Mastadon points out how much the focus on per student spending that can include research can, for lack of a better word, distort ratings. These expenditures may have nothing to do with undergraduate education. JHU administers the Advanced Physics Laboratory 24 miles away in Laurel Maryland. It has 6,000 employees and focuses on defense. I’m sure there are some benefits to JHU undergraduates through internships, but the reality is as a government lab it is open to other schools and the web site says 120 institutions were represented by the 350 interns.
lols… I wouldn’t call using the USNWR patented “logarithmic adjuster” as measuring “yaleness”.
it’s called gaming the system:) something that gets lobbed at Chicago all the time. smell that? it’s irony.
Late 70s Penn admit rate was 40%. Back when West Philly was yucky and before Penn ramped up marketing and ED.
I know a lot of folks talk about Universities gaming the USNews ranking, but this paper seems to indicate that as you get closer to the top, it is quite difficult to get a sustained improvement in the rank, without spending heck of lot of money and effort. This is why the rankings are fairly consistent, year after year
https://rd.springer.com/content/pdf/10.1007%2Fs11162-014-9336-9.pdf
You can try to game the metrics, but in the end the benefit is going to be minimal in terms of rank. Also, the article clearly states that rank changes of up to ± 4 points should be considered ‘‘noise’’
Here are the weightings of categories, “reputation” is still the biggest, it is the most wishy-washy though.
Undergraduate academic reputation, 22.5 per cent
Graduation and freshman retention rates, 20 per cent
Faculty resources, 20 per cent
Student selectivity, 15 per cent
Financial resources, 10 per cent
Graduation rate performance, 7.5 per cent
Alumni giving, 5 per cent
@jzducol - Agreed. Undergraduate academic reputation, 22.5 % (split between 15% for university presidents and then 7.5% represents the high school guidance counselors). The high school guidance counselor rating is certainly suspicious. They had a 7% response rate from ~1,200 guidance counselors. Do you trust 85 random guidance counselors from across the country to judge universities? Many of these guidance counselors do not even have an advanced degree. I am not saying that the Peer Assessment score is flawless but it is certainly more valid simply due to the number of respondents, higher response rate (~40%), and the quality of respondents. Curious what @alexandre thinks here.
@Northwesty Anything and anybody measuring “Yale-ness” is inherently suspect. The only proper and scientifically meaningful reference frame is Harvard-ness meansured in crimsonites
I’d like to see class size somehow added to the list of ranking parameters. Maybe reduce the weight of undergraduate academic reputation by a few percent, and fill that in with class size.
Edit - Disregard the above. I just saw that class size is a part of “Faculty Resources”.
the article cited at the top shows USNWR itself games the system for its desired results just as much as any university with its “logarithmic adjuster”
@Chrchill LOLS! actually it’s a measure of Princeton-ness curve fitting… since Yaleness fails by its own measure:)
@sbballer , I hope you read the response from US News regarding Slate’s claim that US News games the rankings. Personally, I’m skeptical of any media outlet that has a far-left or far-right viewpoint. Their mission is to present their viewpoint rather than engage in fair reporting. Far-left Slate’s no better than far-right Breitbart.
If everybody is trying to game the rankings, doesn’t that mean that, on a relative basis, nobody is successfully gaming the rankings?
lols… of course USNWR games the rankings just like everyone else despite what they may claim.
@“Cariño” Of course peoples perception matters. That is what all the rankings are trying to do, shape public perception. But public perception does not change just because USNews places a school a few spots higher. Princeton has been ranked #1 for ages, still people choose Harvard and Stanford over Princeton. Penn was ranked #4 and #5 for many years, but never was considered on par with HYPSM, same goes for Columbia and now for Chicago. On the other hand the rise of Stanford was based on actual, tangible changes which is why it has surpassed Yale and Princeton in popularity, even though its USNews ranking has consistently been lower.
I seem to recall Stanford being ranked #1 in US News at one point, maybe during the dotcom boom when it was the driving force behind so many computer-related companies. I haven’t been on campus for about two years, but I used to spend a lot of time there and as time passed, it did feel like it was losing something.
@sbballer In a post some time ago, I made it clear what positions I would offer to graduates of each of our so called peer or quasi peer institutions. If memory serves, Princeton grads would be appropriate for landscaping.
Let’s not get carried away here. Weather, Valley and West Coast. Those are the three primary factors that helped Stanford. Stanford did not weave some unique higher education magic. They did exploit the hand they were dealt superbly and for that, they must be acknowledged.
And Uchicago has similarly risen thanks to some real and tangible improvements. This is no mystery.
@Chrchill haha!
@pupflier it’s about money… Stanford founded what we know as Silicon Valley today… Stanford leads in fund raising the past 11 of 13 years… Harvard won the other years… which means higher salaries…better faculty… .Stanford has won more Nobel Prizes since 2000 than any other university… averaging almost one a year… and is the most selective university in the US.
Stanford wins in cross admits over Princeton 75%, Yale 55% and loses to Harvard 44%… according to an internal Stanford senate report a few years back. (my numbers may be slightly off but are in the general ballpark - and I don’t have the report… someone on CC posted it)
When it comes to Stanford, NO ONE here on CC works harder than sbballer and Penn95 at Stanford mythmaking, lol, and the funny thing is I don’t think they’re even getting paid for their hard work.