Best All Around University: sports, undergrad and grad/research

[ORD_Buckeye]

What's the best all-around university for sports, undergraduate college and graduate programs and research. I looked at the data for last year from all of the BCS schools and a few other schools (schools jumping up to bcs conferences, an excellent mid-major, a mediocre mid-major, an Ivy League school, and two Ohio schools with championship caliber non-revenue programs) to get up to 75 universities.

The 75 schools were given points in each catagory: 75 maximum in each catagory for a possible maximum score of 225.



Conf School ATH GRD UG Total
P10 Stanford 72 73 74 219
ACC Duke 70 71 73 214
B10 Wisconsin 71 72 59 202
ACC UNC 69 65 63 197
B10 Ohio State 75 67 54 196
P10 UCLA 55 74 67 196
P10 Cal 53 70 69 192
B10 Michigan 49 75 64 188
SEC Florida 74 58 52 184
B12 Texas 63 64 57 184
P10 Washington 54 69 59 182
B12 Texas A&M 68 57 52 177
P10 USC 44 56 68 168
OTHER Harvard 25 66 75 166
ACC Virginia 50 49 67 166
B10 Penn State 46 62 57 165
ACC Maryland 56 54 54 164
OTHER Notre Dame 66 28 70 164
B10 Illinois 37 60 57 154
B10 Northwestern 19 63 72 154
B10 Minnesota 30 68 45 143
SEC Vanderbilt 22 51 70 143
BE UCONN 58 29 52 139
P10 Arizona 65 53 19 137
ACC Georgia Tech 14 61 61 136
P10 Oregon 61 45 28 134
B10 Purdue 35 50 48 133
B10 Michigan State 43 47 41 131
ACC Florida State 73 27 28 128
BE Pitt 23 52 52 127
SEC Georgia 40 37 48 125
B10 Indiana 32 55 37 124
ACC VaTech 38 43 41 122
B10 Iowa 31 48 41 120
SEC LSU 64 34 16 114
B12 Missouri 42 39 33 114
B12 Oklahoma 67 19 28 114
B12 Nebraska 48 35 28 111
SEC Auburn 62 12 34 108
SEC Kentucky 57 30 19 106
SEC Alabama 60 8 37 105
B12 Baylor 27 41 37 105
OTHER BYU 51 13 41 105
OTHER Rice 1 33 71 105
B12 Kansas 34 40 28 102
B12 Colorado 10 59 31 100
ACC Boston College 12 25 62 99
ACC Wake Forest 6 26 67 99
ACC Miami 15 21 60 96
SEC Tennessee 36 32 28 96
BE Syracuse 29 17 48 94
BE Rutgers 2 46 45 93
SEC Arkansas 59 16 15 90
ACC NC State 20 42 28 90
B12 Iowa State 13 44 30 87
OTHER TCU 47 10 30 87
P10 Arizona State 33 38 15 86
ACC Clemson 18 15 45 78
SEC South Carolina 39 18 21 78
B12 Oklahoma State 52 7 15 74
OTHER Utah 17 36 19 72
BE Louisville 45 11 6 62
BE West Virginia 41 9 6 56
SEC Miss State 24 20 8 52
B12 Kansas State 26 14 11 51
BE Cincinnati 8 31 11 50
P10 Washington State 3 24 20 47
P10 Oregon State 9 23 12 44
OTHER Fredo 7 3 33 43
BE USF 5 22 4 31
OTHER Boise State 28 1 1 30
OTHER Nevada-Reno 21 4 4 29
B12 Texas Tech 16 6 7 29
SEC Ole Miss 11 5 11 27
OTHER Akron 4 2 2 8

Methodology:

Sports: Combination of last year's final director's cup standings, final (post bowls) AP football poll and final (post tournament) Coach's basketball poll.

Undergraduate: US News undergraduate rankings unweighted--75 points for highest ranked school down to 1 for lowest

Graduate:
research funding unweighted (75 points down to 1),
+
average rankings for full-time mba program, law school, med school, graduate engineering ranking and Ph.D program rankings for physics, chemistry, political science and history. (average ranking with 75 to 1 points assigned) No penalty for not having any of the programs
+
25 points for AAU membership.

