<p>
</p>
<p>So either you’re saying US News’ ranking system hurts schools which use teaching faculty or it accurately does its job by ranking schools according to how most people feel the schools should be ranked.</p>
<p>I guess the question then becomes is the US News ranking there to reaffirm people’s beliefs or to rank the quality of an education offered by an institution.</p>
<p>i think al6200 may be a little sore about paying 40k a year to go to school . . .</p>
<p>He may be right in that larger schools have a slight edge in when it comes to the rankings, but I can’t imagine that the effect is that great. If a large university is not so great then that means that everyone knows that the large university is not so great. It certainly isn’t a “game-changing” statistic.</p>
<p>On the arguments on the other two fronts, I think Mr. Burdell has some strong points. The instructors point makes a lot of sense: small schools pretty much brag about having full-time faculty teach intro classes. His point about colleges bringing down the median SAT is pretty spot on: having things like agricultural colleges places more weight at the bottom of the SAT distribution.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>Uhhh . . . if you increase the frequency of students with lower SAT scores, the median SAT score will shift down, and the median of the top 50% distribution then would shift to the left. This is the lowering of the 75th percentile Mr. Burdell is talking about. I don’t think you can say that this effect is negligible. It actually is worse if you keep on letting in students that have scores at the very bottom of the distribution. yikes.</p>
<p>Haha, I have read through this argument quite a bit, and it has to be one of the best threads I have seen on CC… ever.</p>
<p>I like al6200’s little quips about “backing up your arguments with substantial evidence” and stuff, yet I haven’t seen a single argument given by him that has much in the way of solid reasoning. For the most part, he has at least twice as much fluff in each paragraph as he does substance. GP, on the other hand, has backed his stuff up with everything from hard statistics to math. It just makes me laugh how al6200 is too busy with his ad hominem logic that he can’t sit down and actually think about what is being said.</p>
<p>Honestly, state schools definitely have a hard time clawing their way up in the USNWR rankings. In engineering, you don’t see it so much because the state schools, despite their inherent disadvantages in the USN system, are very, very good programs. It seems to me that using a few of the points that al6200 has been using, that he is using the quality of the overall school as a representation of the quality of the individual engineering departments. I believe that the points he has made are actually somewhat relevant… to the overall school rankings that is. That is precisely why most of the top schools on the overall rankings are the Ivies and notable privates, plus a smattering of publics, though in that case, I would argue that some of the publics are underrated.</p>
<p>al6200, your arguments are so riddled with logical fallacies, that someone teaching Logic 101 could use your statements to teach most of the fallacies of relevance. Seriously, take a few minutes and collect yourself, and then answer this:</p>
<p>Which schools on the engineering list do you think should be ranked higher, if you think all of those public schools are overrated? Then, why do you think they should be higher?</p>
<p>Thank you guys. At least I’m not going crazy - I had to walk away from the computer this guy is frustrating me so much.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>The state schools are good, but I also think that private schools aren’t as interested in “running up the score” as they are in the cash-cow fields (business, medicine, and law). The 2004 USNWR rankings proved (well, as close to you can) that many of the top private schools manipulated their rankings in such a way that the larger state schools couldn’t match (e.g. firing instructors, manipulating the alumni giving rate by asking everyone for a dollar, etc.). </p>
<p>With engineering, there’s not a substantial amount to be made in tuition from being the top program (unlike business, etc where you can charge an arm-and-a-leg) and most money comes from government funding and not private companies, which is spread out independent of rankings. So, there’s not an incentive to try to manipulate the rankings, like they do with the overall school rankings.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>Again, another pointless insult. I’ve said it before, people who have confidence in what they’re saying don’t need to do this passive aggressive posturing and rhetorical wordplay. </p>
<p>
</p>
<p>You’re completely right here if you fix two little typos. You must have meant to say that GP was using ad hominems, and that I was using solid reasoning. If you fix that one little mistake it makes perfect sense. </p>
<p>
</p>
<p>Even if engineers are only a small section of the student body, and even if they are at the top of the student population (I’m being extremely generous here, engineers are probably below average in terms of verbal ability, and they’re probably only a little bit above average at mathematics), there won’t be a significant effect if we use 75th percentiles. And EVEN if we do accept that, it’s still dubious that we ought to only look at the performance of engineering students, since a good chunk of a student’s classes will be taken with non-engineers. </p>
<p>
</p>
<p>Is there a fallacy of accusing someone of a fallacy and then not backing it up? Because I think you just pulled one of those off. </p>
<p>
[QUOTE=Darko21]
What is your argument again? You’ve drowned it out in all the hypocritical posts you’ve made.
