2008 US News Rankings

<p>Oops.. I actually meant to write Overall Score not PA.. lol.</p>

<p>gabriellah,
Finally, we agree and I think your sentiments were well expressed. Fit is the most important thing of all and the reality is that a student can have a terrific undergraduate experience at a great number of schools. Recently, unalove started a thread on the schools you wish you'd considered. If you have not seen it already, here is the link:</p>

<p><a href="http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/showthread.php?t=382255%5B/url%5D"&gt;http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/showthread.php?t=382255&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p>

<p>I have always felt this way, Hawkette, and it is not that I do not understand what you have always been trying to drive home: that there are many wonderful schools, with wonderfully intelligent and interesting kids, all over this country. Never, ever would I disagree with you about this. In fact, I know that you are 100% correct. I am not an efete ranking snob...not in the least. I think you can see that from the choices my childern were encouraged to make. Our only real difference comes from the faith I put in the peer assessment. I want to have confidence in some higher authority when I know that I do not have the knowledge on my own. I value professional opinion, and hope that I am getting a good one. I just think, that although our goals for the students are probably very similar, our perspectives on how we get there are different. All good intentions; all strongly held values.</p>

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Hawkette, you gotta learn how to utilize Excel, rather than tying all of that in.

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<p>that's old school</p>

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A cautionary tale for everyone obsessed by the small differences among schools that affect ranking...Some years back, when my oldest child was deciding where to attend, her final decision came down to her favorites, which were Vassar and Weslyan. She really loved Vassar, and very much liked many things about Weslyan. She was not the big university type, abhorred anything to do with fraternity/sorority, and was looking for something "artsy" that fit her personality. Consequently, she immediately made the decision to eliminate the ivies, much to the consternation of her college advisor who knew that Princeton was interested, not only because of her strong academics, but because she was a musical theater performer, and it was apparently looking for kids to fill that niche. She went to visit Princeton, and hated what she perceived to be a very male oriented, "good-old-boy" kind of attitude. She also hated Yale, finding something about it overwhelming. Just not for her.
On one day, we went back and forth with her to Vassar, Weslyan, and then back again to each. When she was on Vassar, I could see that she felt a strong sense of belonging, that I did not see at Weslyan. It seemed that since, at the time, Vassar was ranked # 13, behind Weslyan's # 6, I believe, that her college advisor was suggesting that she pick Weslyan over Vassar. So she was torn. We convinced her to go with what she truly wanted, and not be affected by "the list," which frankly, we were totally unimpressed by back then. We knew that all of the schools she was looking at were topnotch, and that was all we basically cared about, except for her happiness. Ultimately she did just that, and went to Vassar. It is important to note that Vassar and Weslyan are ranked together now, at #11. Why? It shows the folly of getting too caught up in a particular year's rankings. In fact, Middlebury was ranked far lower a few years back, as well, as was Penn. The cautionary message? Go with your heart, and really don't worry about the rankings when you are really splitting hairs amongst the top group. All of these schools are standouts, and the one you pick today because of its apparent rank, may not be ranked as such in a few years. And you may be sorry if you choose # 5 over #10 if you wind up not enjoying the experience. A few years from now, number 10 could be the new #5.
By now you all know how much I love Hopkins. I guess that is because my child is so happy there, and because the administration is so extremely wonderful. As I mentioned before, he had Ivy options, as well as other excellent choices. But when he walked onto Hopkins, much like my daughter and Vassar, he knew that was where he belonged. And yes, peer assessment is important to me...but in a broad sense, not in a specific sense. The PA does not have to be the highest, but the professional assessment tells me something about the academic atmosphere at the schools, that I could not possibly assess on my own.
So the moral of this tale is to go with your hearts, and do not get caught up with the minutia. The bottom line is will you be happy? Will you fit in academically and socially? And, of course, are you comfortable with the tuition costs? Each and every one of these schools is outstanding.

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<p>Don't be afraid to hit the "Enter" button a couple of times every now and then.</p>

<p>I think it's silly to look at a change of .1 as a "drop" or an "increase" and to make rank distinctions based on such a fraction, particularly when the PA survey itself is so dubious as to its reliability. Any mathematicians or statisticians in the house who can tell me at what point differences in this type of scoring become significant ---- at half a point, .2, .1, etc. </p>

<p>Unless someone can say that fractions of a point are significant, I believe the only way to derive any value from this scoring category is to look at very broad groupings of PA quality rather than making a 1-2-3 type ranking of PA. Can anyone really say that a .1 or .2 difference in PA translates into a measurable difference in academic quality? It seems ludicrous. I don't think it makes any sense to take a horse-race approach, with winners and losers judged by a hairsbreadth. Unless, of course, you've got some money riding on it.</p>

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Can anyone really say that a .1 or .2 difference in PA translates into a measurable difference in academic quality? It seems ludicrous.

