<p>Up and coming LAC’s:</p>
<p>Davidson College, NC
Ursinus College, PA
Furman U, SC
Pitzer College, CA
Berry College, GA
Berea College, KY
Christopher Newport Univ., VA
Agnes Scott College, GA
Cornell College, IA
Franklin & Marshall College, PA
U of Richmond, VA
Wofford College, SC
Allegheny College, PA
Calvin College, MI
Kalamazoo College, MI
U of Puget Sound, WA</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>its nowhere to be found.</p>
<p>to keep things easy, though, routine cc searches of your favorite 25-50th ranked lac will let you know when someone finally does decide to post a more complete list!</p>
<p>Does the ranking of colleges by public high school counselors include National Universities and LACs, or just unis? Are there two list or one?</p>
<p>"Well, now you do. "</p>
<p>No, we don’t and your ridiculous statements about how the rankings are done are neither funny nor informative. As those are the only good reasons to post here why don’t you find something more constructive to do with your time.</p>
<p>You read the USNWR methodogy, didn’t you? And YOU don’t think THAT’s ridiculous? How have you informed this conversation?</p>
<p>The SET methodology, with which the Forbes data were correlated, are used by colleges and universities across the United States to assess their own quality. If you’ve got a problem with that, you should take it up with them.</p>
<p>Is it a big deal if a univeristy rises in ranking from 120th to 110th?</p>
<p>“Is it a big deal if a univeristy rises in ranking from 120th to 110th?”</p>
<p>For the school, maybe. For anybody else, not so much.</p>
<p>This sort of reminds me of buying the September issue of InStyle magazine- or Lucky, Allure etc. You see what’s “hot” for the season and what the “beautiful people” are wearing and you are supposed to want to go buy those items! “Up and coming”…some of those can only WISH.</p>
<p>10 places is significant, but it matters more the closer you get to the top. Moving from 20 to 10 would make headlines (on CC at least!).</p>
<p>The US News methodology is very good for what it tries to do. As someone pointed out, the “mind” behind the Forbes ranking is one obscure professor who never got into the first tier and has been busy trying to redefine good ever since.</p>
<p>Can anyone list the counselor’s ranking list?</p>
<p>Hard to say why Davidson would be considered an up and coming
LAC when it has been in the USNWR top ten for at least the past 10 years. Unless it’s projected to miraculously crack the top five in 2010?</p>
<p>It’s interesting how you avoided responding to the substance of my post, Bay.</p>
<p>You said “My argument was about the limited appeal of Caltech to the majority of American college-bound students. I identified one characteristic (lack of URM diversity) that would likely contribute to that limited appeal, along with its small size, and lack of non-math/science majors, women and sports scene. I did not question the academic quality of the school.”</p>
<p>I wasn’t solely referring to the academic quality of the school. I am simply making the point that the number one most important criteria for judging schools is the quality of students they put out. Obviously, quality does not refer solely to academic ability, although academic ability is certainly a large part of quality. Caltech has a reputation for producing quality students–not only are they intelligent, but they are experienced with research, creative and independently minded. I’ll take that reputation any day over having a good sports team.</p>
<p>Next, you said “I don’t know how you could possibly know which schools I “hold in high regard,” so your statement again shows a lack of careful reading of my posts.”</p>
<p>Logically, because you have not spoken out against any of the other top 25 schools (and have in fact implied positive things about their nature) you hold them in high regard relative to our institution, at least when it comes to their status as a “National University”. </p>
<p>Finally, you stated: “With regard to racial diversity, I, along with 24 of the top 25 schools in the nation, do value a racially diverse learning environment. If that means l lack your standard of “a level of maturity to really understand diversity,” then at least I am in good company.”</p>
<p>Congratulations on completely ignoring my point: Racial diversity is not solely the percentage of “under-represented minorities” that a school has. Additionally, racial diversity is only a small part of what diversity actually is. Much more important than racial diversity is cultural diversity–unfortunately, people often confuse the two as it is much easier to group people by skin color than by culture. But even as racial diversity goes, Caltech is reasonably racially diverse. I don’t have the numbers in front of me, but if I recall correctly we are somewhere around 30% Asian (which includes Chinese, Vietnamese, Korean, Indian, and much more). I’m sorry if you think that these people are somehow less capable of contributing culture to campus than “URMs”, but I don’t. More importantly, I also value the incredible cultural diversity of Caltech. Some of my friends, for instance; one was born and spent eight years in mainland China, one is a devout Muslim from India, one is half-Pakistani half-Syrian, one is a Jewish Costa Rican, one is an international student from Nigeria, one is a Russian from the Ukraine, one is Vietnamese, one is ethnically Chinese but culturally Thai… the list goes on and on. My friends all have incredibly different upbringings, cultures, stories… and I value them all. If that’s not diversity, what is? </p>
