But at the end of the day, if both the state schools and the “elites” (ignoring for the moment that there are public elites) have this “other” admissions channel that admits kids with lower qualifications, and the elites still have an across-the-board advantage in class profile over the states, then what difference does it make?
Are you suggesting the rankings cherry pick only the full merit admissions of the elites but somehow account for all of the admitted students of the publics? I doubt that’s the case.
If I were to craft an exception to the large state schools, it would be to account for big-time division 1 men’s basketball and football. Sorry this might not be PC, but there are schools, and we all know this to be true, that run programs that are glorified farm systems for the pros, and many of the kids who go through them are not there for higher ed. As soon as they get the draft information they want, they’re gone, and few ever return.
For large schools, the number of recruited athlete admits is a much smaller percentage of the total than for small schools that field similar sets of sports teams and therefore need similar numbers of student athletes.
I believe the weightings of the rankings were largely chosen to keep the expected HYP… colleges on top. This makes the ratings look right to readers, giving readers more confidence that USNWR is a good ranking system, and ultimately making them more likely to purchase and increase USNWR revenue.
You can see this in many of the categories. I’ll use the newer social mobility category. One would expect that a social mobility category should favor colleges that have a good overall social mobility and penalize colleges that have poor overall social mobility, sort of like the Chetty study at Chetty College Mobility - The New York Times .
The colleges with the highest overall social mobility in this study were:
Vaughn – 57%
CCNY – 51%
CCNY: Baruch – 49%
Texas A&M – 48%
Cal State LA – 47%
HYP did quite poorly on Chetty’s social mobility study… Their rankings were as follows. Princeton was in the bottom 2%, so this type of social mobility ranking could potentially hurt Princeton’s #1 USNWR ranking, particularly if it was weighted higher. And it could help public colleges that admit a large number of low income kids, and have good social mobility on those kids, like the UC system.
So instead USNWR defines social mobility has having a high graduation rate among Pell kids. If you are a selective enough college to admit top academic kids have an endowment high enough to offer them great FA so they don’t need to leave for financial reasons, then you can do well on a Pell graduation rate social mobility… even if you don’t actually admit a large number of low income kids or have much social mobility among the kids you admit.
I could list many other examples, but the weightings largely appear to be selected to emphasize with high weighting things high endowment per student colleges like HYP are good at, and avoid things that this type of college is bad at.
On the graduation rate, here’s why I care about the 6 yr figure:
I’m not worried necessarily about a causal effect. I realize that sending my kid to School X with a lower rate isn’t necessarily going to cause my kid not to graduate on time. BUT …
I do care about the degree of counseling and the extent to which schools offer enough sections to allow students to meet their majors’ requirements. AND …
I also think it’s good for my kid (both of them, although they have different approaches to academics) to be in an atmosphere where graduation within four or five years is the norm.
That being said, assuming the six year grad rate were at least hovering near 85 percent I doubt I would make too much of a fuss. If it were much lower than that (and assuming my kid had a choice), I’d want to investigate why.
Yes, of course. But consider the context of my response, which was directed at the poster who said that the rankings [unfairly] count the lower end stats for large state schools and don’t count them for the “elites”, which I assume is code for highly ranked privates. In addition to questioning the veracity of the claim, I am only making the point that for the large state schools that run large and prominent sports programs (think Alabama), it might make sense to exclude whatever incremental impact that athletic recruitment might have on the overall stats. Just focusing on GPA, for example, consider the following CDS #s from a (IMO) academically fantastic large public from a P5 athletic conference for Fall 2019 (enrolled):
|Percent who had GPA of 4.0||12.20%|
|Percent who had GPA between 3.75 and 3.99||60.17%|
|Percent who had GPA between 3.50 and 3.74||21.48%|
|Percent who had GPA between 3.25 and 3.49||4.54%|
|Percent who had GPA between 3.00 and 3.24||1.32%|
|Percent who had GPA between 2.50 and 2.99||0.24%|
|Percent who had GPA between 2.0 and 2.49||0.04%|
|Percent who had GPA between 1.0 and 1.99||0.01%|
|Percent who had GPA below 1.0||0.00%
Total admitted was something like 23,700, and about 7,000 enrolled. A lot of the action happening below 3.5 at this school is almost assuredly athletic recruits, and the action below 3.0 is almost entirely athletic recruiting. The admissions standards at all but a small handful of P5 D1 schools are pretty low, particularly for men’s FB and BB. On the other hand, an academically comparable (to my selected public) LAC rarely if ever admits anyone under a 3.0.
