<p>Hmmm...UPenn beats Princeton in this ranking...I like it already, lol</p>
<p>"The first question we asked was, what does America need from its universities? From this starting point, we came up with three central criteria: Universities should be engines of social mobility..."</p>
<p>quoted from the article. obviously some schools are for the rich and affluent only. picking up URM's is deceptive because they're probably just accepting the URMs that are of high socioeconomic status already. this ranking isn't supposed to rank which college is best for individual prestige or quality or whatever. it's supposed to rank which countries are doing the best for america, and that includes opporunities for its citizens, both affluent and not.</p>
<p>I hate to bash a ranking that honors UCLA so highly, but I think Washington Monthly's is biased toward publics. The reason I think this is because their criterion is "what colleges are doing for the country", and public universities like the UCs are supposed to serve the country by providing massive amounts of research and social mobility for the citizens of their respective states. There's just no way a private university, which aims for quality over quantity, can compete with public national universities at their own game.</p>
<p>^^^How is that different than USNew's bias toward privates?</p>
<p>Unlike US News' bias towards privates, the bias towards publics doesn't reinforce the anachronistic 20th-century stereotype of Ivy Leagues forever offering the best in every program. I'd rather follow Washington Monthly's more merit-based ranking than being cattle who speaks only of HYPS whenever someone asks me to recommend them a quality college/grad school. It's not perfect by any stretch, but it's refreshing... they've even caught onto the meteoric rise of UCSD as US News did:</p>
<p>Even so, we were caught off-guard by some of the top finishers, including University of California's San Diego campus. UCSD is not normally considered among the elite UC campusesUCLA and UC-Berkeley have that distinctionmuch less top-tier national schools. But it has quietly rounded up a formidable team of scholars. Nine Nobelists are on faculty at UCSD (Dartmouth, by comparison, has none), and the National Research Council recently ranked its Oceanography, Neurosciences, Physiology, and Bioengineering departments either first or second in the country. This concentration of talent translates into direct benefits for the surrounding community: Forty percent of the companies in San Diego's biotech corridor are spin-offs of research based at UCSD. These accomplishments landed UCSD in the sixth slot for research grants, and eighth on our overall rankings.</p>
<p>"He misunderstood the US News predicted grad rate method."</p>
<p>Could you enlighten us in which way Casper misunderstood the graduation rate performance? And, while you are it, could you tell us why it is a such a good measure, and maybe explain to us why Harvey Mudd has been assigned a graduation rate of 99%?</p>
<p>I've got some contaminated well water from the most prestigious, selective and highly ranked Silicon Valley semiconductor, technology and military sites for sale that is ranked way higher than HYPS, Stanford, Caltech, all of the UCs, USNWR and whatever this Washington Monthly's list is...combined! </p>
<p>CCers who insist on debating these ridiculous rankings get a -10% discount on your first gulp! (you probably won't survive long enough for a second swallow...)</p>
<p>Very interesting. I dislike seeing UCLA above Cal, but i like that SD is high :D.</p>
<p>I guess this ranks schools more as places of learning than as corporations.</p>
<p>UVAJoe - "Arbitrary, nothing is arbitrary able having MULTIPLE schools on the level of penn state ranked higher than...HARVARD, how could you possibly advocate any methodology that yields these results!? Please gentleman share why you feel that this method works, because if it does...Penn State(and other similar schools) must really be BETTER(ranked higher) than Harvard, Princeton, Yale...and UVA!!!"</p>
<p>No school is intrinsically "better" than any other; it depends on what you do with the experience it offers. It stands to reason that any place that can motivate so many ppl from the poverty level to succeed and excel in college, as Fisk University clearly does, is a place that offers something that even elite students could benefit from. A Fisk University spokesperson pointed to its low student/faculty ratio as one ingredient; its inculcation of racial pride is probably another. To me, the results argue in favor of more exchange programs with HBCUs, something which was fairly successful in the 70s and might bear revisiting; there's obviously a fine educational experience to be had at places like Fisk and Spelman (if you're a woman) and Hampton (if you're a guy) perhaps Penn State is doing something similar. If it is, it deserves to be examined.</p>
<p>xiggi-
