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The currently most cited US college ranking is done by U.S News, which is heavily favored toward small private institutions from the east coast. I always find it irritating that a world renowned research power house such as UC Berkeley can't even make it into the top 20 ranking, where as schools such as Emory and Vanderbilt are ranked higher. It ALMOST feels like an east coast old money circle-jerk. I guess with the…
It seems like the graduate school entrance exams (GRE, MCAT, GMAT, LSAT) would be a good indicator of undergrad performance (though not so much for engineering and non-medical science). Are those scores available on a per undergrad-school basis?
While I don't have any links, I think that there are many studies showing that SAT/GRE type scores don't mean very much.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
can you think of someone more generous and more influential in philanthropy ?
from a pure cash standpoint what about warren buffet?
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Have you ever been to UC Berkeley? As a current grad student here: it's a fantastic research university and a beautiful campus, but the undergraduate experience is terrible. Classes are giant and there's very little faculty/student interaction, because the focus of the faculty is, for better or for worse, not on undergraduate education. Yes, there are some incredible undergrads and some great opportunities for the 0.…
I went to UT Austin, which is a very similar school. All the negatives you mentioned are certainly valid, but U.S News's ranking isn't just an undergrad ranking, it's an overall university ranking. And even for undergrad, career prospect for a CS undergrad from a UC school is probably SLIGHTLY better than a liberal arts grad from Vanderbilt.
The easy answer is just to rewrite and go with what I know. If I have to, I can do that.
stay with one tense -- past
don't use "I"
don't use dangling prepositions.
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What's awful is that I obsess on grammar while listening to radio interviews. It's a huge distraction. My favorite distraction is "me" or "I". Linking verbs use nomnative, but I think they almost never come-up. caring about grammar just distracts me. I'm an ass.
God says... C:\Text\WORD2.TXT
een the Seven Whistlers, &c." Both these superstitions are prevalent in the midland Counties of England: that of "Gabriel's Hounds" appears to be very general over Europe; being the same as the one upon which the German Poet, Burger, has founded his Ballad of the Wild Huntsman.
NOTE V.
PAGE 128 (302).--_Song, at the Feast of Brougham Castle_. Henry Lord Clifford, &c. &c., who is the subject of this Poem, was the son of John, Lord Clifford, who was slain at Towton Field, which John, Lord Clif
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God did some time travel -- Gabriel Giffords.
I'm Terry A. Davis, 1440 SAT, but don't give a fuck about grammar, anymore. I feel stupid writing full sentences. Bullet points, mon!!
You guys know that I pick from a fixed set of about 12 books?
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I wonder if this is true:
"A liar won't believe anyone."
It seems probably true.
I guess we could talk about Bible passages and passages that have become quotes from God. I don't know. I'm not in crisis. You'll have to work things out for yourselves.
God says...
C:\Text\HUCKFINN.TXT
's WELL for you to set there and blubber like a baby--it's fitten for you, after the way you've acted. I never see such an old ostrich for wanting to gobble everything --and I a-trusting you all the time, like you was my own father. You ought to been ashamed of yourself to stand by and hear it saddled on to a lot of poor niggers, and you never say a word for 'em. It makes me feel ridiculous to think I was soft enough to BELIEVE that rubbage. Cuss you, I can see now why you was so anxious to make
This mis-identification of language in Chrome happens to me probably once a day, though usually when looking at code.
> “The report concluded that there were observable, repeatable and verifiable ways of measuring teacher effectiveness,” wrote Gates in the letter. Anonymous student surveys that asked such questions as “Does your teacher use class time well, get class organized quickly, help you when you are confused" – were proven to provide useful feedback as were reports from trained professionals observing teachers at work. Stude…
http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4559682
linking to an article that reported details of the methodology.
http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2012/10/why-kids...
I looked up other research on the matter for the reply I posted in that thread. From the article submitted then, this is one way this process has been validated:
"The responses did indeed help predict which classes would have the most test-score improvement at the end of the year. In math, for example, the teachers rated most highly by students delivered the equivalent of about six more months of learning than teachers with the lowest ratings. (By comparison, teachers who get a master’s degree—one of the few ways to earn a pay raise in most schools —delivered about one more month of learning per year than teachers without one.)
