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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.
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<p>Columbia's reliance on NYC isn't a 100% win-win situation. In the 70s, NYC was a horribly unsafe city filled with crime, red light districts, whores, johns, drug dealers, etc. and Columbia was pretty much recognized as undesirable and the worst Ivy.</p>
<p>Columbia seems to have been unharmed by the effects of 9-11 and parents' fears of sending their kids to NYC. But who knows what's in store for NYC in the future? My point is simply that Columbia rises and falls with NYC, and NYC may not always be what it is today (as it was in the 70s).</p>
<p>this ranking system is horrendous. All it could supposedly measure is how current hs students perceive the quality of the schools to be.... but that's not even the case... U of Notre Dame above Cornell, Swarthmore, Gtown, Chicago, Northwestern, JHU?!?!?!?</p>
<p>Clearly there are tons of variables regarding what kind of student chooses to cross-apply, the self-selectivity of the schools, geographical influences, fin. aid's impact on these students' decision.... oyyy. This ranking has a long way to go before it measures anything close to how good these schools are.</p>
<p>barring another crack epidemic, the infrastructure investment that the city has made in the last 30 years, the property improvements, and the general wealth of the city's inhabitants should make morningside heights an attractive area during good economic times and bad. It will always have the allure of being the most global city in the US, of broadway and the center of mass media, of finance and world government.</p>
<p>Moreover, I think the difference between Columbia and relative peer institutions will mostly be over the quality of professors they can attract (of which NYC is a big part), access to the UN, and to top jobs.</p>
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barring another crack epidemic, the infrastructure investment that the city has made in the last 30 years, the property improvements, and the general wealth of the city's inhabitants should make morningside heights an attractive area during good economic times and bad. It will always have the allure of being the most global city in the US, of broadway and the center of mass media, of finance and world government.
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<p>I agree with this, but I just don't think NYC is immune to another downturn sometime over the next couple decades. </p>
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Moreover, I think the difference between Columbia and relative peer institutions will mostly be over the quality of professors they can attract (of which NYC is a big part), access to the UN, and to top jobs.
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<p>The flip side is that Columbia in some ways has a relatively hard time, compared to its peer institutions, attracting top quality professors. NYC's cost of living makes it pretty difficult for a junior professor to have a decent lifestyle.</p>
<p>Also, many professors don't want to raise kids in NYC (a terrible place to raise kids) and would have to be relegated to the suburbs and a mega-commute to put their kids in a decent place.</p>
<p>Who benefits when a school rises in ranking? I mean, Columbia can only rise so many spots before it reaches the HYP ceiling. And even if Columbia reaches #1 a few years down the road, is it even possible that it keeps the title the next year all to itself (as in not sharing the spot with Princeton)?</p>
<p>Iono guys... I was watching The Apprentice tonight and if $$ is what ur looking for I realized there is a very low correlation between doing well in life and trying to nitpick differences between the top 50 universities...</p>
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Clearly there are tons of variables regarding what kind of student chooses to cross-apply, the self-selectivity of the schools, geographical influences, fin. aid's impact on these students' decision.... oyyy. This ranking has a long way to go before it measures anything close to how good these schools are.
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if you bother to read the article, the study accounts for most of those, particularly including geography, financial aid, legacy status, and self-selection. you can quibble, if you like, with their particular decisions regarding those variables (or their sample size of 3240 students and your extensive, i'm sure, knowledge of chi-square statistical tests). but your response here smacks of ignorance and laziness rather than science.</p>
<p>the rankings contained there don't pretend to be a measure of anything other than the order in which students actually prefer schools to one another. that, in itself, is a fairly powerful statement about which schools are "better". What makes a school better? People believing that it is. Anything else that tries to make this objective is defeating the purpose of a fundamentally subjective decision (and, ultimately, market).</p>