Monday, January 09, 2006

Alternative college rankings

I was trying to find a ranking of physics grad programs to see where Maryland ranks overall (maybe Caltech has a campus subscription to US News that I can use?) and I ran into a college ranking site, which has some non-traditional (well, the one I looked up actually is traditional---it's just not discussed in US News and World Report, which is clearly deficient) criteria. Apparently, I have chosen poorly in where I've been affiliated (at least as far as this metric is concerned---which is obviously not the metric I used in making my selections, but that's beside the point), having been at schools which obtained a C- (Caltech, Cornell), C (Berkeley--when I was at MSRI), and Georgia Tech (C+). Ouch. I did take summer courses at UCLA (A-), but that hardly counts and it's not like I ever did anything about it. The only places listed lower than Caltech are Carlton College (D+) and CMU (also a D+). CMU came in dead last, and it's not like anybody wants to live in Pittsburgh anyway. By the way, Caltech ranked right after MIT.

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