<p>When considering how “good” a school is, what is the impact of a school being up-and-coming? I’m defining “up-and-coming” as recently (within last decade) having a significant increase in popularity and applications, resulting in lower acceptance rates and higher admitted student stats, and hence rising in the rankings.</p>
<p>Is it reasonable to expect these as cons for an up-and-coming school vs. others of its current selectivity level?
A less strong alumni network, since the school used to be much less respected and easier to get accepted to
Less strong faculty, as faculty tend to stay around for decades, so many were hired when the school was less attractive
Less good job placement, because employers won’t recognize the new reputation of the school </p>
<p>Conversely, is it a concern if a (different) school is slightly declining in number of applications and slightly declining in rankings? Slight decline in popularity is probably due to cold weather, rural location. Student stats holding steady, with yield slightly increasing. </p>
<p>If school A and B currently are similar in selectivity and rankings, but 5-10 years ago college A had lower selectivity and worse rankings than college B, is that any reason to advantage either school A or B? And for what reasons?</p>
<p>I will speak directly to the question of faculty. Studies show that all higher educators have roughly the same training and expertise. That says that a Harvard prof and a community college prof may have the same expertise in their discipline and there is no way of predicting who will be the better teacher. The Harvard prof will have more ambition and publications and likely better connections.</p>
<p>Therefore, it matters what your student wants to study and what the eventual goals are.</p>
<p>And by ratings, do you just mean USNWR? Because there are many others.</p>
<p>My S’s college is frequently ranked number #1 and my D’s #30. The acceptance rate at his school was 17% this year and hers 21%. Since they have both already graduated I can see the complete package. I can honestly say that I see now difference in quality between the two schools or influence of recommendations. In fact, because D’s recommenders included a Federal judge, I think her package might have been slightly more impressive. It happens that S has helped a bit by the prestige of a particular department at his school but this was dumb luck because he wasn’t at all interested in this area when he matriculated.</p>
<p>They both have been accepted into grad programs at the same institution to start in Sept.</p>
<p>I hope this helps even though I didn’t answer your questions directly.</p>
<p>“up and coming” is sometimes just code for “it was always good, but now people in other parts of the country are finding out about it.” so I wouldn’t conclude that the alumni network wasn’t strong.</p>
<p>Also, you’re mixing up selectivity with absolute quality. To pick on WashU for a moment, it ALWAYS attracted the best-of-the-best students. It’s more selective now because it’s got a wider number of applicants, but quality wise, the students were always top notch. It might have been “easier to get into” years ago, but that doesn’t mean the student body was poorer. </p>
<p>Also, the notion of a slight decline in popularity due to weather doesn’t make sense. A cold weather school has always been in cold weather; that doesn’t change over time.</p>
<p>Back to selectivity - that reflects popularity among hs seniors, who are a poor judge of most anything. UCHicago wasn’t a “bad” school when it had a 60% acceptance rate; the fact that a bunch of east coasters just discovered it and think ts the hot new place doesn’t reflect on the educational opportunities. You need to look at absolutes and whether those absolutes are good enough for your desired purpose, not rankings.</p>
<p>Are you saying that in terms of teaching ability, that PhDs teaching at Harvard aren’t necessarily better than those at Northern Illinois? Or that those with PhDs from H aren’t necessarily better teachers than those with PhDs from NIU? Or both? </p>
<p>How would you study this? How would you measure this? This is akin to saying that a financial analyst in city Y is better than a financial analyst is city X simply because one is living in City Y. Or that a lawyer in NYC is better than a lawyer in Memphis simply because the lawyer is living in NYC or that all the lawyers in Chicago are better than all the lawyers in LA. To some degree people pick where they live. Certainly some chase the job, but I tend to agree that there are great profs spread across the country simply because of a spouse or family or desiring a certain quality of life or they land somewhere and are content. You can’t use research because not all institutions of learning are research focused and you can’t use publishing because not all institutions demand publishment. On some level I tend to agree with Mythmom. If all profs goals were identical…to teach at a certain establishment then you could perhaps make some generalization about the caliber, but I tend to think people’s motivations and desires are too diverse to make the claim that the “best profs” are at the “best colleges as defined by a magazine criteria.” The peer assessment portion of the Newsweek ranking but be the closest to having some viability but then what prof really knows all the other profs in their field in the country?</p>
<p>Frankly I think some colleges, particularly the smaller regional colleges, wax and wane in popularity that has little to do with the caliber of teaching.</p>
It’s interesting to compare the “total faculty” rating for various schools on ratemyprofessor. Not that that is a great measurement or anything. Just interesting.</p>
<p>Yes I had a professor in my MS degree that I received at a small, mostly unknown outside the city (yes, city not state) that was a former MIT professor. He was amazing. He moved to the area for a sport that he loved and I’m sure the climate also played a part.</p>
