Technosteve
Banned
Rutgers was ranked 89 the year i graduated, now its 178. Thats what happens when you cut funding to higher education
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World University Rankings 2018
- Thread starter Gowans
- Start date
Rutgers was ranked 89 the year i graduated, now its 178. Thats what happens when you cut funding to higher education
cryptosporidium
Member
UBC not doing bad.
Hows its international law programs? not sure where i want to go yet for graduate school
Hows its international law programs? not sure where i want to go yet for graduate school
No disrespect, I honestly admire that aspect of Cal. As much of a push for progressive values as UCLA makes, the campus feels like a bubble. Being in Beverly Hills-adjacent I think dissociates it from reality.
You went to Stanford and you have a worthless degree?
Except they mean an awful lot. Students, perhaps more accurately their parents, put a lot of stock in them, and administrations put a lot of stock in whatever students do. There are considerable knock off effects from these as well.
Berkeley at 18 is far too low, which is a travesty. This has the potential to actively hurt the school.
Don't look at this for grad programs. Talk to your professors, figure out good departments, and find potential advisers whose research interests are a good fit with yours.
Edit: I missed that this was law. I know nothing about non academic law education after the 18th century so feel free to disregard.
They're stupid because everyone places disproportionate weight on some meaningless number.
Eh? I think grad programs are probably the only thing this list is good for
Brock Reiher
Banned
You're explaining why these rating are so harmful- they don't mean anything and yet so many people rely on them because people assume they mean something meaningful.
They're basically Metacritic scores for videogames.
NipplesAndToes23
Member
I'm surprised Harvard isn't no.1. It's the one I hear about the most. What's it like to go to one of these institutions? I'm still bitter about my college experience so I'm just wondering if those are better.
That's exactly what I'm saying. They are stupid, but that doesn't mean they don't mean anything. Moreover I'm not particular sure about a solution outside of a faculty led coup d'etat to retake control of the academy which is incredibly unlikely.
In academic fields this is pretty untrue, and thinking these are particularly important a big problem for recruitment in the last decade or so. The relative quality of the departments, and more importantly one's specialization, matters a lot, but that doesn't correspond super well to the ranking.
My understanding is that rankings are actually quite important for Law School and Medical School because employers take them seriously.
I'm not sure what you're getting at here. I said they were harmful in my first post in the thread, and I was the first person to bring it up. Something being harmful doesn't make it not meaningful. I'd argue harmful things are pretty meaningful. That being said these rankings don't say much about the quality of the institutions outside of very vauge terms, 1-20 is going to be better than 80-100.
Yeah, it's too late to fix this garbage. But even objective measures like pure economic outcomes (problematic as it is to measure an education that way) offer more insight into the quality education you'll get than these aggregated rankings
So much of the problem with these rankings is that they're created with outcomes in mind. If your ranking doesn't put Harvard or Cambridge or whatever on top, you've probably created a shit ranking. It's a self-fulfilling prophecy.
Andrew Korenchkin
Member
Lol lol lol lol lol.
U of A is ranked lower than ASU ha ha ha ha.
U of A is ranked lower than ASU ha ha ha ha.
Perfect Blue
Banned
Toronto, what up
Don't these lists take into account mostly shit besides from undergraduate education? Faculty quality, research opportunities and citations, etc
Don't these lists take into account mostly shit besides from undergraduate education? Faculty quality, research opportunities and citations, etc
I don't necessarily disagree with you, but if you're in the position to select a candidate/applicant based on alma mater, and you're familiar with the school's exceptional reputation to begin with, is your perception going to change suddenly because it's now 18th versus 17th-10th? That's a pretty fine distinction that will matter most often in fringe cases, I'd wager.
Brock Reiher
Banned
My bad. Yeah we're for sure agreeing, I just thought you were implying that they had some inherent value outside of how people respond to them and got confused.
secretanchitman
Member
20th! Not bad at all Northwestern.
LilWayneSuckz
Member
Woo 301-350 and 351-400th.....
