<p>vossron:</p>
<p>Yep. I think US News should just give them zero points, instead.</p>
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<p>Thank you, I HAVE always thought of myself as a bit noble - perhaps all liberals have a touch of noblity, in their personal identification with those who have a tougher road. :)</p>
<p>As far as ‘protecting the simple-minded’ - look on the college selection board and archives, take a look at the posts by students referring to the US News rankings as if they were absolutely true, view the posts by students lamenting the disinterest/uninvolvement of their parents in the college selection process, find the posts by students whose parents are fixated on rankings. Not simple-minded, just young and/or uninformed and/or not willing to research in depth.</p>
<p>It is a public service to point out that the US News rankings mislead by attempting to offer absolute rankings by means of a methodology based on some factors that are not truly, and worse, the presumption that only quantifiable mesures are useful in evaluating the quality of education.</p>
<p>I say again to you, Legolas: “Caveat Emptor!” (Boycott the US News rankings).</p>
<p>ProudDad:</p>
<p>Ah, but it caused the car manuracturers to fix the problem, didn’t it? My car has perfectly good reception without an external antenna, though the laws of physics say more height equals better reception from a distance, overall. But take VW. It just went with fixed antennas. The fact is, the antennas did cause problems with repair, didn’t they?</p>
<p>As for methodology, CR reports how it gathers data. I know the probabilities.</p>
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<p>Why do I feel as if someone just came up to me and said, “I’m from the IRS, and I’m here to help you?”</p>
<p>I’ve looked at what the kids post on the boards, and what I see is very little thought given at all to useful data. Someone will post something like, “rank these colleges for me” and get a bunch of replies based, as far as I can tell, on absolutely nothing more than “gut feel.” Is that better than having information?</p>
<p>For my purposes, I use three rough measures of educational quality in the absence of other info about colleges. I feel that good things tend to happen when you put very bright kids together with very bright faculty in very small classrooms. US News either gives me that data or surrogate data that’s somewhat related.</p>
<p>As far as protecting people from themselves, I think we’d be much better off banning alcohol. Oh. Wait. We’ve already done that. My bad.</p>
<p>Tarhunt, you are a professor. Professors research everything. Why is there so little research on how an education at a particular school makes a difference in a person’s life?</p>
<p>Why is there very little research done about how well colleges actually educate our kids?</p>
<p>Why do we have to rely on magazines to tell us how good schools are instead of the schools?</p>
<p>Or, we already know how important a college education is and it doesn’t matter which college you go to?</p>
<p>Or, you just can’t quantify the value of an education?</p>
<p>And do you have any links that show the studies, that indicate the higher the SAT score of a school’s student body, the better the education your kid will get?</p>
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Actually, no. Not any more than turning on the ignition causes the car to crash. Operator error caused most. But I’ll run with your position since all that data seems to have clogged your cognitive capabilities. Job related? </p>
<p>Antenna masts have evolved because of increased use of telemetrics. Notice the stupid “shark fins” on luxury cars that receive AM, FM, Satellite radio, GPS information, and link the vehicle to the manufacturer for data swapping in some cases. VW uses a flexible 1/4-wave, base-loaded antenna because their masts sucked, too, but the glass antenna didn’t work well enough (more consumer complaints). BMW and others use a short flexible 1/4-wave mast with amplifier on their convertibles because they can’t use dual diversity antennae on vehicles with no rear glass. You can buy a fake “shark fin” antenna from J.C. Whitney, if you don’t get in to the better schools…oops, I mean if you’re a poseur. The point is, data is deceiving, and data mis-categorized is often worse than useless but can make the user assume a condition that does not exist in reality. We might call that an honest mistake or, worst case, a casualty of simplification based on cost or space. It’s even worse if an assumption is made (USNews) to arbitrarily reduce a number because they think their assumptions are correct even when absolutely no data exists. </p>
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And I suppose that will remain your little secret? I already told you how it gathers data, and that’s the truth.</p>
<p>I don’t know if it was a sign of my ADD/contrary nature in that in * some things* I am very detail oriented and want to check things out for myself- but I saw that some parents ( and many students) used US NEWs as gospel.</p>
<p>These were well educated people, but who didn’t have time or interest to search out a lot of sources for colleges, and routinely adopted the tiered model of UW NEWS when considering schools, in lieu of developing their own criteria which might have been more relevant.</p>
<p>Even after they learned of other sources of information, they didn’t seem to be able to shift their notion that something was “top ranked” or “2nd tier”.</p>
<p>Although if they used something like IQ score to rank schools, D would have fit in at the top, she had already stated that she didnt want to attend schools on the East coast, which forced me to look elsewhere besides the run of the mill guides which are generally dominated by the same few Eastern schools.</p>
<p>We didn’t know about CC- but I did run across the Laissez Faire guide to colleges- which compared similar data as USNEWS but didn’t insist that comparable schools be ranked differently
for example- in this guide Reed was found comparable to these schools( this is from 1999-2000)
</p>
<p>d:</p>
<p>To answer your questions:</p>
<p>I have been arguing for YEARS that the only way to beat the US News rankings is for colleges, themselves to come up with a better system. The reason US News is so influential is that, frankly, they’ve chosen the best available data for their rankings. I can argue with the weights. Anyone can. Since there are no valid benchmarks, there can never be a multiple regression that can predict, with some sound level of confidence, educational quality. I can argue that there are better measures, and there are. But there’s no data. </p>