[/quote]
</p>
<p>Do you know what a hypocrite is? I think you mean “contradictory”.</p>
<p>Double post, edited.</p>
<p>I meant hypocrite when I said it, but you can throw in contradictory in there too. You insult someone for doing something and then do it in the next sentence…it’s almost as good as entertainment. You using solid reasoning w/o ad hominems? Bahahaha</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>I’m going to prove you wrong right here. Let’s say there are 7 students that received 750s on their SAT, and 3 that scored 600. The middle 75% is 600-750. If you remove those last 3, the middle 75% becomes 750. It is clear that removing the bottom 25% can potentially make a big difference. Not to mention you can take away another 10% for the retention rate.</p>
<p>I don’t think it is clear to you what an ad hominem is, al6200. You have consistently attacked the posters’ argument styles, credentials, and intelligence rather than backing up your arguments with cold, hard facts.</p>
<p>Let me put it this way. For a second here, let’s just ignore whether engineers are smarter, dumber or equal to the rest of the student body. The reason here is that it really doesn’t matter what the rest of the student body who major in biology or english or business does, because it doesn’t affect the quality of the engineering school. You have argued the contrary. The thing is, when you are comparing the entire school, it is pretty obvious that a lot of the private schools get a leg up, because they are good in literally everything. When you only compare the engineering departments, like we have been doing here, it means, by definition, that we are dropping the entire rest of the school from the equation. At that point, you have state schools who pour most of their resources into engineering, such as Georgia Tech, Purdue, Illinois, etc., who come out ahead of some of the private schools that are a little more well-rounded.</p>
<p>Of course, we all digress here. The original question was how is Georgia Tech a good school with a 60% admit rate. Simple. The admission rate of a school is only one indicator of the quality of a school, and a very, very minor one at that. The fact is, there are a lot more slots open for students at Georgia Tech than there are at say, Rice. Even if more people apply to GT than Rice, there are so many more open slots, that the admit rate is going to be higher at GT. However, the admit rate doesn’t have anything to do with the total research expenditure, the quality of the professors, the quality of the curriculum, and is only marginally indicative of the quality of the student body. Students are more than just an SAT score, so basing the quality of the student body on that is ludicrous. Instead, look at the retention rate of the school, and what its alumni go on to do afterward. Somewhere like Georgia Tech graduates alumni that are at LEAST as good as somewhere like Rice, and pretty darn close to what you will get with MIT. It has a fairly high retention rate too, so you have to reason that even if the average SAT score at GT is lower than Rice or MIT or Stanford, the quality of the students isn’t that much lower, it just has more of the kids who goofed off in high school and then got it together in college or any one of a plethora of other explanations.</p>
<p>A lot of these public schools are easily lagging somewhat behind the great private schools, which are able to focus more easily on every program due to their smaller size, but in engineering specifically, they are often times better. I school can’t be judged on admission rate or SAT scores alone, especially since after a year of college, it doesn’t matter what you got on your SAT, and no employer or grad school is going to care. What does factor into the school’s quality is the curriculum, quality of research, quality of faculty, and overall quality of the student body, and the points raised in here are only a very minor part of the quality of the student body. Therefore, while the scores and admit rates may be a little less impressive at some of the bigger state schools, they more than make up for it in these other categories.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>Yikes, man, you should give up the 75th percentile argument. Increasing the frequency of low test scores (agricultural colleges, other various programs public schools have and private schools do not that admit students with lower test scores) will drag down the 75th percentile. It definitely isn’t something you can say, “well it’s a negligible effect”. Unless you have a good, new argument against this, I suggest you give it up. You are kind of embarrassing yourself.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>Well, if we shift the goalposts, as you wish, and start talking about the overall quality of the universities then I don’t think you’ll find much argument. For example, GTech and UIUC’s non-engineering programs, although not bad, aren’t at the same quality as their engineering schools. I don’t think this is what we are talking about though, and you know it.</p>
<p>
[QUOTE=Silence_Kit]
Yikes, man, you should give up the 75th percentile argument. Increasing the frequency of low test scores (agricultural colleges, other various programs public schools have and private schools do not that admit students with lower test scores) will drag down the 75th percentile. It definitely isn’t something you can say, “well it’s a negligible effect”. Unless you have a good, new argument against this, I suggest you give it up. You are kind of embarrassing yourself.
