2008 vs 1999: What’s changed in the USNWR data? Who’s hot and who’s not?

College Search & Selection
221

<p>Don't forget though that many non-rich kids go to private high school on scholarship. And many rich families would never dream of paying tuition for high school.</p>

<p>And regarding the pell grants and SATs. Bleh! I'm sick to death of the tired old complaint that only rich kids do well on the SAT. The SAT was adopted to LEVEL the playing field. It doesn't take a lot of money to do well on the SAT. It does take focus and respect for school and 20 bucks for the blue book. Just so sick of that nonsense. Wealthy kids do better because their parents are (a) usually fairly smart, and (b) have a work ethic. Duh. People who rail against this reality should just be honest with themselves and our society and declare that Hey! The wrong people do well. To be fair we have to just totally abandon any objective meausure of competence. Anyone can be a doctor! Get rid of board certification if you want to perform surgery. Just be poor and deserving. Get rid of professional engineering licenses to design bridges and jets. Just be poor and deserving. When will the idiocy stop? The SAT is NOT a class barrier. It is a class crasher for those intelligent enough to "get it." Darwin, anyone?</p>

222

<p>collehehelp, your ranking is incredibly flawed. If you took out PA, a school that would drop tremendously is Cornell, Cal Berk, Michigan, and Chicago and JHU. The fact that JHU and Cornell were still up there indicates you made some errors in your calculations. School that would rise would include Rice, Wash U, Northwestern, Duke and Dartmouth.</p>

223

<p>Columbiahopeful-
The data was cut and paste from the US News website. The calculations were done by computer program. I gave you the formula. Try it out on a few schools. The results differ depending on how you weight the factors and which factors you include. I tried to pick four that I thought were (a) different from each other and (b) important. Then I weighted them a priori based on my subjective estimate of their relative importance. So, I thought selectivity was most important. Class size and full-time faculty were important but not as much. Then financial factors were even less important but still influential.</p>

<p>from what I recall:
(SAT 75th/4) + f-t faculty percent + classes over 50 percent - financial resources rank/2</p>

<p>With the right weights, I could have replicated the US News ranking if I wanted to without using PA.</p>

<p>I wish there were an index for faculty quality, both teaching and scholarship. Maybe I could use NRC ratings for faculty scholarship.</p>

<p>I have my program set up to sort the US News national universities with any of the factors weighted any way I want. It is like a game, really. My original intent was to show that the US News rankings could be made to come out the same without PA, which I did.</p>

<p>If I could, I would add public/private and distance from home so anyone could create their own ranking based on their priorities and personal preferences.</p>

224

<p>bluebayou and dstark,
On the low numbers of Pell Grantees at my “favorite” schools, are you referring to Princeton or Yale? Hey, if it’s good enough for them, then why not also for Wash U, Wake, U Virginia, etc? Or is there a double standard being applied here?? Nice try. :) </p>

<p>Interesting about USC and their high number of Pell Grantees. And they still took their average SAT scores up by 150 points from 1999 to 2008. </p>

<p>Also, for the major publics and their percentage of students from public high schools:</p>

<p>84% U North Carolina
80% UCLA
80% U Michigan
77% U Virginia
75% U Illinois</p>

<p>NA for UC Berkeley and W&M and U Wisconsin</p>

<p>collegehelp,
I don’t have the specific weights for the sub-categories of the USNWR rankings. Nor do I have the rankings of the various schools in these sub-categories. How are you doing your calculations to create an Ex-PA ranking without them? </p>

<p>Also, if you plan to use the NRC rankings for scholarship, why not use the USNWR rankings for classroom teaching excellence? Here is the list of the 25 colleges that were ranked:</p>

<pre><code>NATIONAL UNIVERSITIES
</code></pre>

<p>1 Dartmouth
2 Brown
3 W&M
4 Rice
5 Princeton
6 Stanford
7 Duke
8 Miami U (OH)
9 Notre Dame
10 Yale
11 U Virginia
12 U Chicago
13 Emory
13 UC Santa Cruz
15 Vanderbilt
16 Boston College
17 Harvard
18 Northwestern
19 Caltech
20 Wake Forest
20 U North Carolina
22 BYU
22 Wash U
24 Georgetown
24 Tufts</p>

<pre><code>LACs
</code></pre>

<p>1 Carleton
2 Swarthmore
3 Williams
4 Grinnell
5 Amherst
6 Earlham
7 Haverford
8 St. John's
9 Colorado College
10 Davidson
11 Oberlin
12 Pomona
12 Wellesley
14 Bowdoin
15 St. Olaf
16 Bryn Mawr
16 Macalester
18 Bates
18 Middlebury
18 Reed
21 Kenyon
21 Spelman
23 Smith
24 Sewanee
25 Centre</p>

