Comparing rankings of universities and liberal arts colleges

College Search & Selection
1

<p>When colleges are ranked, there are usually separate rankings for universities and liberal arts colleges. So I was wondering, if the top liberal arts colleges, like Williams, Amherst, and Swarthmore, were compared to the top universities, at around what level would they be ranked? I understand that it's difficult to compare universities and liberal arts colleges, and also that all those college ranking sites are only approximates anyway, but I just wanted a very general idea. Thanks!</p>

<p>(Btw, sorry if this was asked in the wrong forum!)</p>

2

<p>It depends so much on what you want for your college academic experience. Many people say that the education at a top 5 LAC is as good as HYP (you will find many threads on this, I’m sure). I find the academic rating in the Fiske Guide to be helpful. At a certain point schools start getting 4.5 instead of 5 and that applies to universities as well as LACs, so you can tell which the Guide considers to be very slightly lesser.</p>

3

<p>Not exactly what you are looking for, but an attempt to integrate the University & LAC lists:
<a href=“http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/college-search-selection/687793-selectivity-ranking-national-us-lacs-combined-usnews-method.html[/url]”>http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/college-search-selection/687793-selectivity-ranking-national-us-lacs-combined-usnews-method.html&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

4

<p>Actually, most don’t separate the two types (US News is more of an outlier). For instance take a look at the Fiske Guide and Barron’s Guide.</p>

5

<p>Try this just for fun: (Liberal Arts ranking *1.5) + 8 = Nat Uni ranking</p>

6

<p>OP, Williams and Amherst would rank within minute distance from Dartmouth or Brown, or maybe slightly below Brown’s, in my personal opinion. Swarthmore would be around where Rice or Berkeley is. All those three liberal arts schools would (slightly) suffer for their lack of academic/scholarly prestige as viewed by the academic people ¶.</p>

7

<p>Suppose I asked "Which has the better quality of life - New York City or Vail, Colorado? The answer would depend entirely upon what you value. The same is true for top Us and top LACs. The undergraduate experience at a top LAC will be different in some ways from that at a top university, but both will be exceptional and highly appealing to different people. The undergrad academic experience at a top LAC will not be diminished from that at a top U - in its individual attention and intimacy it may be even more outstanding - though the range of majors and scope of courses available within those majors may be more limited.</p>

8

<p>^what gadad said. and, why do we have this compulsive need to rank everything?</p>

9

<p>not withstanding 10scholar’s perfectly valid comment, for grins, here is a list ordered by USNews’ much-debated peer assessment score
National Us combined with LACs. 68 schools with peer score 3.8 or greater. Not too far off IMO.</p>

<p>[For one of a gazillion threads on peer assessment (& my secondary source of those scores,) see this thread: <a href=“http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/college-search-selection/797962-college-comparison-xxii-usnwr-peer-assessment-ratings.html[/url]”>http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/college-search-selection/797962-college-comparison-xxii-usnwr-peer-assessment-ratings.html&lt;/a&gt; ]</p>

<p>4.9 , Harvard
4.9 , MIT
4.9 , Princeton
4.9 , Stanford</p>

<p>4.8 , Yale</p>

<p>4.7 , UC BERKELEY
4.7 , Williams</p>

<p>4.6 , Amherst
4.6 , Caltech
4.6 , U Chicago
4.6 , Columbia</p>

<p>4.5 , Cornell
4.5 , Johns Hopkins
4.5 , U Penn
4.5 , Swarthmore
4.5 , Wellesley</p>

<p>4.4 , Brown
4.4 , Duke
4.4 , U MICHIGAN</p>

<p>4.3 , Bowdoin
4.3 , Dartmouth
4.3 , Grinnell
4.3 , Middlebury
4.3 , Northwestern
4.3 , U VIRGINIA</p>

<p>4.2 , UCLA
4.2 , Carleton
4.2 , Carnegie Mellon
4.2 , Davidson
4.2 , Harvey Mudd
4.2 , Pomona
4.2 , Smith
4.2 , Vassar
4.2 , Wesleyan</p>

<p>4.1 , U N CAROLINA
4.1 , Oberlin
4.1 , US Military Acad
4.1 , US Naval Acad
4.1 , U WISCONSIN
4.1 , Wash U</p>

<p>4.0 , Bates
4.0 , Bryn Mawr
4.0 , Claremont McK
4.0 , Colby
4.0 , Colgate
4.0 , Emory
4.0 , GEORGIA TECH
4.0 , Georgetown
4.0 , Haverford
4.0 , U ILLINOIS
4.0 , Mt. Holyoke
4.0 , Rice
4.0 , Vanderbilt</p>

<p>3.9 , Barnard
3.9 , Macalester
3.9 , U TEXAS
3.9 , USC</p>

<p>3.8 , Bucknell
3.8 , UC DAVIS
3.8 , UC SAN DIEGO
3.8 , Colorado College
3.8 , Kenyon
3.8 , NYU
3.8 , Notre Dame
3.8 , PENN STATE
3.8 , U WASHINGTON
3.8 , W&L
3.8 , WILLIAM & MARY</p>

