<p>My daughter wants to apply early to Boston U. In the Princeton Review book for 2003 it has an academic rating of 92. In the current book, 2006, it has a ranking of 63. This is the worst drop I have seen amongst all the colleges. How good is BU. How seriously should I take the rankings.</p>
<p>Son’s classmates and neighbor really enjoyed BU. Daughter of a friend on fullride /honors college didn’t enjoy BU and made a transfer to Reed as a junior.</p>
<p>Misprint. Just checked on-line. Still 92.</p>
<p>Jasmom - where did you look online to see the rankings?</p>
<p><a href=“http://www.princetonreview.com%5B/url%5D”>www.princetonreview.com</a></p>
<p>I went to the site and looked up the rating for BU. It showed an 85 (still better then the books 63)</p>
<p>General Information
Admissions Selectivity Rating: 93
School Type: PRIVATE
Enrollment: 16,538
Religious Affiliation: No Affiliation
Campus Surroundings: Metropolis<br>
Campus Size: 132
Year Founded: 1839
CEEB Code: 3087
ACT Code: 1794
Average SAT: 1278
Average ACT: 28
Tuition: $33,330
How much for 4 years? </p>
<p>Application Information
Regular Admission Deadline: 1/1
Early Decision Deadline: 11/1
Priority Application Deadline: Not Reported </p>
<p>Boston University</p>
<p>Statistics
(Are we looking at the same thing?)</p>
<p>The current online academic rating at the PR for Boston U is 85. (The fire safety rating is 60.)</p>
<p>None of this matters as the PR rankings are largely based on student surveys and can fluctuate wildly from year to year.</p>
<p>I see 85 as well … 63% was the percent my search keyword “Boston” matched “Boston University”</p>
<p>This may sound a bit simplistic…but if your kid attends BU and loves it, the satisfaction rating is 100% (it is for my kid). If they don’t like it and transfer, the satisfaction rating is 0%.</p>
<p>“Admissions Selectivity Rating: 93” says how hard it is to get in, right?
“Academic Rating: 85” says how good the school is, right? Apples and oranges?</p>
<p>the princeton review rankings are the most arbitrary and dumbest things i have ever seen.</p>
<p>example</p>
<p>academic rating:<br>
university of richmond: 95
villanova university: 89
stonehill college: 88
university of michigan: 84
university of california - los angeles: 74</p>
<p>interesting how the two best schools on that list are at the bottem of it.</p>
<p>I think that the admissions selectivity ratings in Princeton Review are very helpful for lining up match/reach/safety. For example, I think I told my daughter last year to look at schools that were 97+ as reaches, 93-96 as matches, 92 below as safeties. Of course that was very rough, but it worked o.k. for us. (Those numbers, of course, were specific to my daughter’s stats). It just makes the book very easy to work with, and it is based on largely objective factors:
<a href=“http://www.princetonreview.com/college/research/articles/find/ratings.asp#selectivity[/url]”>http://www.princetonreview.com/college/research/articles/find/ratings.asp#selectivity</a></p>
<p>As to academic rating – I think that is far more quirky, in part because it is based on more subjective factors:
<a href=“http://www.princetonreview.com/college/research/articles/find/ratings.asp#academic[/url]”>http://www.princetonreview.com/college/research/articles/find/ratings.asp#academic</a></p>
<p>But note that these may be useful figures when compared to other systems like US News. A low score may indicated a good deal of student dissatisfaction, reflected in the surveys – especially when you factor in issues such large classes and reliance on TA’s. That may explain why a school like UCLA can rank very highly when US News relies on reputation/peer assessment – but a lot lower when you survey kids who are taking math and chemistry in classes with 800 students, and discussion sections led by graduate students who can’t speak English. </p>
<p>I don’t know anything about academics at BU, but it is a larger university --thus less likely to provide a nurturing academic atmosphere for its undergrads. </p>
<p>As to selectivity: BU was a clear “match” for my daughter, and she did apply. (“Match” meaning everyone thought she was pretty sure to get in). My d. was accepted at Barnard, Chicago, NYU, and Berkeley… waitlisted at BU. Go figure.</p>
<p>Thanks calMom for the information. I am shocked that your daughter got into all those great universities and was wait listed at BU. Where did she end up going in the end and how happy is she there. My daughter considered applying to NYU but is leaning towards BU for early decision.</p>
<p>I really like the princeton reviews and find them, in some ways, more useful than the USNEWS rankings. My sons used both as they chose schools. </p>
<p>I agree with mom that they can reflect studetn satisfaction with the school they are at and how their education is going far more than anything that USNEWS uses.</p>
<p>We took both with a big grain of salt but heaven forbid we actually ask the students to help rank the school.</p>
<p>I really like the princeton reviews and find them, in some ways, more useful than the USNEWS rankings. My sons used both as they chose schools. </p>
<p>I agree with mom that they can reflect studetn satisfaction with the school they are at and how their education is going far more than anything that USNEWS uses.</p>
<p>We took both with a big grain of salt but heaven forbid we actually ask the students to help rank the school.</p>
<p>collegeGo, my daughter is at Barnard. You really have to look beyond “stats” in assessing chances. “Fit” is very, very important – and not just from the student’s perspective – you have to look at it from the perspective of the ad com thinking, “does this student really belong here? does her application show that she really wants to come?” I can see Barnard getting excited and deciding to overlook weaker test scores, and I can see BU thinking, “meh” - in part because her middle-of-the-applicant pool profile also means that she might not stand out to them. </p>
<p>Also, I don’t think BU is need blind – I know that they are very honest in explaining how they leverage financial aid, giving better awards for higher-stat students – so our level of need could have been one more factor pushing her over to the waitlist column. </p>
<p>Also, the fact that my daughter was waitlisted doesn’t negate our perception that BU was a “match” – any more that the fact that you toss a toin and have it come up tails that it means that the odds weren’t 50% in favor of heads. Now if we had thought of BU as a safety – that would have been another story. But I think that its better to look at it more along the lines that: my daughter, with her stats, had a 65% chance of getting into BU, and the same odds of getting into Berkeley and NYU – meaning that of those 3, she should have gotten into 2 out of 3. She did. (My figures for purposes of the example are totally arbitrary of course – I’m just ballparking for the purpose of the quick lesson in probability). In the end, my daughter got into 9 out of 12 schools, for a 75% success rate, pretty good given the fact that about half of the schools she applied to were reaches. So as long as we don’t focus too much on individual schools, the process overall makes sense and had a happy ending for us.</p>