<p>The methodology change seems to apply to the Predicted Graduation Rate (not the actual). Wisconsin was 76% last year.</p>
<p>^^ oh really?? hmm… In that case, Ohio State might still have a decent shot at cracking the Top-50 (I hope) when combined with other new variables.</p>
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</li>
</ol>
<p>I think USNWR uses CDS data for 6 year grad rates. For 2009/10, this is what was reported:</p>
<p>Virginia = 93%
Berkeley = 90%
UCLA = 89.25%
Michigan = 89%</p>
<p>“Guidance counselors? Really?? This forum is going to be deluged with anecdotes about how useless and clueless their GC was.”</p>
<p>so going to your own GC for college ideas is worthwile, but the collective opinion of a large number is not? Hmmm. </p>
<p>My thread on the parent forum confirms that many of the families that do not use USNWR for a first cut, use Fiske or similar guides instead. What are the criteria for inclusion in Fiske? Or Princeton Review? </p>
<p>As I have said repeatedly, that first cut is very difficult for many families (esp those flexible on location, etc) And its essential to cut the number you investigate further to manageable size.</p>
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</p>
<p>Hmmm, which school is more regional in its pool? Why don’t you take a look as to what % of each school has students from outside its geographical area, and then get back to us as to which has a more national draw?
If Emory is a “great school for bright students in the South,” I guess that means Berkeley is a “great school for bright students in California.”</p>
<p>^Nice. :)</p>
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</p>
<p>Bingo.<br>
RML, I don’t know why you can’t fathom that all of these are excellent schools that are right for different individuals based on different tastes, instead of trying to come up with rankings that definitively place Berkeley above the schools you don’t care for as much. </p>
<p>Here’s the thing. If you told me that my kids were admitted to Berkeley, Emory, Rice, Georgetown, and Notre Dame, and I knew nothing else about those schools, I would look at the ratings which would tell me that they are all IN THE SAME BALLPARK. Then the choice would be driven by other criteria, including size, including location, including overall campus culture and fit. None of which are “right” or “wrong” – just different. Frankly, Berkeley would fall to the bottom of my list for MY OWN kids because I don’t care for schools that large, nor do I find the aspects of the Berkeley atmosphere personally compelling. But that’s neither here nor there and others could certainly make different choices.</p>
<p>But it wouldn’t matter what the specific rankings are, because the only use of the rankings is to tell you what general ballpark you’re playing in. It would make no difference in the above example to me whether Berkeley ranked right above Gtown, ND, Emory and Rice or below it, as long as they are in the same general ballpark, which they are. You seem to think it matters, somehow. Why, I can’t fathom, other than for your own bragging rights.</p>
<p>Do you know where there is information on expected graduation rates? Because I know currently Brown has a significantly lower actual graduation rate according US News…</p>
<p>
Wow, show me where I said that.</p>
<p>What I am obviously saying is that if you happen to have a knowledgeable guidance counselor, that is great. However, when it came to colleges both the GC’s at my kids’ school were worthless, and that high school sends about 92% to college. I know a lot are very similar to this, they know their state schools and some regional privates, but little else other than the famous ones. Yeah, let’s get their opinion. Talk about population bias!</p>
<p>
Absolutely, because you are able to ascertain your own GC’s individual level of knowledge and trust their advice accordingly.</p>
<p>“Yield is a very good proxy for student views, because it’s how much students value their acceptance from that particular college. If yield is added back into the rankings, it will be part of the undergraduate academic reputation index variable.”</p>
<p>Source: [What</a> May Change in Upcoming College Rankings - Morse Code: Inside the College Rankings (usnews.com)](<a href=“http://www.usnews.com/blogs/college-rankings-blog/2010/06/04/what-may-change-in-upcoming-college-rankings.html]What”>http://www.usnews.com/blogs/college-rankings-blog/2010/06/04/what-may-change-in-upcoming-college-rankings.html)</p>
<p>Darn it!.. Based on the new information released by Morse this morning, yield is most likely not included in this year’s ranking… Otherwise, tOSU has one of the highest yield in the nation (Top-25 & #1 in the Big Ten).</p>
<p>
That US News list clearly states that it lists the four-year graduation rates. For Wisconsin, that latest figure is 50%. I won’t doubt you if you say that number has risen, but it’s not available in the latest (09/10) CDS.</p>
<p>UNC should have been on the list (albeit at the bottom) with a 75% rate. With a rate ~73%, Michigan would’ve just missed the cut.</p>
<p>
Already done. Haven’t you heard of the Revealed Preferences study?</p>
