Niche report card for your school

College Search & Lists
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This is just for fun and a laugh! What does Niche say about your kid’s (or your) school and do you agree with the grade?

I’ll start -

Purdue

Overall: A+

Professors: A+

Academics, Diversity, Student Life, Food, Value: A

Sports: A-

Campus, Party Scene: B+
Safety: B
Dorms: B-
Location: C+

The only one that seems really off to me is safety. I would give Purdue an A. They typically top the the list of safest campuses in the US.

Dorms are highly variable. My D was thrilled with her dorms all three years she was on campus but she got lucky with honors and lottery housing numbers. And there were many years of overcrowding before the new dorms were built so that grade does make sense to me.

She wanted a rural college town so the location totally worked for her but I can see where some wouldn’t be excited about being in the middle of rural IN, so that also makes sense!

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Tulane

Overall: A+

Academics, Party Scene, Student Life, Location: A+

Diversity, Campus: A-

Athletics: B+, Value & Campus Food: B-

Dorms: C+, Safety: C

I think a couple are off.
Diversity at an A-, this should be a B- (at best). Look around the campus and it’s pretty homogenous.
Dorms at a C+, it’s been this grade for a while now and I don’t think it takes into consideration 4 brand new dorm buildings (knocked down several old buildings). The freshman dorms are still old-school community living but after that it’s not bad. Give it a B.

The A+ Location is balanced off with the C in Safety. On campus safety is pretty good but very close proximity to other area’s that make it such a great place to be means that it comes with other elements that students need to be aware of.

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For people who are reviewing a school’s Niche entries, it would be helpful to comment also on the accuracy of the “holistic” parts of the Niche entry, for example:

  • In the Students category, “What one word or phrase best describes your school?”
  • If you then click on Read more about the students, “What one word or phrase best describes the typical student at this school?”
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William and Mary A+

  1. Value grade A minus

  2. Diversity grade A minus

  3. Campus grade C+

  4. Athletics grade B

  5. Party Scene grade B

  6. Professors grade A

  7. Location grade B+

  8. Dorms grade D+

  9. Campus Food grade D+

  10. Student Life grade A minus

  11. Safety grade B+

What one word or phrase best describes the typical student at this school? Passionate, intelligent, TWAMP–This sounds about right!

I think the Dorms and Campus Food grades are out of date by a couple of years. Several brand new dorm complexes have opened over the past two years. There is only one freshman complex that is considered not desirable. Got a new food provider two years ago which has improved that aspect greatly. Not sure about the C+ in Campus.

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I suppose my school - or schools - were so long ago - they don’t count. My son’s school was Alabama:

Overall A

Academics A-

Value B ; I find this curious - if you’re a full pay sure, but so many are heavily discounted due to merit, hence the geographic diversity that probably is as widespread as nearly any school because of it.

Diversity A- I think that will be surprising to some - but it’s geographic and racial, etc.

Campus A+ - wasn’t my favorite, but it’s as clean and pristine as Disneyland

Athletics A+

Party Scene A+

Professors A

Location B+

Dorms A - but for kids in Honors, I’d go A+ (own room, shared bathroom with 1)

Food A

Student Life A+

Safety B-

Three top words:

  1. Friendly 35%
  2. Enthusiastic 15%
  3. Southern Football Fanatics 12%
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S24 is at WashU:

Overall Niche Grade: A+

  1. Academics: A+

  2. Value: A+

  3. Diversity: A+

  4. Campus: A+

  5. Athletics: A-

  6. Party Scene: A-

  7. Professors: A+

  8. Location: A

  9. Dorms: A+

  10. Campus Food: A

  11. Student Life: A+

  12. Safety: B+

My commentary:

Wow, Niche really likes WashU! I think in some sense consistently high grades makes sense–it is a very well-resourced institution and has used those resources aggressively in pretty much all the ways that tend to matter to college students. Also to be fair, most CC kids are in fact going to schools which are somewhere in the top “A” range among all US colleges. So at least mostly As is expected given how select this group is to begin with.

Anyway, I would have one note about “Value”–obviously that depends on what you have to pay, and what you want to pay in general for a college experience. If you are getting good aid, it could be a great deal. If you are full pay, well, it is a luxury expenditure. But as they sometimes say, at least you can see where the money is going.

In terms of diversity, it does have solid diversity in a number of ways, but it remains on the low end in terms of lower-income students among its usual peers. It is working on that but so are they, so it is a bit of a “tail-chase engagement” problem.

Finally, athletics can be great in a participatory sense. Spectator sense? Not so sure about that.

Top words:

For “school” based on 106 responses

  • Work-hard/play-hard 38%

  • Opportunities 21%

  • Unbelievably Friendly 15%

  • Happy 7%

  • All work, all play, no sleep 5%

  • intense 5%

  • Home away from home 4%

  • Underrated 3%

  • Strict 2%

  • Fast-paced 1%

  • highly competitive 1%

For “students” based on 104 responses:

  • Work-hard/play-hard 27%

  • Well rounded, smart, down to earth 23%

  • Hard-working 16%

  • Hard-working and helpful 10%

  • Work-hard, friendly 6%

  • All-work, all-play, no-sleep 5%

  • Nerdy 5%

  • Wealthy 4%

  • Stressed 2%

  • 2 types: smart, kind, & friendly OR nepo baby 1%

  • Nerd 1%

  • Outgoing 1%

My commentary:

This actually feels pretty accurate to me. I think WashU is a bit of a work hard/play hard sort of school, but with a big side-helping of Midwest Nice. Like that friendly, chill person on your club sports team may also be a pre-med or engineering major.

