Agreed @socaldad2020, Stanford should be higher in the US News ranking. It has been pointed previously that Stanford was #1 in US News a few years ago. The current methodology seems to favor the Ivies and East Coast LACS that benefit from the 20% reputation allocation merely due to historical bias. Stanford offers a stronger undergrad education than Columbia for example.
@RichInPitt I stand corrected. For some reason I remembered it differently.
Stanford does fine on the academics âdistinguishedâ =5 vs âmarginalâ = 1 survey with 20% weighting, often tieing for the top spot. You can view an example from another year at https://www.usnews.com/education/blogs/college-rankings-blog/2013/02/28/which-universities-are-ranked-highest-by-college-officials . The top 11 âdistinguishedâ by academics colleges are below from the link are repeated below:
- Stanford -- 4.9
- MIT -- 4.9
- Harvard -- 4.9
- Princeton -- 4.8
- Yale -- 4.8
- Berkeley -- 4.7
- Johns Hopkins -- 4.6
- Cornell -- 4.6
- Caltech -- 4.6
- Chicago -- 4.6
- Columbia -- 4.6
Your data is from 2013. Would be nice to see 2020 data?
These arenât even âdataâ. They were based on some surveys from less than reliable sources.
If you actually want to rank overall school academics through an evaluation that makes sense, you would have to:
- Go through catalogs and schedules to find out what courses are actually offered and how frequently in each subject area.
- For each course, check the syllabus, exams, assignments/projects, etc. to determine what is actually covered and to what level of depth. Obviously, this can require subject matter experts.
- Somehow combine all of the assessments for all of the courses into a rating for the entire college.
But no one seems to want to do that. So most people just use (not always accurate) proxies like reputational / prestige surveys, or assumptions that higher admission selectivity automatically means better academics.
^I generally agree that. Thatâs very close to the recipe we followed when my S was selecting a college a few years ago. We also looked at the professors/instructors who are likely to teach (or have previously taught) those courses and their backgrounds (and reviews if available).
Surveys by US News (and the like) are mostly based on hearsay and often by people who arenât familiar with any of those things. Theyâre easily influenced by publications such as US News because they arenât equipped to independently assess. The process forms a positive feedback loop that self-reinforces.
I believe the 2020 survey results are available to USNWR report paid subscribers. I am not a subscriber. The survey numbers remain very similar from one year to the next.
No doubt that they do, but are those benefits much more significant than the âsignificant benefitsâ of say, colleges ranked #40-50?
As an aside, do high-ranked Large LACâs not provide significant benefits? (sorry, couldnât resist)
Stanfordâs 6th place ranking is certainly not low, but it does rank the lowest among HYPS more often than not. I think one of the more influential reasons for Stanford being below HYP is Stanfordâs co-terminal masterâs program, which involves simultaneously pursuing both a bachelorâs degree and a masterâs degree.
Approximately 40% of Stanford engineering school students pursue a co-terminal masterâs. The numbers are also very high for non-engineering. On paper, co-terminal masters is a 5-year program, but itâs relatively common to take more than 5 years. A rare few take more than 6 years, particularly those who also are involved in non-academic activities, such as co-ops, internships, and sports. Itâs enough to pull down Stanfordâs 6-year graduation rate to below HYP⊠which is the 2nd highest weighted factor in USNWR ranking.
For example, IPEDS lists the following graduation rates. Stanford is tied for first in 8-year graduation rate; but lags well behind other colleges with similar selectivity (similar expected graduation rate based on incoming student stats) in 4-year graduation rate and 6-year.
Princeton â 90% 4-year graduation rate, 98% 6-year, 98% 8-year
Yale â 88% 4-year graduation rate, 97% 6-year, 98% 8-year
Harvard â 85% 4-year graduation rate, 97% 6-year, 97% 8-year
Stanford â 73% 4-year graduation rate, 94% 6-year, 98% 8-year
Other colleges that emphasize co-ops or similar activities that commonly delay graduation usually show a similar effect.