. . . .
"The survey did not ask Do you like your teacher? Is your teacher nice? This wasn’t a popularity contest. The survey mostly asked questions about what students saw, day in and day out.
"Of the 36 items included in the Gates Foundation study, the five that most correlated with student learning were very straightforward:
1. Students in this class treat the teacher with respect.
2. My classmates behave the way my teacher wants them to.
3. Our class stays busy and doesn’t waste time.
4. In this class, we learn a lot almost every day.
5. In this class, we learn to correct our mistakes."
Here is earlier reporting (10 December 2010) from the New York Times about the same issue:
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/12/11/education/11education.html
Here is the website of Ronald Ferguson's research project at Harvard:
http://tripodproject.wpengine.com/about/our-team/
And here are some links about the project from the National Center for Teacher Effectiveness:
http://www.gse.harvard.edu/ncte/news/NCTE_Conference_Using_S...
Simply put, don't assume that what the Gates Foundation was investigating was the same kind of student opinion survey that I have filled out as a postsecondary student. (But note that I'm not so sure that those surveys are as bad or as useless as college faculty often claim they are.) There is a research base for the primary school pupil and secondary school student ratings used in the Gates Foundation studies, and I have every reason to believe those ratings would help school effectiveness--so much so that I use the same questions to invite my clients of my mathematics program to evaluate my teaching from that point of view.
Other comments in this thread are about the more general issue of college rankings as they currently exist. As a parent who has occasion to look at my children's college search process for four children, I really like the site College Results
http://www.collegeresults.org/search1b.aspx?institutionid=11...
which aggregates data that colleges are required by law to report to the federal government into user-friendly data look-ups that allow direct comparisons of similar colleges along many dimensions. For me as a parent, one of the most interesting data views is a view of "comparable colleges" for a college of interest, sorted under the Finance and Faculty tab for a ranking of colleges by instructional expenditures / FTE (full-time equivalent students). That comparison often reveals that even the "scholarships" (discounts from list price) that colleges offer still leave parents spending far more for their children's higher education than the college itself actually spends on educating students. That's a raw deal that more parents ought to know about. Colleges hire expensive consultants to learn how to confuse parents on the issue of value,
http://www.maguireassoc.com/services-challenges/optimize-net...
and parents have to defend themselves by looking up comparable data.
The currently most cited US college ranking is done by U.S News, which is heavily favored toward small private institutions from the east coast. I always find it irritating that a world renowned research power house such as UC Berkeley can't even make it into the top 20 ranking, where as schools such as Emory and Vanderbilt are ranked higher. It ALMOST feels like an east coast old money circle-jerk. I guess with the…
I'm currently a student at a large (largest in the UC system) public research university, and I don't see any problem with excluding schools like UC Berkeley from the top 20. While we, like Berkeley, are a "research powerhouse," spend a little time as an undergraduate on campus and you will quickly realize how little the phrase "research powerhouse" really means to you. Professors are hired for research, not teaching…
Unless the metrics used for the ratings are based upon things like per capita salary x-many years after graduation (broken out into specific fields of study and private/public sectors), then it all comes down to either a popularity contest, or a measure of how well a school's policies reflect the latest "progressive" education practices. In other words, unless it shows what the student "gets" out of the experience wh…
That would work for MBAs and perhaps JDs, but why tip the scales against, say, a med school that produces great GPs but not many cosmetic surgeons? A money-based measurement is also heavily canted toward the "old money" set and their legacy admissions to their alma maters. Money isn't everything. And often it isn't even accurate at measuring how well a school equips students to make it on their own.
Medical school costs (and the insurance load to practice medicine) are already tipping the scales against GPs (low return on educational investment), and many medical students already know this. The real looming healthcare crises will be when the margins on being a general practioneer sinks below the educational investment cost, and all we are left with are specialists.
As far as investment return on the cost of college education goes, earnings would be a useful metric, especially when one has to finance the education with student loans that have fixed rates of repayment. It is the most universally applicable metric, and although it may not make everybody's world go around, it does keep things from coming to a grinding halt (apart from coercion and intimidation).
In any case, I doubt the college U.S. News college ranking is the largest signal to where most incoming freshman apply.