Berkeley's US News Ranking - Wrong SAT Methodology

Colleges and Universities A-Z University of California - Berkeley
1

<p>You know, all other schools use best reading, best math, best writing combined for their average SAT scores when sending into US News ranking lists.</p>

<p>Only the UC's use best one sitting SAT score. The difference between the two can be somehwere between 50-100 points depending on how many times you take the SAT.</p>

<p>Also, federal funding revenue streams should be considered the same as foundation yearly returns. i.e. is there a difference between $5 billion in federal/state funding, vs. $5 billion in foundation payments? Its the same thing. </p>

<p>Either way, although I can see how people can argue about which aspects of ranking methodologies to use, I can't see how they can use COMPLETELY DIFFERENT METHODS TO MEASURE DIFFERENT SCHOOLS!!! WTH???!?!?!</p>

<p>How can they not fix this after 20 years? Are the US News people stupid or something? What schools did they go to? Bc the schools they went to seem to accept some stupid people. lolz</p>

2

<p>But it's pretty much a fact that usnews and world report heavily favors ivies and other private institutions. They have a living to earn and honestly, any good business man/woman will go the route with the best long term economical benefit. They are not stupid, they are just greedy :p</p>

<p>besides, ranking is really not that important. It just gives parents like mine something to obsess over and torture their kids with :p</p>

3

<p>I agree with KitKatz. The rankings really favor private institutions because they factor in class size and alumni donations.</p>

4

<p>If I ever get rich, I'm donating tons of money to Cal :)</p>

5

<p>But the thing is even the foundation criteria is flawed.</p>

<p>100 billion dollar endowment, say it makes 5% return a year they use for funding purposes. So they use 5 billion a year for school funding.</p>

<p>but how is that any different than 5 billion a public school gets from state and federal grants? </p>

<p>its the same cash flow, used for the same academic purposes, research, education, etc...</p>

<p>but either way, the SAT criteria is severely flawed. Im just amazed it is still not fixed yet. I mean, what if these sort of people build airplanes and space shuttles? It will most definitely crash leaving mistakes like this unattended. Lets not let America go down the tubes like that. Fix the mistakes, otherwise, that exact sort of culture is what led to the financial crisis.</p>

6

<p>Tupac Shakur, i share the same sentiment.</p>

7

<p>seriously. US News pollsters who so blatantly use such false statistics are simply un-American. </p>

<p>Its the same sort of "statistical cover up" that led us to this financial crisis with collateralized debt covering up the true risk of bad assets. I can't believe that these US News people hate America so much!</p>

8

<p>I think the SAT aspect of US News ranking isn't really US New's fault. The whole UC system decided to only look at best single score, which IMO isn't very good since people may have off days on certain subjects. Plus, it's not like US News can just ask Berkeley to submit the superscored SAT scores of all admitted students. I think that'd be a lot of work.</p>

9

<p>^ Well, thats why the financial crisis happened. It took too much work to find out the true risk of hidden mortgage assets that was collateralized.</p>

10

<p>
[quote]
I think the SAT aspect of US News ranking isn't really US New's fault. The whole UC system decided to only look at best single score, which IMO isn't very good since people may have off days on certain subjects. Plus, it's not like US News can just ask Berkeley to submit the superscored SAT scores of all admitted students. I think that'd be a lot of work.

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<p>Exactly, and I think that's where the real problem is. Instead of blaming USNews, I would ask: why doesn't UC utilize superscores just like everybody else? Or at least report superscores to USNews? How hard would that be? Just write a little snippet of code that takes the multiple test scores of each admitted students' application packet and performs a simple 'max' computation on each test section to compute a superscore and send that modified record to USNews. How hard is that? Anybody who took a basic computer science course such as 61A could surely do that. Nor do I think it would be controversial, as UC (or Berkeley, if the rest of UC didn't want to follow suit) is could simply explain that it is not "cheating" by manipulating its admissions data, but simply following the methodology that the other schools are using. </p>

<p>
[quote]
Also, federal funding revenue streams should be considered the same as foundation yearly returns. i.e. is there a difference between $5 billion in federal/state funding, vs. $5 billion in foundation payments? Its the same thing.

[/quote]
</p>

<p>
[quote]
But the thing is even the foundation criteria is flawed.</p>

<p>100 billion dollar endowment, say it makes 5% return a year they use for funding purposes. So they use 5 billion a year for school funding.</p>

<p>but how is that any different than 5 billion a public school gets from state and federal grants?</p>

<p>its the same cash flow, used for the same academic purposes, research, education, etc...

