Understood. It's still a bit surprising to me, however. Certainly, it's hellish difficult to get into. I have no personal ties to Rice, so it is just an observation on my part. To be even clearer, my son goes to an out of state "big public school," which is also hellish expensive for an out of state student. An excellent state university, to be sure (or he wouldn't be there), but a state university in Texas would have been incredibly cheaper for us. Both my kids have the Texas Tomorrow Fund, something my mother did for them the first year it was available. It covers all state tuition and fees. It helps to pay for out of state tuition and fees (at a state or private school), but in Texas the fund pays all of it for a state public school (and a part of the freight for a private one). A nice deal that's no longer available. When the Lege deregulated tuition and fees at state universities, the cost skyrocketed (as most here are aware!) and the fund couldn't afford to continue to operate if it continued to accept more applicants.
You can say that about UofT too though. How're the programs at UTM or UTSC? Rotman isn't on Ivey and Schulich level either.
Rotman is actually consistently ranked quite high outside of Ivey and Schulich along with Sauders and Queens business program. But that's not really the point either, the point is bigger schools like UofT and McGill are ranked higher because they are much more well rounded and reputable in almost all of their programs unlike Waterloo that is only superb in some.
Let's not get silly here. You don't really believe Rice is only about application statistics and doesn't care as much about teaching, are you? "Research" seems to be based on volume and income generated. Rice is known mostly as a teaching school, deemphasizing graduate school. For instance, when you don't have a medical school, you will not rank higher than many large schools by these standards. That said, Rice is in the process of buying Baylor Medical School (or is that completed), and that likely will change things. Rice is mainly about undergrads....Engineering students specifically. The course schedule is brutal and students have many resources that large schools just can't provide -- mainly high student to PhD professor ratio with easy access to professors for help. Fact is: there is not much research/income generated by applied science fields like Engineering and Computer Science, as compared to Med Schools and the pure Sciences. But even in that environment, Rice is a research leader in Chemistry (Nano technology) and Computer Science. Saying Rice's "Teaching" is way below other schools is simply not correct. Rice has (or did have) 90% of its classes taught by PhDs professors vs grad students. That is a high number. The student learning facilities are top notch. It is certainly one of the top Engineering and CompSci teaching schools.
Waterloo reputable in Engineering??? That's news to me. Look at the world rankings, I believe Waterloo does not make the top 100. In Engineering I know UofT is top 10, UBC is top 25, and University of Alberta is top 50. Queens and UofC are also ahead of Waterloo. I'm not sure about the Computer Science rankings, but I would guess its not in the top 50. In my opinion Waterloo is highly over rated. Schulich and Rotman undergraduate business majors are about the same, they both are very well recognized. Its at the MBA level where Schulich and Ivey separate themselves.
I call BS on some of these. Some Universities in Europe and Asia are way better than most of the top 30 schools listed on here.
There's nothing shocking here once you consider their criteria: That's 60% of the rankings and really carries the day. That's why the UC system fares so well, even while it's having a lot of trouble. Current research citations necessarily mean references to *past* work. And research volume similarly measures papers already published and grants already won. So I'd say: 1. Rankings automatically prioritize PhD/postdoc engines and eliminate any school focused on undergraduates. 2. Rankings lean heavily toward science and technology schools, merely because science programs pump out more "research" volume, per department, per faculty member, than business, law, social sciences, you name it. Lot of these PhD-mill labs have 30 PhD candidates and postdocs pumping out papers, and the lead professors have literally hundreds and hundreds of publications. Having Georgia Tech (which I love) so high reflects this bias, and having Caltech at the very top (sorry, that's just weird) also reflects this bias. 3. Rankings really rate the last 15 years, as opposed to current status. 4. They completely leave out endowment, student earning after graduation, student satisfaction surveys, etc. Maybe they have trouble assembling this kind of info for a lot of non-American universities. I dunno.
Wise investment. UTSA will be a top Texas University within 10 years. Hopefully we receive Tier 1 status to help pave the way.
I do not have a lot of faith in a poll that suggest that Arizona State is a significantly better university than Texas A&M and better than the University of Virginia. And I say that as someone who rarely defends anything Aggie.
I'm not too thrilled with any ranking system because you have to think about who would use this information and why. So, should an entering college student care about this ranking? What does someone in college care about the volume of research? It impacts the general reputation of the school but has little impact on their particular education. For a college student, more relevant metrics would be things like job offers, average starting salaries, acceptance into graduate programs, percentage of mind-expansion. And then, even for graduate students, an overall rank is of little use. If you are doing nanotechnology at Rice, it doesn't matter the school is ranked #72 overall, because they are a premier place for nanotechnology. The reputation of the particular department is much more important at that level than the school overall. This just seems like another way to slice the data to give bragging rights to a different set of schools to use in their marketing. Or to show off on internet message boards (did I already mention my school was #9? Nine.)
I said "compared to other top tier schools". I never said Rice wasn't a great school. Other rankings really focus based their rankings on average such average students per classroom, citations per professor and so on. Also their student population is top tier because they are so selective. This raises their averages when entering the workforce. This is where Rice excels at. This ranking emphasizes on total resources and volume of research. Some students like smaller classrooms, and I can understand that. For those student, Rice will probably be better for them. Different strokes for different folks. I personally prefer environment at larger universities more than smaller ones because of all the resources available to me. As a Texas alum, I can say that I never had any issue with access to professors for discussion even when the class was 400 students.
Starting salaries are skewed towards smaller selective schools. These schools only take the best and the brightest where as large public universities have to take in almost anyone which effects their averages. I would argue that, if you take a look at the students with equal high school GPA and SATs scores, at Rice, Texas, and ATM, their starting salaries getting out of college would be very similar.
You are not considering competitive learning environments. At Rice, the competition to be the top is extreme...because, as you say, it is small and selective. Small and Selective schools like Rice which place tremendous resources on teaching actively develop and encourage a brutal competitive learning environment between students. Job recruiters know this. You are making strange assumptions and backing them with zero facts. besides GPAs and SATs are not enough to get into Rice. It's more than that. Let me give you an analogy. Your claim is like saying equally skilled and dedicated basketball players at age 18 will succeed on equal career paths. Now one goes to Duke and the other Rice. Which basketball player do you think with be better after 4 years. You sound like you have a chip on your shoulder.
The proper way to use the information from this website is to throw out all critical thinking and base all future educational decisions solely on this infallible article.
That's fair. Also I think the selectivity criteria makes a lot of sense. Selective schools have a better peer group to learn alongside of. One's peer group will be important to the quality of their education and the reputation of their degrees. If a high-performing student in a large public school of lesser repute nevertheless secures a job with a good salary, he did it on his own merit, not the reputation of his degree. The reputation of the degree will be built on the average student, including the slack-jawed yokels in the back row.
