Colorado College joining Reed and others in the group of highly elite colleges. Good for them!
I wonder what their trend has been - i.e. are they concerned with where they are ranked or are the intentions just and sincere?
Don’t know previous rankings - but if I recall, they were higher in past years - I could be wrong.
Just curious if the rationale is pure - or otherwise.
There are other rankings - not sure if schools participate or if the other pubs (forbes, wsj) just pull from available data.
Their curriculum/scheduling is so different from other colleges that it feels appropriate for them to eschew direct comparison to peers through ranking. Lately, USNWR had them in a close jumble of LACs, tied or nearly tied in rank, for which each school had some pretty unique characteristics that wouldn’t translate equivalently to the “similarly ranked” schools.
USNWR throws in service academies and a university (U of Richmond) in the LAC category, so the entire list is a jumble anyway.
These are the colleges that CC regards as its peers:
- Bates College
- Bowdoin College
- Carleton College
- Colby College
- Colgate University
- College of the Holy Cross
- Davidson College
- Hamilton College
- Kenyon College
- Lafayette College
- Macalester College
- Middlebury College
- Pitzer College
- Wesleyan University
- Whitman College
https://www.coloradocollege.edu/offices/ipe/peer-institutions.html
Of course, most colleges list what they see as peers “upward” in prestige / selectivity.
This is Davidson - not an Amherts or Bowdoin - but they don’t list Colorado - so yes, I agree. I do agree with @UnsentDementor that the scheduling is so unique - there are few that do - and that should be a huge factor for the student who wants to attend vs. a rank. Plus, how many people in society - inclduing hiring managers - have heard of Macalester or Grinnell, etc. I’m guessing - societally, not many.
Reed led the way on this back in the 90s. Here is a great article about it: The Ominous Cracks in the US News College Ranking System - Reed Magazine - Reed College
CC has been ranked consistently between 25 and 29 over the past 10 years.
My son was accepted EA and yesterday we received an email from the president announcing CC’s decision to opt out. Here is part of their reasoning:
We are pulling out of this ranking because it privileges criteria that are antithetical to our values and our aspirational goals. Here are a few examples.
** U.S. News’ flawed methodology still equates academic quality with institutional wealth and continues to rely heavily on the infamous questionnaire asking institutions to rank each other’s reputation, a non-objective process subject to gaming.*
** It continues to equate academic rigor with high school rank and standardized test scores, a metric that creates perverse incentives for schools to provide “merit” aid at the expense of need-based aid. This metric is also inconsistent with our belief that the educational experiences we provide transform our students regardless of these class rank and test scores, which is why we went test-optional in 2019.*
** Further, U.S. News & World Report’s methodology, weighing the proportion of students with debt and the total amount of debt at graduation, creates incentives for schools to admit wealthy students who can attend without incurring debt. We cannot reconcile our values and our aspirations with these metrics or the behaviors they motivate.*
It’s worth listening to Malcolm Gladwell’s “Lord of the Rankings.” He does a deep dive into US News & World report’s bogus algorithm: Lord of the Rankings | Revisionist History
Last year Colorado College’s acceptance rate was under 15%. Whitman’s was 59%, Lafayette’s was 40%, Kenyon’s was 36%, and Carlton’s was 17%. Their list seems pretty broad and accurate.
Please note that CC appears to have been ranked at #23 in 2018 and at #31 in 2014:
I wish more schools would do this.
But if there were no ranking, there’d be less obsessed students and then the cc would be in trouble - and what would we all do without?
This is getting off topic…but this statement just doesn’t ring true for everyone. Our kids never…and I mean never…looked at the school rankings anywhere when they were looking for colleges. I did put a query on this forum because DD was looking for colleges geographically far away…and got tons of great info…and no mention of rankings….at all.
I applaud these colleges for getting off the ranking bandwagon. There is plenty of very worthwhile info that can and should be learned about colleges that has absolutely nothing to do with rankings.
Yes - and your daughter is likely in the majority but likely not in the majority of CC participants.
That said, it’ll be interesting how it shakes out for the schools leaving.
Yale Law will always be Yale Law - but Colorado College may (or may not see) a different uimpact.
They would almost certainly see their yield increase in the future as students apply because they have heard about and become genuinely interested in the school, rather than applying to the first 10 or 20 schools off a list.
For comparison, Reed’s most recent yield was 14.2%, however.
This used to be pinned to the top of the Wesleyan forum. I’ve tried to get it pinned back, but have not heard from anyone:
Wesleyan’s Ludicrous U.S. News Ranking - Colleges and Universities A-Z / Wesleyan University - College Confidential Forums
I thought the above statement that a prior poster included from CC was interesting. Interesting in that rather than creating an incentive to provide more need-based aid to students to reduce their debit it was incenting the school to admit wealthier students. We obviously would hope for the former but the latter is obviously easier for the colleges.