Should Tufts be Ranked Higher?

Yes I recruit for corporate finance roles on a regular basis. At my Fortune 50 company, they periodically reviewed US News rankings, as well as employee performance, to determine where to recruit.

If we were located in New England, or a senior manager had a relationship at Tufts, we may recruit there. Then, overtime we determine what the quality of output is from the ones we get at Tufts vs other schools. Maybe we’d get the cream of the crop at UMass but the leftovers at Tufts. Maybe not.

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What would you say are the other corporate urban universities beyond NYU, BU and GW?

Northeastern

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Pitt - not urban like GW/NYU but in the city. Charleston not corporate - but the school is smack downtown.

It sounds as if top stats are now a dime a dozen, in which case it’s not surprising that elite institutions discount them. That, however, probably prejudices students who are truly exceptionally bright but whose social skills are inadequate to impress pedagogical bureaucrats aka many teachers, guidance counselors and college admissions officers.

Another possibility is that colleges don’t really want “grinds” if they can admit “leaders” who will better publicize their institution’s reputation in the long run or make more money and donate more to the school. In which case maybe we need to reexamine the nature and purpose of higher education. Is it really to churn out successful… politicians?

If academic prowess doesn’t deserve priority, perhaps colleges and universities would do better simply to employ an admissions lottery. That is, if they really believe the education they offer is suited to a broad swath of applicants.

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Will it be hard to get in with SAT 1420?

Hard yes as it’s below the 25th percent. But it’d be hard even with a 1500. But 25% of its kids are below 1450 so not impossible.

Take out your SAT score. Tufts is just a hard get. For most anyone.

Good luck.

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Why wouldn’t they be categorized as a National University? They certainly don’t meet the criteria for the LAC category – far too many students, healthy percentage of graduate students, etc. Other than being part of the NESCAC athletic league which is otherwise populated by LAC’s, I don’t see the case (and that’s a very weak one. There’s plenty of universities on the NU list that have smaller populations and at least as much focus on undergraduate education. And many NU’s have a “liberal arts” educational focus.

I do not buy into the definitions being used for a NU vs. a LAC.

Tufts is caught in the middle, but besides the CS and engineering majors - most everyone is liberal arts.

Not really, but if you see more than I do - maybe they are in the wrong category, too.

All the other major rankings don’t distinguish between NU’s and LAC’s, so there’s plenty of solutions for those who don’t like the separation. Though typically the LAC’s do worse in those rankings, particularly near the top. It’s hard to compare an undergraduate only school with a couple thousand students or less with massive research universities.

I went to UCLA and they called themselves a Liberal Arts school (at least the College of Letters and Science). Regardless of how you label it, the distinction USN is making has more to do the size of the colleges and whether they are undergraduate teaching-centric. I’ve had two kids so far almost exclusively apply to LAC’s and that definition clearly defined what they were looking for in an LAC.

How would you like to define and divide the list?

This is a silly discussion from ages ago, and this does not answer the OP’s question, so happy to take it to pm.

Consider the following before you reach out:

UCLA has 25k+ students and Tufts has 5k.
Does the college have a business school is often an acid test?
Do 3/4 of the total school major in liberal arts?
US News rankings seems to help you form opinions (mine as well to some extent) but it no longer holds much weight with experts for a variety of reasons.
NASCAC is not just a conference. They really only let in New England Liberal Arts colleges. Ask Babson.

Tufts own website says they have over 11,000 students, not 5K, split nearly equality between undergraduate and graduate (whereas the schools in the USN LAC category are principally undergraduate).

Just based on undergraduate population alone, Tufts is larger than half of the top 10 NU’s in USN’s list. Inclusive of graduate it has more students than Princeton, MIT, CalTech, Dartmouth, Brown, Rice or Notre Dame from the top 20. Should all those also be LAC’s? If so, the distinction USN is making starts to become meaningless. All of those schools with large graduate populations and research resources are going to be a totally different experience than going to Williams.

It’s clear you have a different take on how to define their categories but I’m not sure that take is helpful for students trying to judge between various small undergraduate-centric colleges, which is what the list is accomplishing presently.

Tufts is not a LAC - but why does it matter?

US News shouldn’t matter.

Schools excel at what they do - some are research, some are comprehensive, some are LACs, and some are hybrid.

US News even gives us regional colleges and regional universities - my daughter goes to one that bills it self a public LAC yet it’s #8 or 9 on regional universities - but vs. others it compares to, has a larger geographic footprint.

In the end, US News publishes a magazine and they make stuff up.

As to the question as to whether or not Tufts should be ranked higher - well, again, it’s a ranking…so whatever they decide are the inputs but will give the outputs.

I, for one, think the classifications are silly. Don’t tell me you are 28 in one category. What are you overall?

I can’t compare the #1 in the South to the #200 nationally, etc. Which is higher?

Just throwing in some needless comments as I read the back and forth:)

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Thanks for your thoughts. I understand the differences quite well, but no reason to debate each other. As far as whether my comments are helpful to students in choosing schools, that was not my objective or the OP’s. Start a thread and let’s see what you got!

For my D22, it was good enough that Tufts was a well-ranked school; it didn’t matter if it was #5, #20 or #35. In fact she chose Tufts over colleges that were ranked higher in various published rankings because she liked the school.

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me too!

US News uses the Carnegie classifications, which are based on research activity, and then renames them. Carnegie actually has 2 categories for research universities but US News lumps them all together.

Tufts appears at #49 in a newer contribution to college rankings from WalletHub.

This represents the case in the WalletHub ranking, with only Williams, Hamilton and Swarthmore placing in the top 25. Note, however, that colleges that were fully test optional at the time from which the underlying data were collected appear to have been omitted from consideration (Bowdoin, Wesleyan, Bates, etc.).

Consider the fiasco happening at Columbia, and a few of colleges in the same boat, Tufts definitely should be ranked high.

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Well, due to Columbia’s . . . dissociation, Tufts now places an unofficial 27th in its U.S. News category.

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