The discussion about doors slamming shut if you don’t go to an elite school got me thinking. What is the cutoff between elite and non-elite? How do the “just below” elites fit in? And once you get below the top 20, how much of a ranking difference is actually significant? I know this is sort of silly and subjective, but interested in what people think.
Is a school ranked 25 to 30 significantly different from one ranked in the lower 30s or 40th in the quality of student, quality of education and opportunities beyond college? Is it worth being full pay for a USC or Tufts vs scholarship at Lehigh or BU? Or full pay at NYU, BU or Lehigh versus significant savings at a Fordham or Syracuse? What moving farther down the rankings to American or Clark? Assuming that the full pay is possible without major debt, but painful and the savings could go to retirement or even help with grad school.
What is gained in those situations from the “better” school? Again, totally subjective but interesting to hear your thoughts.
Study mechanical engineering at Missouri Rolla? top program, great mentoring opportunities, I have no clue (nor do I care) what the U’s ranking is by some magazine.
There are programs at Syracuse in Mass Communications, Mizzou in Journalism, Art History at Williams, which are so strong in their relative worlds that nobody cares what the U’s ranking is or who cares what is elite or not.
Bard has a fantastic program in the visual arts/design history. Michigan or Berkeley for Classics? Rice for math? Middlebury for foreign languages? Sarah Lawrence for writing. Most of the Jesuit schools in Philosophy-- and often history. UT Austin for Accounting. Fordham in the performing arts/media studies.
So what does better mean… and for a kid who doesn’t know what he/she wants to study, you need to dig deep into the alleged “rankings” to see what the buzz is all about.
Iowa has one of (if not the top) graduate programs in writing in the country. Does that help your kid who wants to study early childhood education as an undergrad???
I think the door slamming discussion is more about relatively specific post-degree outcomes than on the quality or value of the education a specific student can get at a particular institution.
From a door slamming perspective, it will depend on the outcome (i.e.,specific door/doorway) you are interested in. As blossom mentions, there will be colleges that are not thought of as overall being “elite” (and yes, elite is in the eye of the beholder) but specific schools/programs at the institution might be considered elite by a specific community focused on that specialty. All else equal, you need to consider the end goal to some degree in order to make the trade-off judgement asked by OP.
My son might have gone to American (with merit money) if he’d been 100% sure he would stay in IR. The internship opportunities you can have during the school year are a big plus. I think he got pushed more intellectually at Tufts, he learned much, much more Arabic than American covers in four years, and he had some other opportunities that aren’t available at American. But he does wonder if he’d have had an easier time getting a job with more IR internships.
Older son chose Carnegie Mellon #24 at the time over Harvard (#1 or 2 at the time). No regrets ever. Harvard would have been cheaper.
Those choices were hardly akin to choose between a Bentley and a Yugo! Further, I am not sure if attending a (clearly) better program at Tufts in IR has a negative impact on landing a positive internship in Washington, as the level and value of internships in our national capital is wide ranging. Some believe the notion that the best “jobs” go to local students. Others … know better!
In the end, the differences are always on the individual level in terms of accomplishments and aptitude. And the fact to have been admitted to a more prestigious program is still an accomplishment that … does make a difference.
Yep, concur with @blossom that it depends and really depends on the individual, goals, and environment (as well as family circumstances).
You really need to do your research. There’s no one-size-fits all answer.
I would say to disregard the USN rankings, however.
For example, how do you even compare USC and BU? Yes, they are both big urban privates, but USC has a strong alumni network that is concentrated in CA. BU seems better respected in Europe and parts of the East Coast. They each have their own special programs.
It’s like asking “would you rather visit a zoo with a lot of pandas or a zoo with a lot of giraffes?”
For most of the schools you listed, unless there are really specific goals (i.e., want to break in to the film industry, so full-pay at USC vs. full-tuition at Clark), it would be really difficult to justify turning down a full-tuition scholarship for full-pay elsewhere (but again, that depends on family circumstances and individual characteristics).
None of the schools you listed (outside of specific industries/departments/areas) are massively better than the others).
There are situations where academic rank matters and where it can compete (perhaps painfully) with other factors.
