By a few indications, some posters appear to misunderstand what U.S. News itself says about its rankings. In actuality, USN assigns much of the responsibility in finding a suitable college to its readers:
Nonetheless, it does support its rankings in context, in continuing from the above:
Regarding its methodology for the rankings themselves, I think it’s a mistake to call it arbitrary. USN states it
Even if you agreed 100% with USNews that these factors, and these factors alone, determine what the best colleges are (not all of us agree), and even if you agreed that USNews measured these factors flawlessly (not all of us do), where do you think these percentages come from? If they aren’t arbitrary, what’s the “methodology” behind them, if there’s one? There’re literally infinite number of possible rankings that can be created by tweaking these percentages.
The weightings represent the same concept as the included factors. They may appear arbitrary because they hint at an unattainable precision, especially as posted in the form above. Nonetheless, the factors presumably have been weighted relative to each other in a way that has been informed by the same education experts and research that determined the factors themselves.
I don’t know what qualifies someone to be an expert in assigning weightings to all the factors. Wouldn’t an applicant, along with his/her family, be in the best position to determine the weightings of all these factors, and perhaps some other additional factors?
Or they may have been weighted to get a certain desired result that is similar to “conventional prestige wisdom” about colleges (or some other desired result).
My point was not that rankings “stir up” insecurities in parents, but rather that they exploit existing insecurities by tapping into parents’ desire for assurance that tuition is “worth it” and that their child will be a successful adult.
By the way, I don’t think USNWR rankings are meaningless as a source of information. I’m saying that there are emotional reasons that parents and students rely on the list. I’m not contradicting your assertion that highly-ranked schools open doors early in one’s career (studies show that to be the case). However, I would argue that it’s less about USNWR ranking and more about the brand name of the school (Harvard, Yale, etc.) and the active alumni (Notre Dame, USC). It just so happens (or maybe it’s designed as such) that the US News list ranks those brand name colleges highly. In other words, if US News didn’t exist, I still think graduates of Harvard, Yale and Notre Dame (among others) would have an edge.
All of the statements you quoted appear to come from an old copy of the magazine and/or website. The newer versions of the website appears to have replaced the statements with something very different. In any case, the statement quoted above says that the sub-component measures have been proposed as reliable indicators. This does not mean that the weightings are meaningful and not arbitrary.
In short it’s saying that things like “distinguished” questionnaire, financial resources per student, and faculty salary have been proposed as reliable indicators of academic quality. However, that doesn’t mean a formula that adds up 20% “distinguished” questionnaire + 10% financial resources per student + 7% faculty salary + … is going to output an accurate list of “best colleges.”
Some persons in this thread have made similar statements. It can be useful to look up criteria that is important to you in the CDS, USNWR, and on various other websites. This criteria that is important to specific individuals may include some of the USNWR subcomponent factors. However, assuming that your personal values will be similar to the USNWR weighting selections is not a good strategy for choosing a college.
Perhaps “arbitrary” was the wrong word. The USNWR weightings do not appear to be randomly selected. Instead they appear to have been largely influenced by goals of keeping a particular set of colleges on top, trying to maintain some sense of credibility, and having minor year to year variation in formula. All 3 of these goals are correlated with increased magazine/website sales, which I expect is the primary goal.
If US News’ primary goal was to influence magazine sales through rankings then Arizona State University (ASU), Penn State, & University of Central Florida would be among the top ranked schools as they have the most students and very large alumni bases.
Suppose the top 3 ranked colleges in next year’s USNWR were as follows
Do you think USNWR sales would increase because the bulk of USNWR sales comes from persons who are alumni to the top ranked colleges? Or do you think it’s far more likely that the overwhelming majority of USNWR’s primary base of purchasers would instead think the rankings are wrong because they don’t list HYPSM on top and not purchase/subscribe to the site that they believe is so horribly inaccurate?
They could be correct as results depend upon the rating formula.
