<p>Too much emphasis on prestige and too much emphasis on selectivity and quality of student body (as if 75 points on the SAT will make much difference) on CC. More people should be concerned with the actual quality of programs. People need to stop citing placement rates for professional schools, especially based on flawed studies, when they don’t understand what professional school admissions entails.</p>
<p>Hawkette, although Peer Assessment ratings are not a direct measure of quality, Peer Assessment is ASSOCIATED with actual quality factors like student selectivity, faculty productivity, and so on. Peer Assessment is like “prestige” because it is a more or less gut feeling about a school. </p>
<p>Things like prestige, reputation, Peer Assessment are useful and meaningful characteristics of a school that should be considered by prospective students among other important factors like cost, location, “lifestyle”, campus atmosphere.</p>
<p>I don’t think any student should automatically select a school based on PA score or prestige. The point I am trying to make is that prestige and PA score should not be dismissed as meaningless and irrelevant as some posters seem to imply. Some posters seem to make prestige sound like a negative thing. What I am trying to say is that prestige and PA ratings mean something and they are worth considering. </p>
<p>But, I agree that it is important to do your research, look below the surface, take factors other than prestige into account, and determine what a school’s prestige is based on.</p>
<p>Sorry, collegehelp, but I cannot agree about any of your comments on PA and frankly blame measures like it for promoting the unhealthy overweighting of prestige factors. </p>
<p>What you have written is what YOU think PA means-others can and do have different interpretations of what it means. If clear guidelines were provided for what this measure means and greater transparency were provided on who was saying what, then perhaps I could accept its results as helpful, but as it is currently constructed, I think that PA is a sinister number and does more harm to USNWR’s ranking system than any other aspect of their ranking. </p>
<p>Where you and I possibly can agree is that when wide differences in quality are seen (and this is reflected in quantifiable data), then there is a quality difference and then the student should take this into consideration. For example I would not equate the quality at Cornell with the University of Arizona and there are many objective data points to substantiate that view. But I would equate Cornell’s quality with Tufts where again there are many objective data points to support that view. And yet both U Arizona and Tufts have PA scores of 3.6 while Cornell has a PA score of 4.6. </p>
<p>I don’t intend this to be a Cornell thread, but I am using that college as an example due to your close affiliation with the school.</p>
<p>Norcalguy,
As one who frequently cites standardized test data, I actually agree with your comment about the overemphasis on this number. It is a single data point in the consideration by college admissions counselors of a student’s application. However, it is the cleanest single number that we have to evaluate and compare students. Furthermore, I think it is clear that there is a high correlation between Rigor/GPA and Test Scores and thus Test Scores becomes the best available proxy for measuring student strength. I should also add that, according to the National Association of College Admission Counselors, the standardized test score is considered nearly as important as rigor and GPA.</p>
<p>As for the importance of selectivity, I would argue that this factor needs even greater emphasis by aspiring college students. More than the professors at a college, one’s peers at a college will most determine the nature of one’s undergraduate experience. Having talented peers is a great advantage, both in the classroom and beyond. Moreover, these relationships have lifelong impact and provide a network that can be tapped time and again, both personally and professionally.</p>
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<p>Selectivity and prestige are highly correlated–so how you could argue for one but not the other doesn’t make sense.</p>
<p>IMO, selectivity and prestige are connected, but far from universally. </p>
<p>Consider the LAC universe of colleges. Certainly these are selective places, but often are not that high on the prestige meter, particularly as compared to better known national universities. Schools like Harvey Mudd, Haverford, Claremont McKenna, W&L and others undoubtedly carry less prestige than their selectivity would indicate. </p>
<p>Or consider the universe of national universities themselves. Certainly a college like Tufts (SAT avg of 1410 with 83% Top 10 students) is as selective as a college like Cornell (SAT avg of 1385 and 84% Top 10%). But I doubt many would consider it as prestigious generally. And certainly not among academics who assign Tufts a 3.6 PA score vs Cornell with its 4.6. In a case where a student prefers the campus culture of Tufts, it sometimes happens that the prestige factor pushes Cornell in the conversation. Should it? I would argue no, not if the student prefers Tufts and it meets his/her requirements. Such situations are the perfect breeding ground for sub-optimal college selection.</p>
<p>Seems like an appropriate time for collegehelp to post the analysis of correlation of PA with quality factors. As I recall, there was a high correlation, implying that the people who voted in the PA survey were, on average, well informed about the colleges they rated.</p>
<p>I remember wondering, but not asking, whether the precision of the estimates went down as colleges became less well known, and the group of people who knew much about them became smaller.</p>