Yes, the Stanford President did misunderstand the US News predicted versus actual graduation rate method for assessing "value-added". Absolutely. Value-added refers to the benefits a particular college imparts to its students over and above what the students bring with them to the college. SATs are a measure of what students bring with them and is a good predictor of grad rate. The difference between predicted (what you would expect given student ability) and actual tells whether a college does a good job with the students they have to work with.</p>
<p>He asks what graduation rates have to do with "value added". Are you kidding me? Graduation rates have everything to do with college quality (when you adjust for student quality i.e. SAT, high school rank, etc.). Graduation rate tells how well a college does with the students they enroll. Colleges should strive to be above average in grad rate among similar colleges.</p>
<p>He attributes the disparity between the Cal Tech actual grad rate and its predicted grad rate to the demanding nature of a Cal Tech education. I guess Cal Tech is just too tough for the smartest people on earth. That's BS. Cal Tech did a crappy job with the great students who went to Cal Tech. They didn't care about their students. They didn't deserve to have such great students. In the 2003 US News, the Cal Tech freshmen had SAT scores (1460-1580) way higher than Harvard (1380-1570). Cal Tech had a grad rate of 81% and Harvard had a grad rate of 97%. What's more, MIT (1410-1560) had a grad rate of 92%. Is MIT a cakewalk? Gimme a break.</p>
<p>Cal Tech was doing a bad job with the students they had and US News helped point that out. Cal Tech has since raised their grad rate from 81% to 88%. I wish I knew what they are doing differently.</p>
<p>The Stanford President wondered what "educational expenditures" combined with test scores have to do with value added. To me, it makes sense that the money colleges spend on students would have something to do with quality. The statistical technique used by US News to calculate their predicted graduation rate is "multiple regression". By itself, multiple regression does not imply causality. It tries out many different formulas and then chooses the one that works "best". The reasons why the formula works best may not be obvious, but if it works, you use it. </p>
<p>In the case of educational expenditures, I think that factor is weighted negatively, meaning that the predicted grad rate goes down slightly if educational expenditures are high. This goes against common sense, but I think it works because the highest educational expenditures are in engineering, technology, and science programs. These programs are also the hardest programs with the lowest grad rates. So, colleges with a high proportion of engineering/tech/science students have higher expenses and lower grad rates. That is probably the logic.</p>
<p>The fact that most colleges are within 5% of their predicted grad rate supports the accuracy of the US News formula.</p>
<p>Why does Harvey Mudd have a predicted grad rate of 99% ? Mostly because Mudd enrolls the smartest students of any LAC. Their students are smarter than Amherst and Amherst has a predicted grad rate of 97%. I must say, though, that that the LAC formula probably does not fit Harvey Mudd very well because of its technical nature. US News should have applied the formula for universities to Harvey Mudd, not the LAC formula, which is specifically for LACs. US News also has a different formula for publics and privates.</p>
<p>There is something really wierd about the 2006 UC Irvine grad rate numbers. Exceeding the prediction by 22% ??? I don't think so.</p>
<p>Did anybody actually read this long post?</p>
<p>With all due respect, let me point out that a model that propels your most selective school to the absolute dead last position in graduation rate performance is ... plain ridiculous. Cssper was absolutely correct in his analysis that the USNews rankings penalize schools that show the greatest integrity in their grading policies and maintain the highest admissions standards. </p>
<p>As it stands today, among the most selective LAC, there is an INCENTIVE to lower the selectivity and earn bonus points on the asinine graduation rate performance. Analyze the impact of this criterion for Harvey Mudd, Swarthmore, Pomona, and Wellesley: Except for maintaining the status quo or helping a most favorite school, is there really a reason to penalize Swarthmore and Pomona while giving cheap and UNDESERVED bonus points to Wellesley? </p>
<p>So, how do you reconcile a criterion that is supposed to indicate a level of excellence with the fact that it really rewards the relative mediocrity of certain schools versus their peers. In this case, Wellesley, despite have a slightly improved record than in the past years, is still trailing badly in admission rates, SAT scores, and percentage of top 10 students. Compare their record with Pomona on this elements, and you would have to agree with the fact that USN rewards schools that are LESS selective. </p>
<p>In fact, the graduation rate performance does eliminate almost entirely the differences in selectivity. This year, this little stratagem is responsible for the changes between Pomona and Wellesley. </p>
<p>USN had gone from being simply misleading and jocular to blatantly dishonest.</p>