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Poll: Undergraduate Alma Mater
Where did you/will you get your undergraduate degree? (this includes current students)
Pretty self-explanatory question, context https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5628552
NOTE: I do not 100% agree with the US News and World Report rankings, nor do I think that ratings are the only thing that matter, but it is a publicly-available list. Attending a top university does not guarantee you a good education, and you can still excel if you didn't attend one of the top schools.
- Randgalt 13y agoSchool of hard knocks
- rozap 13y agoI hate to be 'that guy', but I think most would agree that those rankings are silly. They may paint a general picture, but the number and order of the rank is not a very accurate measurement of quality. Observation: In the CS ranking, UBC is ranked above the University of Waterloo, though both ranked below U of T? I'm skeptical. (Disclaimer: I go to UBC).
- dillonforrest 13y agoI agree. Talking about schools and their rankings is very counterproductive. It measures the wrong metrics. I went to Wharton/Penn for undergrad, which favors me in these kinds of surveys, but I'm still against them.
- rayiner 13y agoPeople who don't care about rankings don't usually go to the trouble of distinguishing Wharton from Penn (i.e. "Penn wasn't the highest ranked school I got into.") /light hearted jab
- rollo_tommasi 13y agoYou should be prouder, UPenn is one of the best state schools in the country!
- hkmurakami 13y agoBy what measure which we can trust?
- carbocation 13y agoIt's an Ivy jab. UPenn is a private institution, hence the joke. The lore is that UPenn students are offended when people refer to their alma mater as Penn State, which is a state-funded institution. Edit: I have no affiliation with either institution and think it's all irrelevant, other than from a cultural awareness perspective.
- hkmurakami 13y agoOh whoops totally missed the state school phrase! (and I know the joke too!) (imo Penn State is a fine - as in very good - engineering school)
- mori32 13y agoOnce you actually study at multiple universities in these rankings you realize what a joke it is. I can't believe Penn is ranked so highly, outside of Wharton. I was recently there for CS coming from a UK top 5 in CS and Penn CIS was a joke. Also, Oxford > Cambridge for CS? Wat. When you get to about the top 50 universities, it becomes so specific to the strengths of the particular department that these universities really can't be ranked in a single field.
- rayiner 13y agoRIP JoePa.
- hkmurakami 13y agoWhile I agree that the rankings are contrived, I don't think this flaw obsoletes the purpose of the poll, which seems to be to get some picture of the distribution in the HN population. Regardless of whether those rankings are accurate, most of us let them inform our college decision to one degree or another. Our affiliation with the various subsets of schools does suggest some traits about us and hence the HN population.
- kbar13 13y agolet's fight subjectivity with subjectivity
- rozap 13y agoTouché
- xer0x 13y agoGood point. That's pretty silly. It's fun to see these rankings, but they definitely have strange arbitrary weighting. I'd love to see thoughts on ranking CS schools too. I always see MIT/Stanford posts but not much else.
- niggler 13y agoThe exact ranking is somewhat arbitrary, but the rankings do generally put the schools most people consider as "top schools" at the top. Comparable schools have somewhat similar rankings. But at the end of the day, the education is only as good as the effort you put in. You can graduate from a school that isn't ranked highly and still be incredibly successful
- ultrasaurus 13y agoThe rankings are more than a little silly. I don't know american schools (I'm UWaterloo) but the difference in Canadian schools seems to be whether you went to a school that took their program seriously or one that just has it their to round out another program (computer science at Wilfred Laurier for instance).
- rayiner 13y agoSince when is U Chicago #4? Not that it isn't totally deserved, but when I was applying to colleges I don't even remember it being in the top 15, and changes in the top 10 aren't exactly common...
- mshron 13y agoSince the new administration decided to start gaming the rankings. Admissions rate now stands at 8.8%, down from mid-forties when I was admitted only eight years ago. Part of that was from switching to the Common App, part of it was riding the coattails of Obama. It is a great school. But until recently, rankings weren't really something that the administration paid much attention to.
- niggler 13y agoUChicago was top-10 when I was applying for colleges, and to be honest I don't give much credence to the exact ranking. The set of schools in the top 20 match roughly what I would expect (saying top 5, for example, would exclude schools like MIT and Stanford)
- jeena 13y agoI am still studying (last year) at the University of Gothenburg, Sweden.
- ijk 13y agoThough I want to note that the US News and World Rankings have gotten a lot of flack for the issues with their methodology.
- niggler 13y agoI don't disagree, but the entire process is pretty subjective (there are many variables to take into account, and weights are somewhat arbitrary). USNWR provides a concrete list for the discussion and I think the top 20 captures the spirit of the original question.
- ijk 13y agoFor the purposes of this question you are probably correct.
- ultimoo 13y agoI didn't know that US News were considered a reliable source of ranking schools (if schools can be ranked at all). Isn't US News a for-profit magazine that has figured out SEO really well?
- hkmurakami 13y agoNone of the rankings are "reliable" at all, but since they're all flawed, might as well go with the one that is the de facto "standard" within the US.
- jpdoctor 13y agoTheir ranking has been around (and well-known) since at least the 80s.
