<p>It seems like many people on here sometimes lives by the rankings and prestige (you should go here because it’s ranked higher than this school, you should go here because it’s more prestigious than this school).</p>
<p>However, many people also blast certain schools such as Notre Dame or Washington University In St. Louis for having a rank too high in the US News (aka: a rank that does not fit its prestige), if you put so much trust in the US News rankings, you should not have the right to blast a school you view as in an overrated position because you don’t “like” the school or think the school is not “prestigious”. </p>
<p>If you want to say that Notre Dame or WUSTL (for example) is overrated, then I don’t want to see you use the US News rankings everywhere else on this forum other than those so-called “overrated” schools, there’s no point in using parts of the rankings for your own and other people benefit while blasting other parts of it. Besides, the US News rankings should be taken like everything else with a grain of salt.</p>
<p>So what if the school is intentionally playing the rankings game. I don’t see anything wrong with increasing research spending, becoming more selective, decreasing class sizes, increasing graduation/retention rates, these are all factors that every university should seek to improve.</p>
<p>Of course I know that a Notre Dame or WUSTL on CC is not very prestigious but that does not mean that the school is not excellent academically. The point of selecting a college is not prestige or what other people think, it’s finding the place that has the most opportunities available that will further your academic and professional career and a place where you can prosper and thrive.</p>
<p>I dislike Notre Dame because its religious and I think religion conflicts with true learning, so it along with Georgetown and BC should be ranked lower.</p>
<p>Basically a group of 57 elite universities (Ivy league, Stanford, MIT, Chicago, Northwestern, Georgetown, etc…) that grouped together to prevent bidding wars over promising/ridiculously intelligent students from consuming funds for need-based scholarships for poorer students and ensured the availability of aid for the greatest number of students.</p>
<p>Do you know WHY is it absolutely necessary to** prevent **a ranking war between universities? If all the universities felt compelled to bolster it’s image like WUSTL by investing in criteria deemed absolutely desirable by USNews… Think of the arms race that would ensue within the academic world. Is that just wasted funds that could easily go back to invest in good quality education that can easily be enjoyed by thousands of undergraduates like us rather than pander the pockets of some journalism company who is making money off these deals.</p>
<p>I personally believe any excessive investment in USNews deemed desirable criterias solely for the purpose of moving up in the world is just sad. If universities do not control these temptations… appropriate spending and cost allocation in Higher Education could serious be in DEEP TROUBLE.</p>
<p>Just like in the 568 Group, excessive merit aid investment in high quality students left little to no money for those who truly need need-based financial aid. Many elite universities recognized this problem and together collectively promised to practice need blind admissions. The repercussions of a “recruitment war” and a “ranking war” is too serious to even consider. Especially since universities today are LOADED with cash.</p>
<p>Pierre, I think the under/overrated stuff also stems from an innate dissatisfaction with the USNWR rankings. That’s probably why there are so many threads about making your own rankings or so many debates about how rankings should be formulated. Many CCers have enough knowledge of the top universities that they have a subconscious system for ranking them (hence the under/over) but many have trouble expressing this with stats to back it up.