Harvard has great PR, but it's a quite good school. I think most professors if asked to list the top 5 American universities in no particular order would probably say Harvard, Princeton, Yale, Chicago, and either Stanford or Berkeley. This ranking is rather odd, I certainly don't think very many would put MIT, Cal Tect(which has like 6 majors), and Stanford all above those other schools.
It's difficult to answer the second part of that question. It's undeniably a better education. You have better faculty, and classes not taught by at lest fellows are essentially unheard of, in significantly smaller classes, in my undergrad I only had 2 classes with more than 12 students. They are also generally oriented around seminars and not lectures. I vastly prefer the former, but more shy students generally hate having to talk.
They are also generally extremely affordable compared to schools lower down the ranking but still high seeing as the match all demonstrated need.
The most obvious downside is that your social scene is dominated by the kind of person who goes to a high end university. On the whole this is not a particularly nice or fun group of people. Most of the good schools are very similar in character. Chicago is the standout one, but its culture is just as bad but just in a different way.
shnurgleton
Member
Cool, I went to a top 20 school for undergrad and a top 10 school for grad
Go U NU
Go U NU
I'm really against looking at economic outcomes, which already happens to a degree because of some of the metrics like alumni giving, because it's a terrible proxy for quality of education. As I've said a few times looking at how professors rank universities probably makes the most sense, and even then it's not going to be great.
See I don't so much have a problem with that. Harvard and Cambridge are both clearly 2 of the best schools in the world. The problem with the pure numbers comes more in the lower numbers, apparently especially 28-50, and from students that simply apply down the list to the top 10 or 20 schools or what have you.
The bigger problems are that the metrics are really really stupid and incentivize behavior that we don't need to incentivize.
It might be worth pointing out that before we went to "holistic rankings" Chicago was generally number 1 with Cambridge, Princeton, and Berkeley (I might be remembering that last one wrong) following. That has its issues, though I think faculty are a lot better now with how they think of the prestige of institutions. Yet I think it's both a better ranking and incentivizes what we want to incentivize, namely better research and teaching. Admittidly people also didn't care about it very much before so it didn't incentivize it much, but that's fine by me.
It's not so much about hiring. And obviously the difference of a few positions won't hurt an institution that much. But being chronically and/or vastly underrated will be a fulfilling prophecy as better students go elsewhere.
Ah no. I'm not sure we can get to some platonic quality of universities, but I certainly think these are incredibly poor ways to get at something of that sort while at the same time being actively bad for universities in general.
NipplesAndToes23
Member
I would be interested in going to one of these to see what it's like and for better job opportunities but I feel like I'd never stand a chance to get in. I couldn't get in for a Master's program at one of my state schools because of my undergrad grades.
Probably US News and World Rankings. In fact it's pretty much the only thing they even do.
It's odd that you say that though. While the position varies, as it would with totally different metrics, the top 10 are pretty consistent.
The main difference between US news and Times this year are US News has Berkeley, Columbia, and UCLA but doesn't have Chicago (which is bizarre because in their national rankings Chicago only losses out to Princeton and Harvard), Zurich, or Imperial College.
Hierophant
Banned
top 100 ytb
As many in this thread have said it's incredibly difficult to rank universities.
So many people value different things in universities - prestige of faculty, learning outcomes, employability of graduates, selectivity of applicants, research output.
Then aside from that you also have disparities between departments. A university may be particularly strong in a few areas while weak in others. Going to the 30th ranked university may be preferable than going to the 15th depending on the specific major/department.
It's not that these rankings don't have value, but that people need to consider what matters to them and then view them in a more nuanced way rather than simply looking at the overall rank.
So many people value different things in universities - prestige of faculty, learning outcomes, employability of graduates, selectivity of applicants, research output.
Then aside from that you also have disparities between departments. A university may be particularly strong in a few areas while weak in others. Going to the 30th ranked university may be preferable than going to the 15th depending on the specific major/department.
It's not that these rankings don't have value, but that people need to consider what matters to them and then view them in a more nuanced way rather than simply looking at the overall rank.
I was shocked by this. U of A is generally seen as a very solid school while ASU is....ASU.
