LasMa

QW553, The rankings craze was born because it sold magazines, not as a beneficial service or a grass-roots movement. The notion that an entire institution can be reduced to a single number is patently ridiculous.

QW553

There were some kind of college/gradschool ranking long before USNews. USNews made it a profitable business, which caters to people's demand.

Second, it is not U.S. News intention to give a single number to each school. It is you, and all the people like you, to use it that way. Admit it!

LasMa

And yet, they do exactly that. The very first column on the charts is the number, the magical ranking. They could very easily provide all of the other useful information, and sort the colleges alphabetically, omitting that one all-important column. It's the rankings that sells magazines, and they know it.

Sam Lee

As long as it counts alums, trustee, president, part-time, adjunct, and retired professors, its %NAE is always a lot higher than it should be. Regardless of what exact number it sent 6-7 years ago, it enjoyed as much unfair advantage as it does now. The number overstated is clearly not just "a couple more". When it hired a 94-yo (or 93?) NAE member a year ago, it's reasonable to suspect getting as many NAE as it can is "the" strategic priority.

USN relies on numbers; USN has no capacity to judge how "extensive and excellent programs the school offers".

It'd be nice if you can refrain from any personal attack. Your conspiracy theory holds no water.

jbusc

To be fair, I highly doubt that appointing Ramo (the 94 year old) was solely motivated by boosting NAE membership - he is an incredibly successful and brilliant engineer & has been closely affiliated with USC for many years. It is likely more an honorary/recognition thing.

And surprisingly he's still quite active. USC gave him some award and I went to hear him accept it - he could easily pass for 74

acollegehopeful

What does it matter how old Mr. Ramos is?

Obsessing over how old he is age discrimination.

Anyone who reads his bio can see he is a brilliant man and has made tremendous contributions to the field of engineering.

IF USC has given him some type of academic appointment and is able to bring him closer to the university where students and faculty can benefit from his brilliance, more power to them!

lovetocamp

I sure hope Roger is glad that he created this thread within the USC folder. Such productive conversation and debate. Unbelievable. The entire ranking process is a joke anyway. I suppose that we can debate for the next 6 weeks whether USC should be ranked as number 7, or 11, or 13, or whatever. Does it even matter at this point. Do people really choose a school because it is ranked number 7 instead of number 11, or 13, or whatever? If so, shame on them.

Shall we start a thread (next) about UCLA, or CAL, or Stanford, or UNC, or what ?

Can you all believe that we have been through 7 page of BS, and for what?

Have we agreed upon anything? Has anyone's opinion of USC, or any other school been changes along the way. Definitely not. It's like politics and religion, you can argue, present your facts, discuss your theories, present more evidence, and when all it is all said and done, no one has changed their opinion from where they began.

This is all just a sad, and bad joke. Thanks again Roger, for wasting all of our time.

al6200

Because it doesn't matter what everyone else thinks of your school, right? Let's be realistic here, when you're choosing a school your opinions matter much less than the opinions of other people, because when you apply for a job or a graduate school it will be other people evaluating your academic history.

Then that's their fault for ignoring the evidence.

artiesdad

I indeed came across this thread only because it was in the front page. However, the reason I started reading it is becasue when I first saw the engineering rankings the fact that USC is ranked as high as Caltech caught my attention. This is hard to understand when you look at their peer rankings and student credentials, but more importantly when you look at the top 10 programs in each of the 10+ specialties listed in the magazine. Caltech, as well as schools like Michigan or Texas - both ranked behind USC -- have multiple programs in the top 10 while USC doesn't have any. (full disclosure: I have is a family connection to Caltech).

I agree with lovetocamp, it is hard to believe this is page 7 of the thread, but that is because most posts have been about whether the tread should exists, the forum it should be in, the CC member mentioned in the article, or if other schools do the same. I have seen very little in terms of arguing the substance of the article.

USC is an up and coming school that has a lot going for it. They don't need to take shortcuts on the way up. The have the resources, now they need patience.

As far as rankings go, we keep taking shots at them but I bet most of the posters in this tread will be waiting to see what happens to USC in the next release.

kluge

What you fail to realize is that UC has consciously (and publicly) chosen to admit students based primarily on grades, with test scores a distant second. (My own kids, with sky-high test scores but GPAs only around the 90th percentile at their high school, had to "settle" for a second-tier UC - where they lowered the "top 10%" figure but raised the average test score numbers - as a result.)

And the UC system knows the GPA and class standing of every California public school student (and many private schools as well) at the end of their Junior year of high school - exactly - because of the ELC program. All of the high schools report the numbers to UC for the "guaranteed admissions" of the top 4% - and they submit the transcripts of the top 12% of their students the summer before their senior year. UC campuses don't need to "estimate" where their entering class stood as high school students - they know, at least for their in-state matriculants.

UC's obsessive focus on high school performance, not test scores, is no secret. It's the product of an overt policy. So it would actually be surprising if the more desired UC campuses didn't have "top 10%" numbers in the 90's. (Kids below the top 10% have a much higher likelihood of choosing to attend a school other than a UC for a variety of reasons.)

As to the perceived injustice of "ranking" the likes of UCSB in the top 50; I'll simply note that that campus has more recent Nobel laureates on its faculty than "UT, UF, Penn State (flagship unis.), Tulane, GWU, and Miami" - combined. Nobel Laureates and Universities
Nice beach, too.

ag54

Using this methodology, UCSB, with their 4 Nobel Laureates should be ranked ahead of UCLA, with their paltry 3; and University of Colorado at Boulder would be tied with UCSB, with 4 of their own, as would Yale. - yeah, they're all on the same plain .

If we're using Nobel Laureates as deciding criteria - Univ. of Texas Southwestern Medical School in Dallas has 4 (like UCSB), but I wouldn't choose to attend it over Baylor College of Medicine - but that's just me

kluge

No argument here, ag54 - just goes to show, no matter what criteria you use, someone will find a different one and get a different result

wenger402

yeah USC blows

furyshade

^^maybe i missed it but how is that link relevant? i did a ctrl+f for usc and didn't see it

philaeagles

I'm sure the mistake in the number of reported NAE members was simply a misunderstanding, its really not as big a deal as people here are making it out to be, why did this topic need to be featured on the main page?

I got the following from the USNEWS website:

University of Southern California and the Engineering Rankings - Morse Code: Inside the College Rankings (usnews.com)

The engineering rankings are based on many different criteria, so the rankings weren't influenced as much as some would like to think:

"USC's Viterbi engineering school likely would have fallen in the rankings, but—because the rankings use so many different data points—it does not appear the impact would have been dramatic. U.S. News is not going to publish revised rankings of graduate engineering schools."

USC has already resubmitted its data for NAE members:

"Most recently, the University of Southern California's Viterbi School of Engineering on June 10 told U.S. News that its actual number of full-time, tenure-track engineering faculty members who have been elected members of the National Academy of Engineering—a very high honor for engineering faculty—was actually 13 at the end of 2008."