Absolutely none. If so we would have overlooked the school my son went to which gave him an outstanding education, was a perfect fit, gave him great opportunities to work and travel, and got him into vet school after just three years of undergrad.
We knew they were weighted to popular colleges and have some biases that were not what we were most concerned with. We did our search on what my son was looking for. We did research the program and made sure there were no huge negatives.
He knew what he wanted and I knew he needed to be happy to thrive. We are thrilled with our decision.
Yes, there may be a bias towards Princeton and Williams which have been ranked #1 for several years; nonetheless, the weighting has changed over the years and yet the same schools continue to be on top. Alumni loyalty/giving seems to strong at the top schools, typically in the greater than 50% range. If a high percentage of alums continue to support their school, that is a measurable outcome which indicates a positive educational experience.
While the weightings have changed over time, those changes have been quite small in recent decades. Itâs enough to cause small changes in the specific numbers from one year to the next, but the core components of the ranking all remain similar enough to keep the expected names at the top.
Alumni giving only has a low 3% weight and probably has as much to do with how much pressure the college applies on alumni to make a small donation and characteristics of students than degree of positive education experience. For example, according to Forbes (using Forbes since alumni giving rate is locked on USNWR), 41% gave at Princeton vs 18% at Harvard. Does that mean Princeton grads are far more likely to have a positive educational experience than Harvard grads? Or does that have more to do with Princeton sending more mail/calls to alumni requesting a small donation than Harvard?
However, there is another criteria that is far more correlated with USNWR ranking than alumni giving and this criteria doesnât tend to change much from year to year, as summarized below. Some USNWR factors are directly correlated with endowment per student, such as âfinancial resources per student.â Others are less directly correlated, such as the new graduate indebtedness factor.
4 Highest Ranked LACs in USNWR â Amherst, Pomona, Swarthmore, and Williams
4 Highest Endowment per Student â Amherst, Pomona, Swarthmore, and Williams
6 Highest National Univ in USNWR â HYPSMC (C = Columbia and Chicago)
6 Highest Endowment per Student â HYPSMC (C = Caltech)
There are other contributing factors besides just endowment, so the specific order is not exact. For example, Stanford can be expected to lag behind others with similar endowment per student, so long as they continue to have a very popular co-terminal masterâs program since this 5-year program pulls down the heavily weighted graduation rate below what would be expected with nearly all undergrads in a 4-year program.
There is also a feedback effect that solidifies past rankings, particularly for LACs. For example, several years ago a forum member posted the following âdistinguishedâ / âmarginalâ survey average scores (again donât have more recent info since within locked section). Iâm sure many of the people who choose to fill out the USNWR questionnaire are influenced by the past USNWR rankings in deciding whether a college is âdistinguishedâ or not. Williams always tops the USNWR LAC ranking, which results in more people marking Williams as âdistinguishedâ on the following yearâs questionnaire than would occur naturally.
Ranking Princeton University as a top 2 National University and Williams College as a top 2 National LAC gives credibility to the US News rating & ranking system; to do otherwise would call the rating & ranking system into doubt.
Iâve been arguing the âreverse engineeringâ case for years. However, I would also posit that if Princeton and Williams arenât precisely your cup of tea, itâs worth turning the T20 rankings upside down in order to find alternatives. Prime examples of Princeton/Williams proxies that include some but not all the characteristics of the leader board winners, are Brown and Wesleyan; perennial runners-up, extremely popular in certain circles and the kinds of places where âfitâ are major selling points.
The funny thing about rankings is that no one ever talks about how much the school costs. Thatâll come sooner or later. Once that happens, rankings usually go out the window. Itâs best to avoid them and just choose an affordable school.
Agreed. One of the drawbacks to making every national entry test for Princeton or Williams is that every T20 ranked school will be need-based for financial aid with very little available in merit aid.
USNews says that Princeton is great. This proves that Princeton is great because USNews is reliable. USNews reliability is proven because it says that Princeton is great.
In short, your proof of Princeton being great is USNewsâ reliability, and your proof of USNewsâ reliability is that Princeton is great.
Circulus in probando, or Circular Reasoning. A classic logical fallacy.
This is a misinterpretation & an unfair characterization of my opinion as I consider knowledge of factorsâsuch as EPS endowment per student & overall size of endowment-- beyond the categories used by US News.
A fairer statement of my position would be:
Because I know Princeton University & Williams College to be outstanding schools with respect to several factors some of which are not included in US Newsâ methodology, I find the US News rankings to be reasonable & credible.
P.S. If one ranks colleges & universities based on one of two factorsâeither EPS (endowment per student) or overall endowmentâthe resulting ranking will be similar to the US News rankings. This is a primary reason for my position finding
the US News rankings of Princeton University & Williams College among the top 2 or 3 in their respective categories (National Universities & National LACs) as support for the credibility of the rankings.