Hmm, well a lot of the broader benefits really come with the undergrad education. The flip-side of this is it's generally much easier to get into a graduate program at a top of the line institution than undergrad. Take a year or two to work on your research and cultivate relationships with your professors both past and perspective in your spare time and it's doable.
Unless they were really bad this can be overcome. It'll take work though. I don't want to derail the thread more, but feel free to pm me if you have any very general questions, though you'll be better off shooting professors in your field an email for the specifics.
Ranking them in the abstract might have some value, but the rankings we have now are a net negative for sure. I'm all for taking numbers and being more nuanced in our interpretation of them, but these numbers are essentially useless.
I live in Arizona and it looks like ASU has been improving quite a bit (at least measured by these types of rankings) while U of A has been staying still. 10 years ago U of A was ahead in most of these. A few years ago they were mostly even. Now ASU seems to be ahead in these rankings.
AppleBlade
Member
I went to UConn (University of Connecticut). I thought it would be ranked a little higher. It is ranked at 116 for US Colleges and 300-350 for World University rankings.
NipplesAndToes23
Member
In my final semester I juggled 21 credits and it was too much and my GPA went down to 2.45. That school I was trying to get into said it needed to be 3.0, but if I was close like 2.9 she could let me in anyway, but she wanted to tell me that before I spent $80 on the application to get denied. I might look into what you said regarding the elite schools though in the back of my mind I feel like I'd be going for the wrong reasons. It's what I said earlier, but it's also just so I can get out of my mom's house and be around people around my age.
If you get a professor with some clout arguing for you in the admissions process than there generally aren't any solid rules. This is especially true if you can produce some good research to attach to your application.
Ah, yeah I really can't recommend grad school for this. It's hard and requires lots of your time. If you're going for a masters instead of a PhD it'll also generally cost you.
Is ASU's reputation rising with it? Having lived in Arizona my entire life ASU was always known to me as Tempe Community College, heh.
AppleBlade
Member
My friend went to Yale and I definitely liked the dorm & nightlife atmosphere. People were pretty open & friendly to me. From what he told me, it didn't seem like it was all that more challenging than UConn (which is a big state school). The networking opportunities were great though. It's worth it almost for just that.
What school did you go to?
NipplesAndToes23
Member
You never heard of it. It's just some state school. I think only one other person on this forum has gone to it and I know him.
Here's another list that was published just a couple months ago:
The Center for World University Rankings, or CWUR, claims to publish "the only global university ranking that measures the quality of education and training of students as well as the prestige of the faculty members and the quality of their research without relying on surveys and university data submissions."
http://www.thenewstribune.com/news/l...143080554.html
1. Harvard University
2. University of Toronto
3. University of Michigan
4. University of Pennsylvania
5. Johns Hopkins University
6. University of California, Berkeley
7. Stanford University
8. University of Oxford
9. University of Washington
10. Massachusetts Institute of Technology
The Center for World University Rankings, or CWUR, claims to publish "the only global university ranking that measures the quality of education and training of students as well as the prestige of the faculty members and the quality of their research without relying on surveys and university data submissions."
http://www.thenewstribune.com/news/l...143080554.html
1. Harvard University
2. University of Toronto
3. University of Michigan
4. University of Pennsylvania
5. Johns Hopkins University
6. University of California, Berkeley
7. Stanford University
8. University of Oxford
9. University of Washington
10. Massachusetts Institute of Technology
ASU is a huge research institution at the graduate and faculty level so that may have to do with it.
It seems to have that weird duality in that it's well regarded by some and seen as a party school and hang out spot rather than real university by many others, so it's hard for me to tell what its overall reputation is. It's much more divisive than most major universities that I've been around.
NipplesAndToes23
Member
This list is incredibly long. Are there any HBCUs on it?
Stumpokapow
listen to the mad man
Strikes me that CalTech is a little overrated (still an excellent school), Imperial College London high, Penn a little high, and LSE / Michigan / National University of Singapore conspicuously missing from the top 20 (they're all in the high 20s). I'd probably have CMU in the top 20 too.
As I said above I think the placement of MIT, Stanford, and Caltech speaks to a bias that would work against both LSE and Michigan. It also would explain Yale's relatively low ranking.