Molloy, Adelphi, SUNY-Farmingdale. The three Long Island schools with nursing programs all finished in top 150. My wife has a family member that graduated Molloy nursing. Got a job paying over $100k right out of school. I live near Farmingdale. Most of the kids from our high school that go there use it as a community college substitute - closer than Nassau or Western Suffolk CC. No one is picking it over Binghamton. Or Binghamton nursing.
Montclair State is on every list these days. I have a funny feeling the school may be doing a good job. Also could see a lot of Jersey kids not liking the Rutgers campus and looking for other state options.
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Whether nursing program at college A is more/less desirable or better/worse than nursing program at college B is near irrelevant for the rankings. What is relevant is the % of graduates that pursue nursing or other field associated with higher income, and whether the college is located in a region for which nurses tend to have higher salaries, such as NYC. Stats along these lines are below, using College Scorecard for salary. I have no idea whether WSJ is also using College Scorecard since that is not listed in the methodology cut and paste. I also donât know what year after graduation they are using, so Iâll choose College Scorecard default.
- Molloy (#75) â 82% admit rate, $78k (all grads), $113k nursing, 47% of grads are nursing majors
- Adelphi (#112) â 66% admit rate, $75k (all grads), $114k nursing, 37% of grads are nursing majors
- Farmingdale (???) â 64% admit rate, $70k (all grads), $112k nursing, 6% of grads are nursing majors (most common major is business)
- Binghamton (???) â 38% admit rate, $80k (all grads), $95k nursing, 5% of grads are nursing majors
Based on the bits that have been posted about methodology, I would have expected Molloy to have highest WSJ ranking, which seems to have occurred. 47% of grads at Molloy are nursing majors with an average early career salary of $113k. Half of grads being nursing majors in a region that pays well for nursing results in an average salary that is far above expectations based on selectivity, with their 82% admit rate. Among >80% admit rate colleges, I expect Molloy does quite well in average early career salary stats.
However, the 53% of Molloy grads who do not major in nursing often donât fare as well. For example, the 2nd most popular major after nursing is drama, with an average salary of $17k and high rate of not being employed.
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Farmingdale was 113 and Binghamton 120. Iâd be interested in seeing what got Farmingdale that high. Local salaries help. The local hospital groups know that local cost of living is a burden on new graduates.
For some folks, youâre definitely right.
But I think thereâs a definite population of people who are more discerning than that. @Blossom has mentioned how their family was willing to pay top dollar for rigor, but not for college lifestyle perks. When my family has had to select or rank schools for our kid, itâs one of the factors thatâs come strongly into play. And when one thinks of the âhidden gemâ schools from a CTCL or Jeff Selingoâs new âDream Schoolsâ or however it happens to be identified, itâs an indication that the schools are doing better than expected or are providing good rigor or support or something that makes them a better value proposition than other comparable schools.
And although CC is awash with folks aiming for a Top X school, there are also plenty of families whose kids are not candidates for schools with a sub-15% acceptance rate and are looking for ways to identify ways to differentiate between schools in ways that matter.
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You are spot on and I think are doing a better job of capturing the thinking of most wealthy folks than the notion that all they care about is rankings. As a parent who will not be eligible for need based financial aid anywhere whose kid goes to a high priced quality independent high school and who also went to an Ivy himself, I can confirm that most of the parents I know think about it the way youâve laid out and are not just obsessed with rankings. Do many of them start the process with an Ivy or bust mentality in 10th or early 11th grade? Sure. But what the âall the wealthy care about is rankingsâ crowd on here miss or forget, is that wealthy people also have the most expert guidance through this process. If in private school they often have excellent college counselors who both apprise them of the harsh reality of top ranked school admissions, and also highlight the value of less prestigious schools that would be excellent choices for their particular kid. If they are in public school, many of them pay for expensive private college advisors who do the same. Even some of the private school families layer a private college advisor on top. In short, most wealthy folks do not go through this process blind solely based on their amateur opinions of the process. They have quality experts at their disposal. Very few end the process thinking the only good school for their kid is one of the top ranked ones. And many of them figure out quickly that the top ranked schools are plainly out of reach for their kid unless they can donate a building this year. So, they learn the value of other options.