Those exception numbers, arguably, should be ignored when ranking, or evaluating, the large public. I could argue it the other way, too, but it was just a concession point to the other poster.
You have to analyze grad rates by whether or not a school meets full need and compare like schools to like schools.
Average 6 year grad rate is 62% (61% at publics, 67% at private non-profits, 25% at private for-profits).I think 2018 is the most recent data. See here for more details: Fast Facts: Undergraduate graduation rates (40)
Not every family can get financial aid from private school or can afford the tuition without any financial aid. My kid goes to UC because that’s the only option we can afford. It might not be the best choice but definitely smarter choice for our family. It’s sad that UC have the professor like you. I hope you are not one of the professors at my kid’s school.
@SFpsych is acknowledging the obvious about the problems that UC’s are having with housing, class registration, strikes by graduate student instructors, etc. The UC’s haven’t raised tuition in a very long time, although the UC Board of Regents just approved a 5-year tuition hike plan, IIRC.
And there are other affordable options outside the state, such as Alabama, ASU, UofA, etc. Even Santa Clara offered my kid almost the same CoA as a UC with merit money. That was our likely in-state private school option, before she made her choice to go to a CA public (CP SLO).
Although if my kid had a choice among UCB, UCLA, UCSD or UCSB, even with the challenges you listed, I would encourage him/her to take the long view and make one of those choices before Alabama, UofA or ASU.
My list of affordable OOS options was obviously not exhaustive, but my D18 had those CA public choices (more or less) and went OOS.
She’ll graduate early, with two minors, which will save us tuition. Also, housing, food and utilities are cheaper there than here, by a lot. She has her own bedroom and her own bathroom in her newer apartment building for roughly 1/2 the price here in the SF Bay Area. So, all that factored into our decision for her to go OOS 3-4 years ago.
D21 just began CP SLO today, but that’s about $10,000-$15,000 cheaper than a UC and she gets a 2-year housing guarantee for her college. For her junior year, I’ll expect to scramble around for SLO’s expensive housing market. And we’ll worry about getting classes next year, since freshman year is block scheduled at SLO.
UCB loves kids from our high school, but it’s not even on the list for my CS-minded kid because of the ridiculously large class sizes. CP SLO, another CA public that loves our kids, piques his interest though.
There is a lot of intense focus on this forum on cost, which makes sense for the most obvious of reasons. If it were a massive difference, or if on the margin it represented affordable vs. non-affordable for me, then of course you have to do what you have to do.
But I assume most parents plan for 4 years and don’t count on their kid graduating early. For me, it would depend. Where OOS? OOS to attend UT Austin, UNC CH, UVa, Michigan, Washington, Wisconsin and a few other great publics? Sure. The OOS schools you listed? Much less obvious for me, even with graduating early and the nicer apartment. For me, it would have to be the difference between can do it/can’t do it. In my lifetime, I doubt that the academic reputation of the schools you listed will approach that of Cal or UCLA, and I’d be willing to pay for that difference to the extent possible.
Note that some highly ranked LACs do enroll students from the bottom half of their high school classes, such as Bates, 3%, and Wesleyan, 2% (to the extent that this information is available).
There was nothing to assume for us, about graduating early, at least. The question was how early based upon her senior year AP test results. We expected her to graduate early based on her AP credits and no class registration hassles in speaking with multiple parents and students in person and online.
One would need to investigate each university and major individually, of course.
The other advantage with Michigan (and potentially with other OOS schools) is that you don’t pick your major until the end of your sophomore year. And switching majors is easy within your college and not much more difficult between colleges, but for the Ross Business school. But that’s not “mission impossible” either. Just mission kinda difficult. Try that at a UC.
So does Williams, Tufts, Vassar & Wellesley, to name a few (just want to make sure you’re spreading the love evenly ).
I don’t know how that translates to a below 3.0 GPA, and of course there are exceptions and other factors that could apply to the “low stats” cohort at either type of school. Unusually high test score, 49th percentile class rank from Exeter, or that tippy top valued athlete with some other evidence of academic promise.
But I assume it goes w/o saying that selective LAC recruiting is an altogether different animal than what you see at a P5 D1 school, even an academically strong one, with perhaps two or three exceptions.
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