<p>I would like to suggest that, as an alternate method to checking up average GPA and SAT scores in order to gauge a school’s academic rigor, is to look up which AP scores a school takes as credit. You’ll find that the more rigorous schools only take 4’s and 5’s (sometimes only 5’s) and the most rigorous only allow a student to bypass an entry-level class without giving credit for it.</p>
<p>If anyone doesn’t fully understand this post, just say so.</p>
<p>^^ not always true. Schools like Berkeley are known for their rigor, yet it’s very generous with its AP policies (as a way of helping students to graduate on time). Stanford, for example, is very stingy with its AP policies (and doesn’t even give credit for most of them–even APs like English lit, USH, etc.), but it isn’t quite one of the most academically rigorous schools (minus the hard sciences).</p>
<p>The link to my thread “How to calculate a university’s Peer Assessment score” follows.</p>
<p>Basically, I showed that the Peer Assessment score was almost completely predictable by hard data. The subjective Peer Assessment scores can be replicated with quantitative data. R-squared = .94 where perfect=1.</p>
<p>The enigmatic formula is as follows:</p>
<p>estimated peer assessment = -1.19636
+(.03042* classes over 50)
+(.07052<em>NRC mean for physics english psych SQUARED)
-(.00122</em>financial rank)
+(.0000005199697<em>percent fulltime faculty cubed)
-(.00002286</em>classes over 50 cubed)
+(.00254<em>sat 75th percentile)
+(.0000007890567</em>actual graduation rate cubed)
-(.16392<em>NRC physics rating)
+(.000000553739</em>acceptance rate cubed)</p>
<p><a href=“http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/college-search-selection/412606-how-calculate-universitie-s-peer-assessment-score.html[/url]”>http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/college-search-selection/412606-how-calculate-universitie-s-peer-assessment-score.html</a></p>
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<p>I disagree. Selectivity has become a proxy for elitism. Often HS kids choose to go to, not the most prestigous, but rather the most selective school they can. Otherwise, they feel they’ve worked hard in HS for nothing. I think that is totally the wrong mentality and causes the HSer to ignore fit.</p>
<p>For example, WashU, through various methods, has become pretty selective. What is it actually good in? Some people will say “premed” although we know there’s no such thing as a premed program nor does WashU offer a premed major. There are some schools that have artificially inflated their selectivity through marketing methods without a corresponding improvement in the strength of their academic departments. HSers go gah gah over SAT scores and acceptance rates. Academics won’t go for it. They look at what the university actually has to offer to the student (not the other way around). That’s why schools like WashU will continually lag in the Peer Assessment department until they bring their academic departments up to par.</p>
<p>collegehelp,
I look forward to the explanations of actual PA voters who say that they used anything like your “formula” to determine a college’s prestige. That should be groundbreaking and highly informative. Oy, if only it were that easily explained. </p>
<p>Let’s cut to the real world. A student gets into Tufts and Cornell. He/she prefers the Tufts environment and believes that Tufts can meet his academic and non-academic requirements better, yet Cornell carries higher prestige, including a significantly higher PA score. How do you advise him or her?</p>
<p>hawkette, I would encourage the student to subjectively weigh the greater attraction to Tufts against the greater prestige of Cornell. There are always going to be trade-offs. I would also make sure the student wasn’t mis-informed about the academic and non-academic virtues of Tufts and Cornell.</p>
<p>Actual PA voters don’t actually use any formula. But the formula shows that their intuition has merit and validity in the “real world”. They don’t just pull their ratings out of a hat. They are not random. They are accurate. They capture a lot about a school.</p>
<p>collegehelp,
I guess we’ll just have to agree to disagree on PA. I agree that the scores are not random; I’d say that they’re almost permanently fixed. I would also say that they are not accurate and, for the for-profit world that most students will enter, they capture almost nothing about a school.</p>
<p>I agree with you wholeheartedly, hawkette. Many people are CC are extremely misguided.</p>
<p>I still hold that if you have all the necessary training and talents in your field, and you came from a prestigious college, you have the best chance of getting a selective high end job that suits you. This is independent of whether or not your college offers basket weaving. I think that “interesting” nature you spoke of is built into people, it’s not learned. I think a person who really prioritized his academics can still be a perfectly normal person.</p>
<p>in the end, it’s really your skills and personality that will keep you in jobs and help advance your career.</p>
<p>Precisely, and I’m not saying completely ignore all the other factors, I’m going to be looking for them as well next year. But I still do think its most important to go to a place where you will strengthen your skills most and get the best understanding of your field.</p>
<p>hawkette, you use data when it supports your bias but ignore data when it disproves your bias. The reason prestige doesn’t change is because the relative quality of universities stays the same.</p>
<p>norcalguy, I share your disdain for deceptive and manipulative marketing. It is unethical. Colleges should not be chosen based on glitz and hype. The quality of faculty and academic programs doesn’t always keep pace with what students deserve and expect.</p>
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<p>Hawkette, USNWR defines PA specifically - as a measure of a university’s “academic programs” rated from “distinguished” to “marginal”.</p>
<p>Cornell has more “distinguished” academic programs (engineering, hotel management, etc.) than Tufts - despite the similar level in student quality.</p>