60 Comments
Benjamin Franklin once famously said that the only things certain in life are death and taxes (a rather fatalistic saying for someone who got so much tail). In the world of college rankings, one might add, “And Harvard will always be first, and Penn will always be inexplicably overrated.” Yes, it’s this year’s edition of the US News and World Report college rankings, and Columbia’s held onto its #8 ranking, while ditching Duke to #10. Other movement from last year was minimal, with Princeton moving from 2nd to 1st, Penn moving into a tie for fourth with Stanford (huh?), and Cornell falling below Hopkins. Brown remains bottom among Ivy League schools. The top 20:
1. Harvard/Princeton
3. Yale
4. Caltech/MIT/Stanford/UPenn
8. Columbia/UChicago
10. Duke
11. Dartmouth
12. Northwestern/WashU
14. Johns Hopkins
15. Cornell
16. Brown
17. Emory/Rice/Vanderbilt
20. Notre Dame
Columbia administrators are probably rubbing their hands in anticipation of next year: because these rankings are based on 2008 data, the past year’s financial trouble for many top schools (which, comparatively, Columbia escaped) will only be taken into account next year. Then again, it wouldn’t surprise anyone to find a financially incompetent school on top again – US News has its ways.
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60 Comments
@None US News even rates Penn ahead of Columbia in selectivity with their 17% acceptance rate.
@Zuck went to McGill UPenn rocks these rankings because they have the highest operating budget in the ivy league, mostly attributable to the med school. NIH funding kicks in like half a billion dollars or more… that’s why they’re always #1 or 2 in financial resources. They also pay professors at Wharton, law and med a lot and have a couple thousand extra classes in 35 different languages that nobody takes (like ancient Norwegian)… but this gives them #1 or 2 in faculty resources… hooray for Penn, you figured out the USNews formula 15 years ago and have killed the competition ever since…
@Zuck went to UPenn specifically Wharton for an MBA
@... What on earth is Mortimer B. Zuckerman smoking?
@What on earth? UPenn in the top ten?
@Uhm... Did anyone else’s financial aid allocation drop by a lot between last year and this year with no apparent reason? Like… by five figures?
@bitter, bitter, man bullshit…all fucking bullshit. It’s all who you know, nobody gives a damn about “education”. But I’ll pay 200k to learn the same things I would have learned at an in-state school with a full ride.
@hmm true that gossip girl is shooting at cu again?
@paradox Didn’t gossip girl make columbia into yale….and now one of the characters goes to Columbia. I bet they film at Fordham…the bastards.
@hello prefrosh
@god i don’t fucking care.
@Huh. Nothing like snitty rankings wank to make you not want to go back.
@carlito Barnard is more like Puerto Rico, no?
@Touche but Barnard is full of white people.
@so.... this is once again a useless debate about comparing engineers to liberal art majors…sort of like comparing apples to oranges. when will we all learn to grow up?
@never! I quote the great John Jay Lounge: “Hold fast to the spirit of youth – let years to come do what they may”
@I have to outsource sex. Men at Columbia are socially retarded.
@nuno baby, this columbia man will gladly provide you with all the domestic salami you might need.
@yes but can the men at NYU integrate your curves?
Isn’t that, after all, what a woman really wants?
@I have to outsource sex, too. Girls at Columbia are really bad at it.
@Terminology Does outsourcing to Barnard count? That’s like importing from Canada. Technically it’s an import, but come on…
@This is a valid point, but self-defeating: who wants to import from America jr when you have regular America? that’s why you get imports from other places: Europe, Asia, south of the border, etc.
Oh God I’ve just betrayed my exoticism fetish ABORT ABORT
@and this is why Columbia boys generally FAIL at wooing women.
@Pro-choice? Also, Harvard rules! Go illiquid money! Go rich people! Go Texas! Go RAMS!
@Because Columbia is at number 8 with only a two-way tie, not a three-way tie.
@Alum That means someone else is one place lower this year, not that CU is one place higher.
@Alum If Columbia “held onto its #8 ranking” as the article states, why does the headline say it moved “one place higher”?
@James Because I forgot to edit the title after looking at last year’s rankings. It’s fixed now.
@how did tufts get that expensive? same with tulane?
@Duck Fuke Fuckers have never deserved to be in the top 10
@ummm rankings are bullshit.
@these facts are true, but elitism likes to preen.