Consider a kid who’s a really top-level chess player. Such a kid might want to attend a college that has one of the nation’s top chess teams, and might be recruited by those colleges. And competing for the national college chess championship, with a realistic chance of winning, might be a highlight of this kid’s life.
But what if the kid is also a top student? The colleges that have cultivated the best chess teams in the country are not academic powerhouses. (See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/President%27s_Cup_%28chess%29 ). No academically elite school has placed in the top three in the national chess championship in the past decade.
So what’s your top student who’s also a top chess player going to do? It’s a very difficult decision. If the top chess teams in the country were at schools that are academically only a little below the very top, the decision wouldn’t be so difficult. But should a kid who could get into a top-20 school go to UTD or UMBC instead just to play chess?
Why would anyone disregard the USN rankings … as opposed to consider the rankings ONE of the elements that help form an educated opinion. The success of the magazine (perhaps all that is left of its former self) speaks for itself as the annual releases continue to make waves in tertiary education. Schools spend small fortunes --and even do not hesitate to allocate resources to manipulating their positions-- to be well represented.
One might --and probably is mostly correct-- to dispute the accuracy and integrity of the rankings, but it is a fools’ errand to pretend it does not exist or ignore it altogether. Parts of the rankings are highly suspect, and especially the most weighted element. Would the alternative of having no rankings or having the 1983 version of the USNews better? When considering what the reputation “indexes” deliver, one would have to scream … Seriously?
It is what it is … and it happens to represent and DIRECT the perception of about everyone involved in education who has an interest in the freshmen classes. With the notable exception of the NCAA rankings that satisfy the hillbillies and Nascar fans, it represents the go-to Bible!
My son would say the IR reputation of Tufts undergrad rides too much on the coattails of the Fletcher school. Tufts has a schedule and arrangement that means that many kids can easily have internships every single semester. That’s a lot of exploring and experience you can get in four years. Now I’m not a big fan of pre-professional education as opposed to a more intellectual aimed one. Nevertheless I think American offers something Tufts really doesn’t.
I also think that AU offers something that Tufts doesn’t, namely its Global Scholar program that makes a 3 year BA program possible. The 3 years programs are an underdeveloped resource among US schools. For the rest? The school is overrated and, speaking of riding coattails, you’d have to look at the location as a dominant factor.
I would say it depends on your major. If you want to major in STEM or business, you’re better off going to a state school. The majority of people who work in IT/Engineering/Public Accounting went to state schools. Many top schools incl. HYPSM do not even offer business/finance/accounting as an undergrad major.
OTOH, if you want to major in liberal arts then go on to grad/law school, it probably does matter a bit more where you did your undergrad. In this case it might pay to go to a top 20 school.
I plan for my children to attend our state flagship, unless they get a huge grant to go to a top 20 that would make the private school cheaper than the state school.
As far as the OP’s question:
“Is a school ranked 25 to 30 significantly different from one ranked in the lower 30s or 40th in the quality of student, quality of education and opportunities beyond college? Is it worth being full pay for a USC or Tufts vs scholarship at Lehigh or BU? Or full pay at NYU, BU or Lehigh versus significant savings at a Fordham or Syracuse? What moving farther down the rankings to American or Clark? Assuming that the full pay is possible without major debt, but painful and the savings could go to retirement or even help with grad school.”
This is what’s hilarious about the USN rankings. Most employers have no idea whether USC is ranked higher than Lehigh or Tufts one year or the next. As far as most of America is concerned, beyond HYPSM, all colleges are more or less the same, hence USC is no different from Lehigh or Tufts or University of Iowa. If anything most employers/interviewing managers are only familiar with local schools. The only people who think that USC is better than Lehigh or Tufts is better than Johns Hopkins are the people who went to USC or Tufts, everyone else doesn’t know and doesn’t care. Beyond your first job out of college most employers only care about the skills you bring with you and how you come across in interviews.
Actually I think assessments are more regional. So in the NE Tufts has long been known as a school where kids who have a legitimate shot at Harvard end up because Harvard doesn’t have enough spots. The Fletcher School also gives it some visibility in certain circles. It’s actually ranked lower than a lot of schools I like less.
