2018 USNWR Rankings Forum

[rpupkin]

If the "T" distinction is for schools who have never been ranked lower, then Cornell can't be in the T13, since it was ranked 14 in 2012. So it's the T12.

It can't be T12 either since Berkeley has been ranked 13th before, and it can't be T11 because Northwestern and Duke (tied at 10) have been ranked above 11 before, and it can't be T9 because Michigan has been ranked above 9 before.. So what is it.. T8 now? Has virginia or penn been outside the top 8? If so, then T6? But chicago has been outside top 6.. So T5?

Penn has been ranked 12th at least twice. Not sure about UVA, but I'm sure it's been lower than #8 multiple times.

Ok then it can't be T5 cause NYU has been outside T5. It can't be T4 since Columbia just fell out of T4. So we're down to T3. Has HYS ever been out of T3?

HLS was fifth in 1990.
ETA: And I think SLS was fourth at least once.

Michigan was 3rd in 1987.

UT was 11th that same year.

[PrezRand]

Hikko - I was thinking about this and you're my go to guy on these sorts of things. What is the cutoff for what constitutes a prestigious undergrad?

National Universities
Tier 1: PSYC(Is this CalTech?)HM
Tier 2: Columbia, Chicago, Duke, Penn, Dartmouth, Vanderbilt, Brown, Rice, Georgetown, Northwestern, Cornell
Tier 3: WUSTL, Johns Hopkins, NYU, Notre Dame, Emory, Berkeley, Tufts, Carnegie Mellon,
Tier 4: UVA, Michigan, Boston College, USC, UCLA, UT, UNC, Wake Forest Maybe William and Mary

Just a rough outline. Order within tiers not super precise. Personal preference would be slightly different in some cases. Open to disagreement/suggestions.

I had to return to this cancerous thread. I agree with this a lot but here would be my edits

[LurkerTurnedMember]

If the "T" distinction is for schools who have never been ranked lower, then Cornell can't be in the T13, since it was ranked 14 in 2012. So it's the T12.

It can't be T12 either since Berkeley has been ranked 13th before, and it can't be T11 because Northwestern and Duke (tied at 10) have been ranked above 11 before, and it can't be T9 because Michigan has been ranked above 9 before.. So what is it.. T8 now? Has virginia or penn been outside the top 8? If so, then T6? But chicago has been outside top 6.. So T5?

Penn has been ranked 12th at least twice. Not sure about UVA, but I'm sure it's been lower than #8 multiple times.

Ok then it can't be T5 cause NYU has been outside T5. It can't be T4 since Columbia just fell out of T4. So we're down to T3. Has HYS ever been out of T3?

HLS was fifth in 1990.
ETA: And I think SLS was fourth at least once.

Damn. Wtf. Georgetown obliterated everything. There's no "T" anymore. There's just.... Yale. (Unless it fell below 1 at some point, then USNWR rankings implode and disappear into the shadow realm). Wow. Who knew Georgetown could defeat USNWR..

[Tiago Splitter]

T1
TTT
Penn
Arizona Summit

[michlaw]

If the "T" distinction is for schools who have never been ranked lower, then Cornell can't be in the T13, since it was ranked 14 in 2012. So it's the T12.

It can't be T12 either since Berkeley has been ranked 13th before, and it can't be T11 because Northwestern and Duke (tied at 10) have been ranked above 11 before, and it can't be T9 because Michigan has been ranked above 9 before.. So what is it.. T8 now? Has virginia or penn been outside the top 8? If so, then T6? But chicago has been outside top 6.. So T5?

Penn has been ranked 12th at least twice. Not sure about UVA, but I'm sure it's been lower than #8 multiple times.

Ok then it can't be T5 cause NYU has been outside T5. It can't be T4 since Columbia just fell out of T4. So we're down to T3. Has HYS ever been out of T3?

HLS was fifth in 1990.
ETA: And I think SLS was fourth at least once.

Damn. Wtf. Georgetown obliterated everything. There's no "T" anymore. There's just.... Yale. (Unless it fell below 1 at some point, then USNWR rankings implode and disappear into the shadow realm). Wow. Who knew Georgetown could defeat USNWR..

In 1987 Yale and Harvard were tied for 1st. So were they both 1.5 the average of 1st and 2nd? Or were they both #1?

[Moneytrees]

Hikko - I was thinking about this and you're my go to guy on these sorts of things. What is the cutoff for what constitutes a prestigious undergrad?

