Your favorite news story of the year
It’s late. You’re up. The harsh reality of school and actual homework is probably starting to sink in right about now, but it’s all good because Christmas/Hanukkah/Festivus came early and a wonderful/annoying gift has arrived: US News & World Report!
Actual News
Rankings: So we’re tied with University of Chicago (Yeah, I almost went there, too) for fourth place again this year, right behind Harvard, Princeton, and Yale. Raise your hand if you’re surprised. Nobody? Yeah.
Harvard is tied for first, although we can’t help but wonder how they managed that…
Atlantis: New York City subways may eventually be underwater if the city doesn’t act, and by 2080 30% of our streets could lie in the flood risk zone. This is especially sad since the 2nd Avenue subway should be done by then.
Credit: Moody’s says they will likely cut the US’s credit rating by one notch if a budget deal isn’t reached. But why are we listening to them anyway when freecreditreport.com gives us both our score and a catchy tune to boot?
Funsies
I am surprised that Princeton is still one after all these years, even tho their stats are no where near Columbia, Stanford, MIT, CalTech, Chicago. Endowment must play a bigger role than SAT scores. I am also surprised Columbia did not move into a tie for second or third because it’s stats have improved dramatically over the last few years. Chicago has not really improved, but somehow leaped ahead of Stanford, Penn, Caltech, and MIT, all much better schools.
I’m surprised UChicago is ahead of Stanford, Caltech, and MIT – these schools seem to be stronger. Penn, though, seems to be a peer of UChicago’s, no? They seem to have similar academic reps, selectivity, resources, etc. etc.
Am I missing something?
“Yeah, I almost went there, too” is a great, great line.
and there you have it, a student written post on spectrum.columbiaspectator.com
Thanks for the feedback Dan. Great ssogeutign about doing a correlation between reading level and rank of a website. If you want to take a stab at the correlation data that would be great, if not I would be happy to try to build a model to see if there is a correlation. Any thoughts?