But on the west coast it’s another whole set of schools that would be considered the Stanford runner-up schools. So there UCLA, USC etc have more cachet than they do here. And as for Caltech - if you aren’t in science you may not have heard of it at all.
I’ve done a lot of looking at those lists and I couldn’t tell you the ranks of the Lehigh or USC (which USC anyway?), but I do remember (more or less) the USN ranks of the schools my kids applied to. And I think there were some significant differences between their reaches (ranked 1-24 for the oldest) and (8- 24 or so) for the youngest and their safeties (in the 40-60s for oldest and 70s for the youngest.) And the regional knowledge is even more true of LACs.
I think mathmom is very correct about regional awareness/standing, especially of schools outside the top 5-10.
Just about everyone with a solid education in the US knows about Harvard, Yale and Stanford. Those with a STEM bent know about M.I.T. and Cal Tech. And the next tier (other Ivies, Duke, U of Chicago, etc) is pretty well known as well. But once you start working your way into the teens and beyond on lists like USNWR, I think folks get very fuzzy about relative standing, especially of schools outside of their region.
So, for the actual EDUCATION that you get, #15 is better than #20 is better than #25 (subject to all kinds of caveats about the reliability of rankings, the particular focus of the school and the student, and so on).
But for status, whether it be in seeking a job, or just cocktail party chatter, I would think that the #25 school that’s in your city or perhaps 100 miles away is likely to have better standing than the #20 school that’s on the other side of the country. And this is probably even more true as you move down to 40, 60, and so on…
@MWDadOf3, even with the education, it depends (on field, fit, type, etc.). If you’re talking about rankings that close, they’ll likely be very similar (obviously not
@MWDadOf3, even with the education, it depends (on field, how a kid learns, what opportunities they will take advantage of, etc.). If you’re talking about rankings that close, they may be very similar.
"Is a school ranked 25 to 30 significantly different from one ranked in the lower 30s or 40th in the quality of student, quality of education and opportunities beyond college? Is it worth being full pay for a USC or Tufts vs scholarship at Lehigh or BU? Or full pay at NYU, BU or Lehigh versus significant savings at a Fordham or Syracuse?
What is gained in those situations from the “better” school? Again, totally subjective but interesting to hear your thoughts."
These rankings are really not that precise.
When you are comparing schools that are similarly ranked, there are a lot of student specific factors that should matter more than the rankings. If you can’t figure out what is gained in those situations from the “better” school, then it may not be better for you. What are the differences in the programs? in opportunities? rigor of the programs? Quality of the students? Quality of the facilities? Research opportunities? How well do you think you fit in? How are they at career services? Starting salaries? Placement percentages? Is the higher ranked school also stronger in the specific major you are interested in?
In both the US News National University and National LAC rankings, the top ~5 schools are much more selective (and better recognized nationally) than the #30 or #40-ish schools. However, as you move down the National Liberal Arts Colleges rankings, there seems to be a little more consistency (and less sharp drop-off) in some of the US News quality measurements than there is in the National Universities rankings.
That is, even across a 30 or 40 position difference, the top LACs tend to give you pretty much the same small classes and high graduation rates, as well as good need-based aid. At either the #1 LAC or the #40-ish LAC, you will be taught by professors with PhDs (often from top graduate schools). Among the national universities, a 30 or 40 position ranking drop can mean much bigger classes, much lower graduation rates, and less generous n-b aid (especially for OOS students). It also can mean a much higher percentage of students in pre-professional majors such as business or journalism/communications, as well as less national student drawing power. It may mean that a higher percentage of your classroom instruction is provided by graduate students, especially in the first two years.
To some extent these differences reflect a higher concentration of public institutions in the National Universities ranking. Most of the T40 LACs are private institutions, often with relatively big endowments per student and many wealthy alumni. They don’t have to contend with the vagaries of state budgets. Nor do they support big engineering programs that are especially challenging to complete in 4 years. On the other hand, these are small colleges with more limited course/program offerings and less brand-recognition nationwide than, say, some of the Big 10 schools (which for many students provide something closer to the full traditional American collegiate experience, including D1 sports, Greek life, major corporate recruiting, big federally funded research programs, etc.) The US News rankings don’t pick up all these differences, which are important to many students.