Discussion about results of Poll Thread on Use of Rankings

Parents Forum
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<p>MODERATOR NOTE:
This thread is a discussion about another thread which was a poll regarding the use of rankings by students and parents in their college selection. That thread can be found at:</p>

<p><a href="http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/showthread.php?t=344878%5B/url%5D"&gt;http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/showthread.php?t=344878&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p>

<p>The poll was started by dstark and it asked the following questions:</p>

<p>Did your kid ever look at USNWR?
Did your kid choose the highest ranked school according to USNWR?
Do you know the PA (peer assessment) of your kid's school?
What part of the country do you live?
Did one of the parents ever look at USNWR?</p>

<p>There is a lot of talk about USNWR on this bb. I was curious about a couple of things and so I started this poll. I don't really have some ulterior motives. Definitely not any secret ones anyway. :) This poll is really just for fun.</p>

<p>Now many of us can see, without the yelling and screaming :) how many kids are going to the highest ranked schools and who reads USNWR and how many people actually know a school's PA score. </p>

<p>JHS, I was going to talk about randomness, but you beat me to the punch, so now maybe I won't. :)</p>

<p>PA, there are a lot of complaints about it so I just wanted to see if people were aware of it.</p>

<p>I should have asked if USNWR influenced the decision making process, but I didn't. </p>

<p>Yep. 20 beating 21 is not really significant.</p>

<p>What happens if you choose the highest ranked lac you got into and turned down a university with a higher rank?</p>

<p>These are all flaws. They were flaws when I did this 3 years ago too. You would think I would learn by now. :)</p>

<p>Many people participated. You can still participate. I will still tally the votes. The group this year was way more cooperative, less argumentative, and made it much easier to tally the votes. I think that's good. :)</p>

<p>Anyway, this is the thread to make any comments you want. Do you think the responses match the responses at your kid's school or your community? Do any of the responses surprise you? Do you want to clarify your response or explain your response, or comment on what a nice day it was outside today?</p>

<p>I am thinking of one more poll. Nothing to do with USNWR. More about how the cost of college affected the college choices. I did this last time too. It would go something like this.</p>

<p>Is your kid going to go to...
A public in-state
A public out-of-state
A private</p>

<p>Did the cost of the school play any part in the decision?</p>

<p>Brief comments _________________________________</p>

<p>That's kind of what I have in mind for the second poll. I'm open to suggestions. I'm open to criticism. I'm open to not doing the second poll.</p>

2

<p>Did your kid ever look at USNWR? 24Yes 34No
Did your kid choose the highest ranked school according to USNWR? 13Y 41N
Do you know the PA (peer assessment) of your kid's school? 10Y 47N
What part of the country do you live?</p>

<p>Did one of the parents ever look at USNWR? 38Y 7N 1 Maybe</p>

3

<p>My kids have never seen USNWR rankings. They therefore didn't take them into account in selecting schools to apply to or to attend. We surely are unaware of peer assessment of their schools. I am not even sure where their schools rank. You asked if they picked the highest ranked school they got into and I am not truly sure, without looking up the ranks! However, IF by chance they are attending the highest ranked school on their list, the school was not chosen BECAUSE IT WAS the highest ranked one they got into. In other words, yes, you might have asked if the rankings INFLUENCED their decision as to where to matriculate. For instance, one of my kids, narrowed down her acceptances in April for revisits. She was seriously considering Tufts or Smith and knocked off Penn which she had gotten admitted to. I am sure Penn is ranked above Tufts and Smith but she could care less. She did end up at Brown but not due to its rank. She just liked it the most and it was the best fit for her. At this point, I don't even know if Brown or Penn are ranked higher, nor do I care and she surely doesn't. So, rankings didn't affect her decision making. That said, she wanted to go to a "good" college that was challenging, etc. How they rank on USNWR didn't matter. Once she got into "good colleges" (vague definition I realize!), it was a matter of picking ones that fit best and were favored. Rankings did not play a part in that decision making. But if you go by "did your student attend the top ranked school on his/her list?", that would not be an indication as to whether rank played a factor in choosing where to attend. They may very well attend the best ranked school on their list but it wasn't chosen because it was the best ranked school, nor would they know that it was. To this day, my kids have never seen USNWR, nor could they tell you where their colleges ranked.</p>

