Looks like we’re stuck at 21. Suck it Georgetown.
https://www.usnews.com/best-colleges/emory-university-1564
Not true.
WSJ ranked Emory at 20 this year.
https://news.emory.edu/stories/2018/09/upress_wsj_the_2019/campus.html
Awesomeness lol. Also, appreciate folks for not being petty and caring too damned much. Seriously.
US News changed its criteria this year to positively weight accessibility to low income students and to eliminate selectivity as a criterion. I’m surprised Emory ended up in the same place while UCLA moved ahead of it.
“Social mobility: New this year, we factored a school’s success at promoting social mobility by graduating students who received federal Pell Grants (those typically coming from households whose family incomes are less than $50,000 annually, though most Pell Grant money goes to students with a total family income below $20,000). See below the two measures that factor into social mobility.”
https://www.usnews.com/education/best-colleges/articles/how-us-news-calculated-the-rankings
"New for 2019, acceptance rate (1.25 percent in last year’s ranking) has been completely removed from the ranking calculations to make room for the new social mobility indicators.
Also, we reduced the weight of the two remaining student excellence factors assessing the fall 2017 entering class – standardized tests and high school class standing."
https://www.usnews.com/education/best-colleges/articles/how-us-news-calculated-the-rankings
Both of these changes should have favored Emory vis-a-vis other national research universities ranked above it.
Emory is an elite university that doesn’t need the validation from USNWR. I certainly hope Emory has its own criteria and values which may or may not be consistent with the values of USNWR.
@BiffBrown : Please go see my post in the VU forum. The fact is, certain metrics and variables interact in ways that people don’t really think about. This is whether or not the metric is officially included in the ranking or not. How do you think highered admins and counselors choose to rate various schools? Do you seriously think they go do research on what peer schools outside of their tiers are doing? Or do they just have a “feeling” and knowledge about how much movement they have seen/heard of in terms admissions selectivity and yield.? I suspect relying on gut feelings, historical precedent, and momentum in superficial metrics is more convenient and less time intensive. Also, I believe the Pell Grant numbers have been manipulated to look great by schools that don’t admit many particularly low income students (hardly no elite schools do, but some, even those with great aid packages for the upper middle class, are even worse off than others). I think the threshold to get some sort of Pell grant is higher than we may think. It starts at like 50k I believe. I promise you many schools are admitting those pretty much on that line. It appears Emory probably admits many more significantly lower than this as well as tons more QB Scholars.
@ljberkow : Interestingly, even lately Emory and Georgetown have been performing on par or better than some privates ahead of us in terms of post-grad opp. access, especially the prestigious scholarships. As I always point out, the same or better than schools statistically more selective than us. Guess stats in these ranges cannot predict ambition that well…go figure. Emory needs to gone ahead and move forward with its strategic planning which will hopefully do things far more important than improve its rank. I commented on how glad I am the Wheel actually wrote an article on it rolling out. More undergrads need to actually see what the admins are up to in terms of their ideas of improving the University and college and of course become involved, propose their own ideas that fit within such frameworks, and also hold admins accountable.
So Emory’s reputational score decreased in a way that wiped out any gains due to (a) USNWR treating economic diversity as a positive and (b) no longer considering acceptance rate?
I suspect that a more likely reason for Emory’s rank staying the same is that other schools (e.g. UCLA) benefitted more from USNWR’s changes and were thereby able to leapfrog ahead.
No, I am saying that removal or re-weighting of the admissions components will have little impact on the rankings, because the reputation score can still be impacted by them. UCLA would have a very strong reputation not because of absolute selectivity but because of research prowess and because has been extremely popular lately, garnering lots of applications and a plummeting admit rate. Its reputation performance will benefit from its selectivity “momentum” whether admissions rate is included or not, is what I’m saying. This is not that hard to get. UCLA certainly probably got an extra push from Pell grant, but let us not pretend that it isn’t also going to benefit from the surface level changes in its selectivity which are visible
Do you have any reason that Emory should have moved up at all? I can’t think of it (nor could I think of reasons VU should have moved, or why Rice and Cornell slipped out of their ties for 14). Its number of Pells is not significant versus Berkeley nor UCLA I don’t think, its student: faculty ratio is creeping upwards which hurts. Its selectivity gap is/has improved but has been moving marginally versus most of its peers for quite a while. There is no reason Emory would be moving upwards based upon new or old metrics. I seriously doubt its reputation ranking has been moving upwards as again, its admissions strides are not as big as peers have been over the past decades, its research/academic changes have not been very visible. With the enrollment growth, it has actually been at risk for going down further because of the ratio, but it appears other peers have decided to grow enrollment as well so we’re not as screwed. Reputation rankings have a lot to do with visibility. If Emory was getting higher yield, still admitting a decent chunk of Pells in comparison to other schools and had the admissions momentum some of our peers had maybe 5 years ago, maybe? However, let us keep it honest and recognize the administrators and admissions folks can’t do yield on their own. It is up to current students to promote and alum make folks want to go to Emory as well. If y’all seem apathetic and uninterested, don’t expect Emory to make visible strides in the admissions and yield arena in a way that could garner some attention. This isn’t gonna be solved by Emory admitting more Pell Grant awardees.
A lot of you folks so badly want and expect a ranking increase yet most of you wouldn’t dare promote it over even a closely, but higher ranked peer institution. How does that help the cause? That makes no sense and still goes on today.
Oh, BTW, I am pretty sure Emory’s retention rate is stagnant and fluctuates at a lower ceiling and floor than its peers (hell even lower than Georgia Tech).