225

<p>I hope everyone here is aware that high school grades, significant extracurricular activities, and most other desirable characteristics that college applicants can have are correlated with income in much the same way SAT scores are.</p>

226

<p>
[quote]
I also like the Pell Grant stats.</p>

<p>To many colleges to list them all.</p>

<p><a href="http://colleges.usnews.rankingsandre...odiv_brief.php%5B/url%5D"&gt;http://colleges.usnews.rankingsandre...odiv_brief.php&lt;/a>
Univ. of California–Los Angeles * 37%
Brigham Young Univ.–Provo (UT) 33%
University of California–Berkeley * 31%
University of California–Davis * 31%
Univ. of California–San Diego * 31%
Univ. of Southern California 17%

[/quote]
</p>

<p>If there is one set of statistics that defies logical trends, it ought to be the huge number of Pell grantees at the UC system. Notwithstanding the obvious attempt to transfer part of the state funding burden to the federal system, admissions choices cannot fully explain the gross divergence of the numbers between California and all other states. </p>

<p>While there are a number of probable "explanations," they might not be PC enough to be posted on a public forum.</p>

227

<p>xiggi:</p>

<p>what are the other probable explanations? Please send me a pm with your conclusions.</p>

<p>btw: your claim about passing on costs to the federal government just doesn't make any monetary sense. There are plenty of kids in the Cal state system who are full pay who would have been happy to attend a UC if given the chance. But, instead, the state reserves 1/3 of the UC spots for poor kids. </p>

<p>token: of course, admission to highly selective colleges favors the upper middle (however defined) and upper class (about which I have posted frequently).</p>

228

<p>Hawkette, I have to say I find your post #224 incredibly weak. </p>

<p>"bluebayou and dstark,
On the low numbers of Pell Grantees at my “favorite” schools, are you referring to Princeton or Yale? Hey, if it’s good enough for them, then why not also for Wash U, Wake, U Virginia, etc? Or is there a double standard being applied here?? Nice try."</p>

<p>Is there a double standard here? Who are you talking to? You are inventing your own questions and then answering them. :)</p>

<p>Interesting about USC and their high number of Pell Grantees. And they still took their average SAT scores up by 150 points from 1999 to 2008. </p>

<p>I guess these 2 sentences above sum up why I think your arguments are logically unsound. (I'm trying to be nice. :) )</p>

<p>You love to use objective data which is often incomplete, or doesn't measure what you think it does.</p>

<p>Hawkette, you said..."Interesting about USC and their high number of Pell Grantees. And they still took their average SAT scores up by 150 points from 1999 to 2008."</p>

<p>Hawkette, you need to know what USC's Pell Grants percentage was in 1999 to infer what you are saying. LOL. Why don't you find out what percentage of USC students were on Pell Grants in 1999? Did you ever think that maybe USC had more Pell Grant students in 1999 than they do today? That they went with a more wealthier student body to get their SAT scores up? Why don't you find out before you make assumptions. ;)</p>

229

<p>hawkette:</p>

<p>I guess I don't understand the logic of your question. But, obviously you don't either since your posts continue to support the non-Ivies (which, btw, I do for own kids).</p>

<p>to dstark's point: back in the old days, USC used to have more than 25% Pell Grantees....check it out.</p>

230

<p>Bluebayou, shhhh. :)</p>

<p>You would think Hawkette would be thrilled to see more objective data. :)</p>

231

<p>Hawkette--In your post #224, you refer to the USNWR rankings for classroom teaching excellence. As I have mentioned several times, these "rankings" come from a survey done of academic administrators in 1995. First of all, they are incredibly out-of-date and secondly and most importantly, they are no different from the PA figures which you complain about at every possible opportunity. University officials, such as provosts, presidents, etc. were asked to come up with schools which had a commitment to excellent teaching. It was an opinion poll, answered by people who you feel do not have enough information to rank schools.</p>

<p>You really can't have it both ways (although god knows, you try). Either PA is not valid, in which case the classroom teaching survey is not valid, or PA and the classroom teaching survey are both valid.</p>

<p>One of the reasons I think that you are troubling to some of us on these boards, is because you often misuse statistics and in order to make your arguments, you are willing to jettison logic (i.e., SAT scores are very important, but actually they are not so important, PA is not very useful, but a 10 year old survey of peers about classroom teaching is incredibly valid).</p>

232

<p>midatlmom,
Unfortunately on an internet forum, the nuance and context of a post is often lost. </p>

<p>In another thread, we commented fairly extensively on the 1995 classroom teaching survey (<a href="http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/showthread.php?t=384217%5B/url%5D"&gt;http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/showthread.php?t=384217&lt;/a> and <a href="http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/showthread.php?t=384139%5B/url%5D"&gt;http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/showthread.php?t=384139&lt;/a> ). I agree that it is old and that its application to today is limited at best. What prompted me to bring it up here is that the NRC rankings were mentioned. I believe that those also were done in 1995.</p>

