What schools do you think are the most guilty of manipulating the numbers through tactics such as mass marketing campaigns, multiple ED and EA rounds, removing test requirements, etc?
What other tactics are being employed and who do you see as the best/worst at it? Is it effective in generating prestige?
Do you mean manipulating by cheating (e.g. lying about the numbers), or manipulating in ways that are not cheating?
If the latter, look at any rapid riser in the rankings (e.g. Northeastern).
Note that non-admission manipulation also exists. For example, if you look at Northeastern’s class schedule, you will find that many class sizes are capped at 19, 29, 39, 49, which are threshold numbers for being considered more favorably in USNWR’s “smaller class size” measure for rankings. Would two classes of 19 and 29 students be significantly better than two classes of 24 students each? The former is better for rankings, even if not in actual practice.
“removing test requirements”
This is a manipulation? What is your reasoning here?
UCBalumnus- Great question. I wasn’t thinking of cheating as I suspect that is rare. More along the lines of actions with no educational purpose aside from ranking outcomes. Exactly along the line of what you mentioned at Northeastern which I was unaware of.
Retiredfarmer- it depends on the rationale for going test optional. One day nevitable result is an increase in applications.
The converse is Georgetown. The don’t accept common AP, require subject tests and the submission of all results. In the world of ranking Gtown stands on principal and lowers their applicant pool at the expense of ranking standing.
Admirable but smart (certainly not avcidental)?
"I wasn’t thinking of cheating as I suspect that is rare. More along the lines of actions with no educational purpose aside from ranking outcomes. "
I suspect how you interpret the actions and the importance of certain rankings depends on if you are looking at short term and the “trees” or if you are considering the long term “forest”.
The long term view of the forest is that rankings do matter. Whether it’s reasonable or not, a higher ranking allows a college to attract a larger pool of top talent, increases alumni pride and more importantly - donations, helps with external fundraising and can even help to attract higher quality professors, leaders and speakers. So although a change made to increase ranking may not directly impact the educational quality at the college today or even tomorrow, if you’re considering the quality that the college will be able to attract and offer long term then increasing USNWR rank is a prudent move.
Northeastern is a great example. A very short time ago it had a reputation as a commuter school with almost vocational level offerings. Not a bad place at all, but not an object of desire. The changes it made to increase ranking not only resulted in some better experiences for the students, but has made it a hot ticket. And now it’s self-perpetuating. As the reputation, renown and ranking increase, it continues to attract higher quality students, faculty, leaders and internships. Money is flowing in, new facilities are being built, the quality is increasing.
So yes, it’s a focused and some would say cynical move to make changes to increase rankings. But it’s also a smart long term strategy that benefits both college and students.
Northeastern ceased to be a strictly commuter school in the mid-1960’s although it was primarily commuter until the mid-1990’s. If you consider engineering, business, nursing, pharmacy, education and computer science to be vocational level offerings then the vast majority of colleges have been vocational for a long time.
The biggest “manipulation” that Northeaster did was to get USNews to use the 6 year graduation rate instead of the 4 year rate. Northeastern’s coop program makes the 4 year rate deceptively low. This also benefitted schools like Drexel and many other colleges with optional coop programs. Forbes still uses the 4 year rate and Northeastern does not rank very high there.
I apologize for misusing the phrase, especially since it implies an insult. It wasn’t meant to be. Perhaps “regional” would be a better phrase for what I’m trying to describe. The point I’m trying to make is that it wasn’t long ago when Northeastern appealed mostly to people from the surrounding region and was viewed as a practical education, not a prestigious college that drew top performers from all over the US. It has - through conscious effort to improve its USNWR ranking - transformed itself into a school that attracts top applicants from around the country; many of those top applicants wouldn’t have known about NE previously and only discovered it because it now has an attractive USNWR ranking.
(FWIW, I’m a huge supporter of vocational education and think America needs more of it.)
“removing test requirements”
It can and has been argued that removal of some test requirements actually has some academic value as it:
1. Opens the door a crack for women in the STEM fields and
2. Does the same for other cultural groupings.
It has also been argued that SAT/ACT scores are NOT IQ test and we have reached the point where students and parents are feeding an industry which tutors students on the art of taking these test with an emphasis on speed. These test, particularly across wide tests bands, are not great predictors of academic or professional success. We need to be more creative about the student selection process in order to optimize outcomes for admitted students.