<p>I doubt there’s been any formal study, but I believe you can get an excellent education in most schools. You can seek out the rigor or you can avoid it at any school. You can work hard or just get by. I don’t think someone that just does the minimum amount of work to pass at a top 10 school is getting a better education than the student that seeks out every opportunity at a lesser known or lesser ranked school.</p>
<p>There is also the “fraternity” aspect of work…people tend to stay where they are happy and that engagement often is influenced by the people that they work with and how happy they are with administration. If you have some random college with a fraternity of profs and a decent administration you might very well find extremely good profs who have no desire to pull up roots and go somewhere else at that moment in time. People in general aren’t vagabonds constantly seeking a better opportunity…a few are but many aren’t. Conversely, positions open and administration seeks to fill the position with the best person they can find at that moment in time…this is true for any business, company or institution. The “best” often aren’t available or interested in that moment in time so the position gets filled with the best available, whatever the word “best” means.</p>
<p>The job market for PhDs had been truly terrible in many fields for the last 30 years, and so even fourth-tier institutions have landed some truly great faculty members in that time span, many of whom have been able to “write their way out” of those initial jobs, but some of whom get stuck (often because of spouses or issues totally unrelated to their professional abilities).</p>
<p>What matters is today. If otherwise the schools are comparable, I don’t see why it makes a difference, except with respect to one’s ego. I still don’t get why you’re privileging selectivity versus actual standards, when selectivity just means “what 17 yo’s have heard of.” If school A and school B both have a student body with ACT’s 33-34 (just picking up an arbitrary number) then it makes not a whit that school A has higher selectivity than B because everyone’s heard of A and no one’s heard of B. The existence of a bigger “crush at the door” - either today, or in the past - is irrelevant to the quality of the students who are selected. My WashU example is a good one of that and I am sure there are plenty more.</p>
<p>I also keep coming back to the alumni network. The question is - alumni network where? There is a complete lack of sophistication on CC that there are jobs, and money, and sometimes really big money, in places other than NYC and in professions other than those that worship a relative handful of schools. Frankly, I think “strength of alumni network” has VERY LITTLE to do with actual quality of education. I’d put the strength of the alumni networks at, say, Texas A&M or some SEC flagships against more elite schools anyday. Strength of alumni network is often a function of “what you would do to help a fellow alum based on nothing other than your shared alum status.” That’s got nothing to do with whether the students themselves are the smartest in the bunch or the education is the best in the country.</p>
<p>There have actually been a number of formal studies that show pretty much exactly what you have concluded. In terms of what one learns in college, there is a lot more variation within a given school than there is between schools.</p>
<h2>“A less strong alumni network, since the school used to be much less respected and easier to get accepted to”</h2>
<p>This makes no sense at all. Are you saying only schools that are “highly respected” (by your definition) produce successful alumni? And only students who competed mightily to get into such schools have any affinity for their alma maters after graduation, and want to give back?</p>
<p>It will be a great day when people stop obsessing about rankings and perceived status and focus on more important measures, like student engagement and outcomes for graduates. Of course, some of the more “prestigious” schools will do well in all of these categories, but so will many others most people have probably never heard of.</p>
<p>Here’s the thing though. Up and coming by whose definition? On CC, WashU is “up and coming.” Carleton and Grinnell and Oberlin are “up and coming.” That’s because CC is largely from an East Coast and / or California perspective. As someone who’s been in the midwest for 25 years, I think … up and coming? What? Those schools have been excellent for years and everyone’s known that. There’s no one definition of up and coming that’s national in scope.</p>
<p>No, not everyone. I lived and worked at fairly high levels in the Chicago area for a quarter of a century, and not once did I ever hear anyone talking about WashU. I would guess that even today, a large number of educated people in the Chicago area aren’t really sure about the differences between WashU and SLU. And I would guess that an IIT degree or a DePaul or Loyola degree carries as much “prestige” as one from WashU in the Chicago area. Frankly, when I saw the high number of kids from my D’s high-selectivity school (many from southern Illinois) who applied to WashU I wondered why, until I looked further and realized that it is a high-prestige school.</p>
<p>Perhaps being from the St. Louis area has affected your perception?</p>
<p>I have to agree with Pizza…as a pretty much lifelong except for years here and there midwesterner, Carleton, Macalester, Oberlin, Kenyon and a slew of other schools have been great schools for decades upon decades upon decades but “suddenly” the east coast as “discovered” the value which automatically makes them better…I don’t think so…I actually find it amusing as I suspect Pizza does also.</p>
<p>Perhaps the one (the only one) plus of USNWR is that it has raised awareness east of the Alleghenies and west of the Coast Range that there are schools between the two that actually do something more notable than play football.</p>
<p>I’d have to agree with this ^^. It’s not a bad thing that the midwest colleges are more known it’s just amusing. The thing that I always wonder about is why “some” get “chosen” and other’s don’t…as a marketer I’m always fascinated about what motivates people to make certain choices and dismiss equally viable choices. Why this college but not that college…</p>