<p>IBclass06</p>
<p>that’s just a minor typo error. it’s the criteria used that’s important for me. i just don’t like it that the methodology is inaccessible. But the criteria were better, in my opinion.</p>
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<p>Oh i know you did, and I wasn’t giving you a hard time so much as others in this thread who shoot off assumptions and then don’t take quick look to see what the deal is, like you did.</p>
<p>I think that faculty quality is an important measure, but I think that PA as it stands is a very poor/rough indicator of faculty quality. As a result, I think it should not be emphasized as its just a poor proxy until some better metric can be configured. Faculty salary, similarly, is a poor proxy for quality. It certainly has some relationship, but who knows how tight that relationship really is and the change in recent years in mobility of faculty between institutions is changing what salary means these days.</p>
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<p>lol, this is even worse:</p>
<p><a href=“http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/1062330055-post34.html[/url]”>http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/1062330055-post34.html</a></p>
<p>Panoma.</p>
<p>It’s pitiful.</p>
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<p>Phead128, More people (54%) choosing not to respond to the survey (likely because they do not endorse it) indicates to me that there is a serious flaw there. And just because a less than half of the total sample has an “opinion” it does not make their “opinion” anymore valid. </p>
<p>I do not know about the rest of you, but Colin Diver, the former Dean of U Penn Law School writing a piece like the one vossron posted above, makes the point very clear.</p>
<p>^ Does the survey just show up in the mail? If that is the case, a 46% response rate is phenomenal. PA may be invalid, but this can’t be the reason.</p>
<p>I agree the PA is flawed and is completely subjective. The weight given is not justifiable. Does anyone know what sort of metrics they use to distribute weights to each category?</p>
<p>The Swallows have returned to Capistrano again I see…all this incessant minutiae about rankings, as if it matters one iota. We are facing the most serious economic downturn since 1930 and the parallels to the Great Depression are shocking, when I was taught “it could not and would not ever happen again.” If you think we can’t get a lot worse, think again people.</p>
<p>When you deflate a hot air balloon it sinks faster than you can possibly imagine.</p>
<p>Meanwhile you all obsess about USNWR rankings?</p>
<p>Go back to school, please.</p>
<p>endlessrecession’s name should be non-sequitur. Thoughts?</p>
<p>So, for those who are not in favor of the PA, I have a question for you: if you were to readjust the criteria and reassign values for each criterion, what would it be?</p>
<p>I’d lower it 10%, up the faculty resources 5%, under which I’d have full time faculty be a higher percentage and student-faculty ratio be a higher percentage (at the expense of salary).</p>
<p>I’d up student selectivity the other 5% and use yield as a part of that number.</p>
<p>I’d also probably remove the “added value” of the graduation rate. Seems like a weird measure to mark as the one which is supposed to demonstrate improvement, and I don’t really care what USNWR thought the graduation rate would be, and they already use 6-year rates in retention. I’m not 100% sure where I’d put that five percent, I may consider a totally new category that I’d find much more meaningful…</p>
<p>I’d also eliminate the straight numbering of the list and divide it more into tiers.</p>
<p>and modestmelody’s name is perhaps miscast as well. thoughts?</p>
<p>This annual return of the swallows to capistrano for the neurotic fixation of college rankings (and comcomitant dissing and sneering at other schools…which is most vicious it seems between the so called top 10 schools) is absurd.</p>
<p>But its a free country and you are certainly free to get all verklempt about it here if you wish, as we are free to comment on our observations of same. </p>
<p>We see the annual tomato throwing between LAC"s and national research universities, which of course is like arguing about whether an upper east side apartment is superior to a Long Island estate and vice versa. </p>
<p>Personally, I celebrate the many differences between our nation’s colleges and universities and gloat over the fact that there is a school for anyone who wants to go to college, no matter how smart or wealthy, unlike most countries in Europe where a stratified entrenched system of social order and economics prohibits most from even contemplating going to university.</p>
<p>I celebrate our diversity of choice. I praise our highest and most hallowed hallways of higher education as well as our most modest midways of meaningful classrooms. I lavish praise upon neighbors going to Princeton (pick an Ivy) or those going to our local technical community college to learn a skill. </p>
<p>But I offer you this anecdotal story as something to consider:</p>
<p>My d is in college in New York and thriving. When she was a Junior in High School, and taking all AP"s and one Honors course (All State Orchestra), she remembers seeing a minority student burst into tears in the ladies room. She thought she was distraught and attempted to comfort her. But no, she was overcome with pride and emotion…because she was accepted to ECU, the first person in her entire family going to college and the impact of that acceptance had simply overcome her with emotion. Getting into ECU is on average, not overly selective, shall we say, though its a fine school in its own right. She contrasted that anecdotal moment when a year later a colleague of hers (from her formerly private school) was ranting on Facebook in an extremely ugly manner about being waitlisted at Harvard, though he already had another acceptance at Duke and later at another Ivy. Which story do you find more compelling? The minority student of modest means and stats being overcome with happy emotions and breaking down sobbing in a girls bathroom because she was “going to college!” or the snotty brat from a wealthy family ranting in an immature fashion because Harvard had the temerity to waitlist him, though he was holding TWO very prestigious acceptance letters from other schools? </p>