[/quote]
</p>
<p>Firstly, while public schools may have more of these “less selective programs”, private schools have them too. For example, most engineering schools, private or public, have management or business programs. But that’s probably a moot point since business majors probably have verbal skills on par with engineering majors. </p>
<p>And yes, the 75th percentile is dragged down less than the median. How much depends largely on the variance in the engineering scores. </p>
<p>
</p>
<p>I don’t see how it is shifting the goalposts. An engineering major has to take classes outside of engineering, so shouldn’t they be considered as part of his undergraduate experience, even if his focus was engineering? I mean, if we have a school with a really great history program, is it not relevant to point out that they have a great art program too that enriches the experience of the history majors?</p>
<p>
[QUOTE=boneh3ad]
I don’t think it is clear to you what an ad hominem is, al6200. You have consistently attacked the posters’ argument styles, credentials, and intelligence rather than backing up your arguments with cold, hard facts.
[/quote]
</p>
<p>Pointing out the use of a rhetorical trick or logical hole is not an ad hominem. And I have never attacked anyone’s credentials or intelligence. Please providence evidence to back up that claim.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>Not always. I’ll use the University of Illinois as an example: UIUC has an agricultural college and a college of applied health sciences. Entrance into those colleges is much less competitive than either the general college or the engineering college. [url=<a href=“http://admissions.illinois.edu/apply/requirements_freshman.html]U”>Page Not Found, Illinois Undergraduate Admissions]U</a> of I Admissions: Freshman Admission Requirements<a href=“look%20at%20the%20chart%20on%20the%20bottom”>/url</a> I don’t think Harvard or Stanford offers those programs. </p>
<p>
</p>
<p>It still isn’t something you can neglect! A high frequency of low scores brings the entire distribution down!</p>
<p>You are also assuming that the students that score best on entrance exams are engineering majors. This probably is true at schools like GTech and UIUC, which have engineering programs that are a little more well-respected than their other programs, but probably is not true at, say, Harvard or Yale. In fact, I really doubt that their students that score best on exams go into engineering. </p>
<p>This makes your comparison between the 75% percentiles not a good one as well, if your goal is to compare engineering programs.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>Well fine. If we play this game, you win. GTech and UIUC are less prestigious universities outside of engineering compared to a lot of private schools. Happy?</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>This isn’t that relevant for engineering majors because probably more than any major (I may be missing out on some other specialized pre-professional programs) they have the most required coursework in-major. A lot of engineering students struggle to complete in 4 years because of all the required coursework . . .</p>
<p><pops popcorn,=“” sets=“” up=“” lawnchairs,=“” sells=“” cold=“” beverages=“”></pops></p>
<p>
</p>
<p>al @ GP
</p>
<p>In that quote you insinuate that he is, in fact, no better than a child.</p>
<p>al @ GP
</p>
<p>I point this out because you used a “rhetorical pot shot” in the previous quote as part of your argument.</p>
<p>Mr. Pot, I would like to introduce you to Mr. Kettle.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>No, I said that he was using the same debate tactics as a child. That is not the same thing as calling him a child. </p>
<p>Also, pointing out errors in his reasoning is not a “rhetorical pot shot”. Also, you claimed that I insulted his intelligence and credentials. Even if I did call him childish (I didn’t), that’s not the same as calling him unintelligent or lacking in credentials.</p>
<p>I never said you flat out called him a child. Read it again. I said you insinuated he was a child. That means you implied it, not flat out said it. It is pretty clear that you implied it since you compared him to a child. Implying someone is a child is most definitely attacking their credentials as debater. Thus… ad hominem.</p>
<p>And your quip about his confidence and about the childishness of his tactics are most definitely pot shots and cheap insults. Go look up the definition of insult if you don’t believe me. Seriously, you can’t berate him for making insults in his post when you do the same thing.</p>
<p>Some schools are self-selecting – that is, only top students apply because no one else would want the work load.</p>
<p>Along the lines of mom up there, there are also fewer people who apply to a lot of the privates because they know they can get the same or better education for cheaper at a public in engineering.</p>
<p>Idk… a lot of people don’t realize how much FA can help cut the cost. Some of these top private schools have huge endowment funds to just give away to accepted students. I’m going to school for about half of what my in-state school would have cost.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>I suspect that this is very often true at schools like Stanford and MIT, but less true at other private schools. It is a very good point nonetheless.</p>