Why top ranked colleges are the only legitimate colleges nowadays..few exceptions

College Search & Lists
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<p>Alexandre is right. The US News PA score accounts for only 15% of the overall US News ranking. And I can assure you that among the college and university presidents and provosts I know who fill those things out, admit rates are the farthest thing from their mind when evaluating their peer institutions. They mostly think about which schools have the faculty, resources, and programs they envy, and which don’t. Selectivity may have a greater influence with HS guidance counselors; a survey of their ratings of colleges and universities now makes up 7.5% of the total US News ranking. But even there, a lot more than selectivity is at play.</p>

<p>Here are the most selective universities, according to US News

  1. Caltech, Yale
  2. Columbia, Harvard, MIT, Princeton
  3. Penn
  4. Brown, Dartmouth, Stanford, WUSTL
  5. Georgetown
  6. Duke, Northwestern, UC Berkeley
  7. Notre Dame, Vanderbilt
  8. Chicago, Tufts
  9. Cornell , Rice, UCLA
  10. Emory, Johns Hopkins, USC
  11. Michigan
  12. UVA
  13. Boston College, William & Mary</p>

<p>Here are the schools with the highest PA scores:

  1. Harvard, MIT, Princeton, Stanford 4.9
  2. Yale 4.8
  3. UC Berkeley 4.7
  4. Caltech, Chicago, Columbia 4.6
  5. Cornell, Johns Hopkins, Penn 4.5
  6. Brown, Duke, Michigan, Northwestern 4.4
  7. Dartmouth, UVA 4.3
  8. CMU, UCLA 4.2
  9. Georgetown, Georgia Tech, Rice, Texas , UNC Chapel Hill, Vanderbilt, WUSTL, Wisconsin 4.1
  10. Emory, USC 4.0
  11. Illinois, Notre Dame 3.9</p>

<p>Strikingly, the top public research institutions–UC Berkeley and Michigan especially, but others as well–are esteemed by university presidents and provosts out of all proportion to their selectivity, while some highly selective institutions–like WUSTL (#9 in selectivity per US News), Georgetown (#13), Notre Dame (#16), Vanderbilt (#16), and Tufts (#18)—just don’t get the PA love. Johns Hopkins, Chicago, and Cornell also score higher in PA than in selectivity.</p>

<p>Here are the schools with the highest GC survey scores:

  1. Harvard, MIT, Princeton, Stanford, Yale 4.9
  2. Brown, Columbia, Cornell, Georgetown, Johns Hopkins 4.8
  3. Dartmouth, Duke 4.7
  4. Caltech, CMU, Penn, UC Berkeley, Northwestern, Notre Dame 4.6
  5. Chicago, Tufts, Vanderbilt 4.5
  6. Boston College, Georgia Tech, Michigan, Rice, USC, WUSTL, Emory, UNC Chapel Hill 4.4
  7. NYU, UCLA, UVA, Wake Forest 4.3</p>

<p>The GCs are easier graders, but their grades appear to closely track the overall US rankings, with a little extra love for Ivies (all except Penn ranked #11 or higher), highly selective Catholic institutions (Georgetown, Notre Dame, BC), and other highly selective Northeastern privates (Johns Hopkins, CMU, Tufts). Interesting that Caltech doesn’t rate higher with GCs despite being #1 in selectivity per US News and having stellar academics.</p>

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<p>Hard to be “cut-throat” when you have one vote out of hundreds. You might choose to downgrade your closest competitors as the University of Florida president reportedly did, but if everyone does it those downgrades will just cancel each other out, and if only a few do it the effect on a score on a 5.0 scale with hundreds of people casting ballots is going to be trivial. It would take a huge conspiracy involving dozens and dozens of college and university officials to materially affect any competitor’s final score.</p>