Certainly would increase sales as ASU, Penn State, & UCF students & alumni would be delighted, while those who worship H,Y,P,S, & MIT would just turn the magazine upside down in order to get the proper order based on the traditional formula.
I look at college rankings similar to rankings in my professions (accounting, tax, assurance). The Big 4 firms are always highly rated and will be at the top of most lists just like the ivies and ivy equivelant colleges.
Can one be successful not working at a Big 4 firm, yes, absolutey as there are many “second and third tier” firms that are great such as BDO, Moss Adams, Grant Thornton, regional firms etc. where first year students will get a fabulous public accounting experience.
One can have a very successful career in accounting working for lesser ranked firms (I partner with a lot of them) but the accountants that have worked at the Big 4 firms (myself included) usually garner immediate credibility as the industry recognizes that the Big 4 firms are the gold standard when it comes to knowledge and experience at least in my industry.
To my second point. Working out of our LA office for more than 15 years, I have first hand knowledge that going to top ranked colleges did matter to our on campus recruiters. We recruited heavily from USC and UCLA (90% of our summer interns came from those two colleges alone). We did a lot less or no recruiting at the many CSU colleges such as CSU Long Beach, Los Angeles, and Northridge to name a few colleges.
Where you got your accounting degree DID matter when we were recruiting college seniors and rankings did matter to our firm and the other Big 4 firms in our area.
Lastly, when my D20 was looking at applying to colleges in her area of interest, public policy & economics, she researched many colleges and yes rankings were one factor of many. She chose Duke because they have one of the best public policy programs in the nation and also a great economics minor and/certificate. She also wanted to go to a D1 college with much school spirit. While competitive for the ivies, she didn’t apply to any ivies even though several are higher ranked than Duke as they were not “her cup of tea” and she doesn’t like cold weather! They were not a good fit for her.
The bottom line is that rankings can matter, where you go to college can matter, and some students will thrive no matter where they go to college.
I look at college rankings as just one of many factors that should make up a student’s decision to apply and attend when considering all “fit” factors including financial, academic, job prospects, and socially.
I doubt that alumni are driving sales. I expect sales are more driven by persons focused on attending highly selective colleges, much like the base of this website.
As mentioned earlier in this thread, Washington Monthly used to have a best colleges formula that did not list HYPSM at the top. In a recent year the top 5 were as follows:
Old Washington Monthly Rankings
1 . UC San Diego
2. UC Riverside
3. Texas A&M
4. Case Western
5. UC Berkeley
The responses to WM’s rankings on this site and elsewhere were not kind to say the least. The rankings were considered a joke by many and not taken seriously. WM eventually gave up and made some tweaks to their formula to put HYPSM on top. For example, their “social mobility” formula no longer penalizes HYPSM type colleges with few relatively lower income students. Instead HYPSM are now all among the top 10 best colleges in “social mobility” under the modified formula, much like USNWR. The top ranked colleges from their website are now as follows. If WM can’t do it with their less prestige-focused based, I very much doubt USNWR could do it.
New Washington Monthly Rankings
1 . Stanford
2. Harvard
3. MIT
4. Yale
5. Princeton
Even back in 1960, Life quietly placed colleges in de facto academic tiers. USN’s main offense appears to be that they became popular in a similar endeavor.
You can view the actual Life Magazine article in the link below. It is nothing remotely like USNWR. There is no ranking formula with non-meaningful weights. There is no claim of “best colleges”. Instead they have a table that lists SAT, which is ordered in groups from highest to lowest SAT score.
In other words, Life ranked the colleges through the tiers in which they were placed.
The article in Life includes a table that lists mean SAT score of students attending the college. The table is structured in SAT score ranges groups, with ~10 colleges per SAT score range group. I expect this relates to assisting a student within a particular score range to find colleges with a similar (or higher/lower) score. Life is organizing a table to group students’ mean scores ranges, not ranking colleges as “best”. For example, it makes no claims that the colleges in the highest 660 +/- 15 score range group are “best.” Also note that the table with students SAT scores is not the focus of the article. It is secondary information.
