<p>my favorite comment was that the "criteria and weightings are arbitrary." We can all disagree with the the data points, but arbitrary they are not. USNews has been tweaking the data for ~20 years, likely with input from the blue blood schools, so they have plenty of academic brain power involved. </p>
<p>On another thread, the Pres of Yale said that the alumni giving and endowment components were unfair to public schools. Well, duh! He needs to go back to the early days, and look at the ranking before those two criteria were added....Berkeley was in the top 10, and UMich and other publics were in the top 20. Yikes -- can't let the low tuition state schools outrank the blue bloods......change the criteria to include endowment and alumni giving, and voila, all is right with the NE colleges. :D</p>
<p>Methinks Reed doeth protest too much. Unlike Penn (which could be fabricating numbers), Reed school makes available/publishes (nearly) all the data in the USNews ranking system. But, by claiming 'we don't participate' the school can explain away is relatively low ranking. </p>
<p>IMO, Reed, which is an excellent school, would be better off taking the high road: "We are who we are...."</p>
<p>Penn started its stratospheric climb in the rankings by using ED.</p>
<p>Pesto, I'm one of those parents here who attended Reed.</p>
<p>Reed doesn't have a computer science major, but it has produced a lot of computer scientists over the years. When I attended my reunion last summer, I noticed just that -- from former math majors, philosophy majors, you name it. Peter Norton (creator of Norton Antivirus, Norton Utiliities, etc.) was in my graduating class.</p>
<p>Reed is very strong in math and the sciences -- bio, chem, physics -- as well as in several other areas in social sciences (esp. sociology, anthropology, psychology) and humanities.</p>
<p>As for the USNews ranking, well that has a long history, but as for the remark about CDS, yes Reed has participated in that for a long time (it's part of a data collection processes that virtually all colleges participate in) and oddly enough that's not sufficient for USNews so Reed still gets dumped on by that magazine.</p>
<p>First, it does address the issues of non-participation by Reed. I did not read any displays of sour grapes by USN. Quite to the contrary!</p>
<p>
[quote]
Although it boasts many of the same characteristics as its peer liberal arts schools, such as personal attention and academic intensity, Reed flouts convention just as eagerly as its students do. For a decade, the administration has refused on principle to participate in the U.S.News &World Report college rankings (although it posts much of the relevant data on its website, permitting U.S. News to rank the college).
[/quote]
It goes on to describe some of the best attributes of the school:
[quote]
Those would be Reedies, the 1,300 students who flock to this woodsy liberal arts enclave in Portland, Ore., which prides itself on a devotion to learning that borders on the obsessive. </p>
<p>Students receive grades, but unless they ask for them, all they see are their professors' written comments. " 'Is this going to be on the test?' is a question you don't hear," reports associate professor of chemistry Margret Geselbracht. "Students want to learn because they're interested, not because they're trying to get an A." Defying the pre-professional push in higher education, the one field Reed implicitly prepares its students for is academia; a higher percentage of alums have gone on to complete Ph.D.'s than at all but two other colleges in the nation.</p>
<p>../...</p>
<p>Brainy. The one trait that all Reedies share is a love of learning. At a place where people constantly reference "the life of the mind," one might expect the late-night powwows on Kant, but intellectual pursuits go way beyond those college cliches.
<p>Yeah, this isn't bad. But also no mea culpa from USN about the time they dumped Reed into the 4th tier (and the CDS or equivalent data were available then, too), but a year later raised them to the 2nd tier (even though nothing really changed in Reed's reported stats).</p>
<p>Thanks for your input concerning Reed. The lack of a CS major might deter my son but otherwise it sounds like a good fit. And Norton -- hey, that's a name even I have heard of!</p>
<p>back in the Dark Ages, I was in a meeting with the Dean of Harvard Medical School. He mentioned that he only took west coast one recruiting trip a year where he visited three schools: Berkeley, Stanford and then Reed. So, I can assume back then, Reed's bio-med program was excellent! Not surprised that they have continued in those academic areas.</p>
<p>Pesto, Reed does have a couple of dual degree arrangements that involve or could involve computer science -- with a Reed BA coupled with a BS or an MS from UWash or Caltech. You might want to explore this. But they would both miss some of the "fun" of Reed, namely doing a senior thesis project.</p>
<p>Reed loses heavily in the rankings because of its relatively low graduation rate. I attribute that low rate to four things:
1) it takes risks with whom it admits
2) it doesn't guarantee housing all the way through
3) it requires a junior qualifying exam before becoming a senior
4) it requires a senior thesis to graduate</p>
<p>Might it make some sense to move the Reed postings into another thread devoted to Reed? I'm not sure anyone else who wants information on Reed will find it in this thread. (And I'm not sure how to contact the moderators about it.)</p>
<p>US News doesn't do the compiling from the CDS. They ask each and every school to supply the answers to their not-at-all-short survey. I have somehow managed to escape this task, but one of my colleagues "gets" to do this every year. </p>
<p>It is my understanding that many of the ranking criteria come from the CDS, but not all. Whatever the significance one wants to put on Reed's refusal, it's not as though it has little or no effect on the data used to rank Reed (or, for that matter, the other schools who don't return the survey). As I understand it, at first US News just put the lowest possible value in for each of the boycotting schools. Now US News attempts to fill it in via educated guesses along with data from from the CDS.</p>
<p>USNEWS is one of the three participating publishers involved in the Common Data Set -- the others being the College Board and Petersons/Thompson. Most of the questions USNEWS uses are included on, or calculated from, the Common Data Set. All three publishers try to identify additional questions they are asking and incorporate them in the Common Data Set -- for example, endowment, student revenues net of discounts, total revenues, total expenses, etc.</p>
<p>Once the Common Data Set is completed, the heavy lifting has already been done by any college.</p>
<p>Yeah, did you miss post #16? U-M knows who is behind the CDS. </p>
<p>I don't know if it's true that "virtually all" or, as you later claimed, "most" of the questions are calculated from CDS data. It's 600+ questions. As I said, I believe there is considerable overlap, but some of it must be unique. If that weren't the case, what would be an institution's incentive to devote staff time to it?</p>
<p>I dredged this up from page 3 because I spoke with my colleague. She ballparked that about 50% of US News 600+ questions can be answered directly from the CDS.</p>
<p>She expressed her puzzlement that there were so many questions when it appeared that 16 variables were used to rank schools, and the variables appeared to be derived from about 28 things on the questionnaire, but there you have it.</p>
<p>
[quote]
She expressed her puzzlement that there were so many questions when it appeared that 16 variables were used to rank schools, and the variables appeared to be derived from about 28 things on the questionnaire, but there you have it.