<p>In that context, I think the obsessions of a few people about who should be ranked number 3…or who is overranked, underranked, etc etc…seems awkwardly narcissistic, particularly in these very serious economic times, when tens of thousands of families have lost their jobs, homes and hopes and dreams of sending their children to college. </p>
<p>That is my point. </p>
<p>But you may well proceed for the next six months in anticipation of, and reaction to the USNWR rankings of your favorite schools (or favorites to hate.)</p>
<p>Please, do not, however misplace my comments and assign any antipathy to any particular school. I have high praise for ALL of these institutions of higher learning as they serve a valuable function in our society, whether they are Harvard, Yale, Princeton (or Brown), or Southern Mississippi University.</p>
<p>Finally, I freely admit that I have a mild curiosity at these rankings in a generic sense, to see how various schools in all four tiers are doing. But not to the level where I would gain any value in contemplating whether UChicago is higher ranked this year than WashU-St. Louis, or whether Penn is higher than Brown.</p>
<p>That post is slightly more meaningful, and if you read my postings, you’ll find me frequently go against the entire notion of ranking and talking about fit all over the place, etc etc.</p>
<p>I’ve been criticizing USNWR as bad science for a long time, and that is what keeps me interested. I am not a stakeholder in USNWR like you may think-- I didn’t know what it was when I applied to schools, interestingly enough, and I’m a graduating senior at the best place in the country for me to learn and I’m very happy to have had that experience. I’m also a first generation college student and I know the raw emotion of getting in and what that means, believe me.</p>
<p>On the pure level of someone who is about to start studying education policy on a master’s level and who has worked on several joint-task forces at his own university which had to deal with a lot of accountability-type questions due to our reaccreditation process, I’ve become interested in what people prioritize, what they think these numbers mean, and disaggregating what the data actually does tell us.</p>
<p>I’m interested in these rankings in as much as I am interested in any poorly constructed psuedo-science that is popularized and given a whole lot of value that it does not deserve. So it’s an interesting way for me to avoid draft 2 on my thesis while the Brown boards have slowed down considerable.</p>
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<p>Bravo. This is no different from someone in business in the consumer packaged goods industry ranking other companies in that segment. Perhaps he or she worked at a couple others but beyond that how does second (or third) hand info on these companies contribute anything meaningful? </p>
<p>I think a 40+ percent return on surveys is terrific. But I would suggest that those that fill out surveys will show a pattern of filling out surveys. Thus I’m not sure you learn anything new other than the same people regurgitating the same opinions once again. </p>
<p>Certainly no ranking system will be perfect but the current process is biased to maintaining the old guard. A post-grad world where students entering the work force and the meaningfulness of that entry is completely overlooked.</p>
<p>Thanks for that clarification. Congratulations on graduating from Brown and continuing your education. </p>
<p>Yes, people prioritize things in strange manners. If you become a professional educator you will really see that first hand, particularly at the secondary school level. </p>
<p>What I propose is a sort of “truth in admissions” law, where schools are required to publish annually, on the same date (like tax day or something), the complete unadulterated facts about who applied, how many applied, how many were accepted, the REAL financial aid picture, merit and athletic scholarship issue, etc. </p>
<p>I would like your opinion on some of these athletic scholarships, and I dont mean just for minority students who get the lions share of them in basketball and football, but also the other more obscure sports like squash, swimming, fencing etc. Is it fair to give a kid a full ride who has mediocre scores and tell some person who has excellent scores but otherwise just below the threshold of merit scholarships they must pay full load or put up with the FAFSA games that go on? There is much inequity in admissions and in who pays what to attend.</p>
<p>I am a firm believer that while every person is entitled to attain their maximum educational objective if they keep working, no person is entitled to admission or a free ride (lunch) at any particular institution. On the other hand, I strongly support the efforts of colleges to make their student body racially, economically and socially/geographically diverse, particularly the most expensive colleges and universities. In other words, to reach for a balance in their policy initiatives. </p>
<p>I would love to see the statistical analysis of students colleges accept that were historically below the 50% standard deviation for admission statistics. That is, how well did these students perform and what impact did their education have on their lives? Then extrapolate that information and garner further policy discussions with the most elite colleges, such as the Ivy League, on whether it benefits them, society, and socio-economic groups to admit more (or less) students with profiles that are, e.g. in the 25th percentile. Does Brown, for example, have a specific number of students they admit with that profile? (i.e., do they admit 5% of their incoming class from students with SAT’s and gpa’s in the 25th percentile?) and how do those students perform on average? </p>
<p>Wake Forest (among others) dropped the SAT as a requirement for admission, largely on scientific evidence from studies they did, that showed the SAT to be an inaccurate measure of success in college. They found, apparently, that gpa, maturity and motivation were far greater measures of success than the SAT, yet the SAT continues to be the number one criteria for determining who gets merit scholarships and who doesnt.</p>
<p>Is that fair?</p>
<p>If you were running Brown’s Office of Admissions, what changes would YOU make in their admissions policies, if any?</p>
<p>Thank you.</p>
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<p>Melody, so how many % should the selectivity have? Why do you think its very important?