So Life magazine ranked colleges by SAT score.
It interesting you raise the Big 4. I’m in legal and there are law firms that recruit heavily from top-ranked law schools, and law students who target “top ranked” firms (sometimes called Big Law). I agree that there is a credibility factor at top firms, including an opportunity to work with some of the best lawyers (and clients) in the country. But having spent 20+ years watching it play out, I see it as a cautionary tale. Associates, many of whom have piles of student loan debt, are wooed by the high starting salaries and the promise of 7-figure partner salaries, but the problem is that Big Law can be a miserable working environment. New associates forget that in order to see those high partner salaries, they need to survive 8-10 grueling years working long hours under high pressure. It’s not an easy climb and if you have (or want) children or, god forbid, want a life outside the office, it can be brutal. Many, many associates decide it’s not for them and leave for in-house counsel positions or less stressful jobs at less prestigious law firms (which recruit more broadly and where many excellent lawyers have thriving careers).
College should be approached with similar caution. Some people are cut out for the intensity of Ivy(+) schools, but for others, it would represent a significant sacrifice in their quality of life. Businesses that recruit exclusively from those schools are picking people who have already opted into that level of intensity—which doesn’t necessarily make them better or smarter, it makes them more singular-minded in their pursuit of a certain type of success. So even if a student is “closing doors” to those opportunities by attending a less selective college (whether by choice or because they couldn’t get into Ivy+), they may not have lasted at those intense companies anyway.
Rankings provide a window into the culture and lifestyle of the school and its student body. Students are stepping on the treadmill in HS by working hard so that they can get into a top college…so that they can work harder to get into a top grad/professional school…to work even harder to get to a premier job that becomes all-consuming. There’s nothing wrong with that path—and certainly some people enjoy the pace—but it’s not for everyone. Many of those people will hit their mid-30s and have a crisis of feeling overwhelmed, lonely, dissatisfied and exhausted.
If by “ranked” you mean including a table at the end of the article that lists mean student scores, but provides no numerical rank and has no claims of colleges with higher student scores in the table being best/better colleges… like hundreds of other articles do, including in peer reviewed research publications, and I regularly do on this forum. It’s obviously not the same thing as USNWR “best colleges” rankings.
Personally I would have no problem if USNWR created a similar table that lists SAT scores of 50 colleges, regardless of how the table was ordered – alphabetical, from high to low score, in 5 score groupings ranges, … I think some students would find that information useful or interesting. I’d also have no problem if USNWR created similar tables for other metrics. In fact, I’d find the USNWR website especially helpful, if it offered a way for users to generate custom tables that allows one to easily compare various user-selected criteria, like the IPEDS website does.
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What I have a problem with is making a list of so called “best colleges” with “best” being defined by a USNWR-selected formula with non-meaningful weightings of a large number of metrics, many of which are poorly designed/selected, whose weightings selection appears to be largely influenced by wanting to keep a particular set of colleges on top.
"Do you think USNWR sales would increase because the bulk of USNWR sales comes from persons who are alumni to the top ranked colleges? Or do you think it’s far more likely that the overwhelming majority of USNWR’s primary base of purchasers would instead think the rankings are wrong because they don’t list HYPSM on top and not purchase/subscribe to the site that they believe is so horribly inaccurate?
The primary base of purchasers may not increase if you had schools like PSU or UCLA in the top-3. US News installed base is probably edu institutions, GCs etc. and if they have a yearly or 3-year subscription, they’re not going to cancel or order more. But the alumni of those college would purchase, just to have it, even if they’re not going to use it. It’s possible the HYP and LAC alums may also order to see why the ranking changed.
The bigger question though is if the traditional new customers would increase, the high school sophomores and juniors and their parents. It probably would, a lot more kids consider UCLA than an ivy.