<p>So, I have, many, many times, argued that colleges must produce their own data that’s BETTER than what USN produces. Look, there’s clearly a demand for useful information on colleges. If administrators want to win this battle, they must fill this demand with a more useful set of data.</p>
<p>It hasn’t happened yet for a number of reasons:</p>
<ol>
<li><p>College administrators/faculty/etc. strongly resist the idea that education is even measurable. I argue that, if it’s not measurable, there is a real question of whether it has any value at all. I think it can be measured.</p></li>
<li><p>Various colleges are not run by idiots. They know that any system their peers come up with may not be favorable to them. They’d prefer not to open that particular can of worms.</p></li>
<li><p>There really is a lot of disagreement (and rightly so) over how to measure educational outcomes, and schools that disagree tend to do so on fundamental issues that would affect measurement. For instance, schools that resist the idea of having core classes would strongly object to any measurement of information learned, because they would be at a disadvantage to those school that could design a core around the test.</p></li>
</ol>
<p>As to you rother questions, YOU don’t need a magazine to tell you anything. You can make up your mind based on any criteria you like or, for that matter, no criteria. I prefer data. US News gives me data I find useful.</p>
<p>There can be no studies of SAT scores and their impact on educational quality because there is no accepted definition of educational quality.</p>
<p>I have followed much of this discussion with amazement that USNWR is being attacked for providing data. God knows that I am not a big fan of USNWR (I think that Peer Assessment is wickedly inaccurate and misleading), but I am big defender of the more information that a student or family has in their college selection, the better and USNWR gives you a lot of information. </p>
<p>I will not defend USNWR’s ranking or its methodology (again PA and possibly biased weightings of various factors), but you must agree that its data is very, very useful to millions of students who are trying to find colleges that might be a good fit and that merit further consideration. IMO, intelligent users of USNWR know that reading it is a good FIRST step, not a last, conclusive verdict that tells the worth of any single institution. </p>
<p>If SLC does not like what USNWR is doing, then I recommend that they opt out and suffer or benefit from the fallout. For their client base, that might be fine. But for the great majority of high schoolers out there who are looking for data to compare various schools, eg, who has the better faculty/student ratio-Emory or Brown? or where is a student more likely to get stuck in large classes over 50 students-Harvard or Tufts?, USNWR provides a very valuable service. Interpret the data according to your own needs, but give us the data and more of it if possible.</p>
<p>And Sarah Lawrence College</p>
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<p><a href=“http://collegeadmissions.tripod.com/sitebuildercontent/sitebuilderfiles/laissez-faire-1999-2000.txt[/url]”>http://collegeadmissions.tripod.com/sitebuildercontent/sitebuilderfiles/laissez-faire-1999-2000.txt</a></p>
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<p>So, it’s your position that manufacturers should build machines that aren’t engineered for durability, but depend on proper operation to be durable? In other words, it would be better not to build cars to be crash worthy and protect occupants in the event of the crash, because the crash itself is “operator error.”</p>
<p>I’m sure W. Edwards Deming would have much to say about this were he still alive. I’ll just say that this opinion is why the Japanese managed to kick our butts on product quality, and are still ahead of us in many areas.</p>
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Actually, ProudDad, you supported the analogy. The antenna problem you speak of brought the ranking down. It is eay to investigate what problems caused a car’s rank to be low. If the problem is important to you, no doubt you’ll buy another model. If it is insignificant to you, like limited head room for a five foot tall woman, you will ignore the problem and evaluate the other features. My H is a “car guy” and would not give a hoot about what CR says. He gets his info from car journals, because his criteria are different than CR’s. </p>
<p>The typical SL kid is not rank-focused at all. If SL’s clearly stressed presentation of their uniqueness is genuine, rank should be insignificant.</p>
<p>Most Americans want SAT data included in rankings. If there were a huge demand for alternative rankings, no doubt there would be a version on your newstand. Why does National Review publish a college guide? Because its typical readers value very different and/or additional criteria than that used in the USNews method.</p>
<p>I would also add- that even though our experience is that there are many colleges who are looking for things besides top SAT and GPA numbers, * even* schools that are very competitive, there are probably many who are advising students on colleges who are just going by numbers and may be even referring to the US NEWs rankings at that.</p>
<p>For example, although my younger D, is a very hard worker, and bright, her test scores & grades aren’t stellar- ( however this was without accomodations)</p>
<p>Although her high school counselor didn’t know that she already had, had a sister also with learning disabilities attend college & a pretty rigorous one at that, his recommendation for D2, was based on her test scores, he has told her that if a state university is too big, that she should probably go to a community college.</p>
<p>Which is unfortunate, not because he may or may not think that a community college is a more personalized environment, but because he apparently doesnt know of the numbers of smaller LACs and even universities across the country where students with LDs can do very well.</p>
<p>Not that I consider that the fault of US NEWS, but it does dominate and it is used as a bible for people who should perhaps be consulting a much wider variety of sources- like high school counselors</p>
<p>“The reason US News is so influential is that, frankly, they’ve chosen the best available data for their rankings.”</p>
<p>It would be nice if that were so. But they MADE UP some of the data (peer assessment, for example, which they rank higher than anything else.) There is also data they have decided not to run - median income of the full-payers (which really would obviate the need for virtually all other data, beginning with SAT scores), binge drinking rates (every school has 'em, and they are collected in a standardized fashion); Pell grant data, etc.</p>
<p>Tarhunt, I finally agree with one of your posts. 
