Rutger' ranking article
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Best public school academically in the Northeast. I'll take it.
This is very good news and should be trumpeted across the state. Since I don't live in NJ any longer, perhaps someone who does could comment on how/if this piece of news is being covered by the in-state media, such as it is.
I wonder how many of that top 100 are not in the USA, in particular how many of the 31 ranked above us are foreign universities.
I wonder how many of that top 100 are not in the USA, in particular how many of the 31 ranked above us are foreign universities.
It is not they won't cover Rutgers unless there is something negative. There were all over tuition hikes but none mention this.
In reading the OnTheBanks piece, I see he listed the Big Ten teams ranks (10 of 14 schools made the list of 100 best in the world) and he also ranked teh conferences with Ivy and Big Ten going 1-2.
The ACC was third but OnTheBanks explained that he did not include Notre Dame with the ACC (because they are not a full member) and nor did he include Johns Hopkins with teh Big Ten, again, not a full member.
Sp. I wondered about the Big Ten CIC and if Johns Hopkins and U of Chicago were members. I found out the CIC ended and is now The Big Ten Academic Alliance (not sure how I missed that, was discussed here in 2016) and that U of Chicago's guest membership in the CIC ended in 2011 and that they are a collaborator and I assume Johns Hopkins has a similar status.
The ACC was third but OnTheBanks explained that he did not include Notre Dame with the ACC (because they are not a full member) and nor did he include Johns Hopkins with teh Big Ten, again, not a full member.
Sp. I wondered about the Big Ten CIC and if Johns Hopkins and U of Chicago were members. I found out the CIC ended and is now The Big Ten Academic Alliance (not sure how I missed that, was discussed here in 2016) and that U of Chicago's guest membership in the CIC ended in 2011 and that they are a collaborator and I assume Johns Hopkins has a similar status.
The Big Ten Academic Alliance is for full member only. So no Johns Hopkins or Notre Dame since both are only part members of the Big Ten.
Haven't heard it anywhere except on Rutgers sites. Nothing from NJ.com or any other NJ related news organizations.
Rutgers should promote this as much as they can. They've been doing a great job promoting their business school with billboards on the turnpike.
the order of those 10 seems right to me, but I would have thought Purdue would make the list for sure, and ahead of Rutgers.
So I guess this is why not having a medical school affects rankings.
And what about Indiana ? Not even ahead of OSU ? I smell a flaw on that one.
So I guess this is why not having a medical school affects rankings.
And what about Indiana ? Not even ahead of OSU ? I smell a flaw on that one.
Illinois surprised me. I didn’t realize they were that good of an academic institution. But yea, this is a good list. Falls right in line with what I’ve always thought. We’re a better academic school than OSU, about on par with Maryland, and a small step below Rutgers. Solid article by OTB.
Remember that grad programs have a real impact on these ratings. That's why Dartmouth, with miniscule grad programs outside of Tuck (MBA) and the medical school is ranked below the rest of the Ivies. .My guess is that Indiana falls short on the graduate program level as well. Not sure why Purdue is missing.
My guess is how wide the areas of expertise are.
That is, think of it as recruiting class rank.. in most of the systems grading football recruiting classes.. you can make up for quality with quantity.. to a degree.
I think Rutgers academics might be getting a bump from sheer QUANTITY of subject where we have some very good faculty. That is, maybe Purdue or Indiana might be top 25 in a few disciplines but Rutgers is Top 50 and Top 100 in MANY disciplines... and as someone above mentioned.. maybe you don't get there without a BIG grad school. Rutgers has about DOUBLE the number of grad students as Purdue (about 20K vs 10K).. that's double the chance that a student produces something that might add to the ranking.
Rutgers really is an academic powerhouse.
Rutgers is a fabulous resesrch University and grad school destination. For whatever reason our rep as an undergraduate institution lags...mostly because of USNWR....but don't believe it. We are right where we belong in the Big Ten.
It is great that RU is ranked at 32, but these rankings are always subject to debate.
Under the Rutgers listing, it says RU is ranked in the top 100 for computer science, and that ranking (by the same ranking service) has RU at #57 for computer science. I have heavily researched computer science programs for my son. They also have Ohio State at #19, and I have never seen Ohio State in any computer science rankings this high. They have UNC above Yale, University of Washington and University of Illinois. They also have University of Washington at #51, and University of Illinois at #93, which is way below most other rankings.
Under the Rutgers listing, it says RU is ranked in the top 100 for computer science, and that ranking (by the same ranking service) has RU at #57 for computer science. I have heavily researched computer science programs for my son. They also have Ohio State at #19, and I have never seen Ohio State in any computer science rankings this high. They have UNC above Yale, University of Washington and University of Illinois. They also have University of Washington at #51, and University of Illinois at #93, which is way below most other rankings.
The OnTheBanks story was based on this ranking by TheBestSchools.org. Right at the top they say this about other rankings..
Some university rankings focus on factors unrelated to academic merit. Thus, some rankings of colleges and universities may give weight to attractiveness of campus, satisfaction of students and alumni, extracurricular benefits (such as top athletics programs), affordability of tuition, and expected income of graduates.
This is not such a ranking.
In contrast, if you are looking for a ranking with a focus on academic prestige, scholarly excellence, and sheer intellectual horsepower, then this is the ranking you want.
At the universities in this ranking, you will be mixing with the brightest faculty and students in the world, and developing your knowledge and skills so that you yourself will be in a position to join the world’s elite academics, scientists, and thinkers.
Then they add this..This is not such a ranking.
