@ pupflier…thank you for that post. As a Texas resident I was interested to see the stats for UT-A and TAMU. It just confirmed my opinion of the 10% mandate…
Y’all quibbling over the top 10, and even top 25, is entertaining. From the back of the classroom, I am wondering what difference it makes if the school is ranked 1, 5, 10 or 25? It is all essentially the same thing, ultimately those schools are not going to be affected, that much, by the ranking. Students and parents are still going to want those schools regardless of it being rank 1 or 25. The “product” those top 25 schools are putting out is pretty consistent/similar. I mean, does it really matter in the real world if you graduated from Harvard or Princeton or CMU or Case (whose ranking always baffles me…they are nearly identical academically/socially)? They all have the same “purchase power” when it comes to landing a job or graduate school spot.
IMO these rankings make more of an impact in the #75 - 125 range. Why does no one ever want to dissect those numbers?
Presumably because people aren’t interested in debating which of the schools to which they send their pets is best. Note heavy dose of CC sarcasm there.
The various lists and the responses are always entertaining to me. The idea that there is a meaningful difference between #3 and #9 or #12 is silly. Yet time and time again people will argue that there is. And often times people have an ordered list in their mind which in their heart of hearts they know to be the “right” order and will find fault with anything else that says anything different. Or will come up with what they claim to be objective formulas for determining which school is “best” but they need exceptions for schools that rank well with that formula but who, again in the hear of hearts, they know do not belong there or who are excluded using that formula but who “clearly” should be there. Guess its what the magazine want: people talking about the rankings. Though ultimately I wonder how many people are actually doing so (outside the CC limited bubble of course).
If you don’t like a given ranking, do not fret because there are many others out there. Find one that lines up with what you think is the “correct” order and go with that.
I couldn’t find the ranking stats for Northeastern dating back to 1983, but Northeastern did move from #96 (in 2008) to #39 (its best so far, I think it was last year). Its ten year average is 58 and 5 year average is 43.
@labegg I think because 75% of the UT Austin class is made up of top 7%-8% of students, by class rank even if they have significantly lower test scores than other applicants from highly competitive high schools that may not make the top 7%-8%, UT Austin Struggles with retention and graduation rates. That is not going away any time soon.
It is interesting that only the following schools show an overall positive trend when you compare their 35 year and 5 year averages. And if you consider anything less than a +4 as noise, then only
Chicago, Columbia, USC, Boston College, UC Santa Barbara and Northeastern have made significant progress in the USNews ranking. That tells me, it is not very easy to get productive results from gaming this ranking.
Princeton +0.82 Chicago +5.21
Columbia +4.21
Penn +0.84
JHU +2.52
Northwestern +0.94
Vanderbilt +3.39
Notre Dame +1.67
Georgetown 1.10
UCLA +1.30 USC +7.13
Wake Forest +1.02 Boston College +4.04
NYU +1.12
Rochester 0.33
RPI +2.95
Georgia Tech +2.71
Case Western +0.32 UC Santa Barbara +4.78
UC Davis +0.27
UC Irvine +0.63
Florida +2.04
Pepperdine 0.70
As an active academic with significant experience (UG degree, grad degree, teaching position, visiting position, child’s attendance) at 5 of the US News Top 9 Global Universities (that is being used as a point of reference, not as proof of, or belief in, the accuracy of the ranking), I think Chrchill in post 156 and hzhao in post 157 have it just about right. This is just my 2 cents as someone who has experienced broad exposure to many of these schools. I am also the first to admit that no one (including college presidents, Mr. Morse, and myself) possesses enough current and accurate information to make truly meaningful qualitative comparisons among more than perhaps a dozen schools.
“USNWR calibrate its ranking criteria to ensure HYP are in top five, and UChicago and a bunch of other schools game the system trying to get an advantage.”
That is accurate.
The irony is that separating Universities from LACs implies that they are considering more than undergrad. However, then they rank Princeton #1, which is nothing more than an overgrown LAC. They don’t really even try to be a major university. How is their medical school? Business school? Law school? They don’t even have them let alone a top ranked one. Princeton is not really much of a university at all. It is really the #1 LAC.
Universities have significant grad schools. The primary grad schools for Medicine, Business, Law, and Engineering. Consider those rankings in addition to undergrad, and you see will who the top comprehensive universities really are:
Stanford and Harvard are at clearly at the top.
Columbia, Penn, and Yale are next.
Duke, Northwestern, Cornell, Michigan are in a third group.
Chicago would be in either the second or third group if it had a ranked engineering program. (And I think they are moving in that direction! Yay!)
These are the 10 universities who have comprehensive undergraduate and graduate programs, across major subjects, and all of their programs are high quality and challenging.
@pupflier Thank you for your post #146^. It helps to put the U.S. News annual rankings in perspective. For all of the CC colloquy (heated, at times) that has gone on for years about “gaming” the rankings, the numbers are remarkable when viewed over spans of 5-10-35 years. After all of the fussing and fighting, it appears that the rankings generally are what they are. Of course, some will argue that the U.S. News rankings are bogus or aren’t meaningful, but those are different questions.