National Universities
Tier 1: PSYC(Is this CalTech?)HM
Tier 2: Columbia, Chicago, Duke, Penn, Dartmouth, Vanderbilt, Brown, Rice, Georgetown, Northwestern, Cornell
Tier 3: WUSTL, Johns Hopkins, NYU, Notre Dame, Emory, Berkeley, Tufts, Carnegie Mellon,
Tier 4: UVA, Michigan, Boston College, USC, UCLA, UT, UNC, Wake Forest Maybe William and Mary

Just a rough outline. Order within tiers not super precise. Personal preference would be slightly different in some cases. Open to disagreement/suggestions.

I had to return to this cancerous thread. I agree with this a lot but here would be my edits

Don't see why you would replace the UCs with UT since UCSD and UCSB are probably a bit ahead of it (UG and as research institutions), but other than that it's a good list. Had totally forgotten about Wake Forest.

[LurkerTurnedMember]

In 1987 Yale and Harvard were tied for 1st. So were they both 1.5 the average of 1st and 2nd? Or were they both #1?

Where are u getting the previous rankings? Please provide a link.

[bearsfan23]

Hikko - I was thinking about this and you're my go to guy on these sorts of things. What is the cutoff for what constitutes a prestigious undergrad?

National Universities
Tier 1: PSYC(Is this CalTech?)HM
Tier 2: Columbia, Chicago, Duke, Penn, Dartmouth, Vanderbilt, Brown, Rice, Georgetown, Northwestern, Cornell
Tier 3: WUSTL, Johns Hopkins, NYU, Notre Dame, Emory, Berkeley, Tufts, Carnegie Mellon,
Tier 4: UVA, Michigan, Boston College, USC, UCLA, UT, UNC, Wake Forest Maybe William and Mary

Just a rough outline. Order within tiers not super precise. Personal preference would be slightly different in some cases. Open to disagreement/suggestions.

I had to return to this cancerous thread. I agree with this a lot but here would be my edits

Don't see why you would replace the UCs with UT since UCSD and UCSB are probably a bit ahead of it (UG and as research institutions), but other than that it's a good list. Had totally forgotten about Wake Forest.

How is Chicago not a Tier 1 undergrad?

[michlaw]

In 1987 Yale and Harvard were tied for 1st. So were they both 1.5 the average of 1st and 2nd? Or were they both #1?

Where are u getting the previous rankings? Please provide a link.

http://www.prelawhandbook.com/law_schoo ... _1987_1999

[PrezRand]

Hikko - I was thinking about this and you're my go to guy on these sorts of things. What is the cutoff for what constitutes a prestigious undergrad?

National Universities
Tier 1: PSYC(Is this CalTech?)HM
Tier 2: Columbia, Chicago, Duke, Penn, Dartmouth, Vanderbilt, Brown, Rice, Georgetown, Northwestern, Cornell
Tier 3: WUSTL, Johns Hopkins, NYU, Notre Dame, Emory, Berkeley, Tufts, Carnegie Mellon,
Tier 4: UVA, Michigan, Boston College, USC, UCLA, UT, UNC, Wake Forest Maybe William and Mary

Just a rough outline. Order within tiers not super precise. Personal preference would be slightly different in some cases. Open to disagreement/suggestions.

I had to return to this cancerous thread. I agree with this a lot but here would be my edits

Don't see why you would replace the UCs with UT since UCSD and UCSB are probably a bit ahead of it (UG and as research institutions), but other than that it's a good list. Had totally forgotten about Wake Forest.

UT has more recognized programs than UCSD and UCSB. It is definitely closer to UCLA/Michigan/Berkeley/UVA than people admit.

[candidlatke]

HYPSM
Chicago/Columbia/Penn/top LAC's
Duke/Dartmouth/Cornell/Brown/Georgetown/John Hopkins
Berkeley/UVA/UMich/WUSTL/Vanderbilt/Rice/CMU/Northwestern
UT/UCLA/UNC/the better known flagships/BC/average private schools/etc.
Lesser known state schools like the other UC's/William Mary/etc.

