Any college that is pure STEM will never make it to the top of the list. Because that is not where the bulk of the country is. Just look at CC itself. Also, I suspect there is a soft expectation that the colleges that are at the top of the list have had a large impact on the country through the decades.
The problem is that even if USNWR went away, it’ll take time to wash out the stupidity of assessing colleges primarily based on how many students were rejected (which is very much the rat race colleges are in, with their tree-killing mailings, shameless solicitation of apps from both qualified and unqualified students, etc.) Sure, the numbers Columbia was fudging were more about F:S ratio etc., but it was doing so because it had hit it its wall in terms of moving the acceptance rate needle in comparison to HPYSM. Columbia won’t be punished by future applicants because it happens to play ball (literally) with 7 other specific schools, and Ivy is Ivy, unfortunately. Would have been a more interesting story if it was U Chicago caught with the same shenanigans.
Columbia’s acceptance rate is lower than at least 2 HPYSM schools and probably three, and “student selectivity” makes up 7% of the score.
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Student selectivity (excellence) does not include acceptance rate.
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5% of the methodology is SAT/ACT test score ranges of matriculating students, with a penalty if less than 50% of the class applied TO
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2% is HS performance (top 10%). I do not know whether USNWR does any adjusting to the top 10% number, as less than half of HSs report class rank.
Methodology details here:
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USNWR rankings exist because there is a need for them. If you think that the majority of people will start making better decisions of all marketing disappears, you are very wrong.
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Thanks—yes, the rankings literally do not include acceptance rate at all, so there goes that theory.
Especially if US News is going to hold their #4 place, or whatever it would have been, with no schools. Everyone will know “that’s Columbia’s spot”.
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Only for 2 months. That was just their stop gap until the new ratings come out.
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Right but the bulk of the country is not in the colleges ranked typically in the top-10, it’s actually in the public universities where most students are. In fact, the first three I think US News Rankings reflected that by having Berkeley, UM, Wisconsin, Illinois in the top 15. And why should a college that doesn’t have engineering deserve to be in the top 5? The original list seemed a little more representative, imo.
“According to the page at The History of College Rankings - College Rank , college rankings date back at least to 1900… more than 80 years before USNWR.”
I applied in 1983, the first year of the rankings, before then iirc, we had access to Jack Gourman’s rankings, which I think were by major and maybe overall as well. And it wasn’t as public as US News is now, we had to get it through our guidance office.
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IMHO, any history of college rankings that doesn’t include the Cass-Birnbaum college guidebooks (which now that I think of it, tended to be published by edition and not always annually) has missed the mark. I recall the Gourman Report being pretty incomprehensible; no one could figure out what he was basing his research on. And, yes you were most likely to find either or both of them in a library or college guidance counselor’s office.
Looks like there’s already a class action lawsuit against the University started by a Columbia student (probably recruited by the law firm) over the fraudulent ratings data.
This will certainly force some fact disclosure that will likely not paint the institution favorably. I would predict that as “those responsible” are defined and revealed some heads may roll as the school seeks to distance itself from what is evolving into a scandal.
Ultimately I would ask our resident legal experts such as @roycroftmom how do plaintiffs prove damages in a case like this? Do they have to prove a financial loss or can they just assert they were “defrauded”?
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I don’t know about students, but IMO the kids that applied there and paid application fee have a reasonable case.
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If statistics is treated as a social science (rather than simply as a branch of mathematics), it often makes sense to “collapse” certain values based on relevant (although not strictly mathematical) considerations.
Virginia, Michigan, North Carolina, California, have lots of “stronger” students, as does New Jersey. Just seems (anecdotally) , that top students in New Jersey don’t seem to have as much interest in their state flagship as kids in some other states do.
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New Jersey has a greater proportion of “stronger” students than any of the four states you mentioned (only Massachusetts, and maybe one other state, have more percentagewise than New Jersey). New Jersey also hasn’t made the same level of investment in its flagship as the four states you mentioned.
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The “proportion” is not that relevant. There are very strong students in all these states. Some strong students in some states seem more okay with staying instate than in other states (like NJ?- again anecdotal). No intention to debate this, just an observation . Maybe I’m misinformed.
This is off-topic so I’ll just say that the proportion matters because a higher percentage of NJ students have opportunities to go to stronger OOS schools (both private and public).
Just so we’re all clear this isn’t a one-off occurrence, here’s what Jeff Selingo tweeted on July 16:
“Whitman College previously said the average federal debt of its 2020 graduates was $4,854 and 25% of those graduates had debt. After the college revised those numbers, the average debt of 2020 graduates was $17,298 and 37% of them held debt.”
In the end, this is going to look a lot like the for-external-eyes bookkeeping of Vegas casinos. I’d be willing to bet most of the highly ranked schools on the USNWR list have some discrepancy(ies) that won’t stand up to heavy scrutiny.
EDIT: Selingo follows that with…
“Villanova University, which has had a deliberate strategy to move up the rankings and switch categories (to national universities) over the last decade:
originally reported its average 2021 need-based grant was $51,739. The correct amount is $40,323.”
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Regardless of whether or where Columbia is ranked, I’ll continue to put them in my “CCCP” group –
Caltech
Chicago
Columbia
Penn
hehe
So you have HYPSM, followed by CCCP.
To make this somehow useful to some kid reading this, if you get into a school from the HYPSM group, and a school from the CCCP group, choose based on fit and cost. Disregard any perceived difference in prestige – they are all prestigious at that level, and you can go anywhere you want to go from any of those schools, if you are willing to put in the work and shake some hands.
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