US NEWS Ranking, A few surprises

College Search & Lists
81

Why is Stanford dropping?

82

I am looking forward to the day when they have four schools tied at No.1, five schools tied at No. 5 and twenty schools tied at No.10!

83

“Why is Stanford dropping?”
This could be what they wanted. Aren’t they trying to reduce the frenzy of application to their school.

84

@10s4life Stanford has a reputation for some grade inflation, in some areas. Its very focused on entrepreneurship over the pursuit of learning for learning’s sake, " pure academics" , like Princeton which is ranked 1. I don’t know if thats why it dropped, however, but I see Stanford as a school that is the top school for entrepreneurship, by far, but not for pure academic learning and getting into PhD programs the way Princeton and other schools on the list are focused. It may have something to do with outcomes? How many Stanford grad get into the top law, medical and PhD programs, for instance. A lot do get in though, so I am not sure I am on target. Just random thoughts.

85

Stanford’s USNews rank dropped because USNews changed how they calculate the rankings. This seems unlikely to affect Stanford’s reputation or desirability.

86

Santa Clara U goes to No.1 in Regional University, West, from No.2. A big Congratulation!

87

Re: UCR - It’s #35 in Top Public Schools.

88

@PengsPhils : I am sure you have read this “How Northeastern University Game the College Rankings” article (https://www.bostonmagazine.com/news/2014/08/26/how-northeastern-gamed-the-college-rankings/). Like UChicago, Northeastern has invested so much at this single ranking. I totally understand your support for this USNWR ranking.
I do not support any ranking. But since these days whoever still have money to pay those ridiculous amount of tuition probably are reading WSJ and WSJ is the number one newspaper in the country by circulation (USNWR has no circulation), I can’t totally dismiss its content. If you want to buy stocks, it is better to buy those which are on the way up. Both rankings are flawed. First the faculty to student ratio under WSJ/THE resources can be deceiving. It needs to consider how many of those professors who are tenure track professors WHO ACTUALLY TEACH vs. how many are temporary adjuncts or TA’s in the classrooms. This matters the most. Many schools have faculty with awards who publish research prolifically but have little to no role in knowledge transfer or teaching, especially to undergrads if the institution is heavily graduate focused. Without this, the data is near meaningless. I love my graduate school alma mater but I won’t recommend my kid go there for undergraduate. My advisor is one of those really famous professors who don’t teach undergraduate. He is a great teacher but undergraduates can’t benefit from his wisdom. USNWR’s faculty salary is weighted at 7 percent. I am pretty sure most of those highly paid professors in most schools do not teach undergraduate. (there are exceptions and my kid is attending one of those exceptions) USNWR’s “class size” is also misleading. I can have a bunch of TAs and reduce the class size to whatever you like.

USNWR’s “Expert Opinion” is particularly funny.

Wow! it looks like only 1/3 of those “experts” even bother with this. I think it is not difficult to do something to “encourage” some of those to vote for a particular school in a certain way to manipulate the results since not many of those “experts” are voting.

Lastly but most importantly, there is no customer’s voice in USNWR’s ranking. If you plan to go out to eat in a new city, where do you go to get information? You probably want to get information from Yelp/TripAdvisor/Google/etc. Granted, a large number of those reviews are fake and you need to know how to distinguish the real ones from the fake ones, but those real customers are the only ones who know the restaurants. The biggest difference between WSJ/THE and USNWR is the voice of the students. You can check out http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/college-search-selection/2099271-comparing-wsj-the-and-us-news-college-rankings-methodologies.html to see if student voice can be manipulated. No one is trying to manipulate the student opinions now so the current data is relatively reliable. I recommend you to take a serious look.

89

@sam-i-am
correct
just seconding an observation on UC’s trending upward.

@cu123
there needs to be more UC’s (2 new CSU’s proposed now) to increase supply
hope it happens very soon! Where will new UC locations be built?

@washugrad
UC Riverside (Merced, and Davis to a lesser extent) primarily viewed as “consolation” prize due to inland locations (which didn’t matter much to me) and not academics. All 3 locations have moved up and will contnue onward. Of course the major rankings increases will only help in that process.