Post #128.</p>
<p>I don’t think anyone is complaining that USNews is compiling data and publishing data. Maybe, they are. </p>
<p>If USNWR willingly falsifies data, that is a big no-no in my book. If they are using incomplete data, that’s a no-no.</p>
<p>“There can be no studies of SAT scores and their impact on educational quality because there is no accepted definition of educational quality.”</p>
<p>If there is no accepted definition of educational quality, then how can you rank schools?</p>
<p>“Are there studies that show you get a better education in college if class sizes are smaller?”</p>
<p>mini:</p>
<p>Disagree. Surveying colleges isn’t “making up data.” It’s getting original data. I like the PA. I think the rankings are better with than without it. You disagree. Fine.</p>
<p>As for median income, it would serve as a proxy for much of the other data, but given the availability of the other data, why use a proxy? And why just full payers? That can be a relatively small % of students in some schools.</p>
<p>Binge drinking rates might be helpful for measuring social atmosphere, but I would find them comparatively useless otherwise. Pell Grant data would be useful only as a proxy, as well, to me. </p>
<p>I’ve said it until I’m sure people are sick of it. As a gross measure, I look for brilliant students, brilliant faculty, and small class rooms. US News either gives me that data or reasonable proxies for that data.</p>
<p>d:</p>
<p>I think the real issue is that some people find the data useful and, just because you don’t, you want to deny us that data.</p>
<p>Sorry. Got a problem with that.</p>
<p>There is also date from the National Survey on Student Engagement (NSSE), which is on perceived educational quality. Some of the so-called “elite” schools refuse to participate, so USNWR could just assume they are a standard deviation lower than their peers. 
The Consortium on the Financing of Higher Education (prestige privates) on student evaluations of academic quality and quality of campus life. (Harvard finishes 27th - don’t let anyone tell you that they always finish in the top 3, 'cause it isn’t true.) </p>
<p>“Are there studies that show you get a better education in college if class sizes are smaller?”</p>
<p>I doubt there are many folks willing to go out on a limb to tell you for certain what a “better education” is. (and I’d go further and suggest it is debatable whether it is to be obtained at colleges at all, but I’m on the wrong website.)</p>
<p>“Disagree. Surveying colleges isn’t “making up data.” It’s getting original data. I like the PA.”</p>
<p>They made up the questions, they made up the assumptions behind the questions, they assumed that the Dean of Bowdoin can find Albertson College on a map - they assumed they are peers, they didn’t weight for knowledge.</p>
<p>I guess I could make an assessment of the value of a Mazzerati - since I drive a car, I’m a “peer”, and it doesn’t matter than I don’t think I’ve ever seen one.</p>
<p>If you simply run two sets of data - median income of the full payers, and the percentage of the full payers, and combine in a single algorithm, you’ll get a ranking that looks remarkably like USNWR’s, without any of the fuss. (though Berea will suffer. ;))</p>
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Doesn’t matter. Most people want smaller classes, so USNews is viewing small size as a plus. </p>
<p>My friend’s D is sick to death of being in a very small, all-girl Catholic school. One of her criterion? — “I want to be anonymous. I’m sick of everyone being in my face, in my business. I want to sit in a big lecture hall & disappear.” She went right to the size data to get ideas.</p>
<p>I don’t want you to be denied the data. I do want USNWR’s data to be accurate before it is published.</p>