<p>If you’re going to do something as silly as rank colleges, I think it’s splitting hairs to decide who does the ranking.</p>
<p>At least high school kids have visited more than one school and sat in on classes at multiple universities – which is often more than one can say for deans or professors. The professors and most of my fellow grad students in my field have somewhat hazy knowledge of precisely one department at a tiny number of universities (Berkeley, Brown, Chicago, Johns Hopkins, Michigan, NYU, Penn, UCLA, Yale). That’s all. Heck, they know more about that department at Oxford, Leuven, and Macquarie than at Beloit, Grand Valley State, or Muskingum. </p>
<p>It hardly matters whether you have 10 people or 1,000,000 people in the peer assessment rating. With the exception of a select few top universities, there will always be far more people unfamiliar with most colleges than are familiar with them. To use an example, say you’re rating the College of the Atlantic. It has only ~300 students, so most people have never met a COA grad. There’s only ~30 faculty and only about one or two in each field, so most people haven’t heard of any of the faculty. How do you rate that college as a college administrator? Odds are you’ll simply slap down a 2 or 3 and assume that, well, you haven’t heard of it, so it can’t be that good. Anyone familiar with the school (say, a marine biologist) might well rank it higher, but he’d be outvoted by his ignorant peers. A better example might be Deep Springs, which shares admits with the Ivies and other elites but has virtually no name recognition even in academia. US News, to its credit, does give the option of answering N/A on its PA forms, but the released PA forms from several colleges suggest that very few administrators fail to fill out the whole form, regardless of how much they actually know about those schools.</p>
<p>Public university fans and alumni on CC like peer assessment for two reasons:
- It saves publics from dropping like a rock in the rankings
- It agrees with their own personal ideas of how colleges should be rated (particularly their own)</p>
<p>It’s a bit like getting full points for the right answer on a math test but doing all the wrong work to get there. Even if you don’t disagree with the PA, at least within a point or two, you don’t have to agree with the methodology.</p>
<p>
Who cares? Really, the public university people whine about rankings more than anyone else on this forum, and they’re affected the least!</p>
<p>Public universities are intended, first and foremost, to educate people in their own states. At several of the elite publics (UNC, the UCs), in-state students make up 80-90% of all students at that university. They don’t CARE how that university stacks up against Notre Dame or Johns Hopkins. Here in NC, UNC Chapel Hill pretty much walks on water, and other than Harvard and a couple other elites, Duke is the only school to give it serious competition. Naturally, the cross-admits to any of these are relatively few. </p>
<p>Privates, on the other hand, are starting off on rough footing. Except for a few universities with extraordinarily high yields (e.g. Harvard, Stanford), most privates are working against the wind – they’re more expensive, they’re often further away than in-state publics, and they’re often competing with more selective privates. For such schools, a high US News ranking is invaluable. </p>
<p>
There are many ways to cut down a college list. Have you ever played the game Guess Who? You try to guess the character your opponent has by asking questions about hair color, eyes, clothing, etc. and eliminating the subjects who don’t fit the criteria. Similar games would be 20 questions or Clue. </p>
<p>If you start out with a clearly defined list of criteria - size, location, setting, composition of student body, etc. - it’s really not that hard to get a list down to at least 30 or 40 schools, at which point one acquires a college book and starts reading more in depth information.</p>
<p>Everyone knows they only use GCs from the top high schools right? It says so on their rankings methodology</p>
<p>Resume banter</p>
<p>I was talking about this list-not US News</p>
<p>The Top Ten State Universities by Graduation Rate</p>
<ol>
<li>University of Virginia: 93%</li>
<li>University of California, Los Angeles: 90%</li>
<li>(tie) University of California, Berkeley: 88%</li>
<li>(tie) University of Michigan: 88%</li>
<li>(tie) Penn State 84%</li>
<li>(tie) University of California, San Diego: 84%</li>
<li>University of North Carolina 83%</li>
<li>University of Illinois: 82%</li>
<li>University of Florida: 81%</li>
<li>(tie) University of California, Irvine: 80%</li>
<li>(tie) University of Maryland: 80% </li>
</ol>
<p>Source: The Ten Highest Graduation Rates Among State Universities | The Digital Student Blog</p>
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</p>
<p>Strongly agree.</p>
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</p>
<p>Strongly disagree, particularly the top publics. Academe is full of prestige hounds… They CARE, they really do care.</p>
<p>
Eh, can’t say I disagree there. I specifically meant that applicants don’t care - who are, after all, for whom the rankings are intended.</p>
