Ranking? Choosing grad school

[lkw0922]

Hi, guys

Nowadays, I am quite confused.

I got several offers of admission and interview from universities.

Because of time conflict, I want to focus on just a few interview offers.

Anyway, when I check US News and NRC ranking, it looks strange.

UC Berkeley is number 2 in NRC but not in top 10 in US News. (My major is bioengineering.)

Other universities also has quite different positions. (Maybe NRC and US News have different perspective reviewing grad schools)

What can be another good ways to evaluate universities?

Because I am an international student, it is hard to visit.

I am specially interested in Duke, University of Washington, UC berkeley, MIT, Stanford (I have good news from some of these universities)

Thanks for your Advice

[physviti]

Hi, guys

Nowadays, I am quite confused.

I got several offers of admission and interview from universities.

Because of time conflict, I want to focus on just a few interview offers.

Anyway, when I check US News and NRC ranking, it looks strange.

UC Berkeley is number 2 in NRC but not in top 10 in US News. (My major is bioengineering.)

Other universities also has quite different positions. (Maybe NRC and US News have different perspective reviewing grad schools)

What can be another good ways to evaluate universities?

Because I am an international student, it is hard to visit.

I am specially interested in Duke, University of Washington, UC berkeley, MIT, Stanford (I have good news from some of these universities)

Thanks for your Advice

Tell us what schools and we might be able to help you out better.

In my experience, the US News Rankings seem much more reasonable. There are a few schools in the NRC rankings that have very questionable placements. But of course, a school like Berkeley is world renowned and has very good faculty. I don't think I would care much about rankings in this regard.

Your list of schools is very good and singling out three of them, based on ranking, would be unwise. A better method is too select the schools with the most interesting labs and the best environment (city, housing, recreation, cost of living, crime etc...) for you to work in. Collegeprowler.com might help you with the latter.