U.S. News & World Report Announces the 2021 Best Colleges Rankings

^Not sure what your definition of super rich is. Furthering Data’s exercise, the cost of attendance to Harvard with family gross income at $200,000 plus typical assets is $34k ($31k to parents). UCLA on campus for Cali residents is also $37k, OOS is $67k.

“As the saying goes, Berkeley is the University of California’s past, UCLA is the University of California’s present, and (some add), Irvine is the University of California’s future”

Let’s not get carried away, yield is usually the best way to rank, UCLA’s yield is 45%, UCB is 43% and UCI is 24%.

small nit, but Berkeley was #2 in Classics in the (now old) NRC rankings of PhD programs., and #15 in the world rankings (QS), higher than Yale & Chicago.

That would be incorrect. From the UC Merced Newsroom dated 9/14/2020 (yesterday):

https://news.ucmerced.edu/news/2020/uc-moves-top-100-national-universities-ranked-us-news-world-report

The extremely high and ever rising (faster than the rate of inflation) cost of the T20 schools signals a continued consolidation of power and influence among the already wealthy and elite, which will lead to a continued shrinking of the middle class, and growing income inequality. Sure, the T20 supports a few low income students to attend. But that is just a gesture that is not enough to ameliorate the bigger picture.

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IMO, the top ~20 private schools (including LACs) educate so few (as a % of total), that it’s hardly the case that they alone can lead to a “shrinking middle class”. Do you know of any peer-reviewed studies that say otherwise?

(There are only a few industries where pedigree still matters, Wall Street and Big Consulting being two.)

If there are only a few industries where pedigree matters, then that is yet another reason not to go into debt, not to use up your savings, and not to mortgage your house so that you can buy in to the elite private school cartel.

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U of SC and Miami of OH are two big favorites here at CC for merit aid. Anyone has insight to the drop in rankings?

According to Harvard’s 2019-20 CDS, most Harvard students received grant based FA. And among that majority receiving FA, the average grant size was $59k.

There is also a significant minority of students who are full pay. I expect that the vast majority of this full pay group come from wealthy families with a >$250k income. Wealthy families tend to be tremendously overrepresented at Harvard and similar “elite” privates.

I didn’t say I agreed with the last part of the saying. But it is a specific reference to UC (not other private schools) and the favorable comparisons of UCLA over UCB are increasingly common, not least in student happiness. It would be interesting to see how cross-admit yield stats have changed in recent years. Also, instate yield is very different to OOS yield.

Seems that they are the same schools today that they were before the 2021 rankings came out yesterday, two very good schools…both in the top 10% of 4 year US colleges.

If you really want to understand what changed, one would have to compare their scores in each category in the ranking methodologies (which changed from last year to this year). You have to subscribe to USNWR to look at detail score data.

You’re preaching to the converted - that is all pretty much conventional wisdom on CC anyway.

The T20 schools including the LACs like WIlliams, Amherst and Bowdoin are all “need blind” and provide substantial FA. As such, the sticker shock of the 50k tuition distorts the fact that a majority of the students are aided students. Students at the privates may be paying substantially less than at the state flagships which have also raised their tuitions. The average debt load and percentage of students on Pell grants is the better measure and the new rankings take both into account.

I agree that the T20 universities, including the SLACs, confer significant benefits (almost every affirmative action lawsuit circles back to the same conclusion.) And, some of them do a better job than others in making it easier for lower-middle class families to grab some of the crumbs off the table. But, I also agree that unless you are hell-bent on a career on Wall Street, or increasingly - in Hollywood (UCLA, NYU, and Wesleyan among others) - the average American can live their entire lives without bumping into a single graduate of one of these schools.

Dupe…

Interesting who the biggest movers are in both positive and negative directions between 2014-2021:

https://publicuniversityhonors.com/2016/09/18/average-u-s-news-rankings-for-126-universities-2010-1017/

Moving up:
Howard +62
Arizona State +39
Florida State +33
UMASS Amherst +25
UC Riverside +24

Moving down:
Tulsa and Alabama -57
New Hampshire -46
Michigan Tech, Vermont, and Drexel -36

What is the cause for these increases/decreases?

Source?

My data and https://publicuniversityhonors.com/2016/09/18/average-u-s-news-rankings-for-126-universities-2010-1017/ have both at 57 last year.

Penn State agrees - 9/8/2019 - “Penn State shares the 57th ranking with Florida State University, Purdue University, the University of Miami and the University of Pittsburgh.”
https://www.collegian.psu.edu/news/campus/article_7ee22bc0-d2b3-11e9-a4c6-77e5e87b047a.html

So does Pitt - 9/8/19 - “For national universities, Pitt tied at No. 57 with Penn State, Purdue, University of Miami and Florida State, out of 318 schools.” https://www.utimes.pitt.edu/news/pitt-rises-us-news-world

My mistake - for some reason Merced isn’t in the historical data at publicuniversityhonors.com.

The social mobility algorithms may be a confounding factor across the board: too few students graduating w/in six years, not enough paying off their student loans on time. A school can win or lose points depending on how many Pell grant recipients are enrolled and graduate successfully.

It’s interesting that Columbia is ranked #3 but Times Higher Education ranks it #15. At the end of the day it really comes down to the different ranking methodology chosen by all of these publications will determine the highest ranked colleges:

Columbia University rankings:

USNews #3
Forbes #14
Times Higher Education #15
Niche #12

Stanford University Rankings:

USNews #6
Forbes #2
Times Higher Education #7
Niche #3

Seems to me that Stanford, for example, is the more consistently higher ranked college across the board and Columbia’s #3 ranking by US News is really an outlier.