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<p>^^^ but the more ludicrous it is, the more "real" it gets.</p>

<p>so even though the PA is a total crock, that .1 or .2 differential actually does make a difference in this ranking simply due to the fact that the PA counts for a whopping 25% of your overall score.</p>

<p>LOL, Prestige...Just too lazy, tonight!</p>

<p>CoolaTroop,
I rather be a DramaQueen, than the Queen of Denial (not The Nile, that big river in Egypt, just in case once again you do not get it)</p>

<p>Selectivity Ranks, as I referred to in my post addressed to thethoughprocesss,</p>

<p>Harvard 1
Yale 1
Princenton 3
Columbia 5
Brown 7
Dartmouth 7
UPenn 7
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DUKE 12 ( WELL DRAMATICALLY LOWER compared to the non HYP ivies he was referring to )</p>

<p>How did UF slip from 47 to 49 even though it's more selective now than ever before (especially after the national championships)? I'm confused... :/</p>

<p>MovieBuff - Selectivity based on acceptance rate is deceiving...after all, Duke is in a city of 50,000 - Columbia in a city of 9,000,000. What is more important is the strength of the enrolling students.</p>

<p>It doesn't matter if a bunch of kids apply to school A if the students who enroll aren't as strong as the students at school B. Catch the point? In real terms - it doesn't matter if Columbia or Brown have lower acceptance rates - the students who enroll at Duke are as strong or stronger statistically.</p>

<p>Btw, MovieBuff - Duke's acceptance rate of like 21% isn't dramatically lower than Brown, Dartmouth, or Penn with rates between 15-20% (or Columbia with like 12-13%, while still not enrolling higher caliber students despite being in NYC). A 1-2% fluctuation in each school would put them almost side-by-side (ie if Dartmouth goes from 16 to 18% and Duke from 21 to 19%).</p>

<p>Hey...can someone post Suny Binghamton's admissions statistics from the new rankings? thanks.</p>

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How did UF slip from 47 to 49 even though it's more selective now than ever before (especially after the national championships)? I'm confused... :/

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Because admissions are only one of many factors in the US News ranking. Read the methodology. It would also be ignorant to believe that Florida, and only Florida is getting more selective. Nearly every school in the country is getting more applications, lower acceptance rates, and higher SAT score ranges.</p>

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Hey...can someone post Suny Binghamton's admissions statistics from the new rankings? thanks.

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<p>I just don't understand why you would want to know this, it's the same numbers that are on the SUNY website under the common data set, and it's the same numbers that were on the College Board site a year ago. Here they are though.</p>

<p>Top 10 percent of high school class:49% Top 25 percent of high school class: 84% Top 50 percent of high school class: 98%
First-year students submitting high school class standing:27% Average high school GPA:3.7
First-year students submitting GPA:92%
First-year students submitting SAT scores: 94% </p>

<p>SAT scores (25/75 percentile):
Critical Reading:570 – 650 Math: 610 – 690 Combined: 1180 – 1340</p>

<p>John Hopkins? What's that?</p>

<p>It does look like Johns Hopkins is the big winner this year for greatest gainer.</p>

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Re: undergrad engineering - yay for Harvey-Mudd! =)

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<p>While it does feel good to be at number 1 without a tie, we totally got SHAFTED ONCE AGAIN in the LAC rankings. Harvey Mudd 15th!??!? Give me a frikken break USNWR...</p>

<p>I'm going to Pton so I should be happy, but MIT does not deserve to be so low :(</p>

<p>I don't think that anybody can say that seventh place, no matter what the university, is "low".</p>

<p>I don't think it's a question of MIT being too "low"
It's not HYPS. So really, it should fall in the 4-7 range.
It's the fact that Penn is 2 spots above it, and Penn is perceived as being a lower Ivy.</p>

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It's the fact that Penn is 2 spots above it, and Penn is perceived as being a lower Ivy.

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<p>Mid ivy. The "lower" ivies are Dartmouth, Cornell, and arguably Brown.</p>