And, I will say that my own familyâs experience is an example of this (though in fairness we were never Ivy or bust). It is the college counselor who brought an excellent lower ranked school that is a perfect fit for our D26 to our attention. It is now tied as her top choice school and we all prefer it to most higher ranked schools for our daughter.
Most truly wealthy people make very few major decisions based on someone elseâs generic ranking of that thing. Their kids are almost never the ones applying to all 8 Ivys, and most of them think that is foolish. They understand the value of getting and relying on personalized expertise and/or educating themselves about major decisions.
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Agree. And itâs not just wealthy- a local parochial school in my area brags that it gets over 90% of its seniors into their top choice college. Are they lying? No. Their guidance counselors are experts at sitting the kid down who is convinced that Dartmouth is his first choice and saying (in a way that the kid can hear, and process) âDartmouth isnât happening. So here is a list of 5 schools for you to research that have many of the qualities you seem to likeâ. And for the legacy kids- they know who is or isnât getting into Georgetown no matter how many parents/uncles/aunts are alums. And those are the kids who are getting excited about Holy Cross and Marist and Providence and other easier admits. Student body isnât all wealthy. But the families understand when the college counselor says âYou arenât getting into BC but you are gonna LOVE XYZ schoolâ.
Thatâs how you get 90% into their first choice- change the channel! And the GCâs are also skilled at reducing the âbunchingâ which happens at my local public HS. They know that half the class isnât getting into Penn. Itâs not happening. So they spread the wealth so to speak. The local public HS isnât in the business of telling 20 of its seniors âfind another place to EDâ. You wanna ED to Penn? Have at it.
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Thank you for this post. Totally agree it is not just the wealthy and I am glad for that. I wish everyone could get such good advising. I will say, the one trick with the 90% marketing, is that those institutions then have to be careful to not fall into the trap of steering kids away from schools where they have a decent shot, but not a perfect one, of getting in. They need to resist the temptation of encouraging the kid not to apply to the selective school where they have a 50/50 chance, and guiding them into the sure thing to keep their 90% rate.
If my kidâs school told me they get 90% into first choice, Iâd know they were good at finding great fit schools that were targets or likelies, but Iâd employ a high level of skepticism and really challenge them on providing all the details for any reach they discouraged. Iâd want to make sure they werenât just protecting their success rate.
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Agree. I know lots of families who love the schoolâs approach- reduces the stress of senior year, means that kid arenât signing up for random ECâs because they know Harvard loves ECâs, etc. Not for everyone but hey- itâs a private school, they know their student body.
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And, funny enough, if my kid went to such a school, they almost certainly would be able to count her in their 90% since one of her three literally tied for top choice is a âvery likelyâ admit for her with and admissions rate in the high 60s%. So, even if she were to get in nowhere else (unlikely because of her list), they could accurately say she got into her top choice school.
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Itâs also about how a school/gc/and kid is defining âfirst choice.â My Dâs first choice was Purdue but she did put in a hail Mary application to Johns Hopkins. Many of her classmates did the same thing so it wasnât a situation that the gcs were limiting reaches. The GCs just stressed that they were long shots and to pick a reasonably likely âfirst choiceâ.
I can see many schools marketing departments pivoting when/if kids get into the reaches about that âreallyâ being the first choice, but not vice versa.
Overall though, I think there is something to be said about that approach as it helps managing exceptions and taking a lot of pressure off the process.
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Excellent point. Thank you for highlighting that for me. Makes a ton of sense and I am 100% on board with that approach! Hadnât thought about that.
Edit: I love the idea of framing a super reach as a âHail Maryâ and the top realistic school as first choice. It actually sets the right, realistic tone and expectations.
