, or Amherst better than Pomona. People get really upset because of a ridiculous obsession with ordinal numeration. Anyhow:

Tier 1: HYPSM

Tier 2: The remaining Ivies, Duke, CalTech, JHU, Northwestern, Rice, WASP

Tier 3: UCLA, Berkeley, Michigan, UVA, CMU, Georgetown, Notre Dame, WashU, Vanderbilt, Emory, USC, Bowdoin, Wellesley, Carleton, Mudd, CMC.

Tier 4: A bunch more really good schools that are very close to the Tier 3.

To be clear, all of the schools above are really, really good. Any kid who gains admission to any one of them is blessed. But people here always forget this as they take extreme positions in an effort to distinguish nearly identical schools.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I don’t think UCLA belongs. Their ROI is extremely low. One of the worst paid graduates. That’s why they did so poorly on WSJ’s ranking. Their students are too concerned with social life. In fact it’s the biggest reason I noticed why people want to go there.

Where did you notice this?

Social media. Particularly those YouTube videos where people make their college decisions. Most common rationale for UCLA is “I worked so hard in high school, I don’t want to stress out too much in college and enjoy it”, or something to that effect. And it makes perfect sense when you look at their ROI.

At least per New York Times article below, UCLA ranked #1 among its peers in economic diversity (greatest percentage of poor folk) and social mobility ("This measure reflects both access and outcomes, representing the likelihood that a student at U.C.L.A. moved up two or more income quintiles). In other words, the ROI at UCLA is incredible if you account for the fact that it educates students with far less privilege than its peers.

https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/projects/college-mobility/university-of-california-los-angeles

Ok fine. But why would an UMC or wealthy family sending kids OOS care about this data point? It just means there are thousands of kids there who are unconnected, not networked. It’s awesome that the underprivledged have this opportunity truly amazing but socioeconomic diversity is the last thing I am looking at when I’m looking at schools.

Anonymous wrote:While acknowledging that this is a silly, navel-gazing exercise bereft of any empirical basis, below are my personal set of tiers, which are very loose. I honestly don't know how one can claim, as a very general matter, that Princeton is "better" than Harvard, Duke better than Brown, or Amherst better than Pomona. People get really upset because of a ridiculous obsession with ordinal numeration. Anyhow:

Tier 1: HYPSM

Tier 2: The remaining Ivies, Duke, CalTech, JHU, Northwestern, Rice, WASP

Tier 3: UCLA, Berkeley, Michigan, UVA, CMU, Georgetown, Notre Dame, WashU, Vanderbilt, Emory, USC, Bowdoin, Wellesley, Carleton, Mudd, CMC.

Tier 4: A bunch more really good schools that are very close to the Tier 3.

To be clear, all of the schools above are really, really good. Any kid who gains admission to any one of them is blessed. But people here always forget this as they take extreme positions in an effort to distinguish nearly identical schools.

Anonymous wrote:I don’t think UCLA belongs. Their ROI is extremely low. One of the worst paid graduates. That’s why they did so poorly on WSJ’s ranking. Their students are too concerned with social life. In fact it’s the biggest reason I noticed why people want to go there.

Anonymous wrote:So apparently there are 40+ colleges in the Top 30 ...

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Lists are worthless unless you have no clue what you want to study. Look at the program first and the school second.

Majority changes their major and/or track.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I don’t think UCLA belongs. Their ROI is extremely low. One of the worst paid graduates. That’s why they did so poorly on WSJ’s ranking. Their students are too concerned with social life. In fact it’s the biggest reason I noticed why people want to go there.

Where did you notice this?

Social media. Particularly those YouTube videos where people make their college decisions. Most common rationale for UCLA is “I worked so hard in high school, I don’t want to stress out too much in college and enjoy it”, or something to that effect. And it makes perfect sense when you look at their ROI.

At least per New York Times article below, UCLA ranked #1 among its peers in economic diversity (greatest percentage of poor folk) and social mobility ("This measure reflects both access and outcomes, representing the likelihood that a student at U.C.L.A. moved up two or more income quintiles). In other words, the ROI at UCLA is incredible if you account for the fact that it educates students with far less privilege than its peers.

https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/projects/college-mobility/university-of-california-los-angeles

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I don’t think UCLA belongs. Their ROI is extremely low. One of the worst paid graduates. That’s why they did so poorly on WSJ’s ranking. Their students are too concerned with social life. In fact it’s the biggest reason I noticed why people want to go there.

Where did you notice this?

Social media. Particularly those YouTube videos where people make their college decisions. Most common rationale for UCLA is “I worked so hard in high school, I don’t want to stress out too much in college and enjoy it”, or something to that effect. And it makes perfect sense when you look at their ROI.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I don’t think UCLA belongs. Their ROI is extremely low. One of the worst paid graduates. That’s why they did so poorly on WSJ’s ranking. Their students are too concerned with social life. In fact it’s the biggest reason I noticed why people want to go there.

Where did you notice this?

Social media. Particularly those YouTube videos where people make their college decisions. Most common rationale for UCLA is “I worked so hard in high school, I don’t want to stress out too much in college and enjoy it”, or something to that effect. And it makes perfect sense when you look at their ROI.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I don’t think UCLA belongs. Their ROI is extremely low. One of the worst paid graduates. That’s why they did so poorly on WSJ’s ranking. Their students are too concerned with social life. In fact it’s the biggest reason I noticed why people want to go there.

Where did you notice this?

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:1. Harvard
2. Stanford
3. MIT
4. Yale
5. Princeton
6. UC Berkeley
7. Caltech
8. Columbia
9. UCLA
10. U Chicago

11. Penn
12. Duke
13. Brown
14. UC San Diego
15. NYU
16. Michigan
17. USC
18. Cornell
19. UT Austin
20. UNC Chapel Hill

21. Johns Hopkins U
22. Dartmouth
23. Rice
24. Pomona
25. Williams
26. Washington U (St. LouisK)
27. UW Madison
28. Swarthmore
29. Vanderbilt
30. UW Seattle
31. Northwestern

This is (more or less) what everyone that matters in this conversation thinks:

https://www.crimsoneducation.org/us/resources/universities/us-colleges-rankings/

Crimson? The international student scam organization?

Anonymous wrote:I don’t think UCLA belongs. Their ROI is extremely low. One of the worst paid graduates. That’s why they did so poorly on WSJ’s ranking. Their students are too concerned with social life. In fact it’s the biggest reason I noticed why people want to go there.

Anonymous wrote:Lists are worthless unless you have no clue what you want to study. Look at the program first and the school second.