<p>On the question of the usefulness of the classroom teaching survey vs the PA survey, there is one HUGE difference. The classroom survey actually tells you what it is trying to evaluate. PA is not a defined measure-it means different things to different people. I will also concede that I favor schools that are strong in the classroom over those with a far greater focus on research. If I am recommending a college to a student, I care far more about the experience that he/she will have in the classroom over what is taking place in the research labs of the university (and which probably applies mostly to graduate students anyway).</p>

<p>Re PA, I think that xiggi's frequent suggestion to break it out of the rankings and list it separately is a reasonable compromise. This will allow fans of this measure to still claim that their school is tops, but its subjective and hidden nature now only serves to undermine the rankings. </p>

<p>Re SAT scores, I use these numbers frequently as do college admissions counselors. As tokenadult and others have (correctly) pointed out, there commonly is a high correlation between high SAT achievement and great strength elsewhere in a student application. SAT on its own is not the key determinant for most college applications, but it is the most publicly available, standardized clue that we have available to assess student quality.</p>

233

<p>For the question raised earlier about which group of schools is most representative of student excellence, here are the facts about each group</p>

<p>GROUP A-The Highest Ranked Colleges in America by % of students who graduated in the Top 10% of their high school class</p>

<p>99% UC Berkeley
99% UCSD
97% UCLA
97% MIT
96% UC S Barbara
96% UC Irvine
95% Harvard
95% Yale
95% UC Davis
94% Princeton</p>

<p>GROUP B- The Highest Ranked Colleges in America by SAT scores</p>

<p>1520 Cal Tech
1490 Harvard
1485 Yale
1480 Princeton
1470 MIT
1465 Duke
1450 Dartmouth
1450 Wash U StL
1440 Stanford
1440 Brown</p>

<p>GROUP C- The Highest Ranked Colleges in America by % of students with High School GPA greater than 3.75</p>

<p>94% Stanford
94% UC Berkeley
93% U North Carolina
91% UCLA
90% USC
85% U Chicago
85% U Virginia
79% UCSD
78% Princeton
77% U Florida</p>

<p>IMO, the SAT group is most reflective of the schools with the strongest students.</p>

234

<p>Proud to see my alma mater on that last list! (Oh yeah, my first under-grad school is in the second one.)</p>

<p>Now how 'bout a list of highest ranked colleges that don't use SATs for admission?
Oh yeah, they don't rank those any more, do they? ;)</p>

<p>-PD non-sour grapes disclosure; I'm still beaming over finding out that under the new centering scheme I'd be considered "perfect".</p>

235

<p>
[quote]
IMO, the SAT group is most reflective of the schools with the strongest students.

[/quote]
</p>

<p>I share that opinion, while acknowledging that there are still a lot of strong students who, for local reasons, go to a lot of colleges not on that list. After all, how is it to any college's advantage to actively select students who score POORLY on the SAT? The math on the SAT is not hard at all (it is mostly literally "junior high math" in terms of the standard curriculum of many countries) and the critical reading and writing sections are not hard for native speakers of English who read avidly beyond what is assigned to them in their school lessons. </p>

<p>P.S. The California Institute of Technology strongly encourages its own departments and the outside world to abbreviate its name as "Caltech" (one word, with one capital letter), as can be seen on the college website (note the domain name). </p>

<p><a href="http://www.caltech.edu/%5B/url%5D"&gt;http://www.caltech.edu/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p>

236

<p>
[quote]
GROUP B- The Highest Ranked Colleges in America by SAT scores</p>

<p>1520 Cal Tech
1490 Harvard
1485 Yale
1480 Princeton
1470 MIT
1465 Duke
1450 Dartmouth
1450 Wash U StL
1440 Stanford
1440 Brown

[/quote]
</p>

<p>Should the title for GROUP B not read "The Highest Ranked UNIVERSITIES in America by SAT scores?" A list of of the highest ranked colleges should have a slighty different composition.</p>

<p>This said, the point of comparing Groups A, B, and C, reflects how poor a metric the top 10% is when the ranking itself is such a mixed bag among high schools. Does anyone really believe that one student graduating from mega-hs in Texas among 75 to 150 other "top-ten-percenters" is a better student than a non-ranked student at a highly selective private high school. Does anyone believe that a student who is in the midde of the pack at Andover or Exeter isn't better prepared than a student ranking in the 8-9% at a school with a SAT average of 400 per section? The reality is that the majority of the best schools in the country do not rank! </p>

<p>The reality is that a school such as UT-Texas could easily fill its entire freshman class with ONLY top ten percenters. Would a 100% score in this metric make them a better school?</p>

