<p>Well, let’s toss it back to POIH if he is still listening / watching this thread.</p>
<p>What made your spouse think that HYPSM was the be-all-and-end-all ticket to success in this country? Where did she come up with that impression? Has living in America changed / softened that perception somewhat? What does she think happens to smart kids who go on to “mere” top 20 or top 30 schools that aren’t HYPSM? </p>
<p>Or, as I read in another article, “a sociocultural VIP room which happens to offer classes.”</p>
<p>PG…well, we are back to the beginning of this thread when I also said that my family had never read the published rankings and I don’t think we are alone by a long shot. My kids didn’t go to local schools, but we still never read rankings and were not even aware of them. They learned of more schools through directories that have hundreds of schools in them and in D2’s case, she was exposed to some MT colleges having gone to a theater program out of state for years where many go onto colleges for this degree program. Also, I learned about more MT colleges 8 years ago right here on CC (which, by the way, in the 8 years I have been reading and participating here, has become the best resource on colleges for MT anywhere)!</p>
<p>The USNews or now this Forbes ranking seem to be talked about a lot on CC and thus a long time ago when I found CC, I discovered that this is a big deal in some circles, but just not in mine.</p>
And yet by all reports they make a ton of money on this issue. Gordon Gee even claimed it carried them through the year, otherwise they lose money. At least I think it was him. In any case, while you may be right, it is not just noise either. It has enough of a real impact to apparently change decisions and people’s behavior. I actually do worry that if they are using 4 year graduation rates, schools that are offering innovative programs such as those that require 5 years but result in a Master’s Degree might decide they are taking a hit in their ranking. Either that, or they “cheat” and assume that person would have graduated in 4 years anyway. It has been established that the very existance of this measuring system has caused changes similar to what I just mentioned. These things do not exist in a vacuum, and while it is easy to say the administrations should be “above” that sort of thing, it absolutely is not that easy.</p>
<p>there are also colleges that try to get their names in the newspapers, to attract applicants. I am even told some spend considerable amounts on sports to get name recognition and attract applicants. </p>
<p>Shall we ban (or at least discourage) newspaper fluff pieces on colleges, and TV coverage of college sports? </p>
<p>College applicants are humans, and many are going to use reputation/prestige etc either as first cut, or even (less justifiably IMO) as a key factor in the final decision. College admins are humans, and will game whatever it is that drives decisions. </p>
<p>If USNWR gets colleges to focus more on 4 yr graduation rates, and student faculty ratios, even if there is a gamey element to how they do that, instead of focusing on the football team, or trying to find the one student who will make it to the White House, I am not sure its leading higher ed in the wrong direction.</p>
<p>Well, at the risk of saying something bad about my own alma mater (a top 20), when I was solicited for a phone call to raise money, the student said something about how it would boost it in the ratings because the ratings are partially determined by % of alumni giving, so could I please just spare a few dollars, blah blah blah. And I have to say it personally turned me off because I really don’t care what my school does in the ratings as long as it stays in the same general ballpark of quality - but I’m sure that it did work for other alums.</p>
<p>I’m with PG on USNWR. Why blame a commercial product that meets a market need using a disclosed methodology? The need is an answer to the question – “What are the best colleges out there?” Honestly, most of us have asked this question at least once at some point. Apparently, enough people are asking this question (or asking this question repeatedly every few months ;)) that the market for college rankings is big enough for multiple players. Some ask this question because their kids are about to enter college for the first time and they really don’t have a clue. Confirmation bias and/or insecurity may be driving others to ask this question. Published college rankings is a “consumer beware” issue, not unlike other commercial products. Since colleges are selling more or less comparable services, I don’t see why they can’t be ranked like other types of commercial services. Whether we would like them ranked in some order or whether we use the rankings for anything is just a personal preference.</p>
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<p>There is a problem with the above analogy. Albeit incorrect, believing in the “only HYPSM lead to sure success” model will not make a student miss the mark on American college admissions as long as the student also applies to some “backups”. At least the work goes into making one admissible to HYPSM can be leveraged for admissions to other colleges. However, spending effort on volunteering and tennis in China is completely missing the mark on Chinese college admissions.</p>
<p>Agreed - it’s just such a shame that so many kids in those circumstances feel bad that they’ve only gotten into their “backup” as opposed to reveling in the fact that they are still at the very top, elite schools in this country.</p>