- krschultz 13y agoYou missed a massive category: the schools ranks 20-100. I would describe a school ranked #40 or #60 in a major as really good. Not top 20 good, but really good. There is a bigger difference between the #50 school and the #200 school than there is between the #1 school and the #50.
- niggler 13y agoIn retrospect, I wish I added that initially. But at this stage, enough people voted that the number wouldn't be perfect.
- suyash 13y agoMost of the stuff that I learned for my job happened either during internships, self study outside of classroom education or on the job. College Education for CS Majors is years behind the industry requirements.
- learc83 13y agoThat's pretty much the way it is with nearly every major. Plus depending CS degrees exist on a sliding scale between Math, and Programming. I think a very math/theory heavy approach is better overall, but it's not a vocational training program
- suyash 13y agoI would argue against making CS classes heavier on Math/Theory side of things unless you are going for a PhD. In the industry we need to follow the footsteps of Stanford and offer more practical classes such as iPhone Programming, Facebook App Development, Machine Learning...I would add to the list new technologies such as HTML5 Single Page App Development, NOSQL Based programming, Android Programming etc
- prezjordan 13y agoTiny technical school in Hoboken, NJ. Just outside of NYC. I've ran into a few alumni on here (small world). I like it here, I'll admit - I was bummed that I was waitlisted for CMU, and it's still something I think about to this day. But I really, really like it here, and it's led to some interesting professional opportunities. Rankings are bogus, this place felt right.
- tagx 13y agoIf we are currently undergraduates, should we answer "attended" or "do not hold a degree." It is important to be consistent.
- niggler 13y agoQuestion has been edited
- lbarrow 13y agoNobody should pay any attention to these rankings.
- carbocation 13y agoOne thing that I don't like about the US News college rankings is that they use objective criteria with arbitrary weightings. There's no credible rhyme or reason why these criteria matter, especially not in the proportion they do. Nor is there a good reason that these weightings should subtly change from year to year. For this reason (plug coming), I created the algorithm that Parchment uses to rank colleges for the Student Choice Rankings [1]. It uses (voluntarily submitted) data from students who got into multiple colleges and chose one to attend. It treats this as a set of games in which one college "wins" and others lose. It's derived from the Elo chess ranking method [2]. As people will no doubt argue, voluntarily submitted data has its limitations. I acknowledge those but for this type of project, sample size is key, and I have yet to see another project with anywhere near the same quantity or recency of data. Perhaps in time that will change. 1 = https://www.parchment.com/c/college/college-rankings.php?page=1&perPage=25&thisYear=2012 https://www.parchment.com/c/college/college-rankings.php?pag... 2 = https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elo_rating_system https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elo_rating_system
- milesskorpen 13y agoIt seems like this would weight financial aid rather heavily? Maybe that's a good thing, but doesn't really deal with the quality of the school.
- carbocation 13y agoThat's correct: anything that makes a college desirable vis-a-vis its competitors will factor in here. We don't attempt to control for that (that's, currently, intentional). Avery, Glickman, Hoxby, and Metrick do control for that, as their goal is to use this to get an isolated notion of "best". For now, I prefer to answer the holistic question of, "Which schools do students prefer?" If we get to a future in which some schools are paying students admitted to Harvard $100k to attend their institution just so they can rank at the top of the Parchment rankings, maybe we'd want to reconsider.
- ariwilson 13y ago
- freefrancisco 13y agoCaltech
- VermontPowder 13y agoWhat about using the global rankings[1] - though they are admittedly biased against liberal arts school, they are less manipulated than the US News rankings. 1 - http://www.timeshighereducation.co.uk/world-university-rankings/2012-13/world-ranking http://www.timeshighereducation.co.uk/world-university-ranki...
- saryant 13y agoI went to a tiny liberal arts school no one outside Texas has ever heard of. Majored in CS.
- hapkins 13y agoSince I'm pretty un-connected to this account, going to start undergraduate at Cornell. While it may not be Harvard/Yale/Princeton, I'm not going to complain (however there is still some element of jealousy/annoyance). What is HN's opinion of Cornell, especially vs other Ivies?
- niggler 13y agoPG went to Cornell IIRC
- auctiontheory 13y agoAlong with CMU, Berkeley EECS is also not Top-20. Perhaps this list is not the best match for HN priorities.
- jordonwii 13y agoOut of curiosity, why do you say that? I ask because I'm planning on going there next year for computer science.
- untog 13y agoI went to a university that is largely unknown outside of the UK. Not that it matters particularly, because I didn't even study Computer Science. 'What did you study at college' might make for an equally interesting poll.
- fnordfnordfnord 13y agoI dropped out of college, having obtained most of a BS. Thank the stars I didn't load up on student loans. I went to a public university that isn't notable for much (Univ. of Houston). My own opinion is that it was mostly pretty average with a few areas of quite-goodness. I don't regret going. I do wish I hadn't arrived so unprepared.
- gjhiggins 13y agoThe Open University.
- brianbreslin 13y agoI am annoyed, my school was #20 when I went, now tied for #24, so I still picked the first option. University of Virginia (at the time was tied for top ranked public university in country)
- tpf10000 13y agoI actually prefer this college ranking: http://toptestprep.com/best-colleges-rankings/ http://toptestprep.com/best-colleges-rankings/ It combines both liberal arts colleges and national universities. It's less biased, and more objective.