AMERICA STOP IT YOU ARE FUCKING YOURSELF

seriously, a lot of you guys know more about academia than I do.

Seriously, we're fucked if Washington doesn't start taking education seriously, from child-development on up...

Perhaps as engineering/science schools (I don't know actually)?

I didn't have to take the GRE to get into my grad program because most of GWU seems to regard it as a complete waste of time

School rankings really are about the most useless thing I can think of right at the moment, I'm excited for the day when "people in charge" actually realize (or admit, rather) that it's all a bunch of fucking HORSESHIT. Plus fess up that professional organizations, certifications and the like are similarly a lot of worthless, meaningless shit whose usefulness is limited to artifically and unfairly constraining the job applicant pool for certain positions

I honestly can't imagine this being anything but a good thing. Has nothing to do with Bushco. Has to do with higher education being an unprofitable racket which has done little more than put a vast number of people in debt and kept the unemployment numbers down by taking a significant portion of the population out of the workforce

- I think it's at least arguable that Yale College is better than Princeton, but it's undeniable that at worst it's in the same class. Conventional wisdom would put U Chicago below both. It's certainly arguable that its curriculum and student personality put Chicago a cut above, but it's certainly less selective than the others. (not just anecdotally, but I'll add that I was turned down by both Yale and Princeton, but Chicago's admissions director sent me a handwritten acceptance referencing details of my application.)
- It's well-accepted that Yale's law school is the best in America. Chicago's is certainly a close runner-up, but Princeton doesn't have one.
- Yale's Med School is in a class above Chicago's. And Princeton doesn't have one.
- Chicago's B school is certainly better than Yale's (which is very good, but not quite in the class of the college), I'll grant, but Princeton again doesn't have one.
- All three have strong graduate programs in the humanities and social sciences, generally, and leading programs in particular fields. I'll admit to some bias leading out of this area, as I over-value Yale's strength in American History (the best in the country) and under-value Chicago and Princeton's economics departments (who cares about economics anyway?). Both of them also are strong in history, as well as in sociology and political theory, which together may outweigh Yale's great strength in Literature, but I'd say overall the three are in the same class at this level.
- None of the schools are known for the sciences, writ large, but Yale's biological sciences faculty is one of the best in the country
- Princeton's (pretty good?) Graduate Engineering program is superior to Yale's (decent?) one. Chicago doesn't have one.
- I'm not sure how Yale and Chicago's public policy schools stack up, but Princeton's is one of the best in the country.
- All three have top divinity schools; not sure how compare
- Yale has the best Fine Arts Graduate program of any university in the country that is not primarily an art school

So the only measure on which Chicago clearly beats Yale is B school, while Yale clearly beats Chicago on several measures, and arguably beats it on several more. Princeton has no schools of law, medicine or business, which is too far a hurdle for its superior public policy and engineering schools to overcome.

certainly there are U. Chicago departments with historical import, but if we're going to bring history into it, we can just point to Yale's age and reputation and be done with it

Chicago's economics department is world class and has an awesome history behind it, especially in the past few decades. Their B-school is tremendous, arguably the best in the country...Yale's arguably top 20 in that but not better. Princeton might have better range, so I suppose that would make it better than Chicago overall, but I'd still say those two are a close race in head-to-head. As they say, it kind of depends on what you're looking for.

I don't really see school rankings as useless at all.

But we wouldn't know much about the stars if it weren't for the people who studied them.

Depends on what you mean by school rankings. If it's something like "highest percentage of undergrads go on to receive PhDs" (the one thing I remember from Reed College propaganda), then maybe that's a meaningful statistic to you.

But none of the greater-than/lesser-thans discussed here are meaningful at all. They're estimations of the reputation of the insitution involved - who has the best PR. Is there any kind of evidence that an education at Yale Law is superior to, say, Harvard Law or the U of Texas law school? Better than/worse than often comes down to name recognition and contacts, not the education itself (which is student-dependent).

Is the education at Harvard (in general) better than the education at Southwest Utah State? Probably (in large part owing to the greater opportunities afforded to the former). Is there a noticable difference in the education between Harvard and Yale? Not so much.

The coaches poll is a great example - is there really that much difference in the number 12 and the number 20 schools? Between the 4 and the 8?

Is the education at Harvard (in general) better than the education at Southwest Utah State? Probably (in large part owing to the greater opportunities afforded to the former). Is there a noticable difference in the education between Harvard and Yale? Not so much.

Small differences are narcisisstic, but also scientific. There are lots of differences in fact between Harvard and Yale, beginning with details of particular disciplines. In classing them together, you're privileging a broad, reputation-based view of a schools' worth, rather than a more particular view of the makeup of institutions (following from factors such as, following youn's example, the relative priorities of often-short-tenured Presidents). Yes, of course your point is valid. But it's far too broad. Are there no gradations of quality applicable to schools in between Yale and Southwest Utah State? I think it's valid to recognize broad tiers of quality, and tiers within those tiers (yes, Harvard and Yale offer roughly equivalent undergraduate general educations - though if you are particularly interested in science or medicine, it's not that close a call - but Georgetown, say, offers on average an at least marginally lesser such education).

Wow - I didn't know that about Reed. Another consideration is that smaller departments in the arts and humanities probably need more institutional support than departments in the sciences and social sciences that get NSF funding or whatever. So it would be interesting to figure out what institutional factors make a difference in creating a supportive environment for these smaller programs.

Yale is the best because its artsy-fartsy politician types

I guess a future career as a politician is in the cards for arts students at major universities. What surprises me about Yale is that it has had that image for so long. It's like what people said about the NYT trying to be hip. Yet Yale manages it. (I would be far from the best person to judge, but that's what the consensus seems to be.)

If the causes behind this are more far reaching than border and security concerns, then it's not really about the U.S. so much as it is about what's going on in the rest of the world. Education - last bastion of the class system, played out on an international scale.

AARGH.