<p>Yea yea, we all know USNWR does not mean jack ****, but let's face it, as long as the rest of "society" lends it value, it affects us. </p>
<p>With that said, how come Columbia is ranked so relatively low (with regards to what it should be)?. In 2006 it was ranked 9th tied with Dartmouth and Uchicago. But wait there's more. UPenn and Duke also ahead of Columbia???! Fine, Penn may have Wharton and yes Wharton is amazing if you wanna do business but seriously, can Penn CAS really claim to be better than CC? And Fu is probably better than Penn SEAS too. And Duke... well ionno what's up with that. </p>
<p>I predict here and now that over the next decade, Columbia will slowly rise through the rankings and replace Penn. But then again, I'm only vaguely aware of the criteria used by USNWR to rank. Rather, I think Columbia's quality and prestige is greater than those of Penn (insert pennstate joke here) and Duke (not even worth joking about). The Big 3 will jostle for position forever so they won't be touched and MIT/Stanford and Caltech (which IMO doesnt deserve to be so high up...) will likely stay higher too. But besides these, Columbia should be next =). </p>
<p>(disclaimer: applied math major. But the paper's very readable. You can also flip to the results. Brown's rank surprised me, but I guess not as much as Duke's).</p>
<p>The one thing I find frustrating about rankings is that to a lot of students, MIT and Caltech are irrelevant because they cater to a much smaller and more specialized fraction of college applicants.</p>
<p>Denzera, do you mind posting the rankings in that paper? I don't feel like paying $5 for it.</p>
<p>
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Yea yea, we all know USNWR does not mean jack ****, but let's face it, as long as the rest of "society" lends it value, it affects us.
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</p>
<p>I highly doubt more than a small handful of the people who matter know exactly how the top schools rank against each other in US News. Most people have a general sense of which schools are better than others, but don't know the exact number that each school gets every year and don't follow the random fluctuations that occur from year to year.</p>
<p>People aren't going to change their perceptions of whether Harvard is better than Yale or Princeton based on which one of the 3 happens to do best in the latest rankings. And people aren't going to believe Caltech is the #1 college in the nation because USNews happens to rank them #1 one year. And I don't think many people believe that Washington Univ. is a top 10 school and better than half of the Ivies.</p>
<p>So, no, it doesn't affect you. Columbia's prestige, the value of a Columbia degree, the power of the Columbia name, etc. will not change if Columbia happens to fall to #12 next year or happens to rise to #5 or 6 in a few years.</p>
<p>That is very true. I didn't mean for the comment about FSU and UF to come off the way it did, but it really comes off terribly now that I re-read my comment. I just found it rather mystifying.</p>
<p>the bottom line is that when HS students get into multiple schools that have "a national draw", defined carefully, they have a choice between options on this list. Assuming they get into schools X, Y, and Z, a certain percentage of the time, they will choose each of them. (the study controls for confounding factors like being a legacy, or financial aid offers). based on a similar system to how chess rankings work, a choice of a student of school X over schools Y and Z is considered a "win" for school X, and its ranking improves in line with how well all 3 schools are ranked already. Basically, all else being equal, Harvard wins over yale and princeton 95% and 96% of the time, and over everyone else better than 99% of the time, and thus is ranked 1st.</p>
<p>Anyway, I much prefer this to some kluged formula involving a bunch of self-reported statistics.</p>
<p>I think Columbia will rise in the rankings as it seems like the school has no way to physically expand. As the number of applicants rises, the school will still be forced to accept roughly the same number of applicants, raising its standards even higher. The "city" effect certainly hasn't worn out its welcome either and Columbia will continue to draw applicants due to its distinguishing trait of being the only Ivy league school in NYC.</p>
<p>@previous post "The school has no way to expand"</p>
<p>Actually Bollinger recently made a <em>proposal</em> to buy quite some land in Manhattan to expand the school at the graduate level (but undergrad will stay the same). And Columbia cud've been bigger- if those damn CU students didnt protest everytime Columbia wanted to build a bigger gym or added buildings...</p>
<p>What I mean by this is, isn't the study leaving out a huge sample by doing so? For example, I applied ED to Columbia but I do think I had a decent shot at HYPS. I'm sure the case is the same for many others who applied to Princeton, Penn, Brown, etc early. So it leaves out all of those studens who would have chosen those schools if they did not have the option to apply early. Does that make sense?</p>
<p>well yes, but your information isn't a fair test of whether Columbia or HYPS would win in a fair trial - you already hedged your bets with an ED app. Your particular decision does not contain the information they are looking for; same goes with all other ED apps. The only way to do a revealed preference ranking like this is if people actually have real, no-strings-attached choices between comparable goods (colleges) here. That can only occur in an RD round, or if you're deferred. you see my point?</p>
<p>But isn't there another, earlier, level of selection? For example, my kid had no interest in applying to Princeton, Brown, or MIT. On the other hand, he applied to Chicago because, like Columbia it was urban and had a core curriculum. Between Columbia and Chicago, most would choose Columbia. But between Princeton and Columbia, those who applied to both might have been predisposed to Princeton, and seen Columbia as backup, while those who were predisposed to choose Columbia might not have applied to Princeton. Hope that makes sense.</p>
<p>some schools applicant pools are obviously more self-selected than others, and it is this self-selection that you're referring to, sac. In particular, Caltech's applicant pool is unlike any other, because of the extreme degree that applicants self-select there. In the paper they talk about how they handle such a skewed applicant pool, and account for it in the procedure. It is discussed mathematically on pages 17-19, and mentioned specifically wrt Caltech on page 28.</p>
<p>I think I'm talking about a different aspect of preference than the self-selection involved in a technical versus a non-technical school. Leaving MIT and CalTech aside, isn't there an implicit assumption that the choices made between the other schools upon acceptance reveal something meaningful -- while the choices of which schools they apply to in the first place do not?</p>
<p>Few people apply to all the Ivies, for example, because preference is based on more than prestige. The point I was trying to make was that while the choice of Columbia over Chicago by someone whose main criteria were urban and core curriculum might reveal something about their relative attractiveness to students, the choice of Princeton over Columbia might not. That is because I would guess there is far less overlap between those who apply to Princeton and Columbia than between those who apply to Harvard and Columbia, for example, or to Columbia and Chicago, or to Stanford and Princeton, or Dartmouth and Williams. Perhaps the student who does apply to both Princeton and Columbia -- since they are such different institutions -- may be more apt than other applicants to make a decision based on prestige. Total speculation on my part.
I may be wrong, but my point is that if your criterion for ranking is revealed preference, shouldn't you take into consideration the preference revealed by choice of places to apply, and whether how much the applicant pools overlap? Perhaps they do take this into account. I would never claim to be a statistician.</p>