I’ve noticed that if you look at the U.S. News, and other ranking systems, some institutions left off the lists are ranked higher than those included on the lists.
To cite two examples (there are several more) Tufts, not on the university list, is higher ranked than Michigan and North Carolina; and Union College, not on the college list, is ranked higher than Trintiy.
So how were these lists generated? Are they a snapshot of some previous point in time, that has not been updated? Or is there some other metric being used?
Well, I love Tufts (I’ll be going there in the fall), but other than International Relations what can you point to and say Tufts is truly elite in? I guess the humanities it can be considered pretty strong in for some disciplines, but really other than a single USA Today ranking that places Tufts’ biology dept. at third, what else is Tufts truly world renowned for?
University of Michigan on the other hand is considered elite for almost any engineering discipline as well as business. It may not be as well-known in other fields, but those two fields are two of the strongest departments of any college in the world. I agree that UNC:CH might be a weird choice to put over Tufts (I can’t really think of any single major at UNC that sticks out as truly elite; it’s more of just a well-rounded school), but it’s also considered one of the premiere public universities in the nation.
I think there are some flaws to the methodology of rankings in general. Schools like JHU, Notre Dame, Georgetown, and WashU are all considered significantly better than schools such as Wake Forest, Tufts, or Carnegie Mellon, but when you get down to it there’s really very little difference between the schools. Tufts and Carnegie Mellon are almost tied in terms of selectivity with the other schools (in some cases even more selective than the others), and each of those schools is renowned for only two or three fields. There’s almost no appreciable difference in the quality of a degree in IR from Georgetown or Tufts, and there’s really no difference between Notre Dame, JHU, and Carnegie Mellon when it comes to engineering (Carnegie Mellon is probably the strongest of the three, especially in CS).
Rankings in general are subjective. I think Tufts could probably be added to the list for CC Top Universities, but I think that we also have to stop putting weight on USNWR. Once you get to the top 20-30 they’re all incredibly selective and elite universities. Very few people are lucky enough to get into multiple top 30 universities anymore.
@micmatt513 You hit the nail on the head but many parents and students don’t realize that the acceptance probability from #1 to #25 is something only kids in the top 3 or 4 percent need to worry about. You often hear people refer to a school like Colgate at #22 as a fall back if Williams doesn’t come through. They fail to realize that only 1 percentile seperates the two on average.
US News should do a better job in guiding parents and students on this point.
“Popular” is not synonymous w “best quality”. Homecoming King & Queen generally don’t get elected on their SAT scores.
Tufts may be a great school, but it’s in a really “tough neighborhood”. For kids who are looking at universities in Boston, I wonder how often Tufts is the 1st school that springs to mind, or even the 2nd school to spring to mind, or even the 3rd school spring to mind…
In any case, any school that is eponymous with the concept of the “Tuft’s Effect” shouldn’t be on a popularity list. There is an implicit implication (deserved or not) that it is a “lesser” school.
I know it’s subjective. And there is variance among the rating services. I think for the tippy-top schools, it’s like what Supreme Court Justice said about obscenity, “I know it when I see it.” But when you get to number 20, there’s more room for subjectivity. That said, I’m specifically wondering about the rationale behind the CC lists of top liberal arts colleges, and top universities. Why are some schools are on the list, and some schools rated higher on some rating lists are off the list?
In effect, the CC lists are another rating service.
I’ve always thought it was weird that CC arbitrarily separated out the Ivy League schools from the other top universities. It’s just fuel for the fodder for all the nutso parents out there who believe that there is special Ivy dust that doesn’t accrue to Stanford or Duke or MIT or (whatever).
You’ll have to talk to Hunt about that. I think the division pre-dated Hunt’s prestigiosity list, though it’s a fine, fine list as far as I’m concerned. Though of course any university I’m affiliated with in some way should be higher.
It’s likely that they just took the US News top 30 for national universities and for liberal arts colleges, circa 2003 or 2004 (or whenever this website started), pulled out the Ivy League schools into a separate section, and voila, your CC lists. I’m not aware of any changes in the CC lists since I registered in 2005. It’s also likely that they weren’t trying to make their own assessments of prestigiosity or anything else, just trying to drive traffic to the site.
CC’s lists are based on the volume of posts re: a given school, not on the schools’ “prestigiosity”. I know because I’ve asked the moderators. The Tufts board may not be as active as others (by virtue of the fact that maybe students interested in Tufts don’t place much stock in CC, perhaps?). Tufts, don’t forget, straddles a weird limbo between LAC and Research University. Even its enrollment is an anomaly among its peers. And as for the Tufts Effect, I think it’s been established that that moniker is more applicable to Wash U and others than Tufts anymore.
“Tufts may be a great school, but it’s in a really “tough neighborhood”.”
As a longtime resident of the Boston area, I have to say this ranks up there with the most ridiculous and ill informed statements I have read on these forums. I have no connection to Tufts but I know the area well and it certainly is not a tough neighborhood; Davis Square, which it neighbors, West Somerville as well as Medford, are all experiencing wildly rising housing prices as one of the hippest parts of Boston. It’s not simply gentrifying: it’s deep into gentrification. I was so stunned by this statement I did a little poking around to see where it might have come from and I discovered that the Daily Beast had named Tufts #50 of the country’s “most dangerous campuses.” The article notes, however that it had lumped the statistics of the main campus together with the Med School, which sits across the river in a very different part of the city, resulting in the low and damaging ranking.
Sure, Tufts is an urban campus and must have its crime, but by any standard a tough neighborhood it is not.
That’s odd to me too. I’m not from Boston, but Tufts’ campus seemed perfectly fine when we visited.
I agree that they probably just took the USNWR national universities circa 2004, but it’s odd why they pulled Ivy League into a specific category. Mods? Anyone?
@midlifedad I think what GMT was referring to is that people in the Boston area will typically see Harvard and MIT as their top schools. Universities like WUSTL, Hopkins, or Rice don’t have much competition in that regard which could make them seem more prestigious than Tufts. I’m not saying they have more prestige simply because of this reason, but it’s probably a small factor.
@GMTplus7 Re: post#3- Tufts is NOT in a “tough neighborhood.” Maybe decades ago this was true, but this is not an up-to-date statement. Davis Sq., close to where Tufts is located, is one of the hippest places in the Boston area, with tons and tons of restaurants and nightlife. Students and young professionals have made Davis Sq. as popular, if not more so, than Harvard Sq.
I don’t think “volume of posts” is the primary metric. I pointed out a while ago that USC is not on CC’s list of top universities, and yet that is an active subforum with many more posts than some other schools on that list.
I think MrDoctor had it right-I don’t think GMTplus7 meant that Tufts is literally in a tough neighborhood (thus the quotation marks), but that as a Boston school it’s in competition with MIT and Harvard.
When applicants pursue schools in the Boston area, harvard & mit come immediately to mind. Even BU and Northeastern get more buzz on CC than tufts, because of the larger admit pool & fat merit money at those schools, respectively.
@pizzagirl " it’s odd why they pulled Ivy League into a specific category. Mods? Anyone?"
I think they just know how some people think, and tried to make it easier for them. My alternative theory is that it was just to get under your skin, PG. lol
As best I call tell, the lists are based a proprietary algorithm that takes into account the 2004 U.S. News rankings, the USA Today coaches poll, a mystical reading of chicken entrails that frankly is best left undescribed, and Doug and Sally’s judgments about how to maximize click-bait. The last factor explains why the bad basketball league gets its own list.