A final solution for rankiings and prestige

College Search & Selection
1

<p>Nobody hates rankings hair-splittng more than I do. But I think I might have stumbled upon a way to handle the levels of colleges among which there are distinctions but no differences.</p>

<p>First let's put the colleges in to tiers (an old approach).</p>

<p>BUT here's the new part: YOU CAN'T MAKE ANY MEANINGFUL GENERAL DISTINCTIONS OF QUALITY OR PRESTIGE UNLESS THE 2 COLLEGES IN QUESTION ARE AT LEAST TWO (REPEAT TWO) TIERS APART. </p>

<p>So you want to say Stanford is meaningfully "better" than Georgetown, fine. But don't tell me Stanford is meaningfully better than Dartmouth. Of course this applies to GENERAL OVERALL quality, not individual programs.</p>

<p>Tier 1: Harvard Princeton Yale Stanford Cal Tech MIT</p>

<p>Tier 2: Columbia Brown Dartmouth Penn Chicago Duke Northwestern Berkeley</p>

<p>Tier 3: Cornell Michigan Georgetown Hopkins Wash U, UVA, Rice Emory Vandy Notre Dame Tufts Carnegie Mellon UCLA</p>

<p>Tier 4: UNC USC Wake Brandeis Willian and Mary Lehigh Boston Colllege Wisconsin Illinois NYU Rochester GATech</p>

<p>etc.</p>

<p>This approach also seems to allow for more accurate integration of liberal arts colleges (Amherst, Williams, Swarthmore probably tier2; Bowdoin Pomona Middlebury Wellesley probably tier 3, etc) and common foreign universities (Cambridge,Oxford are tier 1; Toronto McGill St. Andrews are probably tier 3).</p>

2

<p>OK, good, we can shut this forum down now.</p>

3

<p>C-jew, you got a better plan to end the endless rankings/prestige bickering? Let’s hear it.</p>

4

<p>Someone please close this topic. I would be screaming and jumping for joy if i got into ANY of those schools.</p>

5

<p>i like the idea.</p>

6

<p>Schmaltz. I like it! Of course this is for undergraduate only right?</p>

7

<p>Schm, your approach is very reasonable and I agree with most of your tiers.</p>

<p>UCSD should be added to tier 4</p>

8

<p>name these tiers Tier 1a 1b 1c etc… Hopkins, Emory, Rice are not Tier 3 schools… maybe tier 1c</p>

9

<p>This is stupid. All you are doing is guaranteeing inaccuracy by restricting college tier placement (conveniently initially started by you) and encouraging more wildly subjective statements.</p>

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<p>What if I think Stanford is “meaningfully” better than Georgetown and Georgetown is “meaningfully” better than Dartmouth?</p>

10

<p>Why is caltech ranked so high</p>

11

<p>because its Schmaltz’s rankings and not yours. its subjective… despite what he/she might claim.</p>

12

<p>Eeks! You’re setting up for battle around here. My kids were applying / are going to comparable schools. Now you’ve separated them by tiers, such hair-splitting minutia indeed.</p>

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<p>Because their freshmen classes consistently have the highest stats. Their admission standards are a truly objective meritocracy.</p>

14

<p>There will obviously be some adjusting around the edges of each tier, but at least it neutralizes the attempts to proclaim meaningful differences among shools that are just a few spots apart, while sill recognizing that there IS some stratification, whether real or just perceived.</p>

<p>Novi, yes, undergrad only.</p>

<p>Alam 1, yes, subjective, but I think it works as well or better than any other system I’ve seen, because while acknowledging that there might be diffeences in objective stats (like mean SAT, acceptance %, US News Peer appraisal, etc.) it does something to ensure that the differences need to be rather pronounced before they become anything close to significant.</p>

15

<p>I don’t understand why kids even attempt to make rankings and tiers for schools they haven’t experienced beyond the application process.</p>

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<p>But that stratification is totally arbitrary. I could, say, that Georgetown far surpasses Dartmouth while another may disagree. This is still inherently subjective and thus unresolvable. </p>

<p>This is yet another failure in the assembly line of “rankiings.”</p>

17

<p>Chaotic: That’s an excellent point.</p>

18

<p>I had really expected things to be resolved when I clicked this thread. Instead I was treated to just another poster trying to express their personal ranking mind model onto paper.</p>

19

<p>Why do these things have to be resolved? Why do universities have to fit into neat cubbyholes? Or are you just being sarcastic?</p>

20

<p>Baelor, Techie, Kvilledeac, glass,
First of all, I’m not a kid. I’ve attended no less than 9 colleges, and have taught at 4 more. I’ve lived everywhere from Boston to Honolulu, and in 5 foreign countries. There are no doubt some objective quantitative data (SAT scores, average gpas, average SATs, % in top 10%, etc.) to be dealt with. My approach allows that objective data to be taken into account (which answers concerns that this is totally arbitrary), without letting people infer major significance to minor differences in the data. If any of you clowns has a better answer to the endless worshiping of the US News rankings, I’m all ears.</p>