<p>Hmm...I suppose you were right about that CoolaTroopa.</p>
<p>Although those statistics do give merit to the idea that Duke places a larger emphasis on SAT's than most school...as that's a fairly narrow SAT range.</p>
<p>s snack, i'm going to p-town next year so I don't have a horse in this race but I find your statements about Penn a bit odd. Like 45Percenter said, where is your evidence that Penn manipulates anything? You can't fault a school for creating desirable programs and spending lots of money to improve faculty, facilities, and research. We are not talking WUSTL here! Maybe Columbia could focus their resources on building a time machine to go back 50 years when they could get away with bashing other ivy-leagues.</p>
<p>s snack</p>
<p>
[quote]
"Although those statistics do give merit to the idea that Duke places a larger emphasis on SAT's than most school...as that's a fairly narrow SAT range."
[/quote]
</p>
<p>Seems like an excuse to me to explain why Duke has more high scoring students. Typical non-HYP inferiority complex at work here - just can't admit that non-HYP Ivies are a step below Harvard and that there are non-Ivy schools with a legitimate claim to being just as good. </p>
<p>The reason why Duke's acceptance rate is worse but the student strength is just as good/better is because less people apply to Duke on a whim since its not a Northeast school/Ivy and away from major population centers. Columbia is in Manhattan (pop. 9 million), Duke is in Durham (pop. 50,000). However, the top academic students are the only ones who get accepted at either, and the students who enroll at Duke are academically just as good - its just that Duke rejected less sub par students than Columbia. </p>
<p>Btw, maybe Duke places more emphasis on sending kids to top law/biz/med schools or Wall Street too - since it is just as good/better as non-HYP Ivies at that too. Maybe Duke places a larger emphasis on getting National Merit Scholars too (since it beats all non-HYP Ivies in that). Or maybe it places more emphasis on having a good faculty:student ratio...or places more emphasis on having kids not drop out for a great retention rate...I mean cmon.</p>
<p>
<p>However, a good example is when Penn's Admissions Director revealed that they give a preference to students who show a strong interest in the school...aka they yield protect (although I don't think this is as significant as it used to be)
</p>
<p>He didn't "reveal" it like it was some state secret, he has continually and proudly announced it, as he did in the 2005 edition of Newsweek's "America's Hot Colleges":</p>
<p>
[quote]
HOTTEST FOR HAPPY-TO-BE-THERE
University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia
While other Ivies deny that applying Early Decision or Early Action yields any advantage, Penn's admissions office has long acknowledged it's more likely to select students who declare the 9,700-undergrad school to be their first choice. Lee Stetson, the dean of undergraduate admissions, says the more students he admits who are eager to be at Penn, the happier the campus. The emphasis on picking students who've picked Penn means freshmen fit in quickly, and "by and large everyone here has found a niche," says rising senior Rachel Fersh, chair of the Undergraduate Assembly.
[/quote]
</p>
<p>Furthermore, Penn makes quite clear to applicants that it places great emphasis on demonstrated interest in attending Penn (as in the "Why Penn?" essay, etc.). This is not "gaming" or "manipulation"--it's sound admissions policy. If an applicant can't put forth the basic effort to demonstrate in an essay that he/she has a real interest in Penn, regardless of his/her other qualifications, he/she certainly doesn't belong there.</p>
<p>And in terms of alleged "yield protection", yield is not even a factor in the US News rankings, so it doesn't qualify as an example of "gaming" or "manipulating" those rankings.</p>
<p>It's probably a good idea to avoid repeating unsubstantiated myths and legends heard from others, and to instead examinine the hard facts for oneself. :)</p>
<p>thethoughtprocess, if we all agree that Duke is as good as the ivy league, will you go away? </p>
<p>:) just kidding :)</p>
<p>This thread makes me sick</p>
<p>seriously. why do you people care so much? i was about to hurl when i read someone asking why yale's peer rating dropped from 4.9 to 4.8. big ****ing deal</p>
<p>whothebelltolls, someone needs to say something when people don't acknowledge reality and bash Duke for being ranked high despite not being an Ivy. </p>
<p>I mean, facts do exist. Posts like "LOL Duke is soo overrated" make no sense. I'm just addressing posts like that. </p>
<p>Sibelius - you don't have to click on a thread if it makes you sick.</p>
<p>Can someone explain to me how Dartmouth managed to fall out of the top 10? Just because it puts an emphasis on undergraduate education as opposed to graduate research (like Harvard) makes it a subpar school?</p>
<p>You just have to wonder how accurate the ratings are when the Air Force Academy is ranked in Baccalaureate Schools (west) while West Point and Annapolis are ranked as Liberal Arts Schools (national). They pretty much have the same curriculum and pull students from all states.</p>
<p>See, here is where we really disagree, Hawkette...Wash U has become a hot school. This is not to say that it is not a great school...it surely is. But its PA rank is only a 4.1 compared to Penn, which has a PA rank of 4.5. Without the PA ranking, we would just be looking at the "hotness" factor of a school like Wash U, which has effectively used the system to the best of its ability to "sell" itself to the public. The only number an individual school cannot effectively manipulate is PA. All others are subject to manipulation, to greater and lesser degrees. I am not particularly interested in how hot a school is. No...Penn deserves it kudos.</p>
<p>did anyone else see that hampshire dropped from 91 to 118 (-27)?</p>
<p>Alston</p>
<p>
[quote]
Can someone explain to me how Dartmouth managed to fall out of the top 10? Just because it puts an emphasis on undergraduate education as opposed to graduate research (like Harvard) makes it a subpar school?