USNews isnât doing anything different than what we witnessed in the last few years with respect to some ânewsâ outlets trying to reinforce our own preferences/biases. Using confirmation bias is proven to work in attracting a large audience. Belief can sometimes trounce logic and reason, unfortunately.
The correlation with endowment and rankings relates to much of the ranking criteria being well correlated with endowment. This doesnât inherently mean the highly ranked college is better or belongs at the top of the rankings. Instead it depends on what criteria you are ranking.
For example, the Chetty social mobility study ranked the following colleges as highest in social mobility, which Chetty defined as the greatest chance of a student moving up 2+ income quintiles. Princeton ranked among the bottom 2% of all colleges in this metric, as listed below.
1 . Vaugn College of Eng
2. CUNY CCNY
3. CUNY Baruch
4. Texas A&M
5. Cal State LA
âŠ
2079 (bottom 3%) Williams (among the worst LACs)
âŠ
2096 (bottom 2%). Princeton (worst among Ivy+ grouping)
Including a meaningful social mobility metric like this in a rankings weighting would interfere with HYPSM appearing on top, so instead USNWRâs social mobility criteria looks at Pell grant graduation rates. This allows colleges like Princeton to have a high social mobility ranking even if they admit few lower income kids, so long as the college is selective enough to admit stellar students who are highly likely to graduate. Unfortunately the colleges that are truly excellent in social mobility are likely to do poorly in USNWRâs social mobility ranking.
Many people donât care about social mobility and do not think it should be a factor in a list of âbest colleges,â and that is a perfectly reasonable view point. However, that does not mean âbest collegesâ should instead be based on highest endowment or whatever arbitrary combination of weightings USNWR is using in particular year. Instead it depends on the personal values of a particular student, which will vary wildly between different students.
For example Williams may be ranked as the #1 LAC on USNWR, but Williams would have been a disaster for me for many reasons, including the weakness in engineering. It was absolutely not a âbest collegeâ for me, regardless of ranking.
I doubt that anyone including employees at USNWR really believes that these particular percentages are an accurate formula for determining âbest colleges.â Some of the selections appear to be doing a poor job of their claimed intention, such as my earlier example of ranking âsocial mobilityâ by Pell grant graduation rate.
Instead I expect that USNWR switching from rankings based 100% on questionnaire to a lot of numbers and weightings was done to give a more scientifically valid feel to the rankings. And I expect that a key factor in selection of the particular metrics and weightings in that computation was USNWR wanting to keep a particular HYP⊠set of colleges towards top. Seeing HYP⊠at the top of the rankings gives some readers a sense of validity to the rankings, resulting in larger magazine/website sales for USNWR and more income than if Caltech, Cornell, UCLA, or similar was at the top. As previously discussed, when HYP did not appear on top in the early days of the ranking 20 years ago, USNWR applied a logarithmic adjuster to outliers for a particular metric in which Caltech excelled in an obvious attempt to penalize the top ranked Caltech, while also changing the leadership team members handling the rankings. An amusing related Adam Ruinâs everything segment on USNWR is at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EtQyO93DO-Q&feature=youtu.be
Looking at it from the alternative perspective, what makes USNWR rankings valid or meaningful beyond seeing HYP⊠at the top? Do you think the particular weightings above are correct selections for ranking âbest collegesâ?
Many of the factors used by US News are important & capable of independent validation.
I would prefer some adjustments, but I do not know of any better overall rating & ranking system than that used by US News.
It is important to know first year retention rates, 6 year graduation rates, student/faculty ratio, percentage of small & large classes, financial resources, selectivity rank based on admission criteria, and the specific ranges for admission. All of these are factors used by US News.
I find the âpeer assessment scoreâ to be helpful as it is based on survey results of âindustry expertsâ.
Of course, no rating & ranking system is perfect. Nor is there one rating & ranking system which addresses all of oneâs concerns or preferences. There are many specialty rankings available. Anyone is free to create their own rating & ranking systemâand many with substantial resources have done so but none have surpassed the popularity of the US News rankings.
It is easy to nitpick & complain, but it is much more difficult to build a better product.
Yes, but - and, this has been a long-standing criticism - USN would have you believe there are only 10 or 12 colleges in the whole country that accept fewer than half their applicants, and graduate 80-90 percent of their incoming classes. Or, offer small classes. We all know that is not true and that if those benchmarks were the only things people cared about, they probably have their pick of more than 100 excellent colleges and universities across a spectrum of entry points. But, listing the same schools alphabetically or in tiers every year doesnât attract the same number of clicks.
Agree that there is room for criticism. No rating & ranking system is perfect. Nevertheless, US News does not restrict its readers or non-readers from utilizing other resources or from creating their own system of rating & ranking schools.
