<p><a href=“http://biz.yahoo.com/prnews/060821/nym147.html?.v=60[/url]”>http://biz.yahoo.com/prnews/060821/nym147.html?.v=60</a></p>
<p>Yes, we all know that college rankings are nonsense… but for this one, they actually do a survey and ask students how happy they are… so… you heard it from a Brown student first! We’re really happy!</p>
<p>:(:(:(:(:(</p>
<p>This PR stuff is next to worthless, allegedly based on "about 300" responses, on average, from 361 colleges, where respondents are totally clueless about the merits of other institutions. There are ZERO comparative rankings involved in most cases, and the "formula" utilized in those few cases where the narrow view of a small group of anonymous internet respondents is not the only basis for the "ranking" is predictably opaque.</p>
<p>Two years ago, BYU, reportedly, had the "greatest library" while Yale wasn't even in the top 20. Presumably the students (or the tiny fraction responding) had different standards at these schools. BYU students might have found the library "great" for hookups, while Yalies downgraded their library for not being open 24-7.</p>
<p>Because the samples are so miniscule, and a local "campaign" to influence the result in this category or that can have such a disproportionate impact, the numbers jump around wildly from year to year.</p>
<p>PR?? They don't really care. As long as they get the predictable spate of news stories about the "best party school" to help launch their guidebook, and preening from here and there such as that typically displayed by the previous poster, they can laugh all the way to the bank.</p>
<p>Go back to the Dartmouth forum. K thx bye.</p>
<p>Byerly does raise a pretty good point. Different people go into college with different expectations. I would say that those affect how they rank their college. But it's still always a nice thing to hear about your school.</p>
<p>My fault, I thought you were a student who routinely came in here ot bash Brown in favor of Dartmouth, but following through your more recent posts it's been a campaign against USNews which I agree. I think Princeton Review sucksjust as much, but honestly, I've never met a Brown student mad about their decision to come or who desired to go elsewhere or even transfer.</p>
<p>And yes, peoplehave different expectations, but self-reported happiness in the only way to think about it. Who cares if it takes less to make someone happy, if they're happy, they're happy.</p>
<p>A more important article with good information:
<a href="http://media.www.browndailyherald.com/media/storage/paper472/news/2006/04/26/Features/Leaving.The.happiest.Ivy.For.Other.Colleges-1877977.shtml?sourcedomain=www.browndailyherald.com&MIIHost=media.collegepublisher.com%5B/url%5D">http://media.www.browndailyherald.com/media/storage/paper472/news/2006/04/26/Features/Leaving.The.happiest.Ivy.For.Other.Colleges-1877977.shtml?sourcedomain=www.browndailyherald.com&MIIHost=media.collegepublisher.com</a></p>
<p>Jeeze Byerly, No one is bashing Harvard on this board...no need to be so aggresive</p>
<p>"BYU students might have found the library "great" for hookups"</p>
<p>LOL LOL LOL LOL LOL LOL LOL</p>
<p>yeah, BYU...</p>
<p>haha, i didnt notice that, what a choice in school for talking about hookups</p>
<p>Brown ranked in these categories:</p>
<h1>1 Happiest Students</h1>
<h1>4 The Toughest to Get Into</h1>
<h1>7 Best College Radio Station</h1>
<h1>18 Best Quality of Life</h1>
<p>while PR does suck, the difference between "Happiest Students" and "Best Library" is that happiest students is just a poll of how happy the average student is at a school, whereas best libraries etc. ask you to actually compare to other schools (which obviously a student can't know about). You don't have to know how happy students at other schools are to rate your own satisfaction, but of course there aren't many BYU students who have seen Harvard's library</p>
<p>Elpope, FTW.</p>
<p>I agree the PR rankings are next to worthless. </p>
<p>Even within specific categories, schools sometimes jump from unranked, to #1 in the category, to unranked in a period of three years.</p>
<p>Also, what's up with their "Toughest to Get Into" ranking? The schools that currently have the lowest acceptance rates are 1) Yale, 2) Harvard, 3) Columbia. That wasn't at all reflected.</p>
<p>"Toughest to Get Into" isn't just acceptance rate.</p>
<p>Imagine this scenario:</p>
<p>School #1 receives 100 applicants and admits 50 of them, for an admit rate of 50%. All 100 applicants have very high SAT scores and GPAs, and have very strong extra curriculars.
