January 5, 2011

"The University of Wisconsin at Madison beat out the University of Chicago and Harvard to be the top national university by internet brand equity."

Internet brand equity, baby! You hear that? We're #1!
What's internet brand equity? It's a measure of who's talking about you online, based on Internet data, social media, blogs and the top 75,000 print and electronic media outlets. The resulting tool, the group claims, gauges the relative value of the various institutions and how they change over time.

The Global Language Monitor created their ranking system in order to eliminate what they described as inherent bias in the other published ranking systems. Rather than emphasizing the opinions of college deans, high school guidance counselors and the ratio of the endowment to the number of students, GLM believes their method reflects the opinion of the world at large.

14 comments:

Freeman Hunt said...

Rather than emphasizing the opinions of college deans, high school guidance counselors and the ratio of the endowment to the number of students,

The real humor is that anyone thinks those things have anything to do with the quality of a school.

Big Mike said...

Judging from the picture it appears that Wisconsin's "brand equity" took a major boost from their football team.

Perhaps Chicago should apply to rejoin the Big Ten? Maybe Harvard could dip into its endowment for a big-time basketball coach and petition to join the Big East for basketball purposes? It's not that Harvard doesn't have a catalog full of gut courses that the basketball players could take to keep their eligibility.

garage mahal said...

UW is a breeding ground for CEOs of Fortune 500 companies, coming in at #4 in the country. .

However, like the CBO, you could also argue that UW is dead last, if that's what helps you get through the day.

DKWalser said...

Hey, you may have beat out Harvard and the University of Chicago in internet brand equity, but I'd rather have TCU's football team.

X said...

How odd that outside the Ivies, MIT, UC, and Berkley, that the winners of a popularity contest based on volume are schools with large alumni bases.

It's almost as surprising as a Big 10 team being ranked #1 in September.

Unknown said...

Freeman, of course, is right. If the product doesn't measure up, all the marketing in the world won't save it.

PS Considering how badly managed a lot of US companies are, maybe the breeding ground needs a little work.

kjbe said...

Hey, DKW, we did beat the spread.

David said...

I blame football.

Jason (the commenter) said...

Perhaps they have a prominent blogger posting stories about them occasionally.

XWL said...

There might be an "Althouse Effect" at work. And for University of Chicago, ChicagoBoyz might help give them a bump. The five Ivies on the list are Ivies, and people who attended Ivy league schools make a point to use every available opportunity to remind people that they attended an Ivy.

A little surprised that of the UCs, Berkeley made the top ten and UCLA didn't, but then, negative buzz is still buzz, and the methodology mentioned doesn't seem to sort bad buzz from good, and plenty of folks use Berzerkley as their go-to campus for highlighting nutty leftiness.

MIT is MIT, and interesting stuff is always bubbling out of there, bet CalTech games the next survey to knock MIT down and put themselves on top.

If Bristol Palin really ends up attending ASU, expect them to suddenly jump up this brand equity list, as the haters are going to hate, and the supporters are going to support.

traditionalguy said...

Wisconsin is highly respected, but do its graduates break down and cry for the love of their school when its undefeated football team wins the Rose Bowl? Man cannot live on respect alone.

madAsHell said...

...but TCU won!

Anonymous said...

So it does pay to sue podunk high schools for using a W in the wrong font. Noted.

Ann Althouse said...

"Wisconsin is highly respected, but do its graduates break down and cry for the love of their school when its undefeated football team wins the Rose Bowl?"

You're suggesting football isn't a big deal to people at the University of Wisconsin?