90

I always reference rankings of different publications as their formula have different emphasis. This year’s Forbes ranking did not bring surprises
the old US News ranking without ties

10. Duke University
9. Dartmouth College
8. Brown University
7. University of Pennsylvania
6. California Institute of Technology
5. Princeton University
4. Massachusetts Institute of Technology
3. Stanford University
2. Yale University

  1. Harvard Universit

https://www.cnbc.com/2018/08/22/the-10-best-universities-in-the-america-according-to-forbes.html

91

@WildestDream Not quite. ND’s expert opinion piece is more in line with it’s peer schools

               ...........Peer__    Counselor

ND 
4.14.7
Rice 
4.14.6
Vandy 
4.24.7
WashU 
4.14.6

NYU 
3.94.5
Roch 
3.44.1

If I remember correctly, the response rate for peer assessment was @35% this year, down from @40% last year. Hmm


And I will trot out again the WashPo piece from last year on the supposed validity of the peer assessment piece. I will never understand how people put such credence into something so subjective with so much room for error and bias. It is as flawed as (if not more so) many of the other pieces criticized.

“That means one of the two factors with the most weight is based on subjective views by, among others, presidents, provosts and deans of admissions of RIVAL institutions.Some presidents, provosts and admissions deans have told me over the years that they don’t fill out the forms themselves because they don’t really have a deep understanding of other schools’ programs. And they doubt that many of those who do complete the survey possess a deep understanding. How many college leaders have time to investigate and then rank their competitors fairly?”

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/answer-sheet/wp/2017/09/12/the-problem-with-the-2018-u-s-news-rankings-junk-in-junk-out/?utm_term=.b5b80036a3bf

92

When a person is drunk, and walks himself in in a loop, and can’t tell the differences among 3,4,5,6, A 7 is probably meaningless to him.

93

The reason Stanford will most likely never make the top 5 is due to their large Division 1 athletic program. This drives down grad rates and scores which in turn affects you rankings. Stanford, however, seems to be fine with that as the benefits of having competitive programs especially in football/basketball far outweigh a few USNWR spots.

94

@nrtlax33

I’m well aware of the nuances of ranking formulae. You’re preaching to the choir here, I quite literally said in my post that rankings are flawed. I’m not supportive of US News, nor any ranking really. But, again, as I said, they have tangible effects you can’t ignore and I don’t see that societally changing anytime soon. So I do think it’s worth supporting positive changes in these flawed rankings when they stand to make positive real world changes.

95

@DiotimaDM
thanks for the UC Riverside clarification above


35 (PUBLIC School Rank)

85 (National (Overall) Rank)

Going to pick up US News magazine shortly to look at all of the rankings in more detail.

96

I’m just not sure how to reconcile some of the shake-ups in the 30-40 range. I don’t know anyone who would say that UCSB is better than BC, or even Rochester, BU, and Brandeis. It seems comical that the University of Florida would be ranked ahead of BC or UCSD above BU.

97

They removed acceptance rate weighting and added Pell Grant outcomes. Not just outcomes. Public unis with large and successful pell grant populations. See UCs and UF etc. as beneficiaries. And highly selective acceptance rates which are the real world test just became fairly unimportant. I always ask. Would the average student at BU or NYU or BC even think to go to UF or UCI instead. All are great. But the answer is unique to the kid.

98

Looks like MIT has a literature department that combines English, comparative literature, and classics.

https://lit.mit.edu/subjects-by-semester/?semester=fall+2018&order_by=course_number&tier=&topic=

99

I used to look at these rankings as a comparison of academic quality.

However, when “AB” schools vault up the rankings over “A” schools because of some esoteric feel good factors, that is no longer the case.

These changes will encourage schools to become degree mills, and worse to admit students that will struggle.

I actually believe that high graduation rates show the school is not challenging enough.

Now, I don’t mind having other factors in the methodology, just provide us a tool/filter to adjust the weightings so we can discount things that aren’t important.

The WSJ rankings provided such a filter.

100

I think that removing acceptance rate is a very positive move. Like them or not, the reality is that these rankings matter a lot to the schools. And many have been gaming the system to deflate their acceptance rate. This leads to many more applications needed per student to assure an acceptable acceptance, which further feeds the trend. It also leads to more uncertainity and stress, both on the part of the colleges and the applicants. No one was benefitting from this trend, which was certainly in part caused by USNWR.

I think it will take a few years for this to trickle through, but hopefully this will result in higher acceptance rates and a less uncertain process for all parties involved.

And Chicago can save a ton by not sending students with a 20 ACT score so many posters and personalized mailings just to drive up appliation numbers.