School #2 receives 1000 applications and admits 50 of them for an admit rate of 5%. The top 100 applicants have very high scores and GPAs and great extracurriculars, while some of the rest of the applicant pool ranges from good to so-so.</p>
<p>Which school is "tougher to get into"? Well, school #2 has a MUCH lower acceptance rate, but for the actual excellent student, your odds are the same at both schools -- you'll get accepted about 50% of the time at each school.</p>
<p>I think the PR "toughest to get into" rankings try to reflect the fact that some schools (Harvard, Yale, etc) have very inflated applicant pools, because some people apply "just for the name" when they obviously have no chance of getting in, while other schools like UChicago and MIT tend to have more self-selected applicant pools.</p>
<p>Not saying they're perfect, but maybe it's a better measure than just looking at % admitted.</p>
<p>"Self-selecting" is usually a word used to describe schools that aren't as selective. But let's look at it another way - not by looking at the number of applicants, but at the ability of schools to draw the best students. NMSC-sponsored National Merit Scholars are the top of the academic heap, so to speak. There are only about 2500 such scholarships in the whole country, and students are awarded them after having made their decisions about where to go, i.e., regardless of where they choose to apply or attend. I think that is the precise definition of a discriminating, "self-selecting" bunch. Here's where they choose to go, according to cardinalalum80:</p>
<p>Here are the NMSC-Sponsored National Merit Scholar numbers corrected for the size of the incoming class ('05) from US News (parentheses show size of class).</p>
<p>School, % of the Class, (Size of the class)</p>
<p>Cal Tech 18.8 (234)
Yale 17.6 (1321)
Harvard 17.5 (1640)
Princeton 14.6 (1229)
MIT 13.1 (996)
Stanford 11.9 (1633)
Rice 8.2 (722)
Duke 6.8 (1724)
Harvey Mudd 6.2 (193)
Dartmouth 6 (1074)
Amherst 5.3 (431)
Columbia 5.3 (1339)
Swarthmore 5.1 (389)
Brown 4.3 (1439)
Williams 4.3 (536)
Univ Chicago 4.0 (1203)
Penn 3.9 (2552)
Pomona 3.9 (383)
Wash U St Louis 3.5 (1388)
Carleton 3.1 (541)</p>
<p>If you really think small differences in SAT scores measure anything other than family income you are mistaken.</p>
<p>Fredmurtz, FTW.</p>
<p>I'll give one to ILoveBrown as well for getting it.</p>
<p>National Merit as percent of the class isn't a way to measure how difficult a school is to get into. It's a measure of where top-scoring students tend to go. I'd say a better measure of this "where students choose" factor is the Revealed Preference Rankings.</p>
<p>And yes, "self-selecting" is sometimes used as "code" for "not selective." But look up there at your list at Brown and University of Chicago. Brown's acceptance rate is significantly lower than UChicago's, and yet they have nearly identical numbers of % national merit.</p>
<p>At the risk of defending PR, with its vague methodology, at least it avoids the USNews "one size fits all" overall ranking. It also attempts to answer questions that matter for prospective students for which there is little hard data to be had. Most people would care about the answer to "how happy are the students" , and might value any attempt to provide some information.</p>
<p>What constitutes a great library? Some might say "rare books", others "ample copies of assigned reading on reserve", others "a good espresso bar".. in the age of online resources, the answer may be "lots of online full text journals". Answer will vary by field (people rarely put rare books online, while the scientists I work with rarely go to a library anymore). </p>
<p>On selectivity, anyone have data on the admit rate for National Merit Scholars? That would be a good indicator. </p>
<p>Tough to compare Harvard to MIT, since Harvard has to fill D1 sports teams, and MIT does not. So it may be about as hard, or harder, to get into H as an academic admit, but there are more ways to get in than by being at the top of the acad pool. Great musical or artistic ability helps a lot a H, at MIT, not so much.</p>