My husband went to #15 for undergrad and #8 for MBA. I went to #72 (astounded it’s that high, must be the medical school pulling up the numbers).
When we met 10 years out of college, he was making 4 times what I was making.
All these years later, his credentials still get him in the door and calls from headhunters–guess the differential tuition and the competitive stress was worth it.
Most rankings of universities are, in fact, complete bullshit.
(Check that: most academic rankings are bullshit. The ones involving universities’ sports teams are . . . ya know, I don’t even want to defend those. Life is too short.)
I’d love to hear the US News & World Report explain what, exactly, happens to a university to cause its ranking to drop seven spaces in one year. I suspect their answer would have something to do with a need to change the criteria each year, otherwise they couldn’t sell magazines.
That being said, the school I graduated from is ranked #14 in the world, #12 in the US, #25 in US News & World Report . . . guess which ranking I consider to be more bullshit than others.
Sure, having a particular school’s name on your diploma can open doors for you down the line. But it doesn’t mean you’ll enjoy it there, and it doesn’t mean it could be the best choice for your future–unless your specific department is highly esteemed, as in NAF1138’s case.
I went to UC San Diego for both undergrad and grad. A great school, but HUGE and really skewed toward bio sciences.
I don’t know how much they tweak their criteria, but I do know that they give a lot of weight to alumni donations to the school. I’ve never heard anybody explain why that proves a school is great instead of, I don’t know, proving that people like having buildings named after them. 
Agreed - doubly so when they attempt international comparisons. I went to Manchester, which on the list being offered is the sixth-best in Britain. But here it doesn’t even make the top ten. Add to that the subject-specific element: I studied music, and neither Oxford nor Cambridge are the leaders in that field.
Well, I got a scholarship to U. of Chicago in 1967. First year was great. Second year my immaturity raised its ugly head and I started getting bad grades in courses I didn’t like. I didn’t finish out the year, went home in disgrace.
In fact, my guilty secret is
in spite of attending three other colleges, I have never graduated from college.
That’s sure going to come back to bite me if I get laid off from here and have to go looking for a management job somewhere else while in my upper 50’s. Sigh.
Go Bears (just got back from the Las Vegas Bowl).
I have mixed feelings about my years at Cal (in the Stone Age of the '70s) – incredible breadth and diversity of subjects to choose from, and people around you. I had the best job ever – working in the library; and was awed just to walk among the millions of books.
On the other hand…Calculus 1A in a lecture hall with 500 other eager scholars is no better, and probably lots worse, than Calculus 1A at Little College in the Pines. You are definitely sink-or-swim there; nobody (administratively) gives a rats ass about you, what classes you’re taking, or your progress toward your major.
According to the worldwide list, Edinburgh is fifth in the UK and 47th in the world. According to GorillaMan’s list, it’s 10th in the UK.
Does anybody know how they compiled the worldwide list, by the way? From what I gather, US and UK degrees are vastly different, so how can universities on either side of the Atlantic really be compared?
There are some things that are constant. I assume that you have school colors. The rankers would asign a point value to each school color: Red = 20, Blue = 22, Green = 10 etc. Next you get audiences to rate the “rockability” of the school songs and assign points based on that. You make up a list of 20 or so of these factors and then just calculate the total values for each school and sort the list. Very objective and scientific.
High five from a fellow UofC dropout, Roderick. 