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Old Posted Nov 20, 2022, 7:47 AM
CaliNative CaliNative is offline
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"Where the "Brains Are"--Most Important University Towns/Cities

We have a biggest/most aesthetic, beautiful skyline thread. Next up, what are the cities and towns with the most important and best universities, in the U.S. and Canada, Europe, Asia, anywhere? There of course are Boston and SF Bay area, each with important research universities in the top ranks (Harvard, MIT, Berkeley, Stanford etc) but there are many others. L..A. area has UCLA, USC, Caltech, UC Irvine, Claremont Colleges etc. Chicago has U. Chicago, Northwestern etc. New York has Columbia and NYU, with Princeton not far away. Canada: another Montreal vs. Toronto match? Europe? Asia? Best/most academially brilliant smaller university towns? Princeton, Cambridge, Oxford...?

Much room for debate and ranking lists with this topic. This topic may have been done before so this may be the latest iteration to bring it up to date and reignite the debate. One list I'd like to see is Nobel prize recipients teaching at universities in a city, or perhaps student admission test scores at various universities, graduation rates, etc. Where are the academic "gods" concentrated? The illustrious minds? The research achievers? Which cities can claim the most important scientific/mathematical discoveries & discoverers in the recent past, say last 25 or 50 years? The most important social science centers? Cultural, music and artistic centers? So we can perhaps also discuss besides university concentrations of talent, cultural institutions like art museums, important musical orchestras etc. Intellectual hotspots, where you have a reasoable chance of bumping into geniuses in the supermarket, like you would stars in L.A. Objective data is important, but your experiences in various cities and subjective opinions are OK too.

Last edited by CaliNative; Nov 20, 2022 at 4:29 PM.
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  #2  
Old Posted Nov 20, 2022, 2:17 PM
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Looking at things regionally, below are the 37 "national universities" in the midwest that made USNWR's top 200 nationally. No ranking system is definitive, so people shouldn't get hung up on the individual numerical ranking of a specific school here, this is more "overall picture" stuff, ie. the most prestigious schools tend to float towards the top.

And this is just for "national universities". There are of course loads of other types of institutions of higher learning that can be considered as well like liberal arts colleges, specialty technical schools, art/music schools, etc.


public schools are regular text
private schools are bolded
catholic schools are also italicized


#6. University of Chicago - chicago
#10. Northwestern University - evanston
#15. Washington University - st. louis
#18. University of Notre Dame - south bend
#23. University of Michigan - ann arbor

#38. University of Wisconsin - madison
#41. University of Illinois - champaign
#44. Case Western Reserve University - cleveland
#49. Ohio State University - columbus
#51. Purdue University - west lafayette

#62. University of Minnesota - minneapolis
#72. Indiana University - bloomington
#83. Marquette University - milwaukee
#83. Michigan State University - east lansing
#83. University of Iowa - iowa city

#97. University of Illinois Chicago - chicago
#105. Miami University - oxford
#105. St. Louis University - st. louis
#115. Creighton University - omaha
#115. Loyola University Chicago - chicago

#121. University of Kansas - lawrence
#121. University of Missouri - columbia
#127. Illinois Institute of Technology - chicago
#127. Iowa State University - ames
#127. University of Dayton - dayton

#137. Depaul University - chicago
#137. Drake University - des moines
#137. University of St. Thomas - st. paul
#151. Michigan Technological University - houhgton
#151. University of Cincinnati - cincinnati

#151. University of Nebraska - lincoln
#166. Bradley University - peoria
#166. Kansas State University - manhattan
#166. Xavier University - cincinnati
#176. Valparaiso Univeristy - valparaiso

#182. Missouri University of Science and Technology - rolla
#182. Ohio University - athens



with 6 universities on this list, chicago shines as "the Boston of the Midwest".

Some people might also consider Valparaiso as the 7th major Chicago university because it's in the MSA, but at roughly 40 miles outside of downtown in NW Indiana, it's a bit too far flung for me to include it as a "Chicago" school.

St. Louis, the Twin Cities, and Cincy all have two schools on the list.

A lot of the big prestigious state flagship public schools in the region are found in relatively small college towns, with some notable exceptions.
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Last edited by Steely Dan; Nov 21, 2022 at 6:10 PM.
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Old Posted Nov 20, 2022, 4:33 PM
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Excellent. I thought it would be Chicago in the Midwest. Cleveland, St. Louis, Cincinnati, Minneapolis, Milwaukee, etc. also have highly ranked Universities as you point out. . In the smaller cities like Madison, Bloomington, Lawrence, Ann Arbor (practically an exurb of Detroit) the big University concentrates the academic feeling of the place that might get diluted in a big city. The academic feeling is strong in smaller places like Hanover (Dartmouth), Princeton, New Haven, the English, German and Italian University towns like "Ox-Bridge, Heidelberg and Padua, etc.