@... UPenn’s ranking is all due to its undergraduate business school, Wharton.
Also, another observation is that Columbia’s tuition and fees are the highest in the top 21 at around 41 grand
@Alumna However, Columbia ranks 3rd among top schools (bested only by two public universities, UCLA and UC – Berkeley) for economic diversity.
http://colleges.usnews.rankingsandreviews.com/best-colleges/national-economic-diversity-among-top-ranked-schools
That’s really pretty cool, even though I wish the percentages of students receiving Pell Grants at top schools were higher across the board.
@CC2010 This little fact about pell grants and economic diversity always makes me feel a little warmer about Columbia. I’m really confused about Penn (what does it have, other than Wharton?) and Brown (oh, love…) though, every time these silly rankings come out. In truth, I’m confused by these rankings in general, and tickled/pleased by Barnard’s decision not excuse itself from them.
In 2005/6, Tufts was *more* expensive than Columbia, by a few thousand. How is it cheaper now?
@actually As far as I can tell we have the highest tuition and fees in the top 100.
Congratulations Columbians! We’re getting hosed!
The only other schools to break the 40k mark were Tufts and Tulane. Even perennial poster childs for overpriced schools, GWU and NYU, are “only” in the $39k range. Princeton (35k) Yale (36k) and Harvard (37k) look like bargains.
Learn to read between the lines, folks. When the administration says not to worry about our endowment losses because, unlike our peers, we’re more tuition dependent, that’s not necessarily a good thing for your bottom line.
@not we also have lower room and board fees than many unis. plus you forget that whole thing about being in new your city. and then the fact that columbia’s financial aid covers most folks. as it says columbia discounts families on average 66% of the cost. (http://colleges.usnews.rankingsandreviews.com/best-colleges/national-best-values) only behind HYPS and tied with MIT with best financial aid.
you are a prick because you don’t know what you’re talking about or how it might actually effect you. speculating is for dummies.
@you always hear that about the financial aid, and yet it seems that the majority of people I know get fucked over by it…
@prick Obviously them I’m from a below average family since the pittance I get is hardly 66%. This despite my family’s income falling at or below our state’s median each year.
@wake-up hey prick,
1) if you are below the median for your state then your family should qualify for full support and not have to pay anything. you should receive all grants and workstudy. this is assuming you don’t have a 5million$ trust fund or something ridic.
2) great English skills.
@why are we always with uchicago? is there something that i just don’t know about?
@johnheff2001 uchicago is an urban oasis of academia as is alma’s
@... UChicago also modelled their curriculum around our Core… so we have that in common too
@and UChicago and Columbia are essentially the same school, except Columbia students get laid.
@I think you’ve got that backwards.
@umm... I get laid. Sorry if you don’t. You should come over some time ;)
@Anonymous Brown remains criminally underrated.*
@Brown is just plain awful.
@actually Harvard was 2nd (not 1st or tied for 1st) in 2006
@12err where did our 10 percent acceptance rate come from? Please don’t tell me that includes GS
@what are you talking about? It’s about 10% if you factor in CC and SEAS.
@yep if it weren’t for SEAS, our admissions rate would be slightly lower, though i doubt this would affect our rankings
@lest we forget if it weren’t for SEAS, median SAT would be slightly lower
@i don't know about that as reading and writing make up 2/3 of the exam while math is just 1/3
@SEAS '10 Yeah, but SEAS kids are better at standardized and quantitative tests in general. It doesn’t mean they’re any smarter, it’s just a different way of thinking.
@CC student given that there are two non-quantitative sections on the SAT, CC students should do better than seas students especially since those sections are writing and critical reading.
most engineering schools actually have lower sat scores than their liberal arts counter parts, with the excuse that only one section is quantitative. So CC should be happy that seas is counted in admissions and ranking data, it helps CC. The test scores should put it beyond question that seas students are as qualified as us, acceptance rates are not comparable if the applicant pools are widely different.
@actually It’s true. Sorry! Engineering can has good skillz 2!
@Anonymous http://www.nypost.com/seven/08202009/news/regionalnews/striphanger_185422.htm
naked columbia student!
@mortimer zuckerman “And Harvard will always be first, and Penn will always be inexplicably overrated.”
Editor-in-chief of US News went to Penn = mystery solved.
@Anonymous if UPenn and Columbia were switched I’d have no problem with this