A Somewhat Sensical Ranking of Colleges and Universities
U.S. News & World Report wrote about yet another ranking system on its blog, The Paper Trail. Unlike other rankings, the Global Language Monitor's iteration eschews an arcane formula in favor of a more direct approach; it merely tallies up the the number of mentions a particular college or university gets in print and online, and orders schools accordingly.
Half of the top ten schools in the university category are from the Ivy League. As you'd expect, Harvard comes out on top. Columbia takes a surprising second, while Yale (8), Princeton (9), and Cornell (10), sit at the bottom of the top. The Ivies that no one's ever heard of fare worse: Penn is 11th, Brown is 30th, and Dartmouth - surprise, surprise - is unlisted.
Obviously, the rankings are biased toward large research universities, which explains why undergrad-focused schools like Brown and Dartmouth would do poorly. But then again this version is only measuring quantity and not quality - it doesn't profess to do anything else. It's refreshingly direct in its methodology, so, at least in our minds, it's a welcome addition to the dubious world of college rankings.
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October 1st, 2008 at 7:48 pm
shouldn’t be too much of a surprise that Columbia is in second this year, what with Ahmedinjad’s visit and then Obama being selected as the Democratic Nominee. I wonder what the longer term trend is, like over the past 5 or 10 years…
October 1st, 2008 at 8:13 pm
good choice of cartoon.
October 1st, 2008 at 8:53 pm
Columbia was number one last year, and I think that the school is probably consistently higher than a lot of the ivies because of its location in the media capital of the world…Plus, not all the ivies are big research schools
October 5th, 2008 at 1:19 pm
how is Penn being 11th “faring worse” than yale, princeton, and cornell which fare 8th, 9th, and 10th, respectively.
count with me now:
…8, 9, 10… 11! much worse.
October 5th, 2008 at 9:06 pm
why does penn have such an effing complex? anyone? really, no one cares.
October 5th, 2008 at 10:02 pm
It’s Ok. Penn just sucks balls.
Oh I’m sorry. Did I say that out loud?