Do higher admissions standards and better statistics indicate a better college?

College Search & Selection
1 
 The top 5 colleges for me right now are UNCC, NCSU, UNC, UNCW, and App State. UNC is considered to be the top NC public business school by just about everyone, and NCSU is considered to be #2 by sources.
 However, the choice between UNCC, UNCW, and App State isn't so easy for me. UNCC has a very low graduation rate, and lower admissions standards, whilst UNCW and App State have much better graduation rates and higher standards. But it seems that the vast majority of people, and rankers (US News, Startclass, etc.) say that UNCC is better.

 So, do higher admissions standards and better statistics indicate a better college, or do rankings and prestige matter more?

Thanks.

2

Rankings and prestige are correlated highly with admissions standards and better statistics. So, they are all good indicators of better quality. Graduation rates, in particular, are very important.

Here are the state schools in NC in order of quality.
Grad rate, SAT midpoint, name of school

90 1320 University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
76 1245 North Carolina State University at Raleigh
64 1195 University of North Carolina at Asheville
71 1190 University of North Carolina Wilmington
70 1150 Appalachian State University
55 1085 University of North Carolina at Charlotte
59 1040 East Carolina University
58 1040 Western Carolina University
56 1030 University of North Carolina at Greensboro
34 930 University of North Carolina at Pembroke
48 910 North Carolina A & T State University
47 885 North Carolina Central University
35 885 Fayetteville State University
46 865 Winston-Salem State University
39 865 Elizabeth City State University

3

No, not necessarily.

Rankings are correlated highly with admissions standards and entrance statistics simply because the rankings methodology is determined in large part by admissions standards and entrance statistics, or by factors that are heavily correlated with them. That’s because the people who make rankings believe (or at least, they know their customers believe) that these inputs are important factors that determine a university’s prestige or quality or worth.

These statistics can be partially indicative a program’s quality - at the very least, you know what kinds of classmates you’ll be surrounded by and what the intellectual environment might be like at the school writ large. But there are a variety of reasons why admissions standards, the admissions rate and better statistics may not perfectly overlap.

One great example is Lawrence University, a small liberal arts college in Wisconsin. Lawrence has a 70-80% acceptance rate, which on face makes it sound like an almost-open access college. But the middle 50% of Lawrence’s accepted students score between the mid 600s and mid 700s on the SAT sections and were largely in the top 10% of their high school graduating class, with an average GPA of around 3.6-3.7. By all accounts, students at Lawrence get a high quality education as well.

With all that said, I wouldn’t put too much stock into rankings (they’re done oddly in some places) and rather investigate the quality of the education beyond that. I think you are going on the basis of UNCC being ranked in the ‘national universities’ list while UNCW and App State are ranked in the ‘regional universities’ list. But that’s not a measure of quality; U.S. News seems to have labeled universities national simply on the basis of doctoral programs:

*Like National Universities, Regional Universities offer a full range of undergraduate programs and provide graduate education at the master’s level. However, they differ by offering few, if any, doctoral programs. Of the 653 Regional Universities, 257 are public, 385 are private and 11 are for-profit.

The 334 Regional Colleges, including 118 public institutions, 198 private schools and 18 for-profits, focus on undergraduate education but grant less than 50 percent of their degrees in liberal arts disciplines. The Regional Colleges category includes some institutions where only a small number of the degrees awarded are at the bachelor’s level.*

So UNCC is in national universities because it has more doctoral programs than UNCW or App State, but that doesn’t mean it’s better. I would argue that UNCW and App State are both better universities for undergrad experience than UNCC.

4

There is a correlation between selectivity and prestige / rigor. Higher admissions students mean better students and that classes can go faster and cover more material in the same amount of time. On the other hand, the more rigorous schools are not better for everyone, as people take a different amount of time to acclimatize to college level work and are able to handle different amounts of work.

Selectivity and rigor do not correlate perfectly though. Some less selective schools (e.g., Purdue, UW Seattle) take in a lot of students and many fail out or are not able to get into their major of choice. And there are some more selective colleges that are nurturing and don’t try to force everyone to handle the highest level of rigor.

I don’t know much about prestige. Prestige is a collective opinion, which is shaped by many people’s college application experience (and their perceptions at that time), their familiarity with graduates, and their perception of who are experts in their field (and the schools where they graduated from or teach). Prestige is generally a trailing indicator of quality, though neither typically change very rapidly. Some schools also carry more social cachet than others, because wealthy people attended them historically.

I’m not sure about the NC colleges though. UNC is the most prestigious, and NC State is the best engineering school (well, other than Duke ;-).

5

I think UNCC has much more of a commuter population whereas App State and UNCW are more residential so that might influence a prospective student.

6

Wouldn’t the higher ranking attract better students, and the school ends up being a better school, whether or not the ranking was flawed to start with?

7

Actually, for US News I was basing it off of this.
http://colleges.usnews.rankingsandreviews.com/best-colleges/nc?school-type=business&_mode=list
This is just for business schools, so they’re all in the same pool.

8

Super skeptical of those rankings. Here’s the methodology:

In spring 2016, U.S. News surveyed deans and senior faculty members at each undergraduate business program accredited by the Association to Advance Collegiate Schools of Business. These deans and faculty members – two at each AACSB-accredited business program – were asked to rate the quality of all programs with which they were familiar on a scale from 1 (marginal) to 5 (distinguished). In 2016, 38 percent of those surveyed responded.

There are a lot of reasons why this makes me raise an eyebrow, but the short version is that 1) a simple single-score numerical rating is a TERRIBLE way to rate anything as complex as a business program; we have no idea how these deans and senior faculty members evaluated the schools against each other or even if they used the same evaluation method for each school, and 2) with a 38% response rate, I have to wonder whether there are systematic differences in the people who responded that might make UNCC (a commuter school with a lower graduation rate) come out on top of App State and UNCW.

Nevertheless, I think this is a perfect example of why students shouldn’t attend a college or university at the undergrad level simply because of the ranking of one particular department or program. Aside from the simple fact that many undergrads change their minds, sometimes a program might be perceived as ‘better’ but the overall educational quality might be worse than some other places you could go. Or there might be other qualities of the experience that don’t match expectations - maybe UNCC’s business program is marginally better, but it’s a commuter school. If you want the residential university experience, App State or UNCW might be better choices for you.

9

EXACTLY what @SculptorDad said.

10

Potentially, over time, although there’s no telling how long that will take to happen. But better/more competitive students are not the only thing that makes a school better - there’s also faculty quality, resources (financial and otherwise), administration and leadership, etc.

Besides, the assumption here is that inputs are important - that “better” schools are the ones that take already excellent students and just polish them. One might argue that really good students would’ve been successful wherever they go (and there’s some support for that). For a certain student, it might be more important that they go somewhere that is used to supporting students with certain kinds of challenges.