<p>To use California as an example, Berkeley is the top public in California and will remain that way for the foreseeable future. It can likely drop to #70 in USNWR without suffering the slightest drop in the quality and quantity of its in-state applicant pool. Students in California would not suddenly start flocking to U Miami and Yeshiva because those universities are ranked higher than Berkeley. </p>
<p>Tennessee is a great example of this, as it’s much less selective and not as strong academically. Vanderbilt is the top school in the state, without question, but do most students dream of going there? No, not really. UT Knoxville is pretty much where it’s at, and students either apply there as seniors or try to get in as transfers. The quality of students at UTK is generally lower than that of Berkeley, of course, but that’s largely a function of the state as a whole; the PSAT NMF cutoffs make it pretty clear that educational quality varies by state.</p>
<p>After all, the vast majority of students apply to only a very small number of colleges - usually 5 or fewer. Over half apply to 3 or fewer, and 70-80% are admitted to and attend their top choice. Additionally, the vast majority of students stay within a 500 mile radius, and a hefty chunk stay within a 200 mile radius. They have no need to do in-depth comparisons of multiple schools, as they’re usually applying only to local schools with which they’re familiar. For such students, USNWR is a bragging point and little more. US News would be useful primarily to a small, self-selected group – namely, those students who are qualified to get into elite OOS colleges and choose to apply to them. Considering the high yields of many of the publics (60-80% at even less selective ones!), such students are not typical.</p>
<p>“NC should have been on the list (albeit at the bottom) with a 75% rate. With a rate ~73%, Michigan would’ve just missed the cut.”</p>
<p>Let’s take a guess at which of the above schools doesn’t have an engineering college? Many engineers take over four years to graduate. Another reason why using that metric is ridiculous.</p>
<p>Forgive me if this has already been discussed (I really don’t feel like skimming this entire thread), but who else noticed in the methodology changes that US News is ELIMINATING the third tier? They’ll now rank 75% of schools as tier 1! Hopefully this categorization will be eliminated for the 2012 rankings. Simply ridiculous. </p>
<p>“2. In response to a strong interest from readers in knowing precisely where all schools on their lists stand, we’ve opted to display the rank of the top 75 percent of schools in each category, up from 50 percent. This top ranked group will be called the First Tier. The schools in the bottom 25 percent of each ranking category are listed alphabetically as the Second Tier (previously called the Fourth Tier). This means we have eliminated the Third Tier from the rankings and we are now numerically ranking 75 percent of the schools in the National Universities, National Liberal Arts Colleges, Regional Universities, and Regional Colleges categories. The same number of schools appear in the ranking tables as last year.”</p>
<p>I just read this and needed to vent. Thanks.</p>
<p>“IF you start out with a clearly defined list of criteria - size, location, setting, composition of student body, etc. - it’s really not that hard to get a list down to at least 30 or 40 schools, at which point one acquires a college book and starts reading more in depth information”</p>
<p>yes, and IF you are flexible, especially on location and setting, it is impossible to pare it down to 30 or 40 schools.</p>
<p>I mean which of the following makes more sense</p>
<ol>
<li><p>Darling, do you want big city, small city, or rural? “I dont care, I am more interested in the academic quality of the school and life ON campus, I think I could be happy in a big city OR a small town” You MUST pick one so we can make our list manageable. “uh, okay, how about Big cities only?”</p></li>
<li><p>We know your grades match several schools ranked about 30 on the USNWR list, and that lots of kids with similar academic levels and interests to yours are going to schools around USNWR 30, so lets just ignore all national Us below 75 on the USNWR nat u rank, except for our instate publics, and any school specifically recommended by someone we trust.</p></li>
</ol>
<p>each approach is imperfect. Which is more arbitrary?</p>
<p>
Um, no not really. If Berkeley dropped to #70, many Californians would divert to the other UC campuses. Presuming that it was still the top UC, those with enough money will flock to better private schools.</p>
<p>The thing you need to understand about UCs is that its filled with Asians, who 1) have money but are also 2) very thrifty and 3) way oversensitive about academics and rankings (much more so than Caucasians). A large chunk of us can afford to go to private school but we just choose not to due to our state schools not being utterly awful. Dropping to #70 would drive the Berkeley student body crazy and the campus would probably be dead in 3 years. </p>
<p>Students, especially wealthy students, located in a state with a poor selection of universities don’t compromise. They look for privates elsewhere.</p>