<p>PaperChasePop - Becasue presumably news magazines are supposed to report news. This is not news, this is a manufactured product that is misleading and arbitrary. Please define “best”. How can one school be “best”? If this were being published by the National Inquirer then more people would look into the details and be wary. Many won’t precisely because it is USNWR. If reputations matter for colleges, they matter for news magazines too. The very fact that it has created a frenzy and changed behaviors, not always for the better, simply proves the point. It is very easy to say, as Brooklynborn did, that if it makes them focus on certain issues it cannot be bad. But yes, it can. It can stifle innovation because these ranking systems can only use the past in their methodology. That makes it very different than the car analogy that was used before (which didn’t occur to me at the time). One can test drive a car before rating it, so something really new can be judged on its merits. This ranking is mostly stats driven, and so that won’t work here. Do we really want our universities to be that “cookie-cutter” because they feel they have to stay up in the rankings? And before someone says that they should just ignore the rankings or that it shouldn’t affect their decisions, remember that jobs can depend on it. Unless you feel that you can educate the whole world on this topic, alumni can be very sensitive to these issues. Wrong as it may be, that is a total reality. You really don’t think people will complain if an administration “let’s” the school’s USNWR ranking slip from #27 to #33, or whatever?</p>
<p>It is great that many of you say that the methodology is all explained and people should use it only as a guide. In a “perfect world”, sure. In a perfect world I also understand all the fine print on all the things the bank, the wireless company, Yahoo, etc. make me sign or agree to. It is easy to say, not so real in everyday life. Even if a person reads everything that goes into the USNWR rankings, it is not reasonable to expect them to understand each factor’s impact and all the flaws and caveats the way those of us that spend hours and hours on here do.</p>
<p>"Becasue presumably news magazines are supposed to report news. "</p>
<p>if you looked at all the cover stories on Time and Newsweek over the last 40 years, I think you would find that relatively few of them are actually about the week’s news. They are general interest mags to a very considerable degree. USNWR in some ways more so.</p>
<p>" Many won’t precisely because it is USNWR. If reputations matter for colleges, they matter for news magazines too. The very fact that it has created a frenzy and changed behaviors, not always for the better, simply proves the point. It is very easy to say, as Brooklynborn did, that if it makes them focus on certain issues it cannot be bad. But yes, it can. It can stifle innovation because these ranking systems can only use the past in their methodology. "</p>
<p>to rise in the rankings they need to improve peer assesment and acceptance percentage. Innovation is one way to try to do that. I am pretty sure that the President of the school my DD is enrolling in is trying to increase their USNWR rank. That has not resulted in them shying away from innovations.</p>
<p>"It is great that many of you say that the methodology is all explained and people should use it only as a guide. In a “perfect world”, sure. In a perfect world I also understand all the fine print on all the things the bank, the wireless company, Yahoo, etc. make me sign or agree to. It is easy to say, not so real in everyday "</p>
<p>In the real world, absent reporting by USNWR, Fiske, etc many more would be focusing on past reputation. Absent USNWR more would use Fiske, Princeton, etc which AFAICT are less transparent.</p>
<p>LOL, I am talking about USNWR because it is the most popular. I am not in favor of any of them. I understand they are a reality and will continue to be. That doesn’t mean I won’t criticize them.</p>
<p>As far as innovation, I am willing to wager that if a proposed innovation came head up against a significant USNWR factor, it would at least be discussed at extreme length regarding that impact and possibly killed because of it. Things like that happen all the time. Acceptance percentage is irrelevant here, I don’t see how innovation does that. the school decides who gets in. Peer assessment assumes that these other schools both know about what is going on at the other schools and answer honestly. We have been over that.</p>
<p>I honestly don’t know what you are talking about regarding the covers. It is about news, although maybe not that week’s news. No one said it had to be about that. You and I may think they are more opinion mags than news vehicles, but they have, or at least used to have, reputations for accurate reporting. Even today with those magazines, it is pretty clear which pages are fluffy opinion type of reports and which are supposed to be hard news story with accurate, checked factual material. USNWR has even more of a reputation for being about straight news. It is perception that counts here, and I think too many people take USNWR as authoritative to ignore that factor.</p>
<p>PG, would you have reacted differently if the young voice had told you that your contribution would not only help your alma mater in the USNews rat race, but that the results of the rankings might influence the bond ratings in a positive way? The savings from a lower interest rate might in turn allows the school to spend more money on financial aid, and this financial aid might take the form of a work study job that entails calling alumni for a few dollars? </p>
<p>The reality is that just as the schools do look better when limiting the class size to below 20 students, the few dollars make them look better because the donations represent a direct barometer of the general happiness of alumni and their desire to make the school better for the next generations. And, fwiw, the level of the participation (more than the amount) also represents a clear indicator of the “culture” of a school as it separates the givers from the takers and reinforces the level of expectations and entitlement of the students a particular school has attracted.</p>