<p>We are on the National Universities list and will continue to stay on the National Universities list because the programs we offer are comparable to those of the other top 25 universities. The students who apply to and/or attend Caltech also apply to many other schools on the list. When I was applying for schools, I applied to MIT, Stanford, Johns Hopkins, Carnegie Mellon, Georgia Tech, and UF. Many techers also applied to Ivy League schools, the UC system, UMich, Rice, etc. </p>
<p>Additionally, the appeal of Caltech is wide enough that we’re able to maintain an acceptance rate in range of the other schools in the top 25 (yes, our acceptance rate is probably double Harvard’s but I would imagine lower than some of the other schools in the top 25) despite the fact that our applicant pool is incredibly more academically self-selecting (The SAT scores of our applicants are higher than any other school on the list). </p>
<p>When they day comes that people do not compare the programs at Caltech and those of other schools on the list, then we should be removed. That day will never come, though.</p>
<p>Interesting that they didn’t include the University of Minnesota in up-and-coming national universities, especially since it just jumped 10 spots, from #71 to #61. It’s always been a strong research and graduate institution, but I think it will keep moving up in US News as it finally gets its act together on undergrad education. It’s making big gains in selectivity, which will only be helped by dropping OOS tuition to $2K/semester above in-state (a real bargain), strengthened need-based and merit-based aid, and an upgraded honors college. Financially it’s in much stronger shape than most state universities, and it’s making aggressive moves in faculty hiring, ambitious new programs, a revamped undergrad curriculum, and marketing its business, engineering, and biological sciences colleges which are very strong. Plus it’s got a very marketable location in one of the nation’s most liveable big cities.</p>
<p>The things that makes me question USNWR’s methodology more than anything are the schools that undergo big swings in either direction. Drexel is up 19 slots; BYU is down 34. What happened at those schools? Did all the best professors leave BYU and get jobs at Drexel? </p>
<p>Universities change slowly. I can see some school moving up say ten spots over the course of a decade or so, but when some school makes a double digit move in a single year I tend to wonder less about what’s going on at the the school and more about what’s going on at USNWR.</p>
<p>The lack of black, hispanic, and native american students, as well as women, at Caltech makes it nearly impossible for the school to attract the brightest of them in the first place. I know many students, many many students, men and women, urm and not, who would attend MIT but not Caltech because the school is not consistent with their values of diversity. </p>
<p>As Bay said, 24 of the 25 top schools agree that ethnic and racial diversity is beneficial in a student body, the fact that YOU trivialize it into simply skin color only demonstrates your ignorance. I also agree that gender diversity is indispensable. </p>
<p>Like Bay, If valuing racial diversity puts me on the side of Harvard, Princeton, Yale, Stanford, and MIT, all universities by most measures outperforming Caltech, then I can deal with that. </p>
<p>On a more relevant note, Stanford should be number 1. :]</p>
<p>As someone said above, it doesn’t seem much of a big deal if a school rises from 120th to 110th except for that school, same thing goes for a school rising from 70th to 60th. After all, people don’t seem to care much after top 30 or so, not being able to differentiate beween 80th and 90th ranked schools and so forth. Every school is trying to climb up the ranking at the same time so the ranking does not change much from year to year, for the top 30 at least. Below that, changes may not mean much for general public unfortunately.</p>
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</p>
<p>Not according to the USNWR rankings, which is the topic of this thread.</p>
<p>Don’t ever forget that the most important criterion for judging schools is how good an education they would provide YOU. If you want to major in English, you are not benefited if your university has the best veterinary school in the world. Don’t be fooled into thinking that number 110 would necessarily be better for YOU than number 140.</p>
<p>I think it’s perfectly fine that Caltech is ranked highly on USNews. Granted, it does have a rather limited scope, but it’s dead excellent at what it does. The USNWR ranking is for National Research Universities, which Caltech is. Even though I personally wouldn’t have considered Caltech for several reasons, contending that it doesn’t belong in the top 10 is narrow-minded. For all the hubbub about lack of racial diversity, still 6% of its class is considered URM (and many more Asian American) and 37% women. Indeed, for a school that prides itself on math and science at the most rigorous level, to get any URMs at all and more than 15% of its class being women is a huge achievement! If you don’t believe this, look at how many scientists and engineers in America are male and White/Asian. Especially considering Caltech’s small class size and applicant pool it is (in my opinion) doing what it needs to do increase diversity. For those who don’t know Caltech offers scholarships to minorities and women whom are admitted to attend. To lower the bar of admission for minorities and women in the admissions process significantly would be detrimental to those students, they’d probably fail out. Caltech is NOT like HYPS or even MIT some would say in the difficulty of curriculum. No one is denying that Caltech is a niche school, but it certainly is a first tier university and deserves to be ranked as such.</p>