How are you going to divide selectivity? What values would you assign to each criterion for under selectivity?</p>
<p>The current formula has 50% SATs scores, 40% GPA and 10% yield rate.</p>
<p>Adjust that based on your new formula.</p>
<p>Bravo endlessrecession!!!</p>
<p>Your post was totally brilliant… and real…</p>
<p>RML-- I may make yield higher, SAT lower and use rank/percent in class as opposed to GPA. GPAs are completely different at different schools so I’m not sure why that would be a useful measure as opposed to rank, when available. SAT has lots of problems, as you and I both know, most especially as an incentive for schools to not craft the community they want and go after a standardized test that has serious flaws instead.</p>
<p>I think it’s very important because I think the two most important things about any school are the students and the faculty. That’s how the culture, community, and academic environment is made, period. Those are the two bodies that are interacting to create an intellectual community. The best students learning from the best faculty is the ideal situation. I know you don’t put stock into peer group at all, but I cannot begin to tell you the positive effect it has had on me outside the classroom and the impact it has had inside the classroom. It’s just unquestionable, from my experience.</p>
<p>To me, there are two things that make up each university-- the quality of its people and the quality of its resources in helping to facilitate the needs of those people. And even amongst those two things, personally, I think that high quality people find ways to make due with less, so if I’d have to choose, I’d rather have an additional amazing faculty member than a fifth NMR that’s 500 MHz instead of the 2x 300MHz and 400MHz one already in the chemistry building. Ideally, I’d have both, but that’s how I’d set priorities, personally.</p>
<p>Endless-- that’s a huge long question that I don’t have time to answer at the moment, but I think I may have hit on in the past if you want to search for some of my posts. For starters, just so you’re aware, I don’t really buy into the degrees of qualified argument. I think students are either qualified for success at an institution or not, and once you pass that threshold we’re talking about shaping the right community which takes advantage of the unique cultural and structural elements of your institution. While I’ve heard rumors of abuse, the athletes I know are not getting any better package than anyone else I know at Brown and we (along with the rest of the Ivy League) do not give merit-based sports scholarship. That being said, I don’t doubt that adding someone with a remarkable talent is not worth quite a bit toward shaping a community and I wouldn’t laugh off the quality of person that a top athlete is and how they can add to the academic community. I’d easily excuse test scores for some stellar athletic achievement no different than looking at an outstanding achievement in any other area. What I wouldn’t stand for is the second-seat for academics-- you **** up, you’re out. You’re not here just to play sports, you’re here to be a scholar and we afforded you that opportunity because we felt your talents merited additional consideration.</p>
<p>I don’t think admissions is nearly as systematic as you’re making it out to be-- admissions officers get an application, they read it as an individual and consider how they feel it fits the profile of someone they think belongs at their institution. That’s the way I’d ideally like to see that happen.</p>
<p>Further, there have been some studies done tracking student success – legacies have a tendency to perform a little worse IIRC (though I’m a strong supporter of some legacy admissions policy), and I believe the UT system has shown systematically that students that are accepted under the automatic top decile policy are far more successful than those students which UT hand selects through the admissions process.</p>
<p>Most of the data you’re talking about is shared behind closed doors amongst institutions, in some form or another, and I’m not 100% sure that it’s all super relevant to those applying and I don’t think that private institutions really have any obligation to show any information they don’t want to unless they’re challenged that their practice is illegal.</p>
<p>We don’t offer merit scholarship based on SATs or anything else and our admissions process has been known specifically for looking “beyond” the SAT-- does that mean that most people here don’t have high scores? Of course not, but I’ve seen examples right on CC of students with pretty damn low scores (compared to avg Brown) get in.</p>
<p>That’s just some of my quick thoughts/reactions to your thorough line of questioning. I’ve had a lot of these debates in person about these very questions and it can take hours to piece through all of it conversationally. Still though, I’m not sure this is the right thread for that discussion.</p>
<p>do you think vanderbilt’s rank will change it all this year?
they had another significant increase in applications and a much lower acceptance rate (18.9%)
and also, do you think vanderbilt, emory and rice are all on the same “tier”?</p>
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I doubt it will change.</p>
<ol>
<li><p>As I said before, this year’s numbers will not be reflected in the rankings.</p></li>
<li><p>Yes, Vanderbilt had an increase in applications. So did everywhere else. I highly doubt it will overtake any universities.</p></li>
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<p>Everyone keeps saying that this or that university will go up in the rankings, with little thought to which universities would supposedly go down. The increased selectivity of a college doesn’t matter. Increased selectivity relative to its peers does matter.</p>
<p>Class rank, not GPA, is currently used.
Yield rate is inversely proportional to acceptance rate, which is already in use. Though just using yield directly would be more precise.</p>
<p>Whenever this year’s stats are used:
USC down
Penn down
Grinnell up multiple spaces
Yale up, tie with Princeton</p>