4

<p>My son is vaguely aware of the rankings, but I doubt he's ever looked at them. Even if he had, he would never have considered them, because his college search was about finding "his people", not about picking the most prestigeous or highly ranked school. I am satisfied (as is he) that he picked the "right fit" school for him, where clearly he will be among "his people", so that's the end of the story. I think most of the schools he applied to, including several that he was accepted to, are ranked higher on the list, but that was not ever a factor in his decision.</p>

5

<p>Sorry. I put comments into the poll because I didn't see this thread.</p>

<p>What's interesting is that there seems to be a kind of adverse selection. Out of 26 kids (so far) who say (or whose parents say) that they looked at the rankings, only five, I think, will admit to choosing the highest ranked school (and in at least one case, I think the poster is wrong, i.e., he didn't in fact choose the highest ranked school).</p>

6

<p>JHS, it is curious. I agree that randomness alone should have more kids going to the higher ranked schools.</p>

<p>I guess I should have asked people how many schools they were accepted to, to know for sure.</p>

7

<p>Just for sake of accuracy -- there is a problem with the "highest ranked" question if there is a choice between a "national university" and a "LAC". What is higher ranked, Swarthmore (#3 LAC) or Stanford (#4 University)? </p>

<p>Also, finances are always a big part of the mix -- so I am not sure that a "random" ordering would put the highest ranking college on top -- if we assume that in general, public universities are more affordable than top ranked privates, and lower-ranked privates are more likely to offer merit aid.</p>

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<p>Calmom, you didn't read post number 1 in this thread did you? ;)</p>

<p>That's ok.</p>

9

<p>Actually, I have seen a number of kids choosing slightly lower ranked schools based on fit or finances (or both): Brown over Stanford and Columbia, Penn over MIT, in one case Temple over Penn and Columbia. But nothing like the proportions here. If I took my son's 20 closest friends whose college choice I know, 15 probably chose the highest-ranked USNWR school that accepted them, whether or not they cared about the rankings at all. That is probably a little distorted by the popularity of Penn in Philadelphia, though, and a tendency there to give very good financial aid to city residents with need.</p>

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<p>don't look at USNWR much, sorry anyone that lauds Jerry Fallwells college lost any credibility it had</p>

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<p><a href="http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/features/2001/0109.graham.thompson.html%5B/url%5D"&gt;http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/features/2001/0109.graham.thompson.html&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p>

<p>U.S. News also suggests that it assesses learning through a survey that the magazine sends to university presidents, provosts, and admissions deans requesting them to rank peer schools' academic programs on a scale of one to five. This survey makes up 25 percent of a school's score and, according to U.S. News, "this is how highly knowledgeable college officials rate the educational quality of the schools they feel qualified to rate." That sounds reasonable. But a closer look suggests, not surprisingly, that the college administrators surveyed share the same bias in favor of research that pervades academia. Analysing U.S. News' data, we found that a high reputation score in the college guide correlates much more closely with high per-faculty federal research and development expenditures than with high faculty-student ratios or good graduation-rate performance, the magazine's best measures of undergraduate learning.</p>

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<p>In other words, them that has, gets.</p>

<p>When you are looking at the top-whatever elite universities, things like graduation rate are silly metrics. Faculty-student ratio is perhaps a less silly metric, but I'm not certain how they take graduate students into account. But somewhere you have to take into account the fact that not all faculty are created equal, and that it ought to matter that some schools have more paradigm-shattering Nobelists and demi-gods than others.</p>

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<p>There's a very recent meta-study on similar questions. Here are a couple of quotes that give the results in a nutshell:</p>

<p>
[quote]
Only 11 percent of the 221,897 undergraduate students who responded to their survey saw commercial rankings as a very important factor in their choice of school; 60 percent found them not at all important (Lipman Hearne 2006). Students who found rankings to be a very important factor in their choice of school were more likely to be high-achieving, from high-income families, and from families with college-educated parents. They also were more likely to be Asian-American (or non-U.S. citizens), and to have intentions of getting doctoral, medical, or law degrees. Low-income and first-generation (i.e., children of parents with no higher education experience) college students were least likely to view the rankings as important. These findings are not surprising given that students of low socioeconomic status tend to enroll in community colleges and other non-selective institutions, which are generally not ranked in U.S. News or other systems. </p>

<p>In terms of the effect that changes in a school’s rank has on overall application and enrolment decisions, Monks and Ehrenberg (1999) found that a less favorable U.S. News rank resulted in a declining applicant pool (at least for the selective, private, four-year institutions that they examined). In addition, a smaller percentage of admitted applicants matriculated, and the resulting entering class was of lower quality as measured by its average test scores (Meredith 2004).

