Could this be a New FA Thread?

[palermo]

<p>He is potentially a math/science major. As far as tier rankings, any of the big college guides (US News, Barrons, Princeton Review) will assign a tier ranking based on the selectivity of the school. Schools like the Ivy league, top LAC are very selective and even the best students will have a tough time getting in those. Most (and this is especially true in NE) do not offer merit aid. Hope this helps.</p>

[palermo]

<p>One other thought - if your daughter is a math/science type have her look at the technical schools. Many of them are trying to increase the numbers of females and seem to be more generous with them. But, my junior is a female and it seems that the competition is tougher for them. Particularly at Liberal Arts Colleges, there are more females than males, so I expect we will find the merit aid search harder for her.</p>

[RatedPG]

<p>So for instance I looked online at the US News listing and the “selectivity rank” would equate to the tier? In Princeton review its selectivty ratings are 60-99 -how does that equate to tier?
Thanks.</p>

[emeraldkity4]

<p>schools that admit 15%to 25% of applicants are pretty selective.
MOst applicants would do well at the school, however there are so many of them, it is a roll of the dice to be admitted.</p>

<p>Schools that admit 26% to 45% are still really selective but particulary if your application is above the scores and stats of 75% of their students, you have a much better chance.</p>

<p>( note the selectivity of the school does not necessarily corrolate to the rigor of the academic experience- sports may play a factor as does location- word of mouth and majors offered just for starters)</p>

<p>schools that accept 46% to 65% or so can be a good match school if your scores are similar to most of students, or a likely acceptance school if admittance rate is on high end and your scores are as well.</p>

<p>Don’t give too much weight to “tiers” USNEWS does have some good information but IMO the tier is kind of gimmicky and distracts from some really good schools</p>

[RatedPG]

<p>The postings here on CC frequently refer tier when referring to schools, I was trying to figure out how everyone knows what tier I or tier II actually means. It must be more than selectivity because US News has Harvard rated 1 and Princeton 4. I am not giving weight to tier level but find myself unable to follow some discussions not knowing what type of school is in what tier.</p>

[emeraldkity4]

<p>From wikipedia

The U.S. News rankings, unlike some other such lists, create a strict hierarchy of colleges and universities in their “top tier,” rather than ranking only groups or “tiers” of schools; the individual schools’ order changes significantly every year the rankings are published. The most important factors in the rankings are:</p>

<p>Peer assessment: a survey of the institution’s reputation among presidents, provosts, and deans of admission of other institutions
Retention: six-year graduation rate and first-year student retention rate
Student selectivity: standardized test scores of admitted students, proportion of admitted students in upper percentiles of their high-school class, and proportion of applicants accepted
Faculty resources: average class size, faculty salary, faculty degree level, student-faculty ratio, and proportion of full-time faculty
Financial resources: per-student spending
Graduation rate performance: difference between expected and actual graduation rate
Alumni giving rate</p>

<p>All these factors are combined according to statistical weights determined by U.S. News. The weighting is often changed by U.S. News from year to year, and is not empirically determined (the NORC methodology review said that these weights “lack any defensible empirical or theoretical basis”). </p>

<p>The first four such factors account for the great majority of the U.S. News ranking (80%, according to U.S. News’s 2005 methodology), and the “reputational measure” (which surveys high-level administrators at similar institutions about their perceived quality ranking of each college and university) is especially important to the final ranking (accounting by itself for 25% of the ranking according to the 2005 methodology).</p>

<p>A New York Times article reported that, given the U. S. News weighting methodology, “it’s easy to guess who’s going to end up on top: Harvard, Yale and Princeton round out the first three essentially every year. In fact, when asked how he knew his system was sound, Mel Elfin, the rankings’ founder, often answered that he knew it because those three schools always landed on top. When a new lead statistician, Amy Graham, changed the formula in 1999 to what she considered more statistically valid, the California Institute of Technology jumped to first place. Ms. Graham soon left, and a slightly modified system pushed Princeton back to No. 1 the next year.”</p>

<p>…
Criticisms of rankings</p>

<p>College and university rankings, especially the well-known U.S. News rankings, have drawn significant criticism from within and without higher education. Critics feel that the rankings are arbitrary and based on criteria unimportant to education itself (especially wealth and reputation); they also charge that, with little oversight, colleges and universities inflate their reported statistics.
Beyond these criticisms, critics claim that the rankings impose ill-considered external priorities on college administrations, whose decisions are sometimes driven by the need to create the most desirable statistics for reporting to U.S. News rather than by sound educational goals.</p>

<p>Furthermore, some have suggested that the formulae and methodologies used to turn the various data into a ranking are arrived at specifically, if unconsciously, to keep a few key institutions at the top of the chart — not because of any undue partisanship among the editors; but simply due to a subconscious assumption that a system which flies in the face of conventional wisdom must somehow be faulty.
Hence editorial decisions would tend to reinforce preconceptions. In other words, if the public, as it is argued, looks to ranking publications not so much for guidance as for confirmation of its own assumptions, then mightn’t the editors of U.S. News (as proud as they are of the annual “fine-tuning” they give their methodology), have a predisposition to overlook methodologies which “rock the boat” to the extent of dropping Harvard (say) out of the top handful of schools?

</p>

[RatedPG]

<p>Thanks Emerald for all the details.</p>

<p>I guess as I read more postings it will become clearer to me.</p>

[AKGIRL]

<p>It really in the end depends on priorities. In our D’s case it is a decision between top ranked tech school (no FA), second tier tech school (limited merit aid), mid level school ( 1/3 to 1.2 FA) or local state school ( tuition free). We are by no means wealthy, but do not qualify for need based aid and loans are surely in the offing if we take option 1 or 2. We feel that the school chosen should be for educational, fit and all around suitability. If we as a family decide that option 1 is the best choice the financial end of it is secondary. We also have a S who will be starting school in a couple of years. We have always thought education is worth the cost, even at today’s high levels.</p>

[SouthJerseyChessMom]

<p>Rated PG- I sent you a private message and if you check in the upper right corner of page under your screen name info about private messaging …</p>