Last edited by CaliNative; Nov 20, 2022 at 5:00 PM.
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Old Posted Nov 20, 2022, 8:24 PM
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I always think of Atlanta as the "Boston of the southeast." There are something like 250,000 college students in the area with leading universities in several fields particularly Georgia Tech (engineering), Emory (humanities, medicine & business), Georgia State (excellent business school), the HBCU members of the Atlanta University Center (Clark, Spelman, Morehouse), and of course SCAD-Atlanta (arts & design). I think only the Raleigh/Durham/Chapel Hill region of NC comes close.
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  #5  
Old Posted Nov 20, 2022, 8:56 PM
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Greater Boston is easily #1 both per capita and in the aggregate: Ivy Leagues; respectable small, medium, and large private universities; top liberal arts colleges, and specialty art schools.

After that, it comes down to how much weight you give to “elite education” with high-ranking graduate and research programs across the board. I make note of this because the vast majority of “educated” people don’t hold graduate degrees, much less from elite institutions. The Bay Area and Chicagoland are “top heavy,” with Stanford/Cal/UCSF and UChicago/Northwestern, respectively. Neither have any noteworthy liberal arts colleges or “B or B+” institutions.

LA has Caltech, but it’s a small school with areas of specialty; UCLA is a public school with 47,500 students and its graduate business/law/engineering programs are mostly 1B; USC is a top-25 private school with a huge student population (over 49,000), but its graduate programs aren’t elite for the most part; and UCI is a large public school (36,500 students) that was established in 1965, but ranks higher than most other states’ flagship public universities. Pepperdine was, for a while, top-50.

Then there are liberal arts colleges: Pomona, Claremont McKenna, Harvey Mudd, Soka, Pitzer, Scripps, Occidental, and Thomas Aquinas all in the top 50.

Art/architecture/music: UCLA, USC, CalArts, Art Center, Otis, SCI-Arc, Colburn.

Film: (a lot)

If Yale and Princeton are considered NYC area schools (they are in the CSA, after all), then I’d rank NYC second.
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Last edited by Quixote; Nov 20, 2022 at 9:08 PM.
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  #6  
Old Posted Nov 20, 2022, 9:01 PM
Docere Docere is offline
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Seems to me Boston, NYC and Bay Area are the top three in US. Princeton is close enough to NYC to be influence; I'm sure a good number of Princeton faculty live in NYC.
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  #7  
Old Posted Nov 20, 2022, 10:10 PM
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Docere View Post
Seems to me Boston, NYC and Bay Area are the top three in US. Princeton is close enough to NYC to be influence; I'm sure a good number of Princeton faculty live in NYC.
If UC Irvine is considered LA... then Princeton should be considered NYC... or is it Philly?


We gotta think of some new topics around here.
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Old Posted Nov 20, 2022, 10:52 PM
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I think a case could be made for LA at #3, or at least tied with the Bay Area.

Accessibility to higher education of any kind, affordability/value, and upward mobility increasingly matter a lot, and the CSU system (headquartered in Long Beach) churns out more graduates with bachelor’s degrees than any other higher education system in the U.S.

Best Schools for Social Mobility (USNWR)
#2 UC Riverside
#3 CSU Long Beach
#6 University of La Verne
#7 CSU Fullerton
#7 UC Irvine

CSU Long Beach receives more applications (67,400 for fall 2020 semester) than any other CSU and has the second-lowest acceptance rate (after SLO) at 47%.

It’s #7 in the nation in number of transfer students enrolled.

Nationally, it ranks at #137… tied with recognizable NCAA Division I names like DePaul, George Mason, Seton Hall, Alabama, Kentucky, Maryland (Baltimore County), and New Hampshire.

Acceptance rate:

CSU Long Beach: 47%
Public
Total students: 39,435 (fall 2021)

DePaul: 69%
Private
Total students: 21,670

George Mason: 91%
Public
Total students: 38,630

Seton Hall: 77%
Private
Total students: 9,881

Alabama: 79%
Public
Total students: 38,316

Kentucky: 94%
Public
Total students: 30,390

Maryland: 81%
Public
Total students: 13,638

New Hampshire: 87%
Public
Total students: 13,991
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Last edited by Quixote; Nov 20, 2022 at 11:12 PM.
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  #9  
Old Posted Nov 20, 2022, 11:28 PM
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I'll start with the same metric Steely Dan used for his post. Per USNWR, these are the California schools that rank in the top 200 national universities:

#3. Stanford University, Palo Alto
#9. California Institute of Technology, Pasadena
#20. University of California, Los Angeles (tie)
#20. University of California, Berkeley (tie)
#25. University of Southern California, Los Angeles
#32. University of California, Santa Barbara
#34. University of California, Irvine (tie)
#34. University of California, San Diego (tie)
#38. University of California, Davis
#55. Pepperdine University, Malibu (tie)
#55. Santa Clara University, Santa Clara (tie)
#77. Loyola Marymount University, Los Angeles
#83. University of California, Santa Cruz
#89. University of California, Riverside
#97. University of California, Merced (tie)
#97. University of San Diego (tie)
#105. University of San Francisco
#121. Chapman University, Orange
#137. California State University, Long Beach
#151. San Diego State University, San Diego (tie)
#151. University of La Verne, La Verne (tie)
#151. University of the Pacific, Stockton (tie)
#166. California State University, Fullerton
#194. Biola University, La Mirada (tie)
#194. California State University, San Bernardino (tie)

So of the 25 best national universities in California, 3 are within San Diego's MSA (SD doesn't have a CSA), 6 are within San Francisco's CSA, and 13 are within Los Angeles' CSA.

I will also add the liberal arts schools. Per USNWR, these are the California schools that rank in the top 100 national liberal arts universities (I used the cutoff of top 100 because they stop ranking these schools individually after around #150):

#3. Pomona College, Claremont
#9. Claremont McKenna, Claremont
#29. Harvey Mudd College, Claremont (tie)
#29. Soka University of America, Aliso Viejo (tie)
#33. Pitzer College, Claremont (tie)
#33. Scripps College, Claremont (tie)
#37. Occidental College, Los Angeles
#45. Thomas Aquinas College, Santa Paula

All of these 8 listed schools are within Los Angeles' CSA.

Quote:
Originally Posted by pj3000 View Post
If UC Irvine is considered LA... then Princeton should be considered NYC... or is it Philly?

We gotta think of some new topics around here.
It's not an open question regarding Irvine, though. Irvine is included in the greater Los Angeles metropolitan area, whichever standard we choose to measure it--the broad CSA, the more attenuated MSA, or the narrow urban area standard.

Last edited by craigs; Nov 20, 2022 at 11:38 PM.
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  #10  
Old Posted Nov 20, 2022, 11:52 PM
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The presence of UC Irvine — a solid "B+" school that is public, large, and neither easy nor exceptionally hard to get into — combined with CSU Long Beach punching above its weight (it's ranked at the same level or higher than most states' flagship public universities), 8 liberal arts colleges in the top 50 (2 in the top 10), specialty schools across a variety of artistic disciplines, and other public institutions that enroll lots of transfer students and provide high value and social mobility, are to me what put Greater LA in the conversation for #3.

Looking at the entire picture and considering higher education of all levels, types, and paths, LA feels "complete" and accessible. Evaluation strictly through the lens of elite institutions is akin to only counting Michelin Star restaurants and excluding ethnic hole-in-the-wall joints and street vendors.

UC Irvine

Public
National ranking: #34 (tied with UCSD)
Social mobility: #7 (tied with CSU Fullerton)
Most applicants: #3 (behind UCLA and UCSD)
Total number of students: 36,505
Acceptance rate: 29%
In-state tuition: $13,985

Graduate programs:

#10 Best Education Schools
#2 Criminology (tied with ASU)

Solid rankings for some very popular fields of study:

#20 Chemistry
#20 English (tied with NYU, Illinois, UNC)
#20 Sociology (tied with Brown, Washington)
#28 Computer Science (tied with Northwestern, Rice, UCSB, UChicago, Virginia)
#30 History (tied with Georgetown, OSU, UCSD)
#30 Psychology (tied with NYU, OSU, Maryland, Virginia)
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Last edited by Quixote; Nov 21, 2022 at 12:11 AM.
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  #11  
Old Posted Nov 21, 2022, 12:34 AM
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Quixote View Post
The presence of UC Irvine — a solid "B+" school that is public, large, and neither easy nor exceptionally hard to get into . . . .
You're a tough grader! Per Wikipedia, USNWR ranked 1,466 schools for its 2022 rankings. Given that context, I think ranking #34 within the most prestigious category of universities earns Irvine an "A."
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Old Posted Nov 21, 2022, 12:36 AM
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Quote:
Originally Posted by craigs View Post
I'll start with the same metric Steely Dan used for his post. Per USNWR, these are the California schools that rank in the top 200 national universities:

#3. Stanford University, Palo Alto
#9. California Institute of Technology, Pasadena
#20. University of California, Los Angeles (tie)
#20. University of California, Berkeley (tie)
#25. University of Southern California, Los Angeles
#32. University of California, Santa Barbara
#34. University of California, Irvine (tie)
#34. University of California, San Diego (tie)
#38. University of California, Davis
#55. Pepperdine University, Malibu (tie)
#55. Santa Clara University, Santa Clara (tie)
#77. Loyola Marymount University, Los Angeles
#83. University of California, Santa Cruz
#89. University of California, Riverside
#97. University of California, Merced (tie)
#97. University of San Diego (tie)
#105. University of San Francisco
#121. Chapman University, Orange
#137. California State University, Long Beach
#151. San Diego State University, San Diego (tie)
#151. University of La Verne, La Verne (tie)
#151. University of the Pacific, Stockton (tie)
#166. California State University, Fullerton
#194. Biola University, La Mirada (tie)
#194. California State University, San Bernardino (tie)
CA's higher education system is really unmatched. You can transfer from a community college to a shit ton of high- and good-quality schools offering some of the best graduate programs (top 10) in a particular field (e.g. UCI for Education, UCSD for International Politics, UC Davis for Developmental Psychology, CSU Fullerton for Nursing-Anesthesia, etc.). Ivy League- or tier 1B-level education/training for a fraction of the cost.
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Old Posted Nov 21, 2022, 1:13 AM
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If you want to be an engineer, Michigan is a solid choice. Kettering University (formerly General Motors Institute), U of M and Michigan State are all good choices.
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  #14  
Old Posted Nov 21, 2022, 3:16 AM
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Agree with addition of L.A. to the top tier.
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  #15  
Old Posted Nov 21, 2022, 4:56 AM
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I think it's worth considering national labs too, even though some are implicitly included through association with nearby universities. The Bay Area has SLAC, LBNL, LLNL and NASA Ames. Chicago has FNAL and ANL. NYC has Brookhaven. Atlanta has CDC. Denver has NIST nearby in Boulder. LA has JPL. And of course DC has a whole bunch of stuff.
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Old Posted Nov 21, 2022, 7:00 PM
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Chapman University is ranked way too high per USNW.
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  #17  
Old Posted Nov 21, 2022, 8:23 PM
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Quixote View Post
Greater Boston is easily #1 both per capita and in the aggregate: Ivy Leagues; respectable small, medium, and large private universities; top liberal arts colleges, and specialty art schools.

After that, it comes down to how much weight you give to “elite education” with high-ranking graduate and research programs across the board. I make note of this because the vast majority of “educated” people don’t hold graduate degrees, much less from elite institutions. The Bay Area and Chicagoland are “top heavy,” with Stanford/Cal/UCSF and UChicago/Northwestern, respectively. Neither have any noteworthy liberal arts colleges or “B or B+” institutions.

LA has Caltech, but it’s a small school with areas of specialty; UCLA is a public school with 47,500 students and its graduate business/law/engineering programs are mostly 1B; USC is a top-25 private school with a huge student population (over 49,000), but its graduate programs aren’t elite for the most part; and UCI is a large public school (36,500 students) that was established in 1965, but ranks higher than most other states’ flagship public universities. Pepperdine was, for a while, top-50.

Then there are liberal arts colleges: Pomona, Claremont McKenna, Harvey Mudd, Soka, Pitzer, Scripps, Occidental, and Thomas Aquinas all in the top 50.

Art/architecture/music: UCLA, USC, CalArts, Art Center, Otis, SCI-Arc, Colburn.

Film: (a lot)

If Yale and Princeton are considered NYC area schools (they are in the CSA, after all), then I’d rank NYC second.
Philadelphia is also heavy hitter. I'm not sure how I'd rank any particular metro after Boston, but Philadelphia would be close to the top of the list.
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  #18  
Old Posted Nov 21, 2022, 9:47 PM
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Florida has to be the worst on a per-capita basis. Here are the ranking for Florida's only "National Universities" ranked in the top 200. I wonder what happened to Miami's rankings? Miami used to rank in the 30's nationally a few years ago. The Boston area alone has far more nationally ranked universities but then again, the Florida schools (other than Miami) area all huge. Giant public schools rather than many small private elite schools.
#29. University of Florida
#55. University of Miami
#55. Florida State University
#97. University of South Florida
#137. University of Central Florida
#151. Florida International University
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  #19  
Old Posted Nov 21, 2022, 9:50 PM
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I think the relative lack of educated people/universities and industries that attract highly-educated workers in Florida contributes to the R trend of the state.
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  #20  
Old Posted Nov 21, 2022, 10:10 PM
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Steely Dan View Post
A lot of the big prestigious state flagship public schools in the region are found in relatively small college towns, with some notable exceptions.

Lots of Sports Marketing and Exercise Science majors.
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