Also, the placement power of the non Berkeley/UCLA UC's is really shitty.
MBB doesn't recruit at any of the UC's besides Berkeley and a tiny amount at UCLA, and the top investment banks are similarly represented (though they take a tiny few. Have seen a few friends from UCSD go to JP Morgan in SF and a few from UCSB as well)
Google/Facebook/Amazon/etc. you have maybe like 10 kids a year going to there per lesser UC.
Apparently UCI reported something like a 15% full time employment rate recently. Friend linked me this: http://www.oir.uci.edu/files/surveys/Se ... esults.pdf
And mind you, UCI's ranked higher than SD at this point on that ranking people are putting so much emphasis on, right below UCSB which are next up from UCLA/Berkeley in case you were wondering.

Also people got weirdly fixated on Duke for some reason. I think most of the people who were talking about Duke were more using it as an example against Berkeley/to bash Berkeley, not to support Duke in itself. Substitute it for Cornell or Dartmouth and I'd argue the same thing.

[Moneytrees]

Hikko - I was thinking about this and you're my go to guy on these sorts of things. What is the cutoff for what constitutes a prestigious undergrad?

National Universities
Tier 1: PSYC(Is this CalTech?)HM
Tier 2: Columbia, Chicago, Duke, Penn, Dartmouth, Vanderbilt, Brown, Rice, Georgetown, Northwestern, Cornell
Tier 3: WUSTL, Johns Hopkins, NYU, Notre Dame, Emory, Berkeley, Tufts, Carnegie Mellon,
Tier 4: UVA, Michigan, Boston College, USC, UCLA, UT, UNC, Wake Forest Maybe William and Mary

Just a rough outline. Order within tiers not super precise. Personal preference would be slightly different in some cases. Open to disagreement/suggestions.

I had to return to this cancerous thread. I agree with this a lot but here would be my edits

Don't see why you would replace the UCs with UT since UCSD and UCSB are probably a bit ahead of it (UG and as research institutions), but other than that it's a good list. Had totally forgotten about Wake Forest.

UT has more recognized programs than UCSD and UCSB. It is definitely closer to UCLA/Michigan/Berkeley/UVA than people admit.

Nah I don't think so.

[Hikikomorist]

Hikko - I was thinking about this and you're my go to guy on these sorts of things. What is the cutoff for what constitutes a prestigious undergrad?

National Universities
Tier 1: PSYC(Is this CalTech?)HM
Tier 2: Columbia, Chicago, Duke, Penn, Dartmouth, Vanderbilt, Brown, Rice, Georgetown, Northwestern, Cornell
Tier 3: WUSTL, Johns Hopkins, NYU, Notre Dame, Emory, Berkeley, Tufts, Carnegie Mellon,
Tier 4: UVA, Michigan, Boston College, USC, UCLA, UT, UNC, Wake Forest Maybe William and Mary

Just a rough outline. Order within tiers not super precise. Personal preference would be slightly different in some cases. Open to disagreement/suggestions.

I had to return to this cancerous thread. I agree with this a lot but here would be my edits

Don't see why you would replace the UCs with UT since UCSD and UCSB are probably a bit ahead of it (UG and as research institutions), but other than that it's a good list. Had totally forgotten about Wake Forest.

UT has more recognized programs than UCSD and UCSB. It is definitely closer to UCLA/Michigan/Berkeley/UVA than people admit.

Nah I don't think so.

Yeah, that's laughably off. I suspect s/he's spent too much/the perfect amount of time in Texas.

[Moneytrees]

Hikko - I was thinking about this and you're my go to guy on these sorts of things. What is the cutoff for what constitutes a prestigious undergrad?

National Universities
Tier 1: PSYC(Is this CalTech?)HM
Tier 2: Columbia, Chicago, Duke, Penn, Dartmouth, Vanderbilt, Brown, Rice, Georgetown, Northwestern, Cornell
Tier 3: WUSTL, Johns Hopkins, NYU, Notre Dame, Emory, Berkeley, Tufts, Carnegie Mellon,
Tier 4: UVA, Michigan, Boston College, USC, UCLA, UT, UNC, Wake Forest Maybe William and Mary

Just a rough outline. Order within tiers not super precise. Personal preference would be slightly different in some cases. Open to disagreement/suggestions.

I had to return to this cancerous thread. I agree with this a lot but here would be my edits

Don't see why you would replace the UCs with UT since UCSD and UCSB are probably a bit ahead of it (UG and as research institutions), but other than that it's a good list. Had totally forgotten about Wake Forest.

UT has more recognized programs than UCSD and UCSB. It is definitely closer to UCLA/Michigan/Berkeley/UVA than people admit.

Nah I don't think so.

