<p>I make shopping lists. They are quite useful.</p>
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Now you are attributing meaning to my statements I never came close to saying. In fact, I said the opposite if you read my post carefully. I said that the family is most responsible for that decision. But does USNWR contribute to this general mania? Clearly it does. It is so easy to say caveat emptor, but supposedly objective news magazines hold an authoritative position in many peoples’ minds. They have the veneer of expertise. You don’t fall for it, neither do I. But it is far too facile to just say “they should know better” and ignore the large effect it does have on many people.</p>
<p>If the utility is to be a starting off point for further research, then there is no point in ranking them the way they do. There are easier ways to accomplish that goal that would be far less controversial.</p>
<p>Call me pizzaboy.
As a scholar impassioned with the books and people i surround myself with (i.e, everyone at my school), i have to make the distinction between quality and perception. In fact, i’ll call all those who can’t discern the quality in my school a philistine, and those who do, sophisticated and cerebral. Quality does not always equal perception, and those who rely on the sycophantic glib from the general public lead very shallow, superficial lives. On the other hand, i’ll continue to live a life of substance and meaning, knowing that my quality education trumps everything else. If you go to Columbia, or Harvard and you are proud of it, well then you must be ignorant, and only superficially intelligent. I, as you will come to see through my posts, bleed the thoughts of aristotle and descartes, not the colors of some prestige-laden school. </p>
<p>In short, chill out, pizzagirl, and stop making the same sweeping accusations as those who pick a part the differences between rank 8 and 9.</p>
<p>xiggi, how do you audit opinion? If I feel the University of Oklahoma, for example, offers distinguished academic programs on factors I feel are important, what are you going to do to “correct” my opinion? The idea of making an opinion poll auditable against some objective facts and more widely held reputations would actually stifle dissenting opinion.</p>
<p>“But it is far too facile to just say “they should know better” and ignore the large effect it does have on many people.”</p>
<p>Why is it too facile to do that? 1. If we are to question people who make unwise choices due to trusting something, there is a range of much more serious issues, from advertising leading you to beleive that consumer goods lead to happiness, to web sites suggesting that getting vaccinated against measles is not a good idea.</p>
<p>If you wish to narrow it to education, there are many worse phenomena, among which I would start with ads for for-profit schools. </p>
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<li> That something like this needs to be taken with a grain of salt seems do dreadfully obvious. Now if it were being used mainly by first generation college applicants, in areas with few college applicants - if the principle were abuse were someone going to ouchita baptist instead of U Arkansas, I could see the problem. But most of the horror stories seem to revolve around NYU (and a few peers). I mean the total number of financially stretched NYU families doesnt strike me as large enough to be top worry. And most of THEM really should be on the ball enough to know to take ANY list, ANY number with a grain of salt. I mean we arent talking about hundreds of thousands of people buying houses for zero down who aren’t quite sure what the FHA is.<br></li>
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<p>Again maybe I live in a bubble, but Virginia is a pretty large damned bubble. You cannot turn AROUND here without someone telling you how good our in state publics are, and what a bargain they are. To the point where it is profoundly annoying (we passed on VTech in large part cause DD’s ADHD justified, in our eyes, her preference for a smallish school - but we dont want to talk about that to every busybody who asks “why not VTech”?) Anyone here who passed on the top three publics here - UVA, W&W, and Vtech (will you forgive me for skipping the USNWR lower ranked Va publics - JMU, VCU, CNU, etc) for a private has THOUGHT about it, reasonably seriously.</p>
<p>“If the utility is to be a starting off point for further research, then there is no point in ranking them the way they do. There are easier ways to accomplish that goal that would be far less controversial”</p>
<p>there are MANY possible uses. Ranking for further research for college search is ONE. Gaining info about a college you have heard of, which you or your kid are NOT applying to is another. Getting a sense of what important colleges are in a metro area is another - for example when DD got into RPI, I wanted to know about the Capital District of NY as a “college town” - the USNWR rankings of Sienna, Skidmore, Univ of Albany were useful for that - I certainly wasnt going to do in depth research for that. </p>
<p>I find it useful to have a generic ranking of academic rigor/selectivity/cross major reputation. </p>
<p>Some folks misuse it. The other day we took some frozen food from a bag to cook in the oven. It said, in the OVEN (not microwave) instructions, “remove food from bag first”. Hmmm. Some folks are dumb. </p>
