|
Quote: |
|
|
|
|
Originally Posted by BrianBrockmeyer |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Here, you're just wrong. The Michigan vs. WUSTL is the exception. Emory is a better school than UCLA. Emory's academic rating is 18 points higher. It's debatable whether UCLA is even better than USC, which is private. Compare UCLA to Chicago, Northwestern, Columbia, Penn, Duke, Notre Dame, Vandy, Johns Hopkins, etc., etc., etc. and UCLA is not getting the better of it.
|
|
|
|
|
|
You're giving too much credit to the USN&WR rankings, especially their undergraduate rankings. On the USC v UCLA comparison, USC is notoriously weak in the humanities. I know it'll sound silly to say the rankings are often incorrect and then turn around and use those same rankings in support of my argument, but you'll have to forgive me for doing just that. UCLA has a much higher ranked business school, something USC likes to pretend they excel at but in reality USC's business school won't get you too far if you want a job outside of southern California. UCLA has a much higher rated law school. UCLA has a much higher ranked medical school. USC has a better engineering school, but it's farily close (7 vs. 15). UCLA is stronger in every social science and humanity than USC. USC is basically known for some decent professional schools, dentistry comes to mind, but in a broad-based comparison with a large public research university like UCLA shows that it isn't quite up to snuff. Oh yeah, they also have a highly-regarded film school.
Also, USC really games the USN&WR rankings. For instance, did you know that it admits their students whose scores/gpa/class rank/&c are used towards those annual rankings in the fall semester and then admits legacies in the spring semester? Things like this are why it's silly to rank a university by its students and not by the more easily measurable quality of its faculty.
I won't go through all of the other schools, but how many of them have more than one or two highly ranked graduate programs? You can almost categorically dismiss the Ivies in a comparison like this because of their relatively weak engineering departments, if they even have one to speak of. Hopkins is pretty close to a one-trick pony, though it's a damn fine pony. There are probably individual programs at most of the schools you've mentioned that are better than UCLA's, but being better in one or two or three out of 10 or more departments doesn't make it a better university in my mind.
You're kidding about Vandy and Notre Dame even being in the same ballpark, right? Just take a look at some of those USN&WR graduate program rankings.