<p>OK, so you at least concede my original point. That’s all you said that I really objected to. Thanks for that. I will concede I did not state one part of my posting very well. What I meant to say was that if you go by average SAT scores only, Tulane is #30 on that same list of schools that USNWR uses, and I think now it will go up. To answer your question, W&L is higher than that, although I am not sure where they are exactly. Probably around #22-23. It’s a great school.</p>
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Actually, if you used that increase against last years numbers, Tulane would have moved up 4 spots. It is fairly significant in an area where getting a change is usually very difficult. We will just have to wait and see how much other schools moved up or down in the same area. I didn’t mention the absolute scores because I was only pointing out that your contention that Tulane was not moving in the right direction was incorrect. You have now said that is right, so great.</p>
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A little snide, but no problem. I do not work for Tulane, I am not paid. I love the school. But if you really searched my posting history you would see I have often recommended other schools when Tulane was obviously not the right fit, was too expensive, etc. The reason I search for references to Tulane is that there is often so much misinformation and incorrect statements, yours being a small example.</p>
<p>As far as increased quality across the board, beyond the academics Tulane is leading the way in the rebuilding of the New Orleans school system and has been very involved in helping small businesses get started/restarted, the architecture school has seen numerous projects come to completion that help the local communities, and I mentioned the recognition by the Carnegie Foundation, Time Magazine, and there have been others. So to say I did not demonstrate anything is just not correct. All your mentions of dropping in ranking were incorrect, but again I did not state it well. Actually Tulane inched up from #51 to #50.</p>
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<p>Well actually, they do suck, but OK. First of course Tulane hasn’t slipped lately, as we have discussed. 25% of the USNWR is “peer assessment”. Suppose you are a professor in the Northeast, so you get to know the schools in your area very well, and there is a high denisity of them there. Same with the California system. Now suppose that after Katrina, all you knew was that Tulane was closed for a semester, the city was still not rebuilt in many areas (not knowing, most likely, that it has nothing to do with the Uptown area of Tulane). Tulane is going to suffer based on these factors. Then there are other factors that USNWR claims represent indicators of quality such as graduation rates, retention, and they used to use admission rates and yields, although I am not sure if they still use those. There was no correcting for Katrina in Tulane’s case, but of course it made these numbers look bad. We will see how it goes as that gets further in the rear view mirror.</p>
<p>But there is nothing scientific about the USNWR formula. They did not develop it and test it in any fashion that resembled a scientific method. What does “best” even mean? It is all quite silly.</p>