[/quote]
</p>
<p>Yes, that is why. That is the beauty of Peer Assessment score. Meanwhile, JHU - with weaker students, worse placement, and less emphasis on undergrad than JHU - has a 4.6 PA score...which is higher than Penn, Duke, Brown, and Northwestern.</p>
<p>gabriellah,
It is not a matter of "hotness" which I interpret to mean the rate of change in the number of applications. Wash U has broken the code on attracting top students and the historical powers don't like it. </p>
<p>Wash U is the school that everyone (and particularly the Ivies) love to hate and that's about clear as it can be. Also, you would have to be blind (or worse) not to see that academics don't like newcomers or outsiders-look how non-NE schools struggle to maintain already low PAs, eg, Duke, Rice, Vanderbilt all went down in the latest survey and emerging powers like Wash U or USC get short shrift compared to schools of similar quality and don't even get me started on Tufts which continues to get the shaft. </p>
<p>The only conceivable way that I can see the PA scores as being justified would be for that individual student who was intending to pursue a career in academia and the name of the college (even if the reputation was made at the graduate level). Otherwise, PA is a most damaging and IMO is mostly used to preserve an old pecking order that is out of touch with the choices that the top students are making.</p>
<p>Gabriellaah, yesterday I posted a couple of tidbits about the PA. Today, there is a new one (quoted in another thread):</p>
<p>
[quote]
"Richard J. Cook, the president of Allegheny College in Pennsylvania, will not say precisely how he used to rate his colleges competitors when the annual U.S. News & World Report peer review questionnaire showed up in his mailbox. What he will say is, I filled it out more honestly this year than I did in the past. </p>
<p>I checked dont know for every college except Allegheny, Dr. Cook said, adding that he gave his own institution an outstanding rating."
[/quote]
</p>
<p>I am a little perplexed by the meaning "The only number an individual school cannot effectively manipulate is PA. All others are subject to manipulation, to greater and lesser degrees." It's obvious that the numbers that compose 75% of the rankings are self-reported and could be misleading, a fact that has been exploited by schools. </p>
<p>However, the PA methodology and impact on the current rankings lends itself to a series of abuses where one decides to penalizes the foes and help friends ... and their own schools.</p>
<p>I believe that the PA does have value. Actually so much value in the eyes of some that I believe it should have its own individual rankings, in a manner similar to the rankings of specialty schools. IMHO, US News should present its rankings of best colleges without the PA, and then present the PA in a separate ranking and take advantage of the "space" by breaking down the PA in ten or twelve subcategories (and providing a bit of detail of what is actually "measured" by the PA. This way, all of us could stop debating if the PA measures "quality of education" or the perception of the same, if it measures dedication to teaching, or dedication to chasing the research dollars, or dedication to publishing. </p>
<p>This way, people who value the PA would have their own rankings (although this is easy to do with the 15 dollars online version.) Others would enjoy a ranking composed of only "objective" data. </p>
<p>Unfortunately that would never happen as long as Morse and his minions use the PA to mitigate the negative impact of lower statistics that plague a few of their friends.</p>
<p>
<p>As a University, I admit, Penn has much more than Wharton.
The prestige of Penn's undergraduate programs don't "ride on" Wharton, either. You must have missed in my earlier post: quite a few highly ranked liberal arts departments in the College of Arts and Sciences, a top-3 nursing school, and highly ranked biomedical and nanotechnology programs in the School of Engineering and Applied Science.</p>
<p>The more you know about Penn, the more you respect it. :)</p>
<p>By what mechanism do these "historical powers" engineer the low PA for "outsiders?" Is is a secret newsletter that goes out dictating what ratings can be given? As ridiculous as that sounds, I guess I'm just grasping for an explanation that illuminates this phenomenon as hwakette has described it here and on other threads.</p>
<p>That is so true, S Snack...Wash U sends out so many applications, with the promise of access to scholarships of every sort. My son was told that he could possibly be eligible for a full scholarship, as did many of his friends. As St. Louis was not a draw for him, this did not provide an allure. But we know several people who did apply because of the tantalizing thought of a large merit scholarship. Although several were accepted, with very high stats, not one was awarded such a scholarship. Nevertheless, Wash U got them to apply.
Wash U makes a consistent and effective effort to make an end run around PA, because that is an external number that cannot be internally manipulated. The name of the game for Wash U is to get an abundance of apps, so that they can manipulate the mid range stats, as well as their selectivity...Causing, of course, a rise in rank. Nope. We need PA to keep 'em honest.</p>
<p>Xiggi: But the other data is not objective. It is constantly played with to result in a desired outcome. There is nothing that the public can do to combat someone with such minimal ethical standards so as to not fill out the USNWR honestly, and to the best of his ability. Frankly, that one comment alone speaks volumes about Mr. Cook, and unfortunately, the institution that would allow him to continue as its leader. He makes no valuable contribution to the education of young people. He is not worthy of our time.
I would hope that the overwhelming majority of professionals doing the assessments are on the up-and-up, and take the questionaire that they are charged with filling out, seriously.</p>
<p>^^ Haha, and not to mention WashU's outrageous waitlist policies.... Seriously - whenever anyone says, 'waitlist,' WashU is the first school that comes to mind.</p>
<p>I really do think there is some value to the rankings. Though it probably isn't in ongoing debates as to why something is number five instead of number 7, or why something is number 11 instead of number 9 (cough cough), I do think it sheds light on some of the best schools in the country. Heck, without it, and of course all those college guides (like Princeton Review & Fiske) that essentially do the same thing withoutout the sensationalism and vulgarity, I don't know that I would have even found Swarthmore.</p>