We see here the effects of anchoring.
This list is no more silly than the USNews ranking.
We see here the effects of anchoring.
This list is no more silly than the USNews ranking.
"It’s a ridiculous list. The service academies should be at the top if the metrics include graduation rates and level of debt. Our kid is getting paid to go to college and will graduate with no debt and a guaranteed job. Though the academies and civilian colleges are apples and oranges on most other metrics, they can’t be beat on the money metric IMO. "
It depends. “A guaranteed job” also could be read as “5-year service commitment”, which wouldn’t be universally appreciated.
BTW, if you dial up to max the 2 criteria:
“How important is it that you graduate with little or no student debt?”
and
“How important is it that the college helps you land a high-paying job?”
and set at lowest the merit money and fin aid slides, you end up with a ranking that people are much more use to (though note that they don’t seem to take regional differences in income in to account, so the Midwestern schools get hammered):
Granted, it then goes
21. Baruch
22. Penn
23. Wellesley
24. BYU
25. Colgate
26. Babson
27. Mudd
28. Colorado Mines
29. SJSU
30. Touro
31. Hamilton
32. MCPHS
33. U of the Sciences
34. U of Chicago
35. Columbia
36. Haverford
37. CMU
38. SUNY Maritime
39. Rose-Hulman
40. UCLA
^ Average student debt of grads from Harvard, Princeton, Duke and Wellesley is only 4 figures which is why they rank so high when you jigger the rankings this way. For every other school in the Money universe (besides Berea), average debt is 5 figures.
Average debt of grads of Rice, BYU, Pomona, and a bunch of CUNYs is barely over $10K, which is why they rank so high when you value the way I did.
Average debt of Everglades University grads is over $40K(!)
Dear @CupCakeMuffins I don’t know if I can read your posts anymore, I always feel like eating something when I do.
Outcomes to colleges is about as pointless as it comes, outcomes to majors is the correct analysis. How about they publish a valid analysis, ChemE at college A compared to ChemE at college B adjusted for COL in area and any other factors that might influence salaries. Now that would be valid.
The tool is also useful for finding safeties. Say that you want to be reasonable assured of admission to a school where the 75th percentile ACT is at least a 31.
Well, there are 7 schools like that who also admit 2/3rd or more of applicants:
Furman, Hendrix, Centre, MUST, UT-Dallas, NCF, and Wheaton in IL.
More chancy, but if you want to find schools with an admit rate of greater than 33% but 75th percentile ACT of at least 33, you have 9 options:
Stevens, CWRU, Tulsa, Rochester, UCSD, UMD, Macalester, W&M, Smith.
any size, urban, highly selective, smart (34 ACT, top 1%), highest pay
OVERALL RANK
6 Massachusetts Institute of Technology
12 California Institute of Technology
16 Harvard University
46 Georgetown University
155 Carnegie Mellon University
14 University of Pennsylvania
15 Yale University
19 Georgia Institute of Technology-Main Campus
13 Rice University
56 Columbia University in the City of New York
…
any size, any location, highly selective, smart (34 ACT, top 1%), highest pay
OVERALL RANK
5 Stanford University
6 Massachusetts Institute of Technology
12 California Institute of Technology
16 Harvard University
46 Georgetown University
132 Harvey Mudd College
155 Carnegie Mellon University
1 Princeton University
14 University of Pennsylvania
15 Yale University
19 Georgia Institute of Technology-Main Campus
13 Rice University
44 Dartmouth College
56 Columbia University in the City of New York
92 Cornell University
@CU123 makes a good point regarding majors and how they are the real apple - apple comparison. The mix of majors has a big impact on incomes, particularly initial incomes. Engineering majors, for instance, can make 1.6X as much initially as average graduates at a school, and they pull up the average for a more engineering heavy school vs a less engineering heavy school. This distorts the difference between the institutions, because any delta may have more to do with major selection than any difference in the schools.
There was a report from the Center on Education and the Workforce a couple of years ago that tried to adjust for mix of majors. https://cew.georgetown.edu/cew-reports/college-rankings/ I imagine cost of living in the areas where graduates settle also has a big impact on earnings, but it would be very difficult to adjust for.
This ranking does have an adjustment by major but I don’t know how much of one. I don’t think they adjust for area of the country or mobility (where kids tend to end up). Just looking at state might not help with accuracy. For instance most kids at the top 3 Maine LACs leave Maine, a lower COL state, and many move to Boston or NYC, high cost areas.
Imho any top 20 school with enough financial aid or merit scholarship make it bearable is a much better value than paying full price at another top 20 school or free ride at a state school.
The top 20 USNWR all have good need-based aid, although more than half don’t offer merit awards. Every case is different so it’s hard to generalize without knowing a family’s specific financial situation.
Note that a large percentage of potential college students are not eligible for need-based aid at many colleges that have good need-based aid, due to uncooperative divorced parents. Also, many parents (whether divorced or not) are unwilling or unable to make the parent contribution expected by colleges that have good need-based aid.
….and therein lies the cycle of poverty (or at least lower income mediocrity).
I found one of the indexes used to gauge student success to be interesting “%of low income students to become up-middle class”, quickly glanced a few:
Mudd is 74%
Princeton: 66%
U Chicago: 45%
UNC chapel hill: 33%
Quite a difference!
By early career earnings (0-5 years), Princeton places first in the Ivy League, followed by Harvard. Of the ten NESCAC LACs, Williams places second (after Hamilton), followed by Amherst. If your conception suggests that the above schools should be tightly paired, then at least some financial data supports this.
(Source: U.S. News.)
@merc81, see my post #7.
It seems that fin aid generosity is what separates them.
In my view any ranking system that puts UC Riverside ahead of Duke is suspect.
A California resident student with low to moderate income parents who are divorced with an uncooperative non-custodial parent will likely rank UCR over Duke based on affordability (unless s/he gets a rare large merit scholarship at Duke).
“Imho any top 20 school with enough financial aid or merit scholarship make it bearable is a much better value than paying full price at another top 20 school or free ride at a state school.”
Why would a free ride at a state school not provide better value? Many of the true full ride scholarships provide a completely different experience for those in the selected cohort compared to the regular students at that school, and winning those scholarships can be more competitive than getting into a top 20 school. And you certainly can’t make a blanket statement like that when you look at some of those opportunities like the Jefferson scholarship at UVA, which regularly contributes to the list of Rhodes scholars etc.