2022 USNews Rankings posted

College Search & Selection
201

I suspect that no one ever knows everyone who provides data for most sources. Possibly not anyone.

Who knows everyone who participated in the latest election poll? Who knows everyone that returned a JD Power rating survey? Who knows every student that returned a salary survey? Who has confirmed every person on LinkedIn that lists college information.

If that’s the requirement, then I would guess any data ever presented on CC would be invalid. Perfect is the enemy of the good. And the plural of anecdote is not data, to throw in another platitude

Everyone should make their own decision on how to use all data presented to them.

How many? Source/cite for this fact?

202

No idea how many of the 4,700+ that are sent out (of which 66% are trashed) end up in the hands of staffers, but I have personally heard it stated by Deans/enrollment management professionals that they give it others to fill it out.

It’s naive to think many college Presidents or Deans would spend time filling these surveys out, or even how many of them would know important details about the schools they are rating. With that said I’m sure some high ranking admin do fill it out, but we have no idea how many.

All in all, garbage in garbage out…and like admissions at highly rejective schools, the transparency is lacking.

203

As stated by U.S News, “We survey presidents, provosts and deans of admission, asking them to rate the academic quality of peer institutions with which they are familiar . . . .” With a conservative approach, most respondents could, with reasonable expertise, rate the schools with which they have preexisting reasons with which to be familiar, also known as their peer schools, as well as perhaps a few others. If a college were to include itself, this would result in a base of about 16 schools that could be fairly evaluated, as in this example of Colorado College: Peer Institutions - Colorado College. Even if all bias could be eliminated, the scope of expertise would seem to diminish beyond this amount. The principle of peer assessment may be valid, but its open-ended guidelines reduce the credibility of the approach.

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204

I would just like to see the list before the super ambiguous, subjective, and apparently extremely incomplete data point of “peer rating.” I’m not sure you get UCSB at 28 without peer rating.

205

I mostly agree with this, except I’d argue that the number is closer to 40 than 16. Many schools conduct extensive research to learn who their up and coming competitors are in terms of students and faculty. The more sophisticated research will cover schools other than the usual suspects. So a Dean of Admission worth her salt is going to know quite a bit about a large group of peer and near-peer schools. This is particularly true of the schools in the top 50 and the schools that aspire to be in the top 50.

I’d be curious to hear what the survey’s response rate is among the top 65 universities and the top 40 LACs. My own admin would have been upset with me had I thrown mine my survey in the trash or passed it along to an underling.

I get it - no one in their right mind should make college decisions on whether School A went up or down a few spaces. The survey has far too many flaws and is manipulable. We paid little attention to USN when our daughter chose her college and we will likely ignore USN when it is our son’s turn to apply to college.

206

So what did you look at and will look at?

207

For the reasons you went on to state, about 40 seems right.

208

Besides fit and comfort level and whether the programs my kid wants are there, I care about several additional pieces of data:

  1. What is the 6 yr graduation rate? Has it fallen in recent years. Is it much lower than peer schools? Unlike the school’s acceptance rate, it’s more difficult to play around with the graduation rate. If the rate is noticeably low, I’m going to worry about the institution.

  2. Same thing with post-graduation salaries. They don’t have to be stratospheric, but they should more or less be in the same range as those of the school’s peers.

  3. Has there been a lot of turnover at the admin level? A succession of failed deanships? Extreme infighting among the faculty or students? If so, I’m going to caution my kid to consider other options. (One way to get a sense of this is to look at the school’s newspaper, which is probably available online).

  4. Is the school emphasizing good news like new grants, new research opportunities and new centers? It may be marketing fluff, but if the grants are real, that’s good news because it will attract top-flight faculty and provide better opportunities for students. Mind you, it might not directly help my kid, but a successful admin/faculty feeds into a happier campus, and a happy campus is where my kid, on balance, is more likely to thrive.

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209

Be sure to consider graduation rates in the context of admission selectivity (6 or whatever years prior for frosh entrants) and financial resources of the students.

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210

Be sure to consider post graduation pay levels in the context of majors.

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211

Yes, graduation rate is the 2nd highest weighted factor in USNWR, after the “distinguished”/“marginal” survey. Graduation rate can be meaningful when closely analyzed, but when 6-year graduation rate is just captured in isolation like USNWR does, it’s primarily a measure of admitting students who are likely to graduate rather than a function of something special that happens while attending the college. If a college admits top academic students from wealthy families, they are likely to have a very high 6-year graduation rate. If a college admits average academic students from average wealth families, they are likely to have a far lower 6-year graduation rate. Using some real numbers:

Harvard – 6-year graduation rate = 98% (<5% admit rate, 25th ACT = 33)
Alabama – 6-year graduation rate = 72% (60% admit rate, 25th ACT = 23)

Suppose a particular kid chooses a full ride scholarship to Alabama over paying $320k for 4-years at Harvard. His chance of graduating doesn’t suddenly drop from Harvard’s average of 98% to Alabama’s average of 72%. Instead I expect he has approximately the same chance of graduating, which is near 100% since he’s a top academic student who will not need to leave the college for financial reasons.

