academic rankings

[jlo]

Greetings from the North
Could someone direct me toward a site that has information regarding academic rankings for NCAA schools??
Thanks

[Deleted]

I know Stanford's been struggling, but that's probably because of all the temps they hired.

[BoilerUp!]

"U. S. News & World Report has just released its national rankings of undergraduate academic programs for 2006. ... Purdue ranks No. 8 this year among engineering programs at doctoral-granting universities, tied with Carnegie Mellon. " (This is from August, 2006.)

You can start with US News & World Report, to make sure a school is respected by its graduates, and employers. But, each University may have schools that are above and beyond their overall ranking... like:

• Industrial/manufacturing engineering, No. 2
• Aerospace/aeronautical/astronomical engineering, No. 4
• Agricultural engineering, tied for No. 4
• Civil engineering, No. 7
• Mechanical engineering, No. 7


Make sure you look at undergraduate rankings, not Grad rankings. And remember that this is very subjective, rankings and all. You can go to a school ranked 25 or 50 or 75 or 100 and get a really good education.

Also, remember when you are looking, that teenagers change their minds.
Make sure the school has a good reputation for multiple possible career choices!

Most schools have spent lots of money upgrading their web pages, to have a section for applicants, with all sorts of information for new students. Once you you have some schools of interest, you could go to those web pages, and poke around. (I just told my sister-in-law to do that, because her son is not bringing anything home from the
guidance counselor. She hadn't even thought of doing that.)

[pedro el leon]

stacey said:

"U. S. News & World Report has just released its national rankings of undergraduate academic programs for 2006. ... Purdue ranks No. 8 this year among engineering programs at doctoral-granting universities, tied with Carnegie Mellon. " (This is from August, 2006.)

You can start with US News & World Report, to make sure a school is respected by its graduates, and employers. But, each University may have schools that are above and beyond their overall ranking... like:

• Industrial/manufacturing engineering, No. 2
• Aerospace/aeronautical/astronomical engineering, No. 4
• Agricultural engineering, tied for No. 4
• Civil engineering, No. 7
• Mechanical engineering, No. 7


Make sure you look at undergraduate rankings, not Grad rankings. And remember that this is very subjective, rankings and all. You can go to a school ranked 25 or 50 or 75 or 100 and get a really good education.

Also, remember when you are looking, that teenagers change their minds.
Make sure the school has a good reputation for multiple possible career choices!

Most schools have spent lots of money upgrading their web pages, to have a section for applicants, with all sorts of information for new students. Once you you have some schools of interest, you could go to those web pages, and poke around. (I just told my sister-in-law to do that, because her son is not bringing anything home from the
guidance counselor. She hadn't even thought of doing that.)

Not so fast with that absurd and bogus U.S. News "ranking"

news.yahoo.com/s/csm/20070412/ts_csm/arank_1

College presidents plan 'U.S. News' rankings boycott

Some key points to the article:

"Colleges have complained in the past about the rankings. But recent events have rallied opposition, including the tying of presidential pay to ranking at Arizona State University and accusations by the president of Sarah Lawrence College that the magazine threatened to use hocus-pocus data to stand in for average SAT scores at the school.

...

The "reputational survey," as it's called, asks college administrators to rank the quality of hundreds of schools on a one to five scale. The data – which critics call a "beauty contest" – account for 25 percent of the overall U.S. News rankings.

...

There's nothing wrong with sharing information, says Myers, but assigning weights to that information is "totally arbitrary." Students and parents may have different priorities, including location, diversity, and strength of a certain department – and their weights are bound to differ from those assigned by U.S. News."



jlo - Don't ever, EVER base your child's college decision on the completely illegitimate U.S. News "ranking."

[IdahoBoy]

It might help to narrow the field... what exactly are you most interested in studying? Many colleges specialize in one thing or another. I think of train engineers when I see Purdue, for example... I think of truck drivers when I see Boise State.

Give us some general topics that may be of interest and we can tell you some of the upper schools for that, both in volleyball and academia.

[ladeda]

Try this Princeton Review
www.princetonreview.com/college/research/rankings/rankingsBest.asp

[AntennaMagnet]

Ah, this is one of my favorite topics....academic fit. Ivy League schools are by far and away the best for academics, mainly because they are ultra - selective and their students are as much of an educational asset as the professors. However, the Ivy League is pretty mediocre in volleyball. Thus, for the talented volleyball player who happens to be in the top 5% of students nationwide, the number of schools that rival the Ivy League and still give volleyball scholarships is quite small. Volleyball players who are academically qualified for Ivy League programs typically have a short list of prospective colleges that include Cal, Stanford, Virginia, Duke, and Northwestern. After that, there are several outstanding schools such as UCLA, Michigan, UNC, and Notre Dame that are academically selective.

Boiler Up is correct that some Universities are uniquely known for special programs, but over 80% of students change their minds about college majors, so I don't know if getting pigeon-holed into a particular University based on a specific program is wise unless you absolutely know that you want Journalism or Engineering rather than a liberal arts education.

[BoilerUp!]

ladeda said:

Try this Princeton Review
www.princetonreview.com/college/research/rankings/rankingsBest.asp

Top 10 Party Colleges
Article provided by The Princeton Review

encarta.msn.com/encnet/departments/college/?article=10schoolsthatPartytheHeartiest07

"When it's time to take a break from the books, the students at these colleges definitely know how to cut loose and let the good times roll. According to The Princeton Review's annual survey of 115,000 college students at the Best 361 Colleges, raising the roof is par for the course at these top ten party schools.by the Princeton Review."

[Wolfgang]

Don't worry so much about where you got that piece of sheepskin (i.e., degree). In the real world, it won't mean much. A couple days on the job and people will figure out whether you're a fraud or not. The stupidest people I've ever met were from the Ivy Leagues and the like. Also, the smartest people I've ever met were from the Ivy Leagues and the like. One of THE dumbest people I ever met went to Stanford Law. Wow. I was amazed at not only the depths of her dumbness, but also the breadth. My coworkers and I were dazzled by her sheer ineptitude, so much so that we couldn't function for a couple days, so traumatized were we by the existence of such an animal in the real world.

[Deleted]

The responsibility for a great education still ultimately falls on the student. If the effort is there, one can receive a great education at literally thousands of schools.

[Wolfgang]

But not figuratively...

[Ye Olde Dawg]

I don't know whether it addresses your question in particular, but RichKern.com has a section where you can look at the academic all-Americans by school, by year, etc.

Interesting point: Nebraska has produced more than most whole conferences.

[Wolfgang]

Academic AA's dont tell me anything. It tells me they got good grades AT THAT SCHOOL. It doesn't tell me:

1. Whether grade inflation exists in that school or department;
2. What kinds of courses they took (i.e., easy jock classes like geology (rocks for jocks));
3. What was her major;
4. What the grade distribution was in those classes across all students;
5. How good is the school;
6. How good is the school in MY field of interest (if I were a vb recruit in high school);
7. Whether the school offers my field of interest (e.g., chemical engineering);

Among others...

[Deleted]

wolfgang said:

But not figuratively...

Figuratively, it's billions and I'm climbing the walls.

[AntennaMagnet]

I don't know, but getting a scholarship from a private, elite academic college must be so sweet when you get the invoice for $40,000 annually that is paid by the athletic department.