Us news rankings 2011

College Search & Lists
741

<p>“Do you really imagine the people at Harvard, or the University of Delaware, have a clue as to what is going on in a sufficiently detailed way at the University of Idaho or Trinity University in San Antonio?”</p>

<p>Ideally regional schools would be ranked by regional peers, etc. </p>

<p>Who knows more about whats going on at Case and RPI? The admins at Lehigh, Rochester, CMU? Or my local high school guidance counselor? Or my kid’s youth group advisor? Or my wife’s dentist? </p>

<p>well guess what, if USNWR says Case is better than RPI, but the GC, the youth advisor AND the dentist, all say otherwise, I am not going to go with USNWR. But if the RL folks are divided, the peer assesment is not a bad data point to have. </p>

<p>You seem to be suffering from McNamara syndrome. Attacking an imperfect data source, doesnt make the decision go away. If the decision of which school to attend among a handful one has gotten into can be made by visits, intensive research, etc, the decision of which 20 or 25 to send transcripts to, to visit initially, to focus ones research on, out of hundreds, cannot be made that way. Its a choice of very imperfect tools.</p>

742

<p>fallen chemist - we live in virginia. Our DD attends an elite public magnet, and had high SAT’s. We did not visit Univ of Idaho. We did not researh univ of Idaho. I do not think we read its description in Fiske (DD may have, but I did not) Should I have? Should I have spent at least 20 minutes on research of EVERY college in the US (we could have cut that down by not looking at the christian schools cause we are Jewish, but I certainly wasnt going to exclude Georgetown, and without some simple prestige ranking, why include Georgetown and not every catholic school at least?)</p>

<p>That is not practical. Some folks ONLY look at instate publics. We couldn’t. In default of any other approach, many folks focus on known prestige - which is why excessive Ivy fever (certainly at our DD’s school) The USNWR rankings, served as a way to segment the market, to strategize about what schools could make sense as targets for our DD (who did not have the grades for the ivies) We talked to lots of people, her GC, others, started several threads here. We got many tips and pointers. I don’t think anyone came up with a school that was a good match for our DD that ranked below 100 on the USNWR nat univ list. So had we only used that as a first cut, we would have done just as well.</p>

743

<p>Well, the USNEWS does have its faults. As do other rankings. But the general people refer to it frequently, especially when college hunting. They have a misguided sense of college rankings/hierarchy. </p>

<p>So I just go with the flow…life’s a lot easier that way for me instead of arguing with close-minded people. At the very most, if they’re chill, just casually correct them if they say “Oh isn’t UChicago better than Brown? Chicago ranked higher, right?”</p>

<p>Now if they say “UChicago pwns Brown hahaha. Brown’s the color of turd and the lowest ranking Ivy on UNSWES LOL.” There really is nothing we can do about that…I just ignore and move on to another topic.</p>

744

<p>Uchicago pwns Northwestern University hahahaha. Northwestern sounds so bad when you say it, and is lower rank then Uchicago on UNSWES LOLOL</p>

745

<p>fallenchemist is telling it like it is. Its a silly game and most College Presidents despise it. However, for a very rough starting point in the college search, it has its benefits. The problem is that too many kids and parents (especially asians) rely too heavily on it in making final decisions on where to attend after they have their acceptance letters. In that case, its a superficial decision and really a bad idea. </p>

<p>People are often prestige hounds and sadly they miss many really good schools, some of them not even in the top 100, that would be wonderful places for their kids to attend college. Success in life has little to do with the name on the parchment and more to do with the quality of your work, your work ethic and your EQ skills, including your compassion and ability to help others in a consensus environment. People who work in companies and spend an inordinate time chatting with buddies from college or high school, or who brag about having gone to XYZ school, or who pontificate with a nasal sounding condescending arrogance won’t succeed in the new world order.</p>

746

<p>^ What ghostbuster said.</p>

<p>College rankings are not very useful, but they’re not completely pointless. For a lot of people without the motivation to do a lot of research on their college choice, it’s a good starting point.</p>

747

<p>The way the President of UF ranked the other schools in the state, was pretty insulting to most, and there was a big backlash in the press. Since that came out last year, I was wondering if other Presidents and Provosts will punish UF this year by giving it really low PA scores… </p>

<p>That would be hilarious… and well deserved…</p>

748

<p>This whole rankings stuff really makes you guys go crazy.</p>

749

<p>I am not saying you shut your brain off and research every University of Idaho out there when you know you have no interest. That example was given in a very particular context, and that is whether other schools possibly know enough about it to correctly evaluate it. If that school had quietly (or maybe even not so quietly) invested heavily in facilities, become more rigorous in admissions standards, and made other moves to improve the school, do you really believe the President at UT or UF would know about it?</p>

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I think to some degree Brooklynborn and similar commenters are missing my point. With all due respect, I never said it made the decision go away. USNWR is not a data source, it does an opinion poll (which is not data) for 25% of its ranking and then arbitrarily weights self-reported data for the rest, some of which is known to be either incorrect, incomplete, manipulated, or all of the above.</p>

<p>Anyone can create a list, that’s fine. There have been guidebooks to colleges for decades, and somehow people managed to find perfectly good colleges. Yes, I think it is reasonable for a student and/or their parents to comb through basic descriptions of dozens or even hundreds of schools to make some judgements. It doesn’t take 20 minutes a school, most can be eliminated in 1 minute or so. I did this, it wasn’t that hard. It forced me to think about issues like location, size, academic level (as in, could I even get in), things like that. Things more important, IMO, than what the Provost of UT Dallas thinks of Colorado Boulder.</p>