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Sets the tone AND helps frame the kids HS experience.
Kid got promoted to shift supervisor at the Pizza store junior year- wants to work FT over the summer before senior year. Parents say noâ kid needs an âinternshipâ because âeveryone knowsâ you canât get in to BC to study finance without an internship.
GC says âshift supervisor shows tons of initiative. And whether BC is a realistic option or not- kid should do what the kid wants to do (shift supervisor at a pizza store) and not make copies and get coffee at a private wealth management firm as an internshipâ.
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The other aspect of this is that âfirst choiceâ may change between application and decision as the student finds out more about the school, changes their mind about things after admitted student visits etc.
(In a totally strict definition your first choice is ultimately the school you commit to, of course.)
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To be fair, both the school based counselors and private college consultants are well aware of the need aware colleges and those where being full pay make a difference for admissions. Applying to schools where money matters can help a kid punch above her/his weight, having myself had personal experience with this. Children of the wealthy have better access to some higher ranked schools
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Maybe things have changed while I wasnât regularly on the board (life got super busy!), but I donât sense that many folks think that wealthy people only care about rankings. Not only do the wealthy have access to lots of expert advice, but they also have the knowledge or resources to understand that there are many roads to success for their child.
I think that the concern people have for folks who are very focused on rankings are for families that arenât super wealthy (and are looking at Top X schools that arenât as well-funded as the Top X schools that are very generous in defining need). The, âweâll figure out a way to make it workâ families even if it means mortgaging our house to the hilt, tapping every relative we know for gifts and loans, and emptying our savings accounts because itâs a Top X school. This is especially common for immigrant families where the home countryâs culture around higher education is much different than in the U.S. Perhaps in the home country individuals couldnât achieve a âsuccessfulâ life without going to the countryâs Top X schools, but that is not the case in the U.S.
Additionally, I think that it can often put a ton of undue pressure on students. When a family is willing to pay $90k/year for a Top X school (out of cash on hand) but then says itâs an in-state public if you donât get in, thatâs a ton of pressure for kids. Theyâre not being told, check out a Holy Cross or a Providence or even a St. Joeâs or Xavier (the latter of two which could end up being competitive in price with a stateâs flagship cost). And it doesnât matter if their state flagship is UVA or UNC or Flagship-of-State-with-Little-Educational-RespectâŠI suspect that the message that comes across to these children is Make it big or youâre a bust. And I find that very problematic.
But, this is pretty far from the thread topic of the WSJâs college rankings. So to bring this back to relevance, I donât agree with the WSJâs methodology, or at least not with how it names their list as combined with the methodology. But I do like that they highlight different schools than just the âtypicalâ ones.
For some families, seeing that a Bentley or Loyola Maryland is doing well on metrics that count for a number of families (i.e economic ROI), then I think that it helps to equalize things a little bit between the wealthy families with the resources to understand this information (whether from the high school guidance counselors or private college counselors or their own connections/background) and the families that donât have those same resources. It doesnât fill in the whole picture, but it helps families to know that there is a broader picture and path to financial success than they thought there was.
Because The Wall Street Journal is a respected, known publication, then its rankings hold a certain weight because of that (even if their methodology isâŠsuboptimal). So if the WSJ helps less-resourced families to see additional routes to success or to help well-resourced kids feel better about attending schools with less cachet, then Iâm definitely not opposed to them.
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My immediate reaction to that is to ask if less well resourced families are usually the type who are able to get behind the WSJ paywall, thoughâŠ
I guess we think differently. Right here you are telling me - I need my kid in the most prestigious school possible. Thatâs how I read this.
Touche! At the library or with a library card that will get them through the paywall? Alternatively, via the marketing material that a college sends out when it says we were ranked X by the WSJ or the top in the state for social mobility or value added or�
Iâm going to take a wild leap of speculation here and say that most people will stick to what they can easily access at home.