[/quote]
</p>

<p>Bottom lines, it seems to me: the rankings have a perceivable effect--one of a magnitude that colleges would find hard to ignore. The effect is greatest on the college choices of the most "desirable" admits and at the most selective colleges.</p>

<p><a href="http://www.ihep.org/organizations.php3?action=printContentItem&orgid=104&typeID=906&itemID=20485%5B/url%5D"&gt;http://www.ihep.org/organizations.php3?action=printContentItem&orgid=104&typeID=906&itemID=20485&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p>

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<p>I also think a lot has to do with the community in which you live. I have never heard anyone discuss college rankings in our high school or community. In fact, this may sound naive, but until I began reading CC five years ago, I wasn't aware of college rankings, let alone how much they are discussed and weighed by some others. I was aware that US News had an issue that discussed colleges. In fact, as an aside, I think there is some interesting information in the issue. I just was not up on rankings. Even now, after going through two of my own children's college admissions process, being trained as and working for several years as a college counselor with many students, I could not tell you my kids' schools' numerical ranks. I have seen the list. I just don't USE it as far as "ranking." It isn't something I weigh. It is useful to get data in one place such as SAT score range of admitted students, acceptance rate, and stuff like that. </p>

<p>My kids were aware of which schools are more selective and harder to get into than other schools but not any breakdown by rankings. But I have since learned this is a big topic in some other regional communities (and including on CC).</p>

15

<p>Am I the only one confused here? What are we talking about?</p>

16

<p>Weenie...
DStark started a poll as another thread but kept it to just a poll without comments. Then he created this thread to comment on the results of the poll on the other poll thread. Here is a link to his poll thread:</p>

<p><a href="http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/showthread.php?t=344878%5B/url%5D"&gt;http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/showthread.php?t=344878&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p>

<p>His poll asked:</p>

<p>Did your kid ever look at USNWR?
Did your kid choose the highest ranked school according to USNWR?
Do you know the PA (peer assessment) of your kid's school?
What part of the country do you live?
Did one of the parents ever look at USNWR?</p>

17

<p>If Harvard weren't ranked number one or two or three (or whatever it is this year) I doubt my son would have applied. And its ranking (well above Carnegie Mellon's overall) certainly made the choice of where to attend more difficult. You could argue that since CMU's grad computer rank way outranks Harvard's he did choose by rank, but only because in this case USNWR happens to proved a ranking for the grad program. But you know even before USNWR there were similar rankings even if they weren't actually numbered. </p>

<p>The results don't particularly surprise me, given that they are coming from the parent's side of CC. As for how kids at my son's school chose, I don't really know enough about the decision making process of my kids friends to be too helpful. I know three who applied ED and got in (Brown, Columbia and Wesleyan). I know the girl who applied to MIT got rejected there, and eventually was choosing between Caltech and Olin. She chose Caltech. Another friend got in to Williams (and some other LACs like it), Dartmouth and Princeton. I know his Mom liked the smaller schools. He chose Princeton, but whether it was the ranking or that he didn't like smaller schools as much as his Mom I don't know! Another good friend is going to Vassar, but I don't know what his choices were.</p>

18

<p>Mathmom,
You nailed the difficulty of decision making process. When S at CMU, met 2 others deciding between CMU's CS or Caltech. The tension was high on accepted students' weekend, and I doubt it was the best way to make a choice.</p>

<p>Most kids chose MIT over Caltech. I think the name brand influences them more than the educational & living conditions.</p>

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<p>There's an important difference between USNWR and "name brand". While the tippy-top of USNWR's list merely seems to confirm what "everybody" knows, you don't have to go very far down the list before it starts being very subversive of traditional brands -- somewhat good subversive, and somewhat bad subversive, too.</p>

20

<p>
[quote]
Most kids chose MIT over Caltech. I think the name brand influences them more than the educational & living conditions.

[/quote]

Is that really true?
For a long time, S had MIT as his top choice; Caltech was not even on his list, although he knew of its stellar quality. So why wasn't it on the list?
Too small.
Too techie (even more so than MIT)
Too isolated
Too far
Too CA (this kid likes snow).</p>

<p>None of his reasons had to do with name brand.</p>