<p>^^I agree with graduation requirements being the different one. Because all the others are set, at least partially, by someone’s subjective opinion. Graduation requirements do not fluctuate subject to opinion. They are what they are.</p>
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<p>Unfortunately, I’ve many times seen otherwise sensible people misuse the rankings in exactly that way.</p>
<p>Okay… The common factor was “rebel.” In which would it NEVER make sense to rebel? Stock prices. If you’re rebelling against stock prices, who are you rebelling against? Whose head do I put on a pike to make the stock market do what I want it to do?</p>
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<p>sorry, I meant podunk in terms of rankings. Many of these schools are extremely well-regarded for good reason, despite their rankings, but they fail to game the system in a way that will reflect this in US NEWS.</p>
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<p>Obviously</p>
<p>^I was trying to explain it to the people above me who didn’t understand stock market and were thinking graduation requirements instead.</p>
<p>There’s a lot of reasons for a CEO to rebel against stock prices.</p>
<p>Mainly, you’re pay is dependent on it and you have little control over the stock market prices. Things like global economy or other events in other parts of the world have a lot of influence over your own salary.</p>
<p>Also, shareholders expect a high stock price, and you end up having to do look at the short term instead of long term. A long term investment might be a wise thing to do but the shareholders want the stock price high in the short term.</p>
<p>There’s absolutely no problem with ranking anything. The OP asks “Why is X ranked higher than Y?”. US News makes it very clear - they have several criteria that each contribute a certain percentage to the ranking formula. The rankings only have any value for you if you buy into the criteria and the way they’re weighted. You don’t like it? OK, create your own rankings if you wish. If you want somewhere warm, make average annual temperature 50%. Want to make proportion of Greek students 20% and the number of days per month that the cafeteria serves meatloaf worth the remaining 30%? No problem - now you’ll have a ranking that serves your needs.</p>
<p>Of course, your rankings won’t carry much value for other folks. US News’ rankings generate so much attention because their weighted criteria seem to have a good degree of face validity for a lot of readers. If not for you, ignore them.</p>
<p>So, this is a report summarizing the Washington Post’s already-succinct report on something that hasn’t really changed since it happened three years ago. American journalism at its finest.</p>
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<p>Here are some objective indications of quality differences between these 2 schools:</p>
<p>… Yale … UMiami
small classes (<20) … 79% … 52%
SAT scores (75th% M+CR) … 1580 … 1370
faculty salaries (FT high) … $117K … $82K
affiliated Nobel laureates … 48 … 0 ?
library size (volumes) … 13M … 3.3M
annual research expenditures … $460M … $214M
graduation rate … 96% … 76%
Bachelor-to-PhD rank … 3rd … 61st *
median mid-career salary … $120K … $96K **
size (student pop.) … 12K … 16K</p>
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<li>Bachelor-to-PhD rank: rank, among national universities, by the number of alumni per capita who earn PhDs
** median mid-career salaries are only for alumni without graduate degrees</li>
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<p>Yadda Yadda Yadda- I agree old news, but I * am* wondering, how do you pronounce * defeastick*?</p>
<p>I think USNWR is the worst thing that ever happened to higher education. Anyone who thinks it doesn’t cause harm, doesn’t work in the industry. The rankings beget rankings, and they have created a monster. </p>
<p>Students are more and more freaked out, ridiculous unnecessary emphasis is placed on top x (as if it has meaning and importance that it does not), and students spend far more time filling out apps and jumping through non-developmental hoops to get into top x school. Some of the frenzy is about more college age students, but most of it is irrational exuberance hyped out of proportion by a magazine. </p>
<p>On the college side, gigantic resources have been taken out of <em>education</em> and put into PR, marketing, statisticians, and a lot of superficial wasteful nonsense- now it’s more and more about playing a numbers game than providing a quality product. The schools have not improved per se, and nor at all do they need to: they just had to invest in prettier gardens, better brochures, more expensive admissions professionals, more expensive advertising, and the facade of a different curriculum and ‘visioning’ when needed. You know, work on the brand. Get teh numbers up is all you have to do because once you are in, a high ranking begets a high ranking (apps go up, yield improves, and so on).</p>
<p>Reed College opted out of participating in the USNWR rat race several years ago. Here’s an article from the Atlantic by Reed’s president on its experience:</p>