10

<p>papa chicken- peer assessment scores cannot be compared across rankings categories. berkeley administrators do not rank williams and williams administrators do not rank berkeley.</p>

<p>for an example of how much things get skewed, compare lac bucknell (3.8) with its small university peer lehigh (3.2). then compare both with slightly less ‘prestigious’ masters university villanova (4.2).</p>

<p>i dont think villanova is a reputational peer of the carnegie mellons and dartmouths of the world. and i dont think lehigh is a reputational peer of the quinnipiacs and lasalles of the world, either.</p>

11

<p>The LACs would have high peer assessment scores if they were ranked by university administrators, considering LAC alumni/ae command a presence in academia.</p>

12

<p>the paper from here: [SSRN-A</a> Revealed Preference Ranking of U.S. Colleges and Universities by Christopher Avery, Mark Glickman, Caroline Hoxby, Andrew Metrick](<a href=“http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=601105]SSRN-A”>http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=601105) shows the “combined preference ranking”
 in other words, colleges ranked by how students choose to attend them. does a decent job at it, too.</p>

<p>Harvard University
California Institute of Tech
Yale University
MIT
Stanford University
Princeton University
Brown University
Columbia University
Amherst College
Dartmouth
Wellesley College
University of Pennsylvania
University of Notre Dame
Swarthmore College
Cornell University
Georgetown University
Rice University
Williams College
Duke University
University of Virginia
Brigham Young University
Wesleyan University
Northwestern University
Pomona College
Georgia Institute of Technology
Middlebury College
U. of California: Berkeley
University of Chicago
Johns Hopkins University
U. of Southern California</p>

13

<p>^^ Is that based on matriculation rate? Because I think BYU is 2nd after Harvard if it is.</p>

14

<p>sure, it’s based on matriculation to the extent that a “preference” is defined in the study as one applicant choosing to attend one college over a subset of others; the methodology requires a certain number of cross-admits with other colleges in order for the destination college to be viable which may explain BYU’s “low” standing.</p>

15

<p>LACs would NOT have higher peer assessment scores. Its absolutely the opposite. Peer assessment for Universities tends to be research driven. In an article published a few years ago, the editor of USNEWS said that if Dartmouth were in the LAC category (it was teetering on this) it would be number one every year.</p>

16

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<p>BYU is indeed just below Harvard in yield rate, but for very specific reasons. Their student body is 98-99% Mormon, and many of those students had no inclination to go elsewhere (and perhaps didn’t even apply elsewhere). And tuition for Mormons at BYU is only $4,290 a year. That’s a pretty unusual draw.</p>

<p>But if I’m not mistaken, I believe the yield rate at the Naval Academy even tops Harvard’s. Of course, tuition at Annapolis is less than free - they actually pay YOU to go there. ;)</p>

17

<p>^^But LAC admins assess LACs, right? And university admins for national universities? You’re assuming that if the rankings merged, the university PA criteria would “win.”</p>

<p>For the record, I don’t think they should ever be merged. The two types are entirely different in what comes closest to the “ideal.”</p>

18

<p>

</p>

<p>1) while i do think that larger universities would still be advantaged in a combined peer assessment rating, even if only as a result of name recognition, i agree that adding 260 lac administrators to the university pas ranking pool would shake things up a bit.</p>

<p>2) my experiences at both major research universities (maryland and penn state) and a liberal arts college (bucknell) suggest that in terms of undergraduate education the two ‘types’ really arent as fundamentally different as many would like to believe. thats not to say that i think the undergraduate educations offered by those research institutions compare well with my own. and its not to say that i would be comfortable pitting berkeley against williams as institutions; that is apples and oranges. but rating those institutions together on their ability to provide an undergraduate education? why not? other than the different pas pools, usnews already utilizes IDENTICAL methodologies to rank each group.</p>

<p>keep the research universities honest on some of their numbers (like s/f ratios and financial resources) and i suspect many lacs would benefit. on the whole theyd compete quite well on faculty resources other than salary (13%), selectivity (15%), graduation/retention (20%), graduation performance (5%), financial resources (10%) and alumni giving (5%). thats 68% of the ranking. everything but peer assessment and faculty salaries.</p>

19

<p>^I agree that universities would “win” on prestige, but adding LAC administrators might well change the earlier referenced focus on research output.</p>

<p>And peer assessment, for better or worse, is HUGE part of the USNWR rankings among single criteria. It may even be the most heavily weighted single criteria.</p>

20

<p>The fundamental tradeoff is class sizes vs. the what you can learn there, eg # of courses to choose from. US News tracks the former, but not the latter. The latter can be very important, but goes completely unevaluated. The other thing is, who are you learning from, who is doing the teaching. To the extent they involve faculty quality, PA scores might not be the same if a single standard was applied in a consolidated list.</p>