Yeah, that's laughably off. I suspect s/he's spent too much/the perfect amount of time in Texas.

Texas cracks the T14 and now all its alumni are big swinging dicks.

[gwillygecko]

Cornell can be in the T13 despite being ranked 14th at some point because it's one of thirteen schools to always be in the top 14. So T13 it is. lmao.

[jbagelboy]

HYPSM
Chicago/Columbia/Penn/top LAC's
Duke/Dartmouth/Cornell/Brown/Georgetown/John Hopkins
Berkeley/UVA/UMich/WUSTL/Vanderbilt/Rice/CMU/Northwestern
UT/UCLA/UNC/the better known flagships/BC/average private schools/etc.
Lesser known state schools like the other UC's/William Mary/etc.

Also, the placement power of the non Berkeley/UCLA UC's is really shitty.
MBB doesn't recruit at any of the UC's besides Berkeley and a tiny amount at UCLA, and the top investment banks are similarly represented (though they take a tiny few. Have seen a few friends from UCSD go to JP Morgan in SF and a few from UCSB as well)
Google/Facebook/Amazon/etc. you have maybe like 10 kids a year going to there per lesser UC.
Apparently UCI reported something like a 15% full time employment rate recently. Friend linked me this: http://www.oir.uci.edu/files/surveys/Se ... esults.pdf
And mind you, UCI's ranked higher than SD at this point on that ranking people are putting so much emphasis on, right below UCSB which are next up from UCLA/Berkeley in case you were wondering.

Also people got weirdly fixated on Duke for some reason. I think most of the people who were talking about Duke were more using it as an example against Berkeley/to bash Berkeley, not to support Duke in itself. Substitute it for Cornell or Dartmouth and I'd argue the same thing.

As much as I hate this conversation, this poster's list best approximates how undergraduate institutions are actually regarded by people with some knowledge. Caltech probably goes with columbia, Chicago, Penn, Amherst, Pomona, Swarthmore, ect., although its reputation would be at the top in STEM. These so-called "tiers" obviously vary a little by subject but this is a decent take.

[BVest]

There seems to be a lot of extraneous debate about the relative quality of various grad programs in answer to a question of "What is the cutoff for what constitutes a prestigious undergrad?" I'm not saying the UC proponents are wrong, I'm just saying let's stick to the call of the question, folks.

[laqueredup]

I'd think West Point and Annapolis would belong in the top 3 tiers somewhere.

Blatant USAFA trolling.

Colorado Springs? What's that?

[ponderingmeerkat]

I'd think West Point and Annapolis would belong in the top 3 tiers somewhere.

Blatant USAFA trolling.

Colorado Springs? What's that?

The world's largest confluence of cholos, rednecks and suburban hell strangely stuck on the side of a mountain. Presftigious!

[Moneytrees]

HYPSM
Chicago/Columbia/Penn/top LAC's
Duke/Dartmouth/Cornell/Brown/Georgetown/John Hopkins
Berkeley/UVA/UMich/WUSTL/Vanderbilt/Rice/CMU/Northwestern
UT/UCLA/UNC/the better known flagships/BC/average private schools/etc.
Lesser known state schools like the other UC's/William Mary/etc.

Also, the placement power of the non Berkeley/UCLA UC's is really shitty.
MBB doesn't recruit at any of the UC's besides Berkeley and a tiny amount at UCLA, and the top investment banks are similarly represented (though they take a tiny few. Have seen a few friends from UCSD go to JP Morgan in SF and a few from UCSB as well)
Google/Facebook/Amazon/etc. you have maybe like 10 kids a year going to there per lesser UC.
Apparently UCI reported something like a 15% full time employment rate recently. Friend linked me this: http://www.oir.uci.edu/files/surveys/Se ... esults.pdf
And mind you, UCI's ranked higher than SD at this point on that ranking people are putting so much emphasis on, right below UCSB which are next up from UCLA/Berkeley in case you were wondering.

Also people got weirdly fixated on Duke for some reason. I think most of the people who were talking about Duke were more using it as an example against Berkeley/to bash Berkeley, not to support Duke in itself. Substitute it for Cornell or Dartmouth and I'd argue the same thing.

As much as I hate this conversation, this poster's list best approximates how undergraduate institutions are actually regarded by people with some knowledge. Caltech probably goes with columbia, Chicago, Penn, Amherst, Pomona, Swarthmore, ect., although its reputation would be at the top in STEM. These so-called "tiers" obviously vary a little by subject but this is a decent take.

