<p>I agree, McCash. Take it for what its worth, or leave it.</p>
<p>^^^Those of us that "are taking it for what is worth", are doing exactly that. We know the PA is misleading, innaccurate and subjective. Therefore, we feel that it is important to bring it up to discussion and to call it to the attention of the thousands, who blindly, can not tell the trees from the forest.</p>
<p>I wonder who really needs to grow up in this discussion.</p>
<p>When one looks at every individual tree, to use the above analogy, one chances losing the entire picture, analagous to the forest. In this case, it is the overall picture that is important...not the perfection of every last detail.</p>
<p>When does the actually magazine hit stores? It's not online in any bookstores or amazon.com.</p>
<p>Last Friday........................</p>
<p>MovieBuff,
Just curious. What's your opinion on USNWR's graduate departmental rankings, and UG business/engineering rankings?</p>
<p>The Peer Assessment (a.k.a. PA) part of the rankings is actually the most important part of the rankings. It's also the most accurate.</p>
<p>Most of the other measures - graduation rate, midrange SAT scores, etc. - don't actually get at what the college does once the kids get in - i.e. educate them.</p>
<p>Ultimately the way you'd measure higher education institutions is by some prestigious global benchmark. For law schools, it's placement of grads as clerks to the Supreme Court. For graduate programs across the world, it's Nobel Prize winners among faculty and students. (And there are already good lists which use these measures.) </p>
<p>For undergrad schools it's job placement/grad school placement afterwards, which can't be quantified but is indirectly related to the reputation of a school, so a peer assessment although imperfect is not an unreasonable tool to use.</p>
<p>The idea is to take a top slice from a given class and extrapolate it through the rest of the class, since a small portion of people tend to contribute a disproportionate amount to society (or the scientific field they do research in, etc - depends on the field of study.)</p>
<p>idk if the link has already been posted (didn't feel like looking through all 37 pages), but here is the link for the 2008 us news rankings</p>
<p>"The Peer Assessment (a.k.a. PA) part of the rankings is actually the most important part of the rankings. It's also the most accurate."</p>
<p>I agree with it to a certain degree. It reflects the perception of the quality of the schools, which in turn largely depends on the past achievements. However, if we only honor the past achievements, then effectively we will have little competition now.</p>
<p>99 times out of 100 the past is a pretty good indicator for the future when it comes to colleges.</p>
<p>
[quote]
The Peer Assessment (a.k.a. PA) part of the rankings is actually the most important part of the rankings. It's also the most accurate.
[/quote]
</p>
<p>The PA (a.k.a. the Peer Assessment) is absolutely the most meaningless portion of the rankings (Garbage In, Garbage Out as the old adage goes). Its also the most subjective and most prone for manipulation and error.</p>
<p>
[quote]
Most of the other measures - graduation rate, midrange SAT scores, etc. - don't actually get at what the college does once the kids get in - i.e. educate them.
[/quote]
</p>
<p>Most of the other measures - graduation rate, SAT, etc. are actually verifiable and tend to be a pretty reliable predictors of future performance in school. BTW, if the kids are generally pretty smart going in, its a pretty good chance they'll be pretty smart coming out -- further, most top universities do a pretty decent job "educating" their students and finally, and more to the point, the PA has absolutely nothing to do with the above.</p>
<p>
[quote]
Ultimately the way you'd measure higher education institutions is by some prestigious global benchmark. For law schools, it's placement of grads as clerks to the Supreme Court. For graduate programs across the world, it's Nobel Prize winners among faculty and students. (And there are already good lists which use these measures.)</p>
<p>For undergrad schools it's job placement/grad school placement afterwards, which can't be quantified but is indirectly related to the reputation of a school, so a peer assessment although imperfect is not an unreasonable tool to use.
[/quote]
</p>
<p>A grad school placement ranking. You don't say... Oh wait, you mean like the WSJ Feeder ranking? </p>
<p>
[quote]
The idea is to take a top slice from a given class and extrapolate it through the rest of the class, since a small portion of people tend to contribute a disproportionate amount to society (or the scientific field they do research in, etc - depends on the field of study.)
[/quote]
</p>
<p>And what exactly does that have to do with the wonderfulness of the PA?</p>
<p>quote--
For undergrad schools it's job placement/grad school placement afterwards, which can't be quantified but is indirectly related to the reputation of a school, so a peer assessment although imperfect is not an unreasonable tool to use.</p>
<p>I have seen numerous posts on this forum to links that rank the PhD production of undergraduate colleges/universities - that is one objective measure. There is also the NSSE (sp?) - student engagement study, which seems more comprehensive and controlled of an assessment.</p>
<p>PA, peer assessment, seems to me a poor measure of a college since it is subjective and susceptible to the prejudices, biases, idiosyncasies, and actually ignorance, of the people giving the assessment. I bet a lot of them know each other in an old boy-girl network and golf together and even vote swap (seems reasonable to me). Finally, the assessment is clouded with lots of money at stake (acquisition of new customers; ie, students).</p>
<p>In short, it is a 'beauty contest' and sees the appearances of the thing rather than the thing itself; The story Mr Plato's cave comes ot mind.</p>
<p>Did I hear right the USNR weights PA 50 pct of the composite score? That is way too much weight to a dubious measure already.</p>
<p>
[quote]
Did I hear right the USNR weights PA 50 pct of the composite score?
[/quote]
</p>
<p>Its 25%. Still a pretty hefty chunk. Regardless it's, Garbage In, Garbage Out as I said earlier.</p>
<p>This Thread Needs To Die></p>
<p>each student should ask what school is best for me...</p>
<p>How is Duke in the top 10? :S</p>
<p>^ It seems like Columbians have one hell of an inferiority complex</p>
<p>Duke = Columbia academically</p>
<p>Duke > Columbia socially</p>
<p>Can somebody give the overall score for the top 25 schools? Thanks!</p>
<p>Dude the OP was drunk when he was typing</p>
<ol>
<li>Princeton</li>
<li>Harvard</li>
<li>Yale</li>
<li>Stanford</li>
<li>California Institute of Technology</li>
<li>University of Pennsylvania</li>
<li>MIT</li>
<li>Duke</li>
<li>Columbia</li>
<li>University of Chicago not 10. </li>
<li>Dartmouth</li>
<li>Cornell</li>
<li>Washington at Stl Louis</li>
<li>Brown</li>
<li>John Hopkins</li>
<li>Northwestern</li>
<li>Emory</li>
<li>Rice</li>
<li>University of Notre Dame, not Emory</li>
<li>Vanderbilt</li>
<li>University of Cal at Berkley</li>
<li>CMU</li>
<li>Georgetown</li>
<li>University of Virginia</li>
<li>University of Cal - LA</li>
</ol>
<p>Why do you guys want Overall Scores or #26-50...They're about the same as last year's. USC's never gunna make it top 5 nor is Harvard gunna drop below 30.</p>
<p>If anyone wants individual school's stats, pm me. The ranking's available on US News+World Report's August 27, 2007 copy. Red Heading: America's Best Colleges, and the cover has a pic of a comely female :)</p>