2006 US News and World Report Rankings

Applying to College
1

The U.S. News and World Report rankings are coming out in a few weeks. There hasn’t been a lot of discussion on CC about the USNWR rankings which are going to be the main topic of conversation soon. I’ve thought about this, and all I can think of is that everyone has the naive idea that “the Ivies” are the only prestigious game in town. For better or for worse, the USNWR rankings are the bible when it comes to prestigious. Part of the fun of the rankings is seeing who goes up each year and who goes down, and so here are the 2005 rankings.

National Universities:
<a href=“http://www.usnews.com/usnews/edu/college/rankings/brief/natudoc/tier1/t1natudoc_brief.php[/url]”>http://www.usnews.com/usnews/edu/college/rankings/brief/natudoc/tier1/t1natudoc_brief.php&lt;/a&gt;

LAC’s:
<a href=“http://www.usnews.com/usnews/edu/college/rankings/brief/libartco/tier1/t1libartco_brief.php[/url]”>http://www.usnews.com/usnews/edu/college/rankings/brief/libartco/tier1/t1libartco_brief.php&lt;/a&gt;

The rankings are broken down into National Universities and LAC’s since USNWR recognizes that you can’t mix apples and oranges. Unfortuanately, you can’t mix the colleges in either of the two cateogories very well either. In my own opinion, the rankings are rather useless except as a way to find an initial list of colleges that you are interested in.

The rankings are based on many considerations such as selectivity, class sizes, faculty/student ratios, endowment, alumni giving, and so on. At least have a little respect for the opinion of the USNWR staff. They have put a lot of work into this. The sales for that issue of the USNWR are normally up 40%. (Now Newsweek is ranking high schools.)

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<p>The fact that universities do not change that much from one year to another is one of the criticisms, emphasizing the artificiality of the “up and down.” But it’s fun nontheless (unfortunately). I wonder if Penn will remain high in the 2006 one. hehe!</p>

3

<p>The following are passages from “Harvard Schmarvard” by Jay Mathews.</p>

<p>“Before the US News rankings began, applicants had to rely on rumor, intuition, their own inexact comparisons of the numbers they found in the existing college guides, and their high school counselor’s judgment in determining which colleges offered the most. Not only did the magazine dare to rank schools, but it also forced colleges to begin presenting data on SAT averages, faculty backgrounds, and admissions decisions in a consistent way or be left off the US News list altogether. The magazine acknowledged that it could not quantify every factor that made a good school. It had trouble finding measures of the quality of learning and campus life once students enrolled. But it made some progress - forcing colleges to compile and release the percent of their students who graduated in six years, a useful indicator of a university’s commitment to ensuring each student’s success.”</p>

<p>However, some educators would soon respond that the list was “not sensible consumerism, but callous disregard of the unique character of American education.” </p>

<p>“Historically, Stanford had tried to ignore the US News list.” In 1983, “the list’s first year, when Stanford was listed number one among undergraduate instititutions”, the Stanford college president “called the magazine rankings a ‘beauty contest.’ He said that it did not have much significance. But by 1996, the university had slipped to number 6, and” the college “cared about the rankings and wanted to fix it.” </p>

<p>The president of Stanford said “The rankings are arbitary and absurdly counter-intuitive in their yearly variance. Can a stable university like Johns Hopkins really change from being the 21st best school in the nation to the 10th and then back to 15th in a three year period?”</p>

<p>“The very selective schools that dominate the list were considered the best schools in the country before the list existed. They will remain so as long as they say no to the vast majority of their applicants.” The president of UMCP said “Your reputation is set by whom you reject, not whom you accept.” and “The more you reject, the better your reputation.” “It is a self-fulfiling prophecy. The more students who are excluded from the freshman class, the higher will be that class’s average SAT scores, yield, and several other factors that influence the US News rankings.”</p>

<p>“I think the wisest students and their parents already know what to do with the list. They glance at the rankings each year, note the statistics about the schools that interest them, read the usually well-nuanced articles that accompany the lists, and go back to making their own plans.”</p>

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<p>this is a one-time-only, sad, pathetic attempt to bump my thread up</p>

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<p>wow Duke is #5</p>

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<p>What’s the difference between the two lists?</p>

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<p>I think the schools themselves care a heck of a lot more than they claim to. It’s actually the students who give them less weight, from what I’ve seen. I’ve never even considered “official” rankings when formulating my list.</p>