Don't see why you would place schools like UVA and UMich ahead of UCLA (they are pretty obviously peers). Also, is UT really on the same level as Emory, ND, Tufts and Wake (and why would you call those schools average, yet name drop BC)? Are the UCs are not well known flagships? Seems like a pretty random list.

Personally I never thought the LACs were necessarily as prestigious as the Ivy league, but I suppose some people on the west coast would consider Pomona more prestigious than Dartmouth.

[Hikikomorist]

HYPSM
Chicago/Columbia/Penn/top LAC's
Duke/Dartmouth/Cornell/Brown/Georgetown/John Hopkins
Berkeley/UVA/UMich/WUSTL/Vanderbilt/Rice/CMU/Northwestern
UT/UCLA/UNC/the better known flagships/BC/average private schools/etc.
Lesser known state schools like the other UC's/William Mary/etc.

Also, the placement power of the non Berkeley/UCLA UC's is really shitty.
MBB doesn't recruit at any of the UC's besides Berkeley and a tiny amount at UCLA, and the top investment banks are similarly represented (though they take a tiny few. Have seen a few friends from UCSD go to JP Morgan in SF and a few from UCSB as well)
Google/Facebook/Amazon/etc. you have maybe like 10 kids a year going to there per lesser UC.
Apparently UCI reported something like a 15% full time employment rate recently. Friend linked me this: http://www.oir.uci.edu/files/surveys/Se ... esults.pdf
And mind you, UCI's ranked higher than SD at this point on that ranking people are putting so much emphasis on, right below UCSB which are next up from UCLA/Berkeley in case you were wondering.

Also people got weirdly fixated on Duke for some reason. I think most of the people who were talking about Duke were more using it as an example against Berkeley/to bash Berkeley, not to support Duke in itself. Substitute it for Cornell or Dartmouth and I'd argue the same thing.

As much as I hate this conversation, this poster's list best approximates how undergraduate institutions are actually regarded by people with some knowledge. Caltech probably goes with columbia, Chicago, Penn, Amherst, Pomona, Swarthmore, ect., although its reputation would be at the top in STEM. These so-called "tiers" obviously vary a little by subject but this is a decent take.

Is this referring to recruiting for the major banks and consulting companies or something else?

[PrezRand]

Hikko - I was thinking about this and you're my go to guy on these sorts of things. What is the cutoff for what constitutes a prestigious undergrad?

National Universities
Tier 1: PSYC(Is this CalTech?)HM
Tier 2: Columbia, Chicago, Duke, Penn, Dartmouth, Vanderbilt, Brown, Rice, Georgetown, Northwestern, Cornell
Tier 3: WUSTL, Johns Hopkins, NYU, Notre Dame, Emory, Berkeley, Tufts, Carnegie Mellon,
Tier 4: UVA, Michigan, Boston College, USC, UCLA, UT, UNC, Wake Forest Maybe William and Mary

Just a rough outline. Order within tiers not super precise. Personal preference would be slightly different in some cases. Open to disagreement/suggestions.

I had to return to this cancerous thread. I agree with this a lot but here would be my edits

Don't see why you would replace the UCs with UT since UCSD and UCSB are probably a bit ahead of it (UG and as research institutions), but other than that it's a good list. Had totally forgotten about Wake Forest.

UT has more recognized programs than UCSD and UCSB. It is definitely closer to UCLA/Michigan/Berkeley/UVA than people admit.

Nah I don't think so.

Yeah, that's laughably off. I suspect s/he's spent too much/the perfect amount of time in Texas.

Or you can check out the rankings for programs like business and engineering. It's more laughable to say that UCSD and SB are ahead of UT

[Moneytrees]

You can't just pick two categories and call it a day, plus UCSD ranks like 3rd in bioengineering since it's in San Diego and its engineering school is pretty well known since it gets a lot of investment from local giants like Qualcomm.

UT is a great school and is probably a bit underrated but there must be a reason why almost all of the UC's are ranked way higher both in the US news national rankings and the global rankings, right?

[Hikikomorist]

Neither UT nor UCX/Y/Z has significant prestige beyond the state border.

[Moneytrees]

Neither UT nor UCX/Y/Z has significant prestige beyond the state border.

Agreed, but there is a pretty substantial gulf in terms of overall academic strength between some of the top UC's and UT.