<p>Hi :)
I'm a rising senior and am apply to about 10 schools. I realized I have based schools solely off of their ranking and location. If a school has too low of a rank, I rule it out. Is this a bad strategy?
For example, I was considering applying to Fordham's Biology program, but saw that it was 207 in the country. Fordham itself is 55 in the country, so would it be a bad idea to apply? I love NYC! </p>
<p>Thank you!</p>
<p>Find several colleges you like, that have the program(s) you need, that you can get into, and that you can pay for, and apply to them. Rankings only impress people who don’t know any better and whose opinions you have no need to care about.</p>
<p>For example, I was considering applying to Fordham’s Biology program, but saw that it was 207 in the country. Fordham itself is 55 in the country,</p>
<p>Biology is at virtually every college in America, so unless the school is BAD in those natural sciences, then a ranking isn’t going to matter.</p>
<p>If you’re pre-med, then it REALLY doesn’t matter…as long as it’s a good school with a decent bio program…which Fordham is/has. </p>
<p>Rankings for bio are probably based on things like Research $$ for profs and things…which has nothing to do with taking Bio classes for pre-med (if that’s your goal)</p>
<p>What is your career goal? </p>
<p>And, if money is a concern…make sure that you include a couple of financial safety schools!!! :)</p>
<p>BTW…just checked…that 207 ranking is for GRAD school.</p>
<p>It might be worth researching why Fordham’s biology program is ranked 207 in the country. If you can’t find a job after you graduate, you might end up wishing you had gone to a higher ranked program! Rankings only matter so much as they correlate to post-graduation career prospects (so if the recruiters in your particular field of study care about rankings, then you should care about them too). That being said, I have no idea whether rankings of biology programs matters or not.</p>
<p>Thank you everyone…and I plan to major in pre-vet, not pre-med. And so the ranking for graduate school has nothing to do with the one for undergrad?</p>
<p>Oh and I’m not trying to be stuck-up or anything, I don’t want a good ranking just to say I went there…I just want the best possible future</p>
<p>I totally understand where you’re coming from, the rankings can seem like a big deal, and they can be, be they should be taken with a grain of salt. The lowest ranked national university I applied to was Lehigh, which is 37 I think, not to say that it was Ivy League or bust for me though. I definitely took the rankings into account when I was looking for schools, but you can still have great opportunities if you apply yourself to your studies/job search wherever you go.</p>
<p>Edit: However, some schools do indeed have better resources than others. I almost went to Colgate just for their unbelievable career development and job placement, especially in business related fields. If you have the drive to do this kind of stuff on your own though, all the better for you, wherever it is you go.</p>
<p>*nd I plan to major in pre-vet, not pre-med. And so the ranking for graduate school has nothing to do with the one for undergrad? *</p>
<p>Grad rankings aren’t going to make a big difference for someone in some kind of pre-health major (pre-vet in your case). </p>
<p>After all, many colleges don’t have grad programs at all (like LACs and such) and they do a fine job for pre-health. </p>
<p>that said…before I did Pre-vet at ANY school, I’d find out how good they are at vet school acceptance rates. </p>
<p>I have NO IDEA about Fordham, but some might argue that a school in an urban community with less rural areas with animals around might not be best for pre-vet. But, I don’t know if Fordham or other “city slicker schools” have a way around that. :)</p>
<p>(and I don’t mean “city slicker” in any bad way…it’s just that the vet schools are often in schools that have a more rural surroundings…easier access to the goats, pigs, horses, etc… ) :)</p>
<p>Speaking as a parent </p>
<p>First of all, you need a variety of schools. Safety, Match, Reach. Fordham is one of those schools that will fall into one of these categories, almost no matter what your grades/scores are.</p>
<p>School ranking – it matters some. If two schools are within … say 5 spots of each other … almost not at all. If there’s a … say 20 spot difference in rankings or greater, I’d think you’d want to have a good reason to take the lower ranked school. However, there are many reasons – finances comes to mind right away; excellent specific program at the lower ranked school; program not great at the higher ranked school; you absolutely hate the higher ranked school, etc. If the difference in rankings is as great as 40 spots, I’d think you would need a compelling reason to choose the lower ranked school – I can’t afford it or they don’t offer what I want to study.</p>
<p>Absent a good reason – if two schools are at different tiers, you almost can’t go wrong choosing the higher tiered school. The reputation will give you greater flexibility if you change your mind about what you want do do in life. It’s not stuck up. To a certain degree, reputation of the school you go to matters to employers, grad schools, etc. Which is not to say that you can’t get into excellent grad programs from any school, just that your chances may be greater from a better school.</p>
<p>Fordham’s biology ranking – this seems low. I’d find out why (or what it means to be ranked this low). Maybe it’s nothing, maybe very significant.</p>
<p>The overall US News rankings are a useful convenience in identifying clusters of reach, match, and safety schools (including places you may never have considered). They are not a good basis for distinguishing schools within those clusters. It would be silly to choose the number 10 school over the number 15 if you like the latter much more, or maybe even over the number 30 if that one is much cheaper, or has something specific you want. </p>
<p>I don’t know where you are getting your department rankings. There really isn’t any good basis to precisely, accurately compare undergraduate department quality in isolation from overall school quality. You can look at graduate department rankings to get some idea of faculty strength and research productivity, but at the risk of overlooking some excellent schools that don’t even have graduate programs, and may offer superior teaching.</p>