<p>How many more copies of the USNWR ratings issue do they sell (over and above the baseline of how many issues of USNWR are sold in a typical week), and how does that compare to the total # of families sending a student to college in any given year? (And yes, I realize there are institutional purchases, and some might purchase it for a hs soph or hs junior, but generally speaking, let’s assume it’s purchased for rising seniors.) </p>
<p>Is this a real societal “problem” or is this an issue only for the small group of rising seniors who are aspiring to the top 60 or so schools?</p>
<p>Because this strikes me as similar to the “oh noes commonapp enables people to apply to a zillion schools.” An issue for the small slice of the pie applying to elites – a non-issue in the broader scheme of college admissions.</p>
<p>xiggi - I’d have been more receptive to a whole host of different reasons other than “it’ll make the school go up in the rankings.” “It’ll help us give FA to those deserving” would have worked for me. But that’s just me.</p>
<p>"Acceptance percentage is irrelevant here, I don’t see how innovation does that. "</p>
<p>DD visits a campus. We are impressed with their innovative approach to teaching. We ask folks about it. DD applies there. One more applicant, same incoming class size, acceptance rate declines.</p>
<p>Which, BTW, has been occurring at DD’s school for several years now.</p>
<p>LOL, is society going to collapse if the USNWR keeps going? No, of course not. Is it a relatively small problem in the general scheme of the world? Lots of things are, but we argue about them endlessly anyway. In this case though, I know it has actually changed both personal and institutional behaviors, and for something as important as our universities I think that is worthy of debate. As I said (probably on the other similar thread), it does absolutely concern me that someone might have a great idea for new programs, but it never gets implemented because it will affect the graduation rate or whatever and thus put downward pressure on the ranking. There is no doubt that people try to meet goals, and if colleges make their ranking a goal (and more than a few have publically admitted this), then the USNWR rankings represent a straightjacket of conformity on our universities, at least potentially. In some ways it already has. I think that is indeed a serious issue.</p>
<p>Actually BBD, in your example your D would not have applied, did apply and got accepted, so % went up. But I get what you mean, although I think the impact of what you are illustrating on that statistic would be minimal. But you may be right. Still wouldn’t matter much, since acceptance rate is the lowest percentage item in the methodology, I think. I am talking about something that would directly impact a fairly major factor. Sure, if the factor were small enough they might just ignore the impact.</p>
<p>“You and I may think they are more opinion mags than news vehicles, but they have, or at least used to have, reputations for accurate reporting.”</p>
<p>If so, I would say those reputations are rather more inflated than the reps of any of the top 30 colleges ;)</p>
<p>Seriously, I have not taken the newsweeklies that seriously for the last so years or more.</p>
<p>USNWR is just drier. Whereas Time and Newsweek will report on some fake cultural “trend”, USNWR is more likely to have, well, a ranking of something or other. lots of things besides colleges
[Best</a> College Rankings, Best Graduate School Rankings, Best Hospitals, and Best Health Insurance Companies - US News Rankings](<a href=“http://www.usnews.com/rankings]Best”>http://www.usnews.com/rankings)</p>
<p>I mean complaining that USNWR is “fooling people”, cause they expect news and not a made up self referential story based on rankings, is like complaining that Forbes is biased towards libertarianism, or that Harpers shockingly is both liberal and gloomy, or that Slate is supposed to be about news but has all these silly little humorous culture pieces, or that TNR publishes incredibly pretentious if sometimes insightful pieces by Wieseltier.</p>
<p>"Actually BBD, in your example your D would not have applied, did apply and got accepted, so % went up. "</p>
<p>someone else who WOULD have gotten in, was rejected because DD applied. Unless you think they increased the size of the freshman class because DD applied?</p>
<p>Well, if you think USNWR has no real impact on individuals or the colleges, I think you are kidding yourself. There has been plenty of news stories out there to prove otherwise. And yes, I do think many times those impacts are negative. There have been numerous studies that show creating a ranking system has a significant air of authority about it that is different than simple opinion pieces.</p>
<p>BTW, you keep using your perception of these news magazines as the standard. That is hardly the point.</p>
<p>Your last post, they would have to be able to predict yield. They try, but it doesn’t always work. How do they know your D will accept their offer, and if she doesn’t they lost both of them.</p>
<p>“Well, if you think USNWR has no real impact on individuals or the colleges, I think you are kidding yourself. There has been plenty of news stories out there to prove otherwise”</p>
<p>I think it is clear that it is used positively by some individuals (as one tool to make the first cut, or as validation for selecting a school otherwise perceived as LESS prestigious) and negatively by others ( to make final decisions or to feel invalidated). </p>
<p>I think similarly there is indication that it leads schools to sometimes do bad things, sometimes do good things, but more often to do minor gamey things completely orthogonal to academic quality (sending out free apps to kids they know will never enroll to bump up their number of applications, for example) </p>
<p>I am not convinced the state of education in America would improve if they disappeared. I AM convinced my DD’s personal journey would have been more difficult.</p>