@StanfordGSB00 I couldn’t locate Boston University’s ranking to get a 35 year average, but the 10 year average rank is 47.6 and 5 year ranking average is 40. So they also seem to have managed a significant enough swing . I think their worst year from available data was 2009, when they were ranked 60. They have been in an upward trend since 2014
In 2015-2016, Princeton awarded 1,307 Bachelor, 533 Masters and 373 Phd degrees. It clearly has a grad school program. A strong professional degree program isn’t a requirement to being classified as a University.
Edit: and this is a ranking of undergraduate programs…
BTW, if you are considering going to graduate school in business, and have an opportunity to go to undergrad at a top 10 school, I would think given the preference a lot of the MBA programs give to their undergrad students, the ranking just based on that and their undergrad ranking would be as follows
Harvard, Stanford
MIT, Penn, UChicago
Columbia, Yale
Duke, Northwestern, Princeton
It makes more strategic sense to go to MIT, Penn or Chicago for undergrad than Yale or Princeton, if you are interested in a graduate business degree and want to maximize your chances of getting into at least one top ranked business school. Yale is making some good moves in business though, so they might move into the second group in another 5-10 years.
I think the folks at College Confidential agree with critics that some colleges don’t belong in the top 25 list at US News and others do. If you click on the “College and Universities” link here, under “CC Top Universities” USC is missing but U. Michigan, UNC, and U. Virginia are there. Under "CC Top Liberal Arts Colleges, Reed is listed. I wonder how CC decides which colleges to put under those links. Anyone know?
This is a very depressing thread. Our culture’s obsession with what the late Heidegger termed “techne”–a focus on merely instrumental, means-oriented thinking with little attention to the “Why?” of our action–is on full display.
For many posters, it seems, the “ultimate” university would be one that simply abolished the teaching faculty altogether, consolidated its research facilities, incorporated itself as a business, and devoted itself solely to bringing hi-tech products to market.
Stanford, Inc.! We’re #1!
Who needs the tradition of “liberal education” that long distinguished the American scene from its European forebear–and that helped pave the way for the sort of creative thinking that made scientific innovation a hallmark of the US?
To quote our instrumental-thinker-in-chief, “Sad.”
“It is interesting that only the following schools show an overall positive trend when you compare their 35 year and 5 year averages. And if you consider anything less than a +4 as noise, then only.”
I think this method overly minimizes the amount of variation. There’s a lot more volatility actually. I’d do it more like this.
Penn was 20 in 1990; 8 this year and 8 trailing five average. +12
Vandy was 24 in 1990; T14 this year and 15.4 5Y average. +10
USC #44 in 1996. T21 and 23. That’s big. +21
Chicago was 6 in 1983, and 14 in 1998. NW was 23 in 1991. CMU was 28 in 1997. BC was 40 in 2006.
I don’t see people here advocating for that. So you are arguing a point that isn’t being contested. Though no doubt you will get some high fives from folks around here. Just the CC way.
The issue is that all of these lists are attempting to make the subjective (“best school”) and make it appear objective (using formulas, producing ordered and numbered lists, etc.). But that doesn’t change it from being a subjective determination. And someone can create a “better” way of ranking (something we see here a lot – including in this thread) but there is no way of objectively determining whether its “better” or just “different.” From what I have seen, the thumb thrown to one side or the other is based on whether the approach comports with one’s own subjective determination of ranking (we can put all of these numbers, factors, weighting, etc. aside because we all know the “best” schools, right?).
And the notion of the “best” school or “best” 10 schools, etc. carries with it a very monolithic view of both the institutions themselves and those students who attend them. Much in conflict with the notion of holistic admissions processes and diversity and the very essence of education itself.
Layer onto that the fact the issue involves (for many of us here) our kids (and trying to do the “best” for them) and the focus on the absurdity of ranking nonsense is probably more predictable. Doesn’t make it any less absurd nonsense though. But hey, carry on. Maybe we should add another to the death and taxes as certainties in life?
only depressing if you’re living in the past. Arts and Humanities requires money and lots of it., Schools such as Stanford bring in “techie” money to fund those programs and there is a big push to integrate the various disciplines (ie arts and humanities with tech).
btw… USNWR artfully curates it’s list with supposed “Ties” the most interesting one being U of Chicago and Yale.
I would not be surprised that Chicago actually ranks higher than Yale… .but of course that would upset the “world order” at the offices of USNWR. hence a tie:) I suspect there is interesting gamesmanship going on by USNWR:)
@pupflier AHA ! – someone who thinks strategically long term and about the future. Kudos. But I think you need to reflect the reality that the top business schools per recent ranking are 1. Harvard and Wharton 2. UChicago Booth and 3 Stanford. 4. MIT. So I would probably reorder your list a bit. Cheers.
Note heavy dose of CC sarcasm there.
hence a tie:) I suspect there is interesting gamesmanship going on by USNWR:)