[/quote]
</p>

<p>But it's not the same. First of all, private schools also receive Federal grant funding, which is apportioned according to openly competitive rules. Harvard, for example, receives over $500mm in annual funding from the Federal government, compared to Berkeley's $330mm in 2008. To be fair, Harvard has a med school and Berkeley does not, and med schools tend to draw disproportionate Federal funding, although I suspect that even if HMS was excluded, Harvard's total Federal funding would still exceed Berkeley's, and certainly on a per-capita basis. </p>

<p>University</a> of California Financial Reports</p>

<p>The main difference is therefore the state funding. However, Berkeley is not receiving state support for free, but rather as a trade-off. Berkeley receives money from the state in return for charging lower tuition to California state residents who comprise 90+% of the undergrad population. What Sacramento gives, Sacramento also takes away. It is highly debateable as to whether the net budgetary effect is actually positive - is is entirely possible that Berkeley actually loses money on the overall deal; that is, Berkeley would actually be generating more revenue if it were a private school that forewent state funding but also charged a private school level of tuition to its students (minus whatever financial aid it would provide to the poor). </p>

<p>But the bottom line is that you can't simply treat state funding as "free money", for that would be double counting. Otherwise, we should then count the extra tuition that private schools charge as "free money".</p>

11

<p>
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Berkeley's US News Ranking - Wrong SAT Methodology

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<p>That also neglects the fact that Berkeley has a relatively large community college transfer population compared to almost all other schools in the USNews top 25. Let's be perfectly honest - most of those transfer students, if they had to take it, would not have scored highly on the SAT, whether measured as best one sitting or superscored. Hence, USNews may actually be overstating Berkeley's true selectivity as measured by SAT scores. </p>

<p>
[quote]
is there a difference between $5 billion in federal/state funding, vs. $5 billion in foundation payments? Its the same thing.

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<p>I would also argue that this is a matter of quibbling over nothing anyway when it comes to the rankings. After all, the USNews methodology weights alumni donations as 5% of the overall ranking. Even if USNews deleted this category, Berkeley's overall ranking would only marginally rise. So instead of Berkeley being ranked #21 as it is now, Berkeley would be ranked #20 (or perhaps in a 4-way tie for #18 with Vanderbilt, Emory, and Notre Dame). Honestly, who cares? If Berkeley were to be launched into the top 5 by some methodology change, then that would indeed be something worth fighting over. But I'm not exactly motivated to improve Berkeley's ranking from 21 to (at best) a 4-way tie for 18.</p>

12

<p>I think the biggest fault that Berkeley has ever committed is when they did not hire the services of sakky. No kidding. He's obviously disloyal to Berkeley and you can sense it instantly that he has volumes of angst and prejudices against the school and its system. However, if you would understand the points he's making, most of what he has said are true. I don't question his motives for bashing Berkeley time and time again. I think he's just being vocal about it because he likes Berkeley to improve and he's just frustrated (as most of you are) that Berkeley isn't responding when their alumni are complaining and the Berkeley administration isn't doing anything to address the issues as well. I think I would have done the same thing if I were an alumnus. Luckily I'm not, plus I don't write the way sakky does that whenever he says something, he can say it in a much, much exaggerated way, that anyone who can read his pieces would think Berkeley is such a crappy school. But then again, I understand sakky's motivation. Too bad he went to Berkeley when I think he's smart enough to be admitted to HYPSM, and it would probably interesting to read post about the inadequacies of some HYPSM school.</p>

13

<p>It is frustrating when you cannot get through the bureaucracy of Berkeley's administration. I really do believe that it could benefit from some academic reforms as sakky mentioned in his/her previous posts but it doesn't seem like the administration is willing to hear such suggestions (unless maybe you donated a ridiculous amount of money to buy such power, even which in such a case I'd still think would be unprobable). These reforms would help improve Berkeley's undergraduate academic reputation, but as of right now I just don't see it happening anytime soon unfortunately.</p>

14

<p>
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He's obviously disloyal to Berkeley

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</p>

<p>Ha! I would argue that true disloyalty would be to know about problems yet do nothing at all about them. All I'm doing is trying to offer solutions to problems. You may choose to disagree with my solutions, but at least I'm trying. Plenty of people don't even bother to do that.</p>

15

<p>
[quote]
So instead of Berkeley being ranked #21 as it is now, Berkeley would be ranked #20 (or perhaps in a 4-way tie for #18 with Vanderbilt, Emory, and Notre Dame). Honestly, who cares? If Berkeley were to be launched into the top 5 by some methodology change, then that would indeed be something worth fighting over. But I'm not exactly motivated to improve Berkeley's ranking from 21 to (at best) a 4-way tie for 18.