Of course if you are happily that sort of person yourself, the combination of social life, support, and mentoring you can get from your fellow students might be top notch. If you are inclined to excessive stress/anxiety, and/or are a bit of a lone wolf type, it may be a less suitable environment for you.

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W&M has one of my favorite campuses anywhere! But that can be a very personal thing, I guess.

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Yeah - i’ll look at two schools with a similar campus metric -

W&L and Bowdoin as an example. One I thought was stunning. One blah. Both an A-.

Purdue is - again, in my and my kid’s opinion - really nice. A B+. But UIUC - he couldn’t wait to leave - and A-. And some posters have noted Purdue is clean and looks well kept while UIUC looks run down. So ….to each their own.

If you google Niche + best campuses, you’ll get a stack rank. Of course it depends on how they classify. You can’t put the link here but the top 10 are and I’ll be interested to see how many are in the other top rankings:

  1. UCLA - fine in my opinion - not a biggy
  2. Liberty - haven’t seen
  3. Cal Baptist - haven’t seen
  4. Va Tech - I think the nicest large campus in America
  5. Wash U - very nice - but very different than Va Tech - so how do you compare?
  6. Alabama - we’ve read many posters on here say once their kids visit, game over.
  7. TCU - it’s fine
  8. JMU - i loved it - especially the quad but my kid hated the freeway running through it
  9. Auburn - very nice
  10. UGA - I liked it a lot - mainly how they wedge the statium in so effortlessly…but top 10….hmmmm

OK the next 10

Ole Miss, MId American Christian in OKC, Yale, FIU, The Masters (in Santa Clarita, CA), USC, SMU, UCF (not buying that…it’s nice but not that nice), Vandy (ehhhh) and Grand Canyon.

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My daughter just graduated College of Charleston

Overall - B

Academics - B ; I’ll disagree because she was in two groups which were subsets of Honors…so the academics are there if you’re a top student and get into these sub groups

C+ Value - for us, an A+ but given regular tuition and cost of the area - that’s fair.

Diversity - B+

Campus B+ - very subjective. My daughter thinks it’s stunning, I think it’s gross.

Athletics B+ - but you have no football team :slight_smile:

Party Scene A - maybe understated - you’re a block from King Street

Profs B my kid will disagree but…i’m sure like every school they have em good and not so good - she had one really really bad one in the poli sci dept.

Location A - if you want to be in a lively city, it can’t be beat. If you want to be in the sticks, it’s not for you.

Dorms C- ; I mean I wouldn’t let my dog live in their dorms…but I did my daughter !! They were uninhabitable. So C- or F must be the same. That was the Honors dorm. I know they are renovating one a year.

Food C+

Student Life A-

Safety C+ - well, you’re in the big city.

Top 3

  1. Friendly for the most part
  2. Motivated
  3. In Search of something

I think the male/female ratio should also factor into kids - if you’re a hetero guy and go to C of C, you’re going to have a good shot at getting a girlfriend if you want one!!!

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For any college with a robust honors program, at least in theory, there should obviously be separate honor program grades.

In practice–I don’t know if they even considered it, but even if so, they already have a small sample size problem. So maybe they don’t feel like they have the data for it.

Who knows. But in general, I would agree it would be a very bad idea to rely just on these overall grades for robust honors programs.

And then of course that can be true of specialty schools, certain restricted majors, or so on. Grades at the level of the whole undergrad program are of limited use for any of that.

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I must say that this Niche rating system seems especially ridiculous (not that they all aren’t in some way). Here’s Exhibit A:

Fordham University, a school often recommended on this forum is ranked #32 in the NYC Tri-state area. Here are some of the schools ranked ahead of it:

CUNY Lehman
Seton Hall
Kean
Molloy
Montclair State
Monroe (a for profit college)
SUNY Farmingdale
St. Joseph’s University, Brooklyn
American Musical & Dramatic Academy
St. Elizabeth
Hofstra

Is this someone’s idea of a bad joke? And these aren’t even the nit picks, but just the most egregious cases which in no way should have been ranked ahead of Fordham . . . and others below them.

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I’m guessing there’s a weighting system for each metric.

Fairfield has 3 As (all A-) and 3 Bs (a B+, B, and B-) on the cover page.

Fordham has one A (diversity), 4 Bs (2 B+, 1 B and 1 B-) and a C+.

So if the academic rank was solely looked at (which they got a B+, the rank might look different).

Here are the weightings - as usual, it’s always in the methodology - and some always disagree.

The Best Colleges Methodology – Niche

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A weighting system which comes up with that result is obviously worthless.

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For UCLA (D22)

Academics: A+

Value: A

Diversity: A+

Campus: A+

Athletics: A

Party Scene: A+

Professors: A+

Location: A+

Dorms: A+

Food: A+

Student Life: A+

Safety: B-

Obviously Niche is a fan. But I’d say the dorms are decent but not on the same level as the food—which is truly special and deserves the A+. Comparatively, the fact that they guarantee campus housing for 4 years, have a variety of options for housing, it’s all located together on the hill—as far as UCs go, this is among the best.

For Value, it gets an A+ from us, as in state parents enjoying tuition frozen at $13k a year, we can’t ask for anything better.

The rest seems pretty on point to me. We are happy customers.

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