@retiredfarmer @Nocreativity1 My understanding (from reading posts on CC) is that schools removing test requirements — aka going “test-optional” – is a way to manipulate a school’s rank because the end result is an increase in the mid-50 test score ranges. If a school doesn’t require test scores, then it’s the applicants with the lower scores who will decline to submit them. Applicants with higher scores will still submit them, thus artificially raising the score range for the pool of admitted students. I’m not saying all test-optional schools do this on purpose, but I’m sure some do.
I agree that Georgetown is to be admired for their application process. My daughter was accepted there and the subject tests & the separate application required are extra effort that I think applicants would not bother with unless they were serious. It’s much harder than simply pressing a button and adding a school to your common app.
WORST - Skidmore
Then - Colby, Bates
Kenyon and University of Chicago
I think the Colby president has made a concerted effort just to increase it’s US NEWS ranking and not caring as much as the greater good of all students, and it backfired. They moved down 6 spots.
Some schools found no test required in the end had a different result than they expected and favored wealthy students. The wealthy students had the money for all the extracurricular to make up for lack luster scores. So schools that really cared became test optional, not no test required.
Many schools became so concerned with rankings that it hurt middle and lower income capable students, US News has tried to correct this with it most recent changes, because they caused the problem.
My daughter just started at the school. Her and her dorm mates’ SAT/ACT scores are crazy high. Normally, we would have looked at Bowdoin or Cornell (family school) but with Colby at a higher ranking, it was in our mix. After visiting and seeing the culture, she fell in love with the school and applied ED. It has been a great year so far. I’m sad to see it fall in the rankings b/c it really is a good school. I’m OK with the dropping of the percent admitted but really they should keep a high emphasis on the standardized tests. We come from a public high school and the kids who did well on these really were the dedicated, smarter students.
I was talking about Colby!
I was talking about Colby!
This has been mentioned before I’m pretty sure, but Penn was one of the first to manipulate stats, going more to ED and sending out more marketing material, to influence the rankings, and they were pretty open about it.
“I think the Colby president has made a concerted effort just to increase it’s US NEWS ranking and not caring as much as the greater good of all students, and it backfired. They moved down 6 spots.”
Can you be more specific about some policies that Colby has implemented to increase ratings that are not in students best interest? I have a freshman there and would love to be enlightened.
Colby has more students in the top 1% 20.4, than the Bottom 60% 11.1. This puts it at 4th in the country, a dramatic lack of economic diversity. Just think of a group of 100 students all wanting to go to Colby. 1 each representing their economic percentage. The one richest kid has a better chance than the entire 60 students from the bottom, almost by a 2 to 1 margin. Colby is need aware.
The best way before to move up in the rankings is to get full pay high test score kids, and send out marketing material to everyone even if it’s not a fit, remove any obstacles like essays, then reject them to get a lower acceptance rate. U Chicago started then trend sending tons of marketing material, posters and such to students who had no chance of getting in.
This created a cycle in which over the last ten years, colleges were moving in the wrong direction of what they themselves wanted to improve. This is why US News changed it’s ranking criteria, and I believe Colby took the biggest hit of any LAC.
Don’t get me wrong, it’s a great school. Just trying to describe why I think it took a hit in the US News rankings.
When we confuse the college selection process with the college marketing process we end up lost in the woods. This distinction is very difficult to discuss in a world full of marketing cynics
Assume for a minute, that a university really is trying to design a process which brings to the applicant pool surface students academically prepared and fired up for the programs the college believes they are actually offering. At least in the process of reading application after application, selection of the “best fit” is still the reader’s goal. With luck, and proper staffing, discussion should follow.
If rankings were not available, how would that decision process go? Now introduce the marketing issues which arise from manipulation of market variables created by any ranking organization.
We really need to break these discussions into two parts and not confuse one with the other.
Schools with large enough applicant pools, e.g., Georgetown, should be able to do this and so could 100+ others. These over worked “rejection races” are harming the selection process as they take the focus off the ball for both the university and the student.