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</p>

<p>Because no state university has made it that high in the past decade or so, I believe that's still worth fighting for. It doesn't seem right to see a league table where Berkeley wasn't ranked in the top 20.</p>

<p>Just an opinion.</p>

16

<p>blackfire,</p>

<p>I've noticed that Berkeley's alumni network is somewhat weak compared to most elite privates. I think that there is less participation from Berkeley alumni in terms of giving back to Berkeley, which is ironic considering that Berkeley students have acquired their world-class education with huge discounts. I think if only the alumni association would become very established, the body can dictate or pressure the institution on some of its wrong moves. I think the alumni must act as one body so it would have power.</p>

17

<p>
[quote]
Ha! I would argue that true disloyalty would be to know about problems yet do nothing at all about them. All I'm doing is trying to offer solutions to problems. You may choose to disagree with my solutions, but at least I'm trying. Plenty of people don't even bother to do that.

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<p>And, I respect that. Knowing you who know so many things about Berkeley, it's just natural that you can't help but comment, and I believe that most of your comments are true.
However, the other schools don't have anyone --who's like you-- who's brave enough to touch on their school's hidden flaws. If Brown or Columbia or Duke or Chicago, etc, for instance has someone who's exactly like you, it would have at least fair, because that would provide a better leverage between good and bad, and would have at least, fair for Berkeley.
As it is, we would only know Berkeley's ugly side (through you, which again, are mostly true) and not of the others. That's very unfair for Berkeley, if I may analyze this carefully, because I know every school has flaws, it's just that, no one from their school has the guts to make them public, exactly just like what you're doing.
In a way, I commend you because through your posts, one would see the real picture of Berkeley. But it's also sad that what has been released to the public from its peer schools are confined to the schools' strengths, and the bad comments have been restricted from the public. So, it isn't fair to Berkeley, in my opinion.</p>

18

<p>Anyone see the new Prez's speech? He inferred that rankings were important and so were test scores. It'll be interesting to see if the UCs start to superscore the SAT.</p>

19

<p>
[quote]
I think the biggest fault that Berkeley has ever committed is when they did not hire the services of sakky. No kidding. He's obviously disloyal to Berkeley and you can sense it instantly that he has volumes of angst and prejudices against the school and its system. However, if you would understand the points he's making, most of what he has said are true. I don't question his motives for bashing Berkeley time and time again. I think he's just being vocal about it because he likes Berkeley to improve and he's just frustrated (as most of you are) that Berkeley isn't responding when their alumni are complaining and the Berkeley administration isn't doing anything to address the issues as well. I think I would have done the same thing if I were an alumnus. Luckily I'm not, plus I don't write the way sakky does that whenever he says something, he can say it in a much, much exaggerated way, that anyone who can read his pieces would think Berkeley is such a crappy school. But then again, I understand sakky's motivation. Too bad he went to Berkeley when I think he's smart enough to be admitted to HYPSM, and it would probably interesting to read post about the inadequacies of some HYPSM school.

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</p>

<p>I mostly concur with sakky's suggestions as well. My only beef is that, by reading sakky's posts, it appears to be a "Berkeley problem" (or problems), when in fact it is a state and Regent problem. Both of the latter have been doing everything they can to increase the prestige level of the bottom 7 (well, ok, just get anyone to go to Merced), almost at the expense of Berkeley (and UCLA). Thus, practically any good idea that would benefit Berkeley (or ULCA) will be ignored by the Regents (and Legislature) if it places more distance between the Big Two and the other 7.</p>

20

<p>

Emory has Oxford College to house all the bozos.<br>
Cornell has CALS to house Keith Olbermann and the likes, not to mention the hotel school.<br>
Penn has the nursing school.
We're comparing freshman standing. Apparently proximity to greatness makes one greater. The freshmen don't live in the same dorm as the CC transfers.</p>