75 down to 1 point assigned for total score in each catagory. Sum of 3 components for final score.

 

[darbypitcher22]

Interesting to see the Bucks ahead of schools like Notre Dame, USC, and UCLA. you would have thought all of those schools academic reputations would have made up for their athletic ineptitude lately.

 

[ORD_Buckeye]

UCLA was tied with Ohio State, and if we hadn't had such an amazing year athletically (#2 athletic director's cup, #5 football and basketball) would have topped us. USC had a crappy sports year, and their advantage in undergrad was negated by Ohio State's advantage in grad/research. Notre Dame's grad/research rankings pulled them way down: only a decent law and biz school, minimal research funding and no AAU points. Even Harvard, was dragged down a little by their amount of research funding despite having the second highest average grad program ranking behind Stanford.

I set the scoring system up before plugging the data in and let the chips fall where they may.


The Scoring broke down as follows:

Sports 33 1/3% of total
---Athletic Directors Cup Final Standings 16.1%
---Last year's final AP football poll 8.7%
---Last year's final Coach's bball poll 8.5%


Undergraduate Reputation/Ranking according to US News 33 1/3% of total score

Graduate/Research 33 1/3% of total
Research Component 14.3%
Ranking of professional and Ph.D programs 14.3%
AAU membership 4.8%

 

[Abenaki]

Impossible. I was just wasting time on the Penn State board and from what they say I refuse to believe that they scored anything less than a perfect 225 on your system. Plus an additional 100 points just for introducing the world to Joe Paterno. Please recalculate.

 

[Muck]

Just thinking about potential expansion candidates, eliminating B1G & Pac schools leaves us with a top 10:

ACC Duke 70 71 73 214
ACC UNC 69 65 63 197
SEC Florida 74 58 52 184
B12 Texas 63 64 57 184
B12 Texas A&M 68 57 52 177
ACC Virginia 50 49 67 166
ACC Maryland 56 54 54 164
OTHER Notre Dame 66 28 70 164
SEC Vanderbilt 22 51 70 143
BE UCONN 58 29 52 139

 

[LovelandBuckeye]

Just thinking about potential expansion candidates, eliminating B1G & Pac schools leaves us with a top 10:

ACC Duke 70 71 73 214
ACC UNC 69 65 63 197
SEC Florida 74 58 52 184
B12 Texas 63 64 57 184
B12 Texas A&M 68 57 52 177
ACC Virginia 50 49 67 166
ACC Maryland 56 54 54 164
OTHER Notre Dame 66 28 70 164
SEC Vanderbilt 22 51 70 143
BE UCONN 58 29 52 139

Duke - Please Tebow! No!

UNC - Just looking at schools and leaving the geography out of all these. I would like this one.

Flo-Rida - Same as above and hell, even Wisky might be able to find one SEC speed player.

Texa$ - Too easy. Imagine divisions with UN-Texa$ & tOSU-TSUN

aTm - We already have PoSU

UVA - Only if I get to punch one of their arrogant students in the face annually.

Maryland - Not a bad thought. Decent school and gets good talent from time to time...wait...what the hell are they wearing? Did Oregon move East?

Catholics of Indiana - Good geography fit but I love to see them suffer. It would be nice to watch them get owned by more B1G teams though.

Vandy - It could be worse. It could be Good Ol' Rocky Top!

UCONN - No thoughts at all on this one.

 

[Buckeye513]

I'd give Maryland the edge here due to their propensity for igniting stuff while rioting.

 

[MUBuck]

Graduate:
research funding unweighted (75 points down to 1),
+
average rankings for full-time mba program, law school, med school, graduate engineering ranking and Ph.D program rankings for physics, chemistry, political science and history. (average ranking with 75 to 1 points assigned) No penalty for not having any of the programs

Very interesting, ORD. I'm curious on why you didn't penalize for not having professional programs. It seems to me that having a medical school is almost necessary to be a big research school. Having an MBA program would also seem beneficial for the access to alums with deep pockets. I suppose an argument to my own question would be that schools without these programs are already "penalized" enough by lower scores. Either way, thanks for doing the leg work.

 

[sandgk]

It seems to me that having a medical school is almost necessary to be a big research school.