<p>[Is</a> There Life After Rankings? - Magazine - The Atlantic](<a href=“http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2005/11/is-there-life-after-rankings/4308/]Is”>Is There Life After Rankings? - The Atlantic)</p>
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There is constant criticism of USNWR on CC and these forums have done much to explode the rankings myths, and quite frankly, the CC posters present a better case against USNWR than HuffPo or WaPo</p>
<p>I don’t have a lot of respect for colleges that whine about USNWR but then still play along just the same. They should put their money where there mouth is. They can choose to participate or not. I think things will only change if they take a stand are refuse to play along.</p>
<p>"students spend far more time filling out apps and jumping through non-developmental hoops to get into top x school. "</p>
<p>At DD’s school they do that mainly for the Ivies, which have had prestige advantages for a long long time, well before USNWR.</p>
<p>I don’t think taking away USNWR would result in fewer apps, or less chasing prestige colleges. I really don’t. Thats not based on experience in the industry, but experience observing kids at a selective high school.</p>
<p>I agree fully with gadad. The problem is not in the rankings - USNWR is pretty transparent as to what their criteria are, whether or not you agree with them. The problem is with the kinds of idiots who do indeed think that #10 and #11 are meaningfully different. So what? Let 'em think it.</p>
<p>^^The difference between #10 and #11 hugely significant – to the schools. </p>
<p>Colleges in general appear to obsess over every single place up or down that their school moves. And the gap between #10 and #11 is especially large. I bet hundreds of college presidents and admissions deans would give their eye teeth to be able to stand in front of a room full of alumni/donors or potential applicants and their parents and crow about how their school is now in the Top Ten in the Nation.</p>
<p>I don’t think it is USNWR that is making Harvard ( a Harvard) or MIT ( a MIT). I knew of these colleges way back home while growing up thru the work of people who have attended these institutes and not because a magazine have put them at the top in some numerical ranking.</p>
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<p>coureur, we had a recent discussion on this topic and how much the elite colleges care about their USNWR rankings. It was a draw between me and JHS :-). Starts getting good around post #6.
<a href=“http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/parents-forum/913360-why-do-elite-college-recruit-so-much.html[/url]”>http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/parents-forum/913360-why-do-elite-college-recruit-so-much.html</a></p>
<h1>30 Starbright: one positive aspect of the USNWR rankings is the shame attached to private colleges that use adjuncts to teach a large percentage of their intro-level classes. Private institutions relying heavily on part-time faculty take a huge hit in the rankings.</h1>
<p>Gadad wrote: "There’s absolutely no problem with ranking anything. The OP asks “Why is X ranked higher than Y?”. US News makes it very clear - they have several criteria that each contribute a certain percentage to the ranking formula. The rankings only have any value for you if you buy into the criteria and the way they’re weighted. You don’t like it? OK, create your own rankings if you wish. If you want somewhere warm, make average annual temperature 50%. Want to make proportion of Greek students 20% and the number of days per month that the cafeteria serves meatloaf worth the remaining 30%? No problem - now you’ll have a ranking that serves your needs.</p>
<p>“Of course, your rankings won’t carry much value for other folks. US News’ rankings generate so much attention because their weighted criteria seem to have a good degree of face validity for a lot of readers. If not for you, ignore them” </p>
<p>But this is the problem. Nobody actually reads all the tiny print explaining the weighted criteria. It’s like a new law passed by Congress. Most protesters, pro and con, have never actually read the bill. They’ve heard edited snippets in the media and have decided they know all about it. “Face value” is a real problem with these rankings, don’t you think? Library size? Okay, so podunk college steers a chunk of money to triple the size of the library. They should move up in the rankings? Come on. Same goes for an elite college that throws money at the library or some other building. Why should #11 move ahead of #10 just because they decided to buy a million more volumes that no student will ever actually read?</p>
<p>The whole ranking thing is absurd. My theory is this: USNWR did it solely to sell magazines and advertising. And people pay attention to it for the same reason they pay attention to where they buy a house and what the house looks like: they want to feel that they are better than someone else.</p>
<p>THIS IS EXACTLY WHAT I’M TALKING ABOUT–PEOPLE BELIEVE THESE RANKINGS: <a href=“http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/parents-forum/922787-family-obsessed-prestige.html[/url]”>http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/parents-forum/922787-family-obsessed-prestige.html</a></p>