<p>Note that Clemson admitted downgrading rankings of all schools previously ranked higher than Clemson and I believe it was Ohio State where the President ranked only Harvard on OSU’s level.</p>
<p>The idea that college presidents are willing to rank hundreds of schools they have never set foot in, or met a student or professor from, is truly frightening.</p>
<p>Why does Peer Assessment seem so hard for people to understand? It’s merely a survey asking academics to rate a university’s academic offerings on a scale of 1 (marginal) to 5 (distinguished).</p>
<p>Higher scoring schools offer more distinguished academic programs than lower scoring schools…and that is IT!</p>
<p>
I doubt it. Georgetown offers a very distinguished international relations program; BYU and ND offer strong undergrad business programs…what else in their academic offerings would you classify as “distinguished”?</p>
<p>good lord–read the incidents quoted on this thread alone! Way too many schools use this opportunity to stack the deck! It’s just marketing. This figure counts for a whopping 25% of their USNWR score! Plus answer the charge that for the LACs, how can the person filling out the form at 1 school possibly be able to really evaluate the hundreds on the list???</p>
<p>
LAC presidents are asked to rate only other LACs. If they don’t know, they’re asked to mark their form as such. Likewise with university presidents. </p>
<p>I’ll say that evaluating LACs in a rating like this is trickier than evaluating universities.</p>
<p>
USNWR says they clean the data.</p>
<p>Peer assessment is easy to understand; but much harder to accept at face value.</p>
<p>An interesting test of whether the safeguard of bieng able to answer “I don’t know” works would be to publish the % of such answers; unless it is reasonably high, the system is not working.</p>
<p>Has USNWR described in any detail how it “cleans” the data?</p>
<p>Marketing works! In the last 5 yeasrs, if you get an SAT score above 2200 you would get a heavy envelop with a lot of beautiful printed materials, a thick catalog and a few “golden” letters from University of Chicago.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>USNews says so many things! The key is to believe anything Morse and his people say. </p>
<p>Well there is always hope that they’ll start doing what they say. In the meantime, one can only wonder why it still took a number of enterprising students to fully expose the scamsters, and this despite years of reports by … the officials themselves. </p>
<p>The reality is that USNews cannot do much except praying to receive sufficient replies, and this means they have to let the schools play their games. Making the process more visible and give it an ounce of credibility or scrutiny would propel the response rate to single digits, and force USNews to admit how flawed their PA truly is. And, fwiw, do we really believe that there is ANYONE at Synovate who is able to judge which presidential answers is bogus or biased. Will this person call the “boss” at Clemson and let him know he is full ot it? Dream on! </p>
<p>It will be nice to see if the august officials who are lending their name to this questionable exercise will find sufficient moral fiber --or fear to get caught-- to fill the forms with a tad of integrity and … knowledge. It will be interesting to see how USNews processes survey that contain a handful or scores and 90-95% of I DO NOT KNOW … as they should.</p>
<p>Yes, there is hope that USNews WILL clean the data and that astute readers will be able to track the changes between the manipulated past and the … clean data. </p>
<p>And, while they are at it, we could alwauys hope for USNews to clearly spell out what the PA is supposed to measure … in their methodology and in their instructions to the respondents.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>Well, here’s what confuses me: Notre Dame is one of the most reputable schools in the country, and has enormous clout among Roman Catholic families, both rich and poor. You’re correct in asserting that ND lacks outstanding programs besides Business, Philosophy, and Theology. </p>
<p>NYU is similarly reputable, the dream school of kids from across the nation. Unlike Notre Dame, it actually has top graduate programs in Law, Medicine, etc. However, both of these schools, in spite of their superior repute, have relatively poor P.A. scores.</p>
<p>Recall NYU was founded by Jews to serve Jews discriminated by the admissions practices of Ivy League schools.</p>
<p>Of course, NYU has always been a secular school, but could the elite WASPs who dole out these peer assessment scores be perpetuating age-old, insidious anti-Catholic and anti-Jewish sentiments?</p>
<p>Georgetown also has a T14 Law school. :)</p>
<p>NYU’s med school is only fair-to-middlin’, ranked #31 with the publics Iowa & Colorado. Of course, any US med school is great.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>By “WASP,” do you mean: Williams, Amherst, Swarthmore and Pomona???</p>
<p>What’s the Selectivity Rank of these schools on USNews?</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>“What’s the Selectivity Rank of these schools on USNews?”</p>
<p>Do two threads have to get another useless ranking?</p>