MIT would beg to differ with you.

And they wouldn't be the only one.

 

[ORD_Buckeye]

Very interesting, ORD. I'm curious on why you didn't penalize for not having professional programs. It seems to me that having a medical school is almost necessary to be a big research school. Having an MBA program would also seem beneficial for the access to alums with deep pockets. I suppose an argument to my own question would be that schools without these programs are already "penalized" enough by lower scores. Either way, thanks for doing the leg work.

Originally, I was. Then I looked at Rice who doesn't have a law school vs. Akron who has the 127th rated law school and one that narrowly missed having its accreditation pulled a few years ago. It didn't seem right that Akron should somehow gain points on Rice under such conditions. That's the only change that I made to the original formula after beginning to plug in the data.

Also, I didn't think that UC Berkeley or Texas should be penalized because of how their state systems have set up their respective med schools. I figured that each paid some form of secondary penalty in the research funding area anyways due to the lack of a med school.

Had I more time, I probably would have looked at a five year window for the three athletics rankings. Nevada-Reno for instance saw something of a boost for having the best year in their football program's history (and still came in second to last in athletic director's points). Averaging their performance out over a broader window would nullify that statistical anomaly.

If anyone knows how I can post an excel spreadsheet with multiple worksheets, I'll put up the raw data.

 

[MUBuck]

MIT would beg to differ with you.

And they wouldn't be the only one.

Sorry, meant for schools that were listed or under consideration of being listed here. Besides that though, the NIH is big money. They gave out 11.7 trillion dollars last year, top winners being Hopkins with 450 billion. OSU came away with almost 100 billion, and we weren't even top 40. That money goes a long way into becoming a big research school. Great example though, MIT certainly doesn't need NIH dollars to keep its reputation.

EDIT: MIT actually did receive quite a bit of NIH funding despite not having a medical school (106 billion). It was one of the very few schools to be worth listing that isn't affiliated with a medical school.

 

[MUBuck]

Originally, I was. Then I looked at Rice who doesn't have a law school vs. Akron who has the 127th rated law school and one that narrowly missed having its accreditation pulled a few years ago. It didn't seem right that Akron should somehow gain points on Rice under such conditions. That's the only change that I made to the original formula after beginning to plug in the data.

Also, I didn't think that UC Berkeley or Texas should be penalized because of how their state systems have set up their respective med schools. I figured that each paid some form of secondary penalty in the research funding area anyways due to the lack of a med school.

Solid points. Where did you find the data for total research funding? I'm interested to see what percentage of the total comes from medical funding alone. I assume it to be a very large chunk, but would like to confirm.

NIH data can be found here for those interested.

http://www.brimr.org/NIH_Awards/2011/NIH_Awards_2011.htm

 

[ORD_Buckeye]

Solid points. Where did you find the data for total research funding? I'm interested to see what percentage of the total comes from medical funding alone. I assume it to be a very large chunk, but would like to confirm.

NIH data can be found here for those interested.

http://www.brimr.org/NIH_Awards/2011/NIH_Awards_2011.htm

The National Research Council published the research data. In addition to the total numbers, they break it down into several ways such as just engineering r&d or how much from the feds, from private industry etc.

 

[sandgk]

If anyone knows how I can post an excel spreadsheet with multiple worksheets, I'll put up the raw data.

Google Docs is the way to do that.

Import the Excel data into Google's spreadsheet (as it is raw data it should really be pretty direct - as long as you don't have formulae to convert).

Publish the document either with or without a password to access - your choice.

Typical gmail account prerequisite to create the GoogleDoc spreadsheet.

If others want to play with the data to highlight various interactions they can do that without mangling your data.

 

[ORD_Buckeye]

Google Docs is the way to do that.

Import the Excel data into Google's spreadsheet (as it is raw data it should really be pretty direct - as long as you don't have formulae to convert).

Publish the document either with or without a password to access - your choice.

Typical gmail account prerequisite to create the GoogleDoc spreadsheet.

If others want to play with the data to highlight various interactions they can do that without mangling your data.

There are some simple formulas, such as averaging rankings for grad programs and adding up subscores. I'll play around with it, and see what I can come up with. I can always just save the worksheets as pdf files and upload them.