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<p>Brightfutureahead: The one list is National Universities and the second list is Liberal Arts Colleges. Colleges come in basically three types. Large public universities that have fantastic facilities and opportunities, and some disadvantages such as large class sizes in freshman year. Liberal Arts Colleges (LAC) that are much smaller (at least under 5000 students). LAC’s concentrate on undergraduate education, have small class sizes, the professors know you by name, and a professor might invite you home for dinner. LAC’s tend to try to find a niche such as humanities or science rather than try to offer broad programs in everything. The third type are small/mid-sized universities that combine a broad range of options with smaller size. Most of the bigname non-public schools are in this category.</p>

<p>USNWR decided that it was okay to compare Stanford to Harvard and rank them, but not okay to compare universities with LAC’s. This is why there are two lists.</p>

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<p>

I thought the very concept of a “liberal arts education” was to make the student well-rounded by offering a wide variety of classes</p>

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<p>Best as he can remember this is what his mom told him about LAC and from what it appears they didn’t visit any and he doesn’t know anybody who goes to one. LOL</p>

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<p>I think there is a difference between “Liberal Arts College” and “liberal arts education”. The issue is really whether or not the college has a core curriculum. Some LAC’s are politically somewhere to the left of Lenin and let you design your own major. On the other hand, some universities have comprehensive core curriculums that make you take classes from different categories of study. Everyone doesn’t take the same courses, but you have to have so many science, humanities, history, etc credits in order to graduate.</p>

<p>I did not say that all LAC’s are politically left. They all have different personalities and some are politically right or politically middle-of-the-road. Also, I did not say that all LAC’s let you design your own major.</p>

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<p>You know it would be pretty easy to predict the rankings because 2004-2005 common set data is out for most colleges.</p>

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<p>I’m not sure who posted it, but I saw a ranking that said that if the US News magazine uses the same percentage weighting it would look like this:</p>

<p>1) Harvard
2) Stanford, Princeton
4) Yale
5) MIT
6) Columbia
7) Duke, Penn
9) Cal Tech
10) Dartmouth</p>

<p>They figured it out with the SAT scores, acceptance rates, and whatever; of course this might not be accurate since that seems pretty complicated to do. I Think Columbia and Cal Tech might have been switched…I forget which order it is</p>

<p>However, they changed the weightings, didn’t they?</p>

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<p>I read somewhere (not on this board) and a poster mentioned it before that Penn was moving into a 3rd-place tie with Yale for 2006 rankings. Whatever…I guess we’ll see. Hell, I’d happy with any of the top 15 schools.</p>

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<p>Although I will be attending Penn in the fall, I still believe MIT/Stanford are better and more prestigious and therefore should be ranked higher than my school. My opinion is Penn is probably equal to Duke and vice versa (which is still not too shabby)!</p>

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<p>Indeed. :)</p>

<p>Penn=Duke=Dartmouth</p>

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<p>This is the letter from the former Stanford President that was cited by another poster above:
<a href=“http://www.stanford.edu/dept/pres-provost/president/speeches/961206gcfallow.html[/url]”>http://www.stanford.edu/dept/pres-provost/president/speeches/961206gcfallow.html&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

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<p>Penn does not equal dartmouth and columbia. Stop making these absolute comments of yours that have no merit. Plz tell me in terms of location, academic strengths of schools, type of schools, school spirit that these schools are alike. Wow, devil, your brilliant, your comments just seem to wow me everyday. Penn has 2400 freshman, Duke around 1500, and dartmouth around 1000. Penn has 4 schools, Duke has 2, and dartmouth has one. Penn is in phili, dartmouth in new hamp, and duke in north carolina. I don’t see too many similarities except for your need to link your duke with 2 ivy league schools.</p>

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<p>Comparing schools depends on what subjective measures are important to you. If having a D1 sports team is important, then your rankings are going to be different from someone who doesn’t care about that. You should just take the USNWR rankings as a game to play, and then go ahead and make you own personal (and perhaps secret) ranking of schools that you want to apply to.</p>

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<p>Collegekid988: Is it really that necessary to be so combative? Why not respond respectfully instead of making incendiary comments that you know will spark a backlash? I’m starting to think you like starting flame wars with DMC</p>

<p>Anyway, yeah they changed the weightings, thoughtprocess. I think they are putting less emphasis on endowments right? I can’t remember. Anyway, I seriously doubt the rankings will change much. <em>shrug</em> Some schools may go up 1-2 places up or down. Not sure.</p>

<p>Anyway, take the rankings with a grain of salt. The places between schools are practically negligible.</p>