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On the first page of the thread University of Pennsylvania is listed as 6th by the first poster. It is however ranked 5th
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<p>i think s/he was in a rush to post, and forgot some rankings overlapped.</p>
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Your might meet more incredible people at Harvard, but how much more amazing can their ECON101 class really be?
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<p>Professor Mankiw is supposedly amazing! The intro text book he wrote on Macro and Micro is awesome.</p>
<p>Six of the top fifteen lacs are not located either in the northeast or mid-Atlantic region.</p>
<p>George2007, I agree.</p>
<p>Personally, I think it's important for US News to try to include output metrics as well. The magazine already incorporates graduation and retention rates, but how about the # undergrads who end up in top graduate programs? Or the number of students who are recruited and hired by companies upon graduation? Or the # of graduates who are leaders in various fields and industries or Fortune 500 corporations or the world's greatest philanthropic organizations? Also, how about looking at the schools who end up with the most Rhodes, Marshall, Gates Millennium, and Fulbright scholarships a year? Some might say this might be difficult, but Business Week and the Wall Street Journal have already done rankings on some of these.</p>
<p>The way US News college rankings are now composed it's like ranking car companies based on the type of materials they use to build their cars (i.e. GPAs & SAT scores) and the types of factories in which they build their cars (Financial and Faculty resources), without looking at the cars that actually come out of their factories (output metrics). It would be silly if I bought a car based on those first 2 factors alone. So why should I pay for a school only based on those factors?</p>
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Professor Mankiw is supposedly amazing! The intro text book he wrote on Macro and Micro is awesome.
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<p>haha ok then</p>
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I dont believe the average sat scores drop 10-20 points in general student population. Anyone with statistics background has any explanations?
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<p>2007
Harvard: 1400-1580
Yale: 1400-1580
Princeton: 1380-1560
Stanford: 1360-1550
Penn: 1340-1520</p>
<p>2008
Harvard: 1390-1590
Yale: 1390-1580
Princeton: 1370-1590
Stanford: 1340-1540
Penn: 1330-1530</p>
<p>Most of the schools have the same data. Only Stanford dropped at both the 25% and 75% mark.</p>
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but how about the # undergrads who end up in top graduate programs? Or the number of students who are recruited and hired by companies upon graduation? Or the # of graduates who are leaders in various fields and industries or Fortune 500 corporations or the world's greatest philanthropic organizations? Also, how about looking at the schools who end up with the most Rhodes, Marshall, Gates Millennium, and Fulbright scholarships a year?
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<p>What do you want to bet that those factors are so closely related to entering SAT scores/class rank/etc. that it adds nothing to the calculation?</p>
<p>Hmmm...not true. Look at the majority of Fortune 500 CEOs, they are not undergraduate alumni of Ivy League schools. Plus, when you look at outputs like Rhodes Scholarships, you'll see that some colleges that you would think would be feeder schools (i.e. the lower Ivies like Brown) really don't do that well against others...say the US Military Academies, some top publics, other lower-ranked privates, etc.</p>
<p>Globalist:</p>
<p>Well, since grads of schools that admit only those with very high high school numbers tend to be a very small minority, it would make sense that the majority of CEOs would be from other schools. But a factor analysis accounts for that. Of course, if you're going to use CEOs as a criterion, you would probably put colleges without business schools at a bit of a disadvantage. Or perhaps not. That's why it's important to actually do the math.</p>
<p>You don't need an undergraduate degree in business to go into business. That's why we have MBAs and economics majors. </p>
<p>Also, I'm confused. How does grad schools admissions have anything to do with CEOs coming "from other schools"?</p>
<p>It's silly to use something like "CEO of a Fortune 500 company" or "Nobel Prize Winner" or "number of Rhodes scholarships" to judge a school since those are amazing achievements that are highly dependent on the individual. </p>
<p>A more accurate measure of "output" would be to use grad school admissions rates but, as someone has already noted, those rates pretty much correlate with the quality of the entering student body and are therefore redundant.</p>
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would be to use grad school admissions rates but, as someone has already noted, those rates pretty much correlate with the quality of the entering student body and are therefore redundant.
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<p>Well, tons of top students don't go to grad school anyways.</p>
<p>2006 was the first year they included the writting portion. I know for my D the testing procedure was a nightmare. They were not ready; they started a couple of hours late and were finished well after lunch.</p>
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A more accurate measure of "output" would be to use grad school admissions rates but, as someone has already noted, those rates pretty much correlate with the quality of the entering student body and are therefore redundant.
