@Alamber2, I believe Forbes uses Payscale data, in which case, SUNY-Maritime now pips Mudd. Caltech, MIT, Navy, Stanford, and Harvard all follow close behind.
In any case, yes, the major tends to matter more than the school.
When any of these lists finds some way to measure, even subjectively, how colleges and/or universities create value by changing and developing their students during the years they are in school, and supported post graduation, instead of just measuring which places are the most elite and expensive, I’ll pay attention.
What I am asking for is difficult to measure.
So, let’s just repeat the same list year in and year out and juggle the names a spot or two to jazz things up. This should be called the most expensive college in Cali and the Northeast List.
Ranking of colleges is big business. The rankings has nothing to do with the education rather, the percentage admitted that applied. Hence why such a push to get applicants. The gut of the University is not in these rankings.
Good read that covers this and much more. Where you go is not who you’ll become, by Frank Bruni. He was a professor @ Harvard. It’s an antidote to the college admissions mani
I agree that the ratemyprofessor data is more than useless. I’m also curious of this America’s leaders list. Does anyone have a link to that?
Thanks @Alamber2 , I was shaking my head at @Much2learn’s statement too. It’s silly to say the LAC’s only matter for people seeking grad school. LOL.
@bclintonk #65 post with 2015 ranking of endowment listed in [].
- Stanford (#4 in US News) [5]
- Princeton (1) [4]
- Harvard (2) [1]
- MIT (7) [6]
- Yale (4) [2]
- Brown (14) [31]
- Penn (9) [9]
- Notre Dame (18) [12]
- Northwestern (12) [8]
- Columbia (3) [11]
All 3 rankings are not too far from one another. However, Brown does better with its money.
“underrate schools with a higher degrees of math, science and rigor.”
@alamber2 “@Much2learn, yes because an art history degree from a RU is more valuable than one from a LAC?”
@dustyfeathers “Thank you @Alamber2. Your statement, @Much2learn, maybe should be reevaluated, that LACs are less rigorous than other schools. shaking head And that what a person earns entering the market is somehow proof of that.”
The point here is that by choosing graduation rates as a criteria Forbes lowers the rankings of schools like Cal Tech, Carnegie Mellon, or Case Western. Top schools a significant portion of students focus on math, science, and engineering have higher degrees of rigor in the sense that they fail students at a much higher rate. Many of these students who are failing are standouts in high school who get methodically crushed in very difficult subjects where there is a clear right or wrong answer. The weeding out competition that happens in these classes can be significantly more brutal than anything that happens in non-stem majors.
Notice that I am not saying that all LACs are less rigorous than all U’s. I am saying that in my experience, there is no equivalent to the rigor of a Cal Tech, JHU at schools that are not stem focused. I don’t think that more stem-focused schools should be penalized for being more difficult, and non-stem programs should not be rewarded for graduating a higher percentage of students who are not stem focused.
Additionally, the Forbes ranking rewards schools who graduate a higher percentage of students within 4 years. Liberal Arts majors are more likely to graduate in 4 years because many fewer credits are required to graduate. For example, at Penn, many liberal arts majors can graduate with 32 credits, but many engineering majors require 40 credits to graduate. It is common for students in majors that require 40 credits to need an extra semester or two to graduate. Why should schools be penalized for having difficult majors with high graduation requirements? Why should schools be rewarded for not offering majors that have higher graduation requirements?
Someone correct me if I’m wrong but digging deeper into the American leaders list they completely ignored sports. I’m not sure why a viola player with the Cleveland Orchestra is more a leader than the power forward for the Cleveland Cavaliers? Or why the Emmy winner for best actor in a comedy series is more a leader than the MVP of the NFL.
I don’t get your point. You seem to think liberal arts colleges are only offering humanities.
Liberal arts colleges typically don’t have engineering, but they have the exact same biology / chemistry / physical / mathematics classes that their research university counterparts have.
Indeed, there was no distinction between my S’s “college of arts and sciences” embedded in a large research university versus my D’s “liberal arts college” when it came to majors, courses, etc. It’s just that S was on a larger campus, that’s all.
You seem to think LAC’s are some kind of different breed altogether when they’re just merely the arts and sciences subset of a research university.
And JHU is not STEM-focused. It has some great STEM problems, but the same can be said of all the RUs which ranked above it.
STEM majors at LACs are just coasting along, waiting for that easy grad school/med school admit, lol.
@Pizzagirl “You seem to think LAC’s are some kind of different breed altogether when they’re just merely the arts and sciences subset of a research university.”
Your inference is incorrect.
The point is that the ranking penalizes schools where students are disproportionately enrolled in majors with more extensive requirements or higher failure rates. Those tend to be stem-focused schools. This negatively impacts more U’s than LACs. To assess it correctly, you would, at a minimum have to control for the major selected.
When shown data showing that LAC grads have lower starting salaries, than U grads, LACs point out, reasonably, that it is actually pretty even on a major-adjusted basis. However, when the focus is graduation rates, or graduates finishing in 4 years, the pretend that they can’t understand that these need to be major-adjusted too. Why is that?
I don’t buy the argument that engineers need 5 or 6 years to finish a BS. If MIT can get engineers in and out in 4 years, OR grant a Master’s degree in 5 years, I have trouble understanding why significantly lower ranked engineering programs (many non-flagship engineering state U’s for example) seem to need 5 years and maybe an extra summer.
Either the “requirements” can’t be finished on a timely basis due to budget cuts, unavailability of labs or classrooms or instructors when needed- in which case colleges should be upfront- “you are looking at a 10 semester program and you need to budget for that”… OR the kids aren’t walking in ready to tackle college level math and science.
But the claim that “our program is so rigorous you will need five years to do a BS” seems just that to me… BS.
^ Granted, some schools have a lot of engineering students in co-op, however. MIT may not.
Neither the Payscale/collescorecard income data (10%) nor the graduation rates (7.5%) are the big ticket items here and they pretty much cancel each other out.
Even some schools who take 49% or more of applicants manage to get most engineers out in 4 years: http://www.thecollegesolution.com/where-can-you-graduate-from-engineering-school-in-four-years/
That list specifically excludes more selective schools.
Some engineering schools have programs that take 5 or 6 years due to coop and the possibility of taking the PE exam after graduation due to work exp hours accumulated during study.
^ Yes, Cincy, NEU, Drexel, etc. IMO that is different. Perhaps “4 year rate” should be redefined as “8 semester rate” for this purpose.
@blossom You probably know this, but often times the number of units required to graduate for an engineering major is quite a bit more than a non-engineering. For example, here are some MechE programs I’ve looked up:
(180 units for normal major on quarter system, 120 for semester)
UCLA - 184 units
UCSB - 190 units
Cal Poly - 202 units
SDSU - 140 (semester)
Not accounting for AP credit, Cal Poly and SDSU require more than a normal quarter/semester’s worth of units to graduate. At UCSB, a freshman MechE is taking 17-18 units their freshman year to stay on track which most people around here would not recommend doing if someone generically asks if they should take that many units.
Still the 4 year graduation rate is only 5% whereas RMP is 10% and the American leaders List is 22.5% and they seem more or just as flawed.