In contrast, if you are looking for a ranking with a focus on academic prestige, scholarly excellence, and sheer intellectual horsepower, then this is the ranking you want.
At the universities in this ranking, you will be mixing with the brightest faculty and students in the world, and developing your knowledge and skills so that you yourself will be in a position to join the world’s elite academics, scientists, and thinkers.
Ranking Methodology
To counteract the apparent gaming of university rankings, TheBestSchools.org contracted with InfluenceRankings.com to form a ranking based on statistical document analysis across the Web. For the present ranking, this meant selecting a representative sample of disciplines at universities (not just natural and social sciences, as with Shanghai, but also humanities and professional schools), finding the influencers in each discipline, and then pooling these influencers to see where they are on faculty and where they got their degrees. Details about the underlying methodology can be found here.
The result is a ranking immune to gaming because it is based entirely on the “footprint” of key researchers and scholars on the Web — -not just in terms of some broad popularity measure (such as number of Google search results), but by measuring their strength of association on the Web with the topics in which they are supposed to be expert.
Accordingly, the result is a ranking that focuses on the preeminent factor that ought to be used to gauge academic merit in the first place — namely, the combined influence of a school’s faculty across fields of study. Yes, this ranking is entirely Web-based. But in this day and age, if you’re alive and currently active but not influential on the Web, then you’re not influential, period!
They specifically mention the Shanghai ranking where we also do very well.. but suggest their ranking is more encompassing. In short, it would seem to measure the quantity and quality of the OUTPUT of the universities.The result is a ranking immune to gaming because it is based entirely on the “footprint” of key researchers and scholars on the Web — -not just in terms of some broad popularity measure (such as number of Google search results), but by measuring their strength of association on the Web with the topics in which they are supposed to be expert.
Accordingly, the result is a ranking that focuses on the preeminent factor that ought to be used to gauge academic merit in the first place — namely, the combined influence of a school’s faculty across fields of study. Yes, this ranking is entirely Web-based. But in this day and age, if you’re alive and currently active but not influential on the Web, then you’re not influential, period!
But as noted above, there are several schools on their Computer Science rankings that are way out of whack.
Illinois is an excellent school
Those are the 2 Ivies with the smallest grad school presence and excellence. Nowhere near the grad programs that Rutgers offers. However, back about 25 years ago the rankings done by USNWR had a category "Best Schools for Undergraduates". Dartmouth was ranked #1 each year and Brown was usually #2 or #3. What was interesting, particularly for unfamiliar East Coasters, was that Miami of Ohio was Top 5 every year. And this was before Roethlisberger.
Correction (to bolded parts above)....looks like you missed it, but U of Illinois is 13th on the top 100 CS list. #93 is UI-Chicago, not the flagship in Urbana-Champaign.
Back to the overall ranking list, probably the biggest miss is Carnegie Mellon, followed perhaps by Texas A&M...not sure what in the methodology would have caused those universities to fall outside the top 100.
Good catch, and oops by me. One other strange anomaly on CS- UC Irvine and Davis at 29 and 30 above Columbia. The UC system is outstanding, but had never seen schools other than Berkeley and UCLA on the CS list. We visited both schools this week, and both were just astoundingly beautiful campuses and solid on academics.
As a funny aside, we were talking with a professor, and unprompted, he went off on spending and football and athletics and what a waste of money it is to put money into football. I debated him on the point, but he was not convinced. Also, during our UC Berkeley tour, the student tour guide mocked how bad UC Berkeley was in football and at the bottom of the PAC 12.
Back to the general rankings, A&M and CMU are glaring omissions. Maybe CMU has the same problem as Dartmouth and Brown, or maybe they are strong in engineering and science only?
I spent quite a bit of time chatting with a family from Texas who we saw on the Stanford and UC Berkeley tours, and their daughter was not applying to either University of Texas or Texas A&M--I got the sense that those schools were not considered good enough and/or she wanted to get out of Texas and go to school on one of the coasts.
Imagine that-- a kid wanting to leave their home state to go to school--thank goodness that NEVER happens with NJ students.
I also don't know why Carnegie Mellon did not make the cut.
They are a prestigious academic institution (AAU member University) that does about $250-300 million in annual research expenditures. They have excellent grad programs in engineering, business, computer science/artifical intelligence/engineering (believe they are ranked #1 in CS) etc. Some of the US schools that did make the cut are not AAU research member schools.
HAIL TO PITT!!!!
My brother lives in Texas and his wife is a UT grad. My uncle also relocated to Texas and had 2 kids much younger than me go to UT. While this is a decade plus old, UT was noted for huge class size for freshman introductory courses and little contact with faculty. And although it's since gotten much better, the freshman retention rate was highly mediocre. For a kid looking at Stanford and Berkeley I can understand the lack of intertest.
And as far as A&M goes, it is an acquired taste. Even Texans either love it or can't stand the place.
This is quite true. A&M comes off rather cultish, yet that really manifests itself, for example, in the 12th man at Kyle Field. Due to its military tradition (Virginia Tech has similar roots but perhaps not as intense?), it appeals to some more than others. More conservative leaning folks in College Station, whereas Austin and UT are more progressive/liberal.
Even if he/she were to apply to either or both of the Texas flagships, I would imagine it would only be as safety schools.
Berkeley will have some large freshman lectures too but probably not as many. Probably better retention rate too, but never saw that being a big factor. May be a good thing if weaker students are weeded out early on.
Hmm.. perhaps A&M is similar to Purdue? Too focused? Not a wide-enough footprint across different discipline?
Perhaps. Frankly, two that I didn't think of that I'd have expected would make this list are Georgia Tech and Purdue.
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