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I'd like to see you prove that with actual data. Just take a poll with the PhD students at UCB (since they have top 5 grad programs almost across the board). You may be surprised to find that there is not a strong correlation between SAT scores and college GPA.</p>
<p>But I think I did read that SAT scores went down after they changed the format. The tests are longer than before, the math section was restructured and the writing section adds a lot more. Its a measure of the test changes, not the kids scoring lower.</p>
<p>Do you guys know if SAT writing scores were incorporated in the ranking this year?</p>
<p>Norcalguy, I don't have a perfect formula of what outputs to use, nor do I claim to. I was just listing a number of options. </p>
<p>Nonetheless, I feel that US News must include some sort of output metrics otherwise its rankings are highly flawed. Colleges make a lot of claims, and I think it's important to see if they actually do create the leaders and successful alumni that they claim to.</p>
<p>I like the way another site ranks schools onto tiers. They say that there's not much difference between a school ranked 5 or ranked 10th.</p>
<p>Tier I
Amherst College
Brown University
Cal Tech
Columbia University
Cornell University
Dartmouth College
Duke University
Emory University
Harvard College
Harvey Mudd
Johns Hopkins University
Middlebury College
MIT
Northwestern University
Pomona College
Princeton University
Rice University
Stanford University
Swarthmore College
University of Chicago
University of Pennsylvania
Washington University: STL
Wesleyan University
Williams College
Yale University</p>
<p>Tier II
Bard College
Bates College
Bowdoin College
Brandeis University
Carleton College
Carnegie Mellon
Claremont McKenna
Colby College
College of William & Mary
Cooper Union
Davidson College
Georgetown University
Georgia Tech
Grinnell College
Haverford College
Macalester College
New York University
Oberlin College
Reed College
Tufts College
University of Notre Dame
Vanderbilt University
Vassar College
Washington and Lee
Wellesley College</p>
<p>Tier III
Barnard College
California: Berkeley
Boston College
Boston University
Bucknell University
Case Western Reserve
Colgate University
Connecticut College
Hamilton College
Kenyon College
Lehigh University
Rhodes College
Rose-Hulman Institute of Tech
Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute (RPI)
Scripps College
Trinity College
Tulane University
University of Michigan
University of Richmond
University of Rochester
University of Virginia
US Air Force
USC
Wake Forest University
Whitman College</p>
<p>Tier IV
Colorado College
Colorado School of Mines
Franklin & Marshall College
Furman University
George Washington University
Grove City College
Illinois Wesleyan University
Kalamazoo College
Lafayette College
Lewis & Clark College
Mt. Holyoke College
North Carolina at Chapel Hill
Puget Sound
Sarah Lawrence
Smith College
St. Olaf College
Stevens Institute of Technology
Trinity University
UCLA
University of Maryland
University of Wisconsin
US Coast Guard
US Military Academy - West Point
Villanova University
Worcester Polytechnic Institute (WPI)</p>
<p>As long as we're on the topic of what changes we'd like to see in the USNWR methodology, I'll repost something that I created a few months ago on another thread. I agree that some postgraduate measurements would be a great improvement to the rankings because that is what many, many, many students are going to college for in the first place.</p>
<p>30% STUDENT BODY MEASUREMENTS for Incoming & Outgoing Students
8% Standardized Test Scores
4% Top 10% Ranks
2% Admittance Rate
10% Job Placement Statistics (% with full-time jobs, starting salary, etc)
4% Graduate School Placement Statistics
2% Average Debt of Graduates</p>
<p>20% FACULTY RESOURCES
5% % of classes with under 20 students
5% % of classes with over 50 students
4% Student/faculty ratio
2% % of classes taught by TAs
1% % of faculty with highest degree
1% Faculty salary
2% % of faculty that are full-time</p>
<p>15% FACULTY ASSESSMENT
6% Reputation among academics
3% Reputation among students
3% Reputation among alumni
3% Reputation among employers</p>
<p>10% FINANCIAL RESOURCES
7% Money per student dedicated to research, student services, and related educational expenditures.
3% Endowment per capita (combined for undergraduate and graduate)</p>
<p>10% GRADUATTION/RETENTION MEASUREMENTS
1% Freshman Retention
3% 4-Year Graduation Rate
3% 6-Year Graduation Rate
3% Differential Measurement</p>
<p>10% COST OF ATTENDANCE</p>
<p>5% ALUMNI GIVING (exempt public universities)</p>
<p>from this thread: <a href="http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/showthread.php?t=352886%5B/url%5D">http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/showthread.php?t=352886</a></p>
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I like the way this site ranks schools onto tiers. They say that there's not much difference between a school ranked 5 or ranked 10th.
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<p>The ranking you quoted seems absurd to me. UC Berkeley for example which is ranked top 10 ** in the world ** in most international rankings, is considered "3rd Tier". Likewise, it's ridiculous to consider UCLA "4th tier". </p>
<p>Besides, the ranking you mentioned mix small private research universities, non-research LACs, and large state universities in one single category as if "apples and oranges" were directly comparable. It doesn't make any sense !</p>
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15% FACULTY ASSESSMENT
6% Reputation among academics
3% Reputation among students
3% Reputation among alumni
3% Reputation among employers
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<p>A university is not like High School where faculty quality is measured in terms who is the "nicest teacher". Faculty assessment at the university level has to be measured in terms of the academic credentials, namely research output and impact. </p>
<p>A university learning experience actually differs radically from High School. It should be less supervised and should require far more individual initiative on the part of the student to learn outside the classroom, including active involvement in original research. For a university student, having a professor who can bring new scientific insight into standard textbook material and guide him/her into new research directions is far more important than having a "good teacher" in the HS sense.</p>