237

<p>xiggi,
No need to stop with U Texas. Any of the top publics and certainly all of the top privates could get their Top 10% numbers up without too much difficulty. Stanford at 89%? Duke at 87%? U Chicago at 80%? Meanwhile, UC Irvine and UC Santa Barbara have 96%. IMO the USNWR weighting assigned to top 10% data is too high (40% of selectivity rank; 6% of overall) because this number really is not a very accurate reflection of student strength. It may possibly also be one reason why publics and privates should be ranked separately.</p>

238

<p>how much time did u waste on this?</p>

239

<p>I think it is impossible to compare public universities to private universities where SAT scores are concerned. Public universities do not usually superscore and they do not place as much importance to the test as private universities do. </p>

<p>One university I am obviously familiar with is Michigan. The latter does not distinguish between a 1360 and a 1600 or between 1200 and 1350. In fact, when Michigan used an admission's fomula, it granted a perfect 12/12 points for SAT scores between 1360 and 1600 and 11/12 points for SAT scores between 1200 and 1350. On the other hand, Michigan would offer a whopping 80 (EIGHTY)/80 points for a perfect 4.0 unweighed GPA and 78/80 points for a 3.9 unweighed GPA. End result, a 3.9 student with a 1600 SAT score would get a total of 90 points whereas a 4.0 student with a 1200 on the SAT would edge him out with a total of 91 points. Like it or not, comparing such a university's selectivity standards to those of a private university is impossible, for better or worse. As I mentioned above, that formula is no longer used, but Michigan's admission's philosophy hasn't changed much since then.</p>

<p>And even if public universities and private universities placed as much importance on SAT scores, public universities do not generally superscore whereas private universities generally do. Although there are no exact and official studies on the impact of superscoring, it is generally believed that universities that report superscored SAT scores have, on average, a 40 point edge over universities that do not superscore. </p>

<p>In short, it is probably better not to compare private and public universities where selectivity is concerned. In fact, it is impossible to compare public and private universities statisitically in most ways, whether we are talking about endowment figures (state universities have alternate means of funding where private universities rely almost entirely on endowment) or placement rates (most public universities have large portions of students majoring in untraditional majors).</p>

<p>Statistics are always fun to look at, but to draw any conclusion from those statistics can often be misleading.</p>

240

<p>It's impossible to make absolute decisions based on any of these metrics, if that's not already obvious. Each student is different and that difference can be in math or verbal proficiency or aptitude, quality of teaching, as well as test-taking ability and/or preparation which make the SAT just a snap-shot.</p>

<p>Likewise, the 10% gauge is worse than arbitrary, depending on the quality of the high school, courses taken, and even differences in student-body strength from year to year. I know in my kids' H-S experience, they could have had a higher weighted GPA by taking a study hall rather than a course they were interested and getting an A in that course. Unless you're taking AP/IB courses it actually works against you to a choose courses simply out of curiosity or interest in that subject. In our school system choosing Earth Science as a freshman takes you off the science track to AP science courses which, if followed, gets you no Earth Science exposure. I'm lucky my kids ignored school guidance by taking courses they were interested in, skipping a fifth year of high-school-level math in favor of more elective pursuits, and still scored well enough on standardized tests, class rank, and GPA to get into schools they wanted to attend. They didn't start playing college-admissions games (as early as middle-school these days) even though different course choices in high-school would have bumped one into the top-10 students (not %) by GPA in her graduating class of 400 which would have qualified her for different scholarship opportunities at several schools. They chose colleges that look for individual achievement beyond the classroom——qualities that should be important to life after college, too——and done not for the sake of advantage in college admission.</p>

<p>The emphasis on stats makes the entire admissions system ripe for gaming and planning in areas that have nothing whatsoever to do with intellectual curiosity, being a kid, or enjoying a high-school experience. The fact that so much emphasis on ratings, rankings, and scores occurs here on CC makes it obvious a lot of people are playing the game. I don't deny some of these components are valid metrics for determining "match", but only for those schools that don't take the time to look at the whole applicant. I'd much rather have kids take courses because of an interest in the topic and to learn more about something they're interested in, as opposed to being on a specific "track" toward college admission. I wish more schools felt the same.</p>

<p>I understand the need to be aware of the reality of these metrics when applying to college. However, I do think that planning a childhood around what college you can get into is very sad, not uncommon, and I blame it on college admission policy. Not all schools can take the time to evaluate each candidate on what is unique about them versus raw data. I'm very glad my kids have been able to find schools that don't rest solely on stats and so have built a student body of interesting kids with healthy educational curiosity. I also realize if your kid has always wanted to be a chemical engineer since birth, then all these stats and choosing the "best" E school by the stats they use makes sense. But we should really be looking for what school is the best fit for our kids beyond the stats, rather than which have the "best rank". </p>

<p>I know; reality bites! And you all know this already. Thanks for the opportunity to vent, though!</p>