2018 US News Best Colleges rankings have been released

College Search & Selection
221

@theloniusmonk

I think you misinterpreted my post. I am well aware that Princeton does not have a business school.
The point I am making is that if you are planning to get an MBA, you may want to approach the USNews undergrad ranking a little differently

Both Harvard and Stanford have great reputations and highly ranked business programs, if you plan to get an MBA and have been admitted to either one of them, it makes sense to take that offer because these schools do admit a significant percentage of their undergrad alums in their MBA programs( choosing between them is purely personal decision at this point)

Then we come to the next tier. MIT, Penn and UChicago also are ranked highly for undergrad and also have highly ranked MBA programs as well. These schools also like their undrgrads for their grad program. So given their relative MBA ranking, they fit in a single tier. Personally I wouldn’t put Penn in the same tier as Harvard and Stanford, because that suggests that a kid getting into either Penn or Harvard or Stanford would choose between these schools for undergrad based on personal preferences. I don’t think that is realistic given the relative prestige of the institutions today. I am sure there are exceptions though

I think choosing between Penn, MIT and UChicago is purely personal, since going to either school will significantly improve your chances to get into that school’s MBA program relative to the general pool of MBA applicants. I don’t think Northwestern belongs in that category even though it has a great MBA program because when given a choice between Northwestern and Penn, MIT and UChicago an overwhelming majority of kids would choose the latter three schools for their undergrad. That is just where things stand today. Ten or fifteen years ago, the situation may have favored Northwestern over UChicago, but not anymore.

We then come to the third tier of schools, namely Columbia and Yale. Clearly great undergrad schools, but slightly weaker MBA programs than the schools mentioned above. So if you are interested in an MBA eventually and mulling over an offer from Yale vs Penn or UChicago, I would choose Penn or UChicago, because you will get an excellent undergrad education and increase your chances to get into a higher ranked MBA program relative to the general pool of MBA applicants. If you go to Yale, you will increase your chances of making it into Yale, but relative to a Penn or UChicago undergrad, your chances at those schools will be lower ( not much, but still every small advantage counts). Yale’s MBA program is making great strides, but still doesn’t belong in the same tier as HSPCMKC

I have included Princeton in the final tier because an undergard from Princeton will still be an excellent signal for any top MBA program. The primary disadvantage with going with Princeton is that it does not have its own MBA program, so why risk it by going there if you can go to Penn, UChicago, even Yale. At least you get a leg up on admission to one MBA school. With Princeton you are competing as an outsider for every MBA school, albeit with a very strong brand. That is why it is in the same tier as Duke and Northwestern which have good undergrad reputations and solid MBA programs as well

What about Dartmouth, Cornell, Michigan etc? In my opinion their combination of undergrad and MBA ranking doesn’t put them in the same tier as the other schools mentioned above. That is my personal opinion. Once you go past the M7 super elite schools for MBA, you are in a different tier although Yale might break into this tier in a decade or so, displacing Columbia, given all the changes happening there.

222

I think your tiers are missing some facts. UNWR puts Berkeley’s MBA program consistently 7th ahead of Yale and Columbia. In other It also places Berkeley as tied for second with MIT in the undergraduate business program.

You’ve conveniently left out Haas which by the way is focusing on their ranking and you’ll see it climb to at least 5th by next year.

223

@preppedparent Berkeley Haas is a great MBA program, but I don’t think most would consider it part of the M7 super elite schools yet. It’s undergrad business program is strong, but MBA schools are really not giving any advantage to business undergrad students during admissions. In fact it might hurt them relative to STEM, Economics and Humanities majors. So Berkeley’s undergrad strength in business shouldn’t really be a factor if you are thinking about an MBA from an elite grad school. If however you are just thinking of a Bachelors business program as your terminal degree, the calculation would be very different.

We then come to Berkeley’s general undergrad program. It may be a great public school, but really cannot compete in terms of resources, class sizes and overall experiences with the private schools for a “better undergrad” experience, specially given the cuts in the budget. Classes are overcrowded, getting into classes that you need is getting increasingly difficult ( I have several friends there, and the reports are not flattering) and increasingly they are turning to international and out of state students to balance their budgets. Berkeley undergrad is heading in the wrong direction and so unless finances are an issue ( which is quite important btw), most kids would turn down Berkeley for one of the top 10 private schools. That is just the reality today.

224

Michigan has to be hurt by the fact that public ed in that state has been in free fall, with student scores falling for years. That is the pool for 1/2 of their freshmen. It can’t be good.

225

Strongly agree with the above analysis of Berkeley versus top privates-but I would extend it to the top 50 or so.
I had one child at Cal, one at WUSTL and one at Vanderbilt.
The latter two had MUCH better undergrad experiences: better housing, better departmental advising, smaller class sizes, more school pride, and the excellent FA at Vandy make it about half the price of Cal and UCLA-where she was accepted and received nothing other than $2000 for Regents.

I attended Santa Clara University back in the day and though it is not even ranked-other than as a “Regional U” -I feel that the over-all quality of my undergrad far exceed that of my son at Cal.

226

“I would contend that there should be even more separation into different types of schools, rather than the two large categories that exist now. Different types of schools should be evaluated on different attributes. This is one of the ideas in Malcolm Gladwell’s critique of this largely useless ranking endeavor at”

Weak. Since USNWR already does this extensively.

Best National Universities.
Best LACs.
Best HBCUs
Best undergrad business programs
Best undergrad engineering programs
Best public schools
Best schools for B students
Best regional universities sorted by region
Best regional colleges sorted by region
Best value schools

Also, they separately rank grad schools. Best law. Best med. Best engineering. Best B schools. Best nursing. Best ed schools. So the above discussion of grad schools is irrelevant. When it comes to undergrad education, it does not matter that Dartmouth has an MBA school but no law or med school, while Princeton has none, and Michigan has all three.