When even families making $200K a year are awarded financial aid at some of the elite colleges, that does not say a great deal about socioeconomic diversity on campus.
The percentage of students on Pell Grants is only one of several measures of socioeconomic diversity, and Iâm not sure itâs the best. Letâs look at Williams, Smith, and Grinnell as an example.
[ul][]Smith - 24% receiving Pell Grants
[]Williams - 23% receiving Pell Grants
[li]Grinnell - 20% receiving Pell Grants[/ul][/li]Looks pretty similar, with Grinnell appearing to be the worst. But then we have to look at family income data, courtesy of the NYTâs college mobility study.
Williams
[ul][]Top 1% - 17%
[]Top 5% - 42%
[]Top 10% - 55%
[]Bottom 20% - 5.3%[/ul]
Smith
[ul][]Top 1% - 4.4%
[]Top 5% - 25%
[]Top 10% - 39%
[]Bottom 20% - 5.8% [/ul]
Grinnell
[ul][]Top 1% - 5.6%
[]Top 5% - 24%
[]Top 10% - 35%
[]Bottom 20% - 6.3%[/ul]
Looks rather different, eh? Williams has more than 3 times as many students from the top 1% as from the bottom 20%, whereas Smith and Grinnell have slightly more students from the bottom 20% than from the top 1%. Additionally, both Grinnell and Smith have noticeably fewer students from the top 10% than Williams â only about 1/3 at Grinnell as opposed to over 1/2 at Williams.
Note that SLACs, depending on user intent, may refer to selective liberal arts colleges.
Okay, first of all, the âSâ in SLAC stood for âselectiveâ not âsmallâ. But, to your other question, I think just having a college degree in todayâs winner-take-all economic system probably confers benefits to anyone willing to put in the time and scrounge up the cash. You just have to convince all of those other people who think their lives will be ruined if they donât become either investment bankers or show runners to take a second look at #s40-50 .
It seems the NYT study may have some data that is inconsistent with other metrics. For example, a large percentage of the incoming class at Williams and the SLACs is first generation students and suggest a broader spectrum of socio economics than the numbers above provide.
I always find it interesting, given that rankings are generally disparaged in the CC community, how much activity these new rankings threads generate. Debating ordinal positions with very small differences in scores among the top ten is a particular headscratcher.
Iâd love to know âtypical assetsâ. Our gross income is usually less than $200k and our EFC last year was well into the six digits so we wouldnât be getting any institutional aid from any school, including Harvard. So, it is true that many many families cannot afford the top-ranked schools or have to choose to use a considerable amount of their assets to attend.
Homer - Typically, Harvard and other high tuition/high discount universities treat a family making 200k in income and only one wage-earner differently from one earning the same income from two wage-earners.
^^Typically around 5% of your assets (excluding assets in retirement accounts, and for a few schools, equity in primary home) are added to your income for the purpose of calculating financial aid.
My inputs:
Family 4, 2 kids in college (note, the calculator asks for place of residence, but all that does is factor in travel cost and not COLA in this simplified version)
$200k income (put it all in the gross wages box)
Parent Assets $200k
Student assets $1,000
Output:
Estimated Scholarship
$42,157
Your Cost
$34,300
Your Cost Details
Cost to Parents
$30,750
Student Asset Contribution
$50
Student Term-Time Work
$3,500
If I adjusted Parent assets to $500k, the cost goes to $44,800; I need to push assets to $1.4mm to get $0 aid.
If I reduced children in college to 1, using $200k in assets, the cost goes to $49,050; at $500k in assets, costs goes to $64,050. Assets need to be about $750k to get $0 aid.
The Harvard calculator is pretty easy to use, and it doesnât ask you to give it identifying information. Have fun with it. https://college.harvard.edu/financial-aid/net-price-calculator
Donât know about the others but with FSU, Florida has been aggressively funding all its state schools (but especially FSU and UF) with the goal of rivaling CAâs state university system. Lots of hiring of new faculty, decreasing class sizes, improving graduation rates, funding diversity initiativesâŠall stuff that helps with rankings. In state tuition is super low, less than $7,000 a year.