Here’s a government webpage with the number of Pell Grant recipients for 2 and 4 year institutions of higher education:
From the 2016-2017 data set (the latest available), the total number of Pell Grant recipients in a student body
UCLA 11,146
U Cal Berkeley 8692
U Michigan/Ann Arbor 4724
Cornell 2311
Columbia 1914 (not sure whether this includes Barnard College, which has 440)
U Penn 1495
Emory 1456
Harvard 1217
Stanford 1068
Northwestern 1043
Brown 1031
Vanderbilt 953
Georgetown 911
Notre Dame 896
Princeton 880
Duke 858
Yale 812
Wash U 766
U of Chicago 662
Dartmouth 642
Rice 545
It’s much easier to maintain higher average standardized test scores for matriculated students and higher retention rates with a higher SES student body.
Here’s the link:
https://www2.ed.gov/finaid/prof/resources/data/pell-institution.html
@BiffBrown : How do the reasons matter? Fair or not, Emory is not doing awesome in metrics that matter. Also, those are absolute numbers and not percentages. The percentages will be closer at these schools than one would predict based upon these numbers due to undergraduate enrollment differences. Also, do the Emory numbers count Oxford? If so, they are even further inflated.
You can complain about the rankings and the metrics or actually ask the school to get better at doing what it is supposed to do or continue to do what it does well already. Educating and ensuring students successfully gain access to the post-grad. opportunities they desire. USNWR is not really gonna rank those things. Getting bent out of shape over metrics not exactly playing into the hands of an already highly ranked school is petty and unproductive.
@BiffBrown
Actually the new criterion hurt Emory. The reason why we didn’t move was mostly due to an increase in stats and reputation scores, which helped stabilize our ranking. We need to work on graduation rates, and resources.
@emorynavy : What are “resources” again? I don’t remember how USNWR defines them (and am personally opposed to looking them up because I don’t want to give these rankings much energy). I know Emory has a serious faculty compensation struggle that has existed since the recession. The endowment…ehh, it is solid but I suppose post-enrollment growth, the “endowment per student” (a non-sense metric) number has or only increased marginally (other schools with flat enrollment numbers that experienced similar endowment growth will certainly benefit more). I mean I don’t know, I am imagining these would be included in resources, but I am unsure. Also, wasn’t 17-18 ranked? Not 16-17. I thought USNWR ranked the class right before the incoming cohort, which means those numbers could have changed. Many schools are awfully serious about enrolling and admitting with an eye towards these rankings.
If you don’t define a #21 ranking as top rate, then you will be critical of the metrics. The retention rate seems inconsistent with the Princeton study that ranked Emory #1 in campus life.
The statistics used were from the Class of 2021. The Class of 2022 had stronger stats comparatively when it comes to 2021. If you do see a bump, it would be next year. One of the reasons for the large classes at Emory (even more so Oxford) is the quality of the admits. They might need to get tougher on admissions for Class of 2023.
@bernie12
I looked again, our Resources rank is 20, so that’s fair. What we really need to improve is Graduation and retention which is ranked 34th, and Selectivity which is ranked 24th. Those two really hold us back, especially the grad ranking as I’m sure that dropped due to the change. Pell grant students graduate at 85%. That abyssal for an “elite”. Emory need to fix it, probably through better vetting of Pell students, as Emory some some of the best fin aid for poor students.
@ljberkow
Emory has higher SAT scores than USC, UCB, UCLA, GTOWN, and UVA so it’s fairly high but they an go higher , but class rank is stuck.
So our friends at USNWR computed percentage Pell Grant recipients per institution for the most recently available data. I think this means one year ago.
https://www.usnews.com/best-colleges/rankings/national-universities/economic-diversity
U Texas/San Antonio 47%
UC - Irvine 43%
UC - Davis 39%
UCLA 36%
UC/Berkeley 30%
U Texas/Austin 25%
U Oregon 25%
U Georgia 24%
Emory 21%
Columbia 17%
Ga Tech 17%
MIT 17%
Cornell 16%
Harvard 16%
Northwestern 16%
Princeton 16%
Brown 15%
Dartmouth 15%
Stanford 15%
U Mich 15%
U Penn 15%
Yale 15%
Rice 14%
Vanderbilt 14%
Duke 13%
UVA 13%
CalTech 12%
Carnegie 12%
Georgetown 12%
Hopkins 12%
U Chicago 11%
Notre Dame 10%
Wash U 10%
As you can see, it’s hard to maintain a high level of selectivity while also admitting a lot of lower SES students.
I suspect retention has more to do with students transferring for financial reasons rather than students being unable to keep up academically. At least, that’s what I’ve observed with students in my friend group starting at Oxford. Quite a few finished up Oxford in 3 semesters and others who took the usual 4 semesters at Oxford plan to graduate from Emory in 3.5 years (including some premeds).
@emorynavy Didn’t USNWR stop considering Selectivity as a factor this year?
@BiffBrown if that’s the case - retention is impacted by financial means - expect it to get worse and not better. Beginning with this year’s freshmen class, the maximum AP credits allowed is 12 and some 4s no longer qualify for credit. I suppose with 12 (or a little less), you could finish a semester early.
I do wonder who much of the retention issue relates to the Oxford dynamic and I would be interested to know what the retention rate for those who enter Emory College as freshmen is. This year’s freshmen class at Oxford is huge and off the charts. I hope Emory finds ways to keep these kids satisfied and effectively transitions them.
@BiffBrown
No of course not. They reduced the weighting by 1 percent.
Having more pell grant students is useless if they aren’t graduating. As you can see schools like Vandy and Notre Dame didn’t budge in the ranking despite having lower pell grant students than us. That’s because the graduation rate is better.