End of the day, USNWR (while imperfect) does as good a job on this as you could reasonably do. And their work is completely transparent. So you can hone in on the data and metrics that matters to you. I found their stuff extremely helpful in shopping colleges for my three kids, who were all very different and ended up at three very different schools. Way easier than plodding through a hundred different one-off college common data sets online.

The money I spent for their annual magazine (99 cents online) was money extremely well spent!

227

Berkeley is a super brand in the world of universities and reports of its demise are greatly exaggerated year after year.

even USNWR has Berkeley ranked 4th globally above Yale, Princeton etc. look at other world rankings and Berkeley often ranks higher in those lists too.

as far as undergrad at Berkeley is concerned it’s a very tough school… especially in any of the sciences. grading on bell curves, no or little grad inflation… and some of the smartest undergrads around = super competitive.

you don’t get a participation trophy at Berkeley

228

Looking back at the common data set for Michigan for 2006-7, 2012-13 and 2016-17, mid SAT critical reading is 580-690, 610-700 and 640-730, respectively. For SAT math its 630-730, 650-760 and 670-777. For ACT composite its 27-31, 28-32 and 29-33. Doesn’t appear to evidence hurting. Maybe other colleges in Michigan are impacted by high school test scores declining in the state.

229

@Cleepople USNews does not consider research output. it is primarily and undergraduate ranking. The worldwide rankings are based heavily on research. Please read the methodology for each ranking.

230

@TomSrOfBoston , USNews includes financial resources in the undergraduate ranking, and resources includes research spending. (Although research spending may have no impact on undergraduate education and may even indicate a lack of focus on undergraduate education.) Research spending can also impact other categories like faculty resources.

Research “output” probably impacts reputation, which is also factored into the undergraduate rating (even though producing published research and educated undergraduates are not necessarily correlated).

Below is Financial resources description:

Financial resources (10 percent): Generous per-student spending indicates that a college can offer a wide variety of programs and services. U.S. News measures financial resources by using the average spending per student on instruction, research, student services and related educational expenditures in the 2015 and 2016 fiscal years. Spending on sports, dorms and hospitals does not count.

231

“USNews includes financial resources in the undergraduate ranking, and resources includes research spending. (Although research spending may have no impact on undergraduate education and may even indicate a lack of focus on undergraduate education.) Research spending can also impact other categories like faculty resources.”

This is a prime reason why USNWR breaks out LACs from national universities. Because the metrics would be different for the apples and the oranges.

232

@northwesty , I agree that national universities and LACs differ (even though in this situation, the objective of both LACs and national universities is the same – to educate undergraduates).

Even among the national universities you have some apples and oranges. Dartmouth, William and Mary, Wake, etc. are quite dissimilar to large research universities, for instance. They are perhaps somewhere between LACs and national universities.

233

Cal is a highly competitive university…when you include its graduate programs which BTW are run very similarly to private universities. The problem lies with its undergrad program and funding. This is a common problem with public universities which puts all of their futures as top universities in doubt. If you can’t see that then you are blind to the increasing class sizes and decreasing resources for undergrads at public unis.

234

As shown by the following table, Michigan’s school age population is in a long-term decline:

http://milmi.org/population#Population-1223

Currently, Michigan’s cohort of 18 year old’s is roughly 133,000 kids. That is projected to fall to the 115,000 range in the next 15 to 20 years. They will need significant amounts of immigration to offset that figure, but they could always import more students from OOS.

235

^ My alma mater has been irritating me with poor leadership. The Memorial Stadium renovation finance plan is a huge boondoggle that hasn’t been adequately addressed. Cal will likely have to cut sports - it can’t afford to maintain 31 varsity teams and stay within Title IX requirements.

236

Did NEU fall in its ranking? All that game playing didn’t boost the ranking
Bu is 4 rankings ahead… I guess NEU has long way to go before catching up to BU

237

NEU dropped 1 spot, from 39 to 40. That’s noise in the system. It can’t be viewed as a trend.

238

Despite this decline, as I already posted U of Michigan stats for incoming classes have been increasing. Seems to me the predicted demise of UofM that some of you seem to want to happen is premature.

239

The whole US News process is strange, yet entertaining. The fact is that it is just not easy to establish reasonable criteria that will make Princeton come find it’s way to #1 every year.

For a start, there are few objective criteria by which Princeton or any other college is a better overall university than Stanford and Harvard whether it is for undergrad or grad school.

Then if you oddly weight the criteria, to slide Princeton past Harvard and Stanford, there is a good chance that Yale, Columbia, Penn, Cal Tech, or Duke may slide past Princeton, into the #1 spot.

So they start thinking, what will he have to do to get Princeton to end up at #1?

  1. Come up with an excuse to remove the LAC's. Then we can get Princeton to #1 in teaching.
  2. Decide that within universities, they'll only count undergrad even though it's inconsistent with removing LACs.
  3. Add add in the logarithmic adjustment to nudge them past Cal Tech.
  4. Avoid clear outcome metrics like salaries, because Harvard, Stanford, MIT, and Penn are better.
  5. Base a big component of it on random surveys so you can rank however you want.

There! Now you have Princeton at #1 in just five slightly bizarre steps.

240

Princeton is a top university with a heavy undergrad focus, why wouldn’t it come out on top in undergrad rankings? The other heavyweights have a bigger focus on their grad schools. Having no association with Princeton I would come to the same conclusion as USNWR as that is where they spend most of there money (undergraduate studies).