<p>I would have no problems with USNWR putting some warning on their list. Do NOT use to determine which school to attend. be warned that any differences between schools with 5 ranks of each other could just be noise. To not read while operating a motor vehicle or heavy machinery. Do not complete college applications while drunk.</p>
<p>The 1000 hs counselors in Illinois (number made up) think that U of Illinois is the greatest thing since sliced bread. The 1200 hs counselors in Virginia (again, number made up) think that U of VA is the greatest thing since sliced bread. How do you aggregate those two? And how important is that for the kid in one of those states who a) desires to stay local the rest of his life vs b) may want to move / live elsewhere?</p>
<p>the 1200 counselors in Va could at least help with the UVA vs Vtech Vs W&M problem.</p>
<p>and mostly they know about UMd, UNC, UNC-Ashevill, Coastal Carolina. at some schools they can compare Vtech to RPI, Lehigh, etc. At TJ at least they have a pretty strong sense for UVA vs the “top 25”. </p>
<p>I wonder if someone, instead of asking a GC to rank ALL colleges, couldnt ask them to rank the ones they feel they know, and then use a computer program to interpolate ranks - IE those who ranked UVA vs Lehigh said X, while those who ranked Lehigh vs Rutgers said Y, etc, etc. One could do the same with the peer assessments.</p>
<p>Sometimes a good point can lead to an overreaction. Reading CC parents forum or any forum with lots of parents posting (like FA) you’d think that the families passing on state flagships for NYU are the main threat to the republic.</p>
<p>ovens. evidently there are people who put the whole bag of frozen food, including the bag, into the oven. </p>
<p>Evidently there are people who go to restaurants looking at “best restaurant lists” without thinking about what they like to eat, or what the restaurant costs. Evidently there are people who apply to “the best companies to work for” without considering what the job is, or what they would get paid.</p>
<p>and evidently there are some folks who spend 200k more than they need to on college for two or three places on the USNWR rankings. Despite being strapped for cash. Again, I have never met one of these in the flesh. Even on CC, where they do sometimes appear, they seem to be outnumbered by folks who wonder why anyone would go to Duke when there are such good deals to be had at U Alabama.</p>
<p>Although I realize that the numbers you selected are only a matter of examples, I believe that the USNews will seek to poll the GC from a list of schools that more or less aligns itself with the Jay Matthews’ boondoggle. One thing we CAN count on is that Morse and his people will rely on a list created to deliver the expected results. </p>
<p>I would love to see a series of interviews that detail how those GCs are able to evaluate the schools chosen by their students. How many here might wager that the most used source of information will be … last years’ USNews edition. Oops, I need to take that back … it would be an edition of three or four years ago!</p>
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<p>How will the schools be selected?</p>
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<p>You think that polling 110 schools from California --arguably the most state-centric in college education-- won’t affect the results?</p>
<p>Exactly. For example, why is the Cornell “the worst Ivy”? Well, I know it’s not as good as the other Ivies. How do I know that? Well, it’s ranked lower in USNWR, of course. </p>
<p>Really, what REAL information do most people have to make that judgment, other than impressions from a previous ranking which becomes self-perpetuating?</p>
<p>^^That’s crap btw. You graduated from Berkeley… How can Berkeley’s huge undergraduate+graduate lectures make it the 11th in the country? Don’t get me wrong. I almost went to Berkeley. One thing that held me back was actually the classes.</p>
<p>How? Let’s assume all 1000 hs counselors in Illinois give Illinois the highest rating and UVA one lower, and the converse for the 1200 hs counselors in Virginia. Do they weight it 1000 / 1200? So because there happen to be more hs counselors in Virginia in my hypothetical example, that “makes” UVA better than U of Illinois? What kind of goofy nonsense is that? What do most hs gc’s in Illinois know about Virginia anyway, and vice versa?</p>
<p>UCB, did Morse survey a DIFFERENT group of people, or did he go back to the same wonderful source that serves him so … well?</p>
<p>As one might surmise, the results of the survey speak volumes about how well “experts” evaluate teaching and dedication to teaching. I realize that many seem to think that faculty members who spend 50% of their time researching, 40% of their time with graduates students, and 5% on administrative matters can STILL be dedicated to teaching undergraduates and contribute to a school being highy-ranked in the Best Colleges in the US. Or something along those lines!</p>
<p>Forgive me for being so wrong to want to measure DEDICATION to teaching undergraduates by counting the classes they DO teach without TAs and other academic crutches.</p>
<p>Opinions of what employers, though? That makes an assumption that everyone’s goal is to be employed by some large corporation who hires enough people from different places to be able to say that the grads of College A are better than the grads of College B. What does the music major hoping to be employed by a city symphony care what some bank in NY thinks of his school’s econ majors? What does the student going on to divinity school care what the engineering firm thinks of her school’s engineering majors?</p>