<p>I don’t have a problem with lists of schools that show in order various particular data. Which gets to the heart of the matter.
I am not “attacking an imperfect data source”, I am attacking a magazine which has tried to put that data together, along with a garbage opinion poll, to make a claim they can tell us all which colleges are “best”, down to a level of precision that differentiates #22 from #34. I am attacking the fact that USNWR has chosen to label this as the “best” colleges, and thus has, intentionally or not, created a phenomenon that has been quite detrimental to the search process for many students, as I cited in an earlier post. Yes, one can just say that is their problem, too bad they and/or their parents are all hooked on prestige. TheSaiyan is right, one could just laugh it off and go with the flow and all. Unfortunately, I have seen too many cases of this phenomenon causing great strife within families and resulting in expensive, poor decisions. I know I won’t change closed minds, but it doesn’t mean I won’t continue to point out all the flaws.</p>

750

<p>There are a few quality indicators that can be expressed by objective quantitative figures. For example, selectivity (admission rate, average GPA/ test scores of admitted students) or academic faculty productivity/quality (number of peer-reviewed papers published per faculty, number of citations per paper, number of faculty who belong to national academies, etc.). Other indicators are subjective, e.g. prestige/reputation among school counselors, job recruiters, or university deans. Combining those different measures into a single quality index that can be used to rank universities in descending order is problematic IMHO. </p>

<p>On top of that, despite the American tradition of liberal arts/generalist college education, there are colleges/universities that excel in certain majors and are not as strong in others. Also, different schools offer different choices of majors. Rankings by area of study/major would be welcome then in addition to overall undergraduate rankings such as USN&WR.</p>

751

<p>Hi bruno - OK, now I will come across as a zealot I suppose. Maybe I am on this issue, LOL. But while I get it that you are essentially supporting what I said, I still have a couple of disagreements with what you say.</p>

<p>

Admission rate would only be an objective figure if all schools behaved identically in the total admissions process. But they do not. Tulane, for example, has a strategy that involves sending out huge numbers of solicitations for students to apply with a free app that is quite easy to do. As a result the number of applications has skyrocketed from about 18,000 to 44,000, and the admission rate has dropped from about 50% to 25%. The reason they do it isn’t to get a lower admission rate per se, but to attract better students. Nonetheless, it is a false indicator in Tulane’s case as a stand-alone statistic, and I say that as one of the biggest Tulane boosters on here. Other schools do similar things, U Chicago just had a big jump in applications as well. GPA and test scores are also difficult in other ways, such as different scales for GPA (if only everyone did unweighted, but alas. And even if they did, you have to take into account students that have more challenging schedules such as AP classes, etc.), SAT optional schools which means the lower scores are probably not submitted, etc. As far as academic faculty and their research and papers, that is much more relevant for grad school than undergrad. Otherwise you might as well do away with the LAC’s, many of which in reality are incredibly good schools. The same reasoning also applies to why it is absurd to rank undergrad departments. Some have tried, they have been thoroughly discredited. It is another thing that is virtually impossible to measure.</p>

752

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<p>People outside the US don’t know what’s quality here. They work only on perceptions that may or may not be accurate. I think their opinions aren’t all that meaningful. </p>

<p>And I have to laugh at the concept that quality is always known. The truest high quality things are known only by a select few who are in-the-know. Not the masses.</p>

753

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<p>Does it matter to people in Europe/Asia/South America/Africa/Australia if, say, schools like Amherst and Williams are stronger than JHU or Northwestern or Cornell when the former schools are unknown in their respective countires? If you’re a foreigner, say from France, what’s the substantial value in studying in Williams compared to Northwestern or Cornell, for instance?</p>

754

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<p>Indeed, to people who view obtaining a degree as nothing else than a ticket to a better status and prestige, studying at schools that focus on education should not be that relevant.</p>

<p>No wonder some are trying so desperately to defend the value of the “reputational” indexes!</p>

755

<p>and NU and Cornell aren’t the type of schools that focus on education? please clarify.</p>

756

<p>^RML, I’m sure that’s not what xiggi is implying…he didn’t say specifically that Northwestern and Cornell don’t focus on education at all. He was making a general statement…</p>

757

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<p>What is relevant to them is being able to get a job when they return to their respective countries. US citizens have the luxury of “focusing on education” when choosing schools but not all foreigners do.</p>

758

<p>Oh, well, by all means, put “impressing other people who may or may not know what they’re talking about” at the top of your list. Some of us will focus on quality for quality’s sake. </p>

<p>Why you all want to impress people who don’t know what they are talking about is beyond me.</p>

759

<p>Quote:
Does it matter to people in Europe/Asia/South America/Africa/Australia if, say, schools like Amherst and Williams are stronger than JHU or Northwestern or Cornell when the former schools are unknown in their respective countires? If you’re a foreigner, say from France, what’s the substantial value in studying in Williams compared to Northwestern or Cornell, for instance?</p>

<p>The value is a Williams education, of course. </p>

<p>Some of you people must make all your choices by whether your brand impresses other people. How do you ever get dressed in the morning without checking whether Louis Vuitton or Gucci impress more people?</p>

760

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