While 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.

The 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

The 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).

let's fight subjectivity with subjectivity

Touché

Good 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.

I 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.

You should be prouder, UPenn is one of the best state schools in the country!

By what measure which we can trust?

It'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.

Once 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.

Oh 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)

RIP JoePa.

People 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