When colleges of similar selectivity have different graduation rates, in many cases there a positive reason for the relatively lower graduation rate, rather than a negative one. For example, Stanford lags well behind peers in graduation rate, which I expect is the primary reason why Stanford is usually ranked last among HYPSM in USNWR. Some specific numbers are below:

Princeton – 4-year = 90%, 5-year = 97%, 6-year = 98%, 7-year = 98%
Stanford – 4-year = 73%, 5-year = 89%, 6-year = 94%, 7-year = 96%

Looking at these numbers, a student might think if they choose Stanford over Princeton, then they have a high 1 in 4 chance of not graduating in 4 years. The numbers in isolation don’t explain that Stanford gives many students an opportunity to simultaneously pursue a bachelor’s and masters as part of their co-term program. ~1/3 of students choose to do this on paper 5-year co-terminal masters program. I expect that if you remove the kids on a 5-year or 6-year program, the 4-year graduation rate would shoot up, and the 5 and 6 year would also increase. Having this co-terminal masters opportunity is certainly not a bad thing, but it hurts Stanford in many ranking lists.

Colleges at which a large portion of the student body choose to do co-ops also do quite poorly in graduation rates . Some numbers for GeorgiaTech are below. I expect few would consider having many easy opportunities to do co-ops while attending GeorgiaTech a bad thing, especially considering that they often lead to quality work experience and job offers. However, if a college makes it easy students to do co-terms, co-ops, or anything else besides a simple 4-year plan, it can hurt their ranking on various website lists.

GeorgiaTech – 4-year = 46%, 5-year = 85%, 6-year = 90%

Perhaps the most influential positive thing the college can do to improve graduation rate is offering quality grant-based financial aid such that few students need to leave school for financial reasons. Being affordable is certainly a positive factor, and it is correlated with graduation rate. However, there are far better ways to check whether the college is affordable for a particular student than looking at the average graduation rate or USNWR ranking.

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212

This is really insightful, @Data10. Thanks!

213

Very helpful and totally agree on 1, 3 and 4 as relevant factors.

What is your threshold for 6-year graduation rate? 80 percent or higher or lower? Thinking of an Elon/Sewanee (less selective bottom) to Ivies/NESCAC (selective top of range), private universe including the in-between. Any thoughts on 4-year graduation rate? Dropout rate?

I was also wondering if you take into account endowment/student ratio. A lot of savvy parents seem to be (I think correctly) focusing on that. I am thinking of a threshold ratio equal to the full tuition of the kid for four years, but I am not sure that makes sense from an educational perspective. The endowments at some places like say Georgetown seem alarmingly low compared to their prestige peers, say WashU and Emory. Yet, would the federal government ever let Georgetown in particular fail? Doubt it. I am struggling with the point at which to draw the line on that variable.

On 2, I find the data is too distorted by the presence of engineering and/or prestigious business programs at the school and geography. I find aggregate data in this space not particularly predictive, but am open to being convinced otherwise.

214

U.S. News does consider the entering characteristics of students for “graduation rate performance,” which composes 8% of the total score.

215

All undergraduate colleges are highly tuition-dependent, even the uber-selective, high-endowment ones that provide staggering amounts of need-based aid. It’s why wealthy full-MSRP families are so absurdly overrepresented (almost always around 50%), and why these schools have the highest tuition and (pre-COVID, anyway) highest rate of tuition growth.

Obviously endowment has an impact on the undergraduate student experience, but the funds are highly restricted, and if you think they are a big security blanket, I’d argue that the furloughs, layoffs, and hiring freezes at the richest schools during the last 18 months are a bit of a reality check. Probably simple undergraduate per-student spending is the best and most relevant measure (and this will closely track endowment anyway).

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216

There are many components of the rankings that are contradictory or heavily biased to traditional “elite” schools. Without providing a laundry list here, one that really stands out is that state schools are penalized for some of the lower admission requirements they have as state schools for in-state students, while privates have no penalty for practices like favoring legacies that have no appreciable academic value and are purely perpetuations of privilege.

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217

I don’t think many people think this, the cross-admit of Stanford and Princeton is 75/25 in favor of Stanford (Parchment). Even if you question Parchment data, that’s not a bad estimate.

218

The quoted post began, “looking at these numbers, a student might think…” I expect few students look at the numbers above. I expect it is far more common for applicants to look at USNWR ranking (not details) and look up or hear about some basic information about the school, without much detail. I interview for Stanford. Based on students I have interviewed, I think extremely few are familiar with Stanford’s co-terminal masters program or are aware that Stanford’s lower 4-year graduation rate that peers.

Yield is a different issue. If a student was aware of Stanford’s 4-year graduation rate and had a big problem with it, that student may not apply, preventing them from appearing in cross admit yield. Yield generally follows the more selective college since kids who prefer the less selective colleges often do not apply to the more selective college as a back up. ED/REA/SCEA also has an influence. Given Stanford’s extremely high selectivity, it should have no problem in cross-admit yield, regardless of graduation rate.

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219

I am a professor at a UC and have a daughter starting her first year at UChicago. She applied to 14 schools last year – not one UC. UC faculty are quite aware of the problems with getting classes and how tight resources are at UCs. It was surprising for me to watch how many of my daughter’s classmates at a private HS applied to UCs. From my perspective it seemed like a terrible choice for students (and yes, I know, this is odd that a UC professor is offering this).

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220

Could you give me an example of this?

I take @ucbalumnus ’ point that top schools draw top students, and top students tend to be focused and are more likely to work to graduate. But I also know there are other factors. At the schools my Ds attended, their advisors were very focused on this point so they’d graduate on time. Family members who attended larger schools had different experiences, and it tended to be something you as the student needed to manage because the university administration wasn’t going to warn about impending doom. It would just happen.

But I’m more interested in your assertion that top schools are just watering down their curricula to enhance graduation rates. That’s not been something I’ve observed. And if it is happening, are you saying that it’s exclusively at the top schools and schools lower on the pecking order are keeping things rigorous?

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