[/quote]
</p>
<p>The real value of USNEWS is not their ranking system, but in their extensive collection of data on each school that is published in their comprehensive printed guide and their on-line edition. </p>
<p>The additional data includes a lot of stuff like percentage of students who study abroad, percentage on varsity sports teams, most frequent post-grad employers, most common overlap schools in admissions, most frequent grad schools, and so forth and so on. Some of it is useful, but much of it is so lacking in standardized reporting that it is virtually useless. For example, the future post-grad education plans data is typically derived from the exit surveys given to graduating seniors in May -- a point in time when vast numbers haven't firmed up their long-term plans. For example, the students who know they will be a future MBA at graduation is small percentage of the actual future MBAs. I'm not sure that data really captures an accurate picture and certainly not a picture that is statistically comparable to other schools.</p>
<p>Getting back to Reed...if they were taking a principled stand, they would refuse to supply the basic data that is used for arbitrary rankings. I believe that everything used for rankings (except financial data and alumni giving) is taken from the Common Data Set. Refusing to supply the additional data serves no real purpose beyond a PR stand.</p>
<p>Im not really up on all the reasons why Reed doesn't supply data directly to USNEWS, my impression was that they wanted to be the ones to present their data, not give it to a third party to tweak every year to sell magazines
I do read USNEWS and obviously they would look silly if they left out Reed ( although didn't they leave out Occidental or was that Princeton review?), although isn't this the first year in a while that Reed has been 1st tier? That is silly- but the whole tiered thing is overstated anyway.
Reed does have all that info on their web site- but I also think the USnews info is helpful- not so much the " rankings" but how many freshmen return, how much aid is available- how many from out of state etc. I like the chart format as it is fairly easy to read- although we also make our own charts with our own criteria. ( would that I was so organized when I bought my house!)</p>
<p>I admit however that my jaw does drop, when I see how much importance that some place on the rankings- I hear adults talking about "first and second tier" like they are talking about first and second place in a race, on one of the other threads students are already hypotheszing about rank for the 2007 magazine. They are really doing themselves a disservice by not finding their own criteria, and using available information to determine the right school for them,because that is what really matters.
For students to be depressed, because the school they like isn't ranked high enough, or for other students to be smug because their school is ranked higher is sad, IMO</p>
<p>So to take a principled stand, Reed should deny the CDS data to anyone? </p>
<p>I disagree. </p>
<p>Publishing a CDS provides some basic data to anyone who wants it. It's complying with a standard for, well, common data. It allows students to find out about the college and, if they desire, compare it to others on variables that matter to them in their college search. Not every school publishes their CDS, but a good many do, and it's a useful tool. Many people have legitimate uses for it that have nothing to do with ranking schemes. I use it sometimes when I'm gathering data here.</p>
<p>I don't see how it's "principled" to refuse to participate in a useful data publishing standard, just because you don't like how a third party may take it and manipulate it. It's cutting your nose off to spite your face, and does a disservice to the very constituents some feel are ill-served by US News. You want Reed to not just deny information to the US News drones (who will mine it when Reed doesn't return the survey), but to deny it to everyone else, too. It's one solution, but it doesn't feel (to me) like one that's more principled than what they are currently doing.</p>
<p>The ranking system can be intimidating and it is used by some to be snobbish. The funny thing is that some of these kids who have been the "big fish" at their high schools are going to find that they are a "dime a dozen" when they arrive at their top 10 school. Many of these kids have become accustomed to "special treatment" & adoration from faculty at their high schools because they are one of the few with a high GPA & SAT (or whatever). When they get to their school and find out that all of their classmates had equal or better stats than they did, they will be in for a shock. Sometimes it is better to go to a lower ranked school so that a student can still "shine". Also, sometimes a lower ranked school is just a better fit.</p>
<p>" I admit however that my jaw does drop, when I see how much importance that some place on the rankings- I hear adults talking about "first and second tier" like they are talking about first and second place in a race, on one of the other threads students are already hypotheszing about rank for the 2007 magazine. They are really doing themselves a disservice by not finding their own criteria, and using available information to determine the right school for them,because that is what really matters.
For students to be depressed, because the school they like isn't ranked high enough, or for other students to be smug because their school is ranked higher is sad, IMO"</p>
<p>Yes. I agree totally. I'm rather glad that when my daughter was in the college-search phase, I was so naive about the whole process that I never even looked at the US News ranking. I will confess that I have sneaked a peek at it since then, and, yes, I will confess to a glimmer of gloating to find that the college she now attends was ranked higher (by a considerable margin) than two of the colleges that wait-listed her, but as I prepare to go through the process again with child #2, I am vowing not to look at the rankings at all -- and rather to rely on a combination of Fiskes, CC, and GC recommendations for guidance as S puts together a list of prospective colleges based primarily on the criterion of their strength in his areas of interest.</p>