My hypothesis.</p>
<p>It only takes one school to set off an arms race. Most Presidents and University CEOs know better than to invest valuable university resources on something as baloney as USNews report. While Deans obviously understand the potency of advertisement, It only takes one elite university to try to hop over another to set off an arms race… </p>
<p>It’s a known fact that Presidents report to University Board of Trustees who closely monitor the performance of the university in the USNews rankings. If University X feels pressured by a close peer who is skyrocketing into national preeminence in the rankings and is eating deep into … it could set off a chain effect that can envelop the academic world. The result would probably be reckless spending on stuff that doesn’t really pertain to undergraduate education.</p>
<p>Are you serious? That is the most hypocritical thing I have ever heard in my life.</p>
<p>Did you know that there was a time that ALL learning was sponsored by religion? The Church had a responsibility to educate people because there was no other social system that would before the 1800s and we saw considerable reform in education. Notre Dame and Georgetown honor their tradition as Jesuit universities, but they are very open-minded places that find innovative ways to mix their prestige and history with new innovations in research and discoveries that must be taught in the classroom.</p>
<p>Someone who’s on the opposite side as you are could say that secular universities have no doctrine to teach in the first place. Why don’t we just have a happy median and try and get away from the hypocrisy and ignorance on both sides?</p>
<p>Not everyone in CC thinks that way. Many think US News Rankings are trash… It’s mostly the noobs that sprout that kind of “school A is superior to school B” garbage.</p>
<p>Ampere, you’re trying to remove history from storied universities though. And you’re just being an ass, really.</p>
<p>Gryffon, I firmly believe that 75% of people on this forum are actually 14 year old kids who think it’d be really awesome to get online and trash any non-Ivy university.</p>
<p>I have no problem saying somewhere is over or underrated, and I have severe issues with anyone choosing schools based on rankings (even if they were ideal) anyway.</p>
<p>Yeah, the Jesuits are generally regarded as the best Catholic educators, so most people assume ND is Jesuit since ND is arguably the best Catholic school in the country.
I thought it was too until a few years ago when someone corrected me and got all offended.</p>
<p>@Phead128: That group of universities you mentioned is noteworthy because it was prosecuted by the Justice Department for antitrust violations. All the Ivies settled, but MIT took it to court and won.</p>
<p>Here is my theory about 568 Group. There is a secret alliance amongst the top tier schools to give each other high rankings in order to ensure that each school doesn’t jockey and compete against each other to do well in the rankings…</p>
<p>I’m pretty sure everyone in the academic circles have their friends and they do stuff together that may not necessarily be morally sound but it is in the best interest for the academic community for them to do so :D</p>
<p>One example is I’m pretty confident that top tier schools communicate with each other and secure each other top tier reviews on the USNews peer review session.</p>
<p>It’s like… I’ll help you out if you help me out kinda deal. Otherwise, it could get ugly :D</p>
<p>WUSTL has an abysmal PA score given how highly it ranks. The mindset of WUSTL is simple. Invest and pay for as many Valedictorians and NMSF as possible. Their reputation will exponentially increase in the near future due to their constant lingering among the upper echelons of USNews report. Good things has to happen right? Academic excellence and national prestige can wait.</p>
<p>UCI is trying to get it’s law school into the top 20 slots by pay full tuition for the first inaugural class of UCI Law school. Schools are willing to spend a lot of money to attract top talent… Academic excellence usually fuels interest. In UCI’s case, full tuition grants will generate excitement while academics is left behind waiting and collecting dust.</p>
<p>On another thread, I’ve been grappling with the ranking methodologies in what I think is a fairly serious way (being limited of course by time and access to data). After averaging a few different metrics in various ways, I’ve concluded that for many schools in the USNWR top-N, the rankings would be about the same regardless of which of several methods you use. This is especially true as you move toward the high (“best”) end of the list.</p>
<p>WUSTL and Notre Dame are two schools that do seem to move up or down, about 3-5 places, depending on which methods and data you use.</p>
<p>So I think one can appeal to rankings in general to advance the case for particular schools, and yet object to a too-high or too-low rank for others, without necessarily being a hypocrite. But it is better, really, to think in terms of broad ranking bands (perhaps 4-6 schools per tier within the top 25) rather than precise integer rankings.</p>
<p>And it is better to use rankings to examine how we assess quality, not to rely on them to make precise distinctions about where to apply or attend. A school ranked at number 30 may well be a better choice for you than a school ranked at number 5 (as long as you understand the factors that drive the different rankings, and conclude they are not too important to you).</p>
<p>Sophistry. You build an argument on peer assessment when peer assessment is a joke. </p>
<p>Suggesting that WashU is a select few of high fliers with the balance of the school not measuring up is not supported by facts. 95 percent of WashU students are in the top 10 percent of their class - a number that exceeds Stanford University.</p>