<p>You shouldn’t take departmental rankings too heavily into consideration for undergraduate study. The departmental rankings are weighted heavily in graduate studies as well as research output.</p>
<p>
I am normally in complete agreement with this statement, but Fordham is one of the few urban schools that is an exception. It is right next to the Bronx Zoo, and students have excellent research and volunteer opportunities.</p>
<p>^^^</p>
<p>I actually thought about the Bronx Zoo, which is why I mentioned that there may be some way around its urban limitations.</p>
<p>*
I don’t know where you are getting your department rankings. There really isn’t any good basis to precisely, accurately compare undergraduate department quality in isolation from overall school quality. *</p>
<p>They’re the US News rankings for GRAD schools…which don’t really apply…after all, many LACs and other non-grad school colleges wouldn’t have any thing to rank at all.</p>
<p>I’m sure that Fordham has a decent undergrad bio dept…it does have successful pre-med students. However, those who are pre-vet are often req’d to take animal-related bio classes. So, look into those classes at Fordham.</p>
<p>Thank you everyone!! very helpful</p>
<p>Rankings are one factor among many. If they didn’t matter, we wouldn’t be talking about them.</p>
<p>In practical terms, there are really Tiers of rankings.</p>
<ol>
<li>Harvard</li>
<li>Yale, Princeton, Stanford, MIT, Caltech</li>
<li>The rest of the Ivies plus Duke, NU, WashU, and Hopkins, and LACs Williams, Amherst, Swarthmore</li>
<li>The rest of the top 50, more or less</li>
<li>Top 100 or even Top 125</li>
</ol>
<p>It doesn’t make a lot of sense to try to split hairs – for example, between Fordham at #56 and, say Tulane at #51, or Syracuse at #68. Or between USC at #24 and NYU at #31. </p>
<p>Applying to about 10 schools seems about right. If you apply to 3-4 reaches, 4-5 matches and 1-2 Safeties, you’ll likely have 5-6 acceptances from which to choose. That’s when you start visiting/re-visiting the schools, and find your best fit. Often the best fit is not related to ranking. You may pick ranking #79 over ranking #35 for financial, social, geographic, or some other reason important to only you. Some of your classmates might even look upon you with shock, and blurt out: "How could you POSSIBLY turn down #35 for #79?? Are you crazy? What did you do all that work for, just to turn down your prize, your just reward, your RECOGNITION? Well, they just don’t get what FIT is, but toward the end of this process, in around April of next year, you’ll have a much better idea what it is.</p>
<p>You’ll have plenty of options. Just do some research on this BB about what is a Reach, Match, and Safety.</p>
<p>VERY helpful thanks a ton!</p>
<p>You can get an excellent education no matter what school you come from, you just have to be willing to get it. A high ranked school doesn’t determine your future. You do. That’s the high and the short of it. Apply to schools in places you could live in and that have well organized programs with opportunities for research, networking, etc. If it’s the wrong fit, there’s nothing wrong with transferring during your freshmen or sophomore year.</p>
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<p>People talk about a lot of things that don’t matter. In terms of things that matter, I put college rankings right about where I put who will be the next American idol.</p>
<p>Rankings are based on totally a totally arbitrary list of criteria, weighted in a totally arbitrary manner. Their only utility is to give the parents of kids that get admitted to top-ranked schools something to brag about.</p>
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<p>Here is an example of a “totally arbitrary” list of criteria:
<p>Here are examples of criteria that are not totally arbitrary:
<p>There is a fairly self-evident relationship between the above criteria and college quality. Nobody needs to convince me that small classes, well-paid professors, and high-achieving alumni are desirable features. But if you don’t agree, try repeatedly picking any 3 (or so) at random to generate your own rankings. See if the same schools don’t show up nearly every time in the resulting top N. The major rankings are based on criteria like these; these criteria tend to be mutually correlated (i.e. very selective schools tend also to have small classes, high faculty salaries, big libraries, highly paid alumni, etc.)</p>
<p>All of those certainly affect the PRESTIGE of a college, and some of them MAY have an impact on the quality of the undergraduate education. But without doing serious analysis behind the numbers, there’s no way you can tell how much effect any of them, except perhaps class size, have on how well the college prepares undergraduates. It’s impossible, IMO, to separate the effects of the entry-level achievement and economic situation of the student body from the effect of the four years students spend at a college when looking at alumni salaries and PhD rates or graduation/retention rates. The faculty measures all beg the questions: are the faculty members hired and tenured for their teaching ability (hah!), and do the high-prestige and highly paid faculty actually teach undergraduates? Endowment per student - how is the income from that endowment used? Selectivity - Northwestern’s and UofC’s selectivity both plummeted this year, mainly because they recently went to the common app, and Case Western’s dropped because it started weeding out acceptances to people who were obviously using it as a safety school. Did those changes in policy make them better schools? </p>
<p>But even to the extent that your list has some validity, what’s the highest weighted factor in the most widely cited ranking? Academic Reputation, as measured by “peer assessments” and “High School counselor’s rating(!)”. Together, these make up 22.5-25% of the ranking. Class size? 8%. SAT/ACT: 7.5%. Student/faculty ratio: 1%.</p>
<p>[Methodology:</a> Undergraduate Ranking Criteria and Weights - US News and World Report](<a href=“http://www.usnews.com/education/articles/2010/08/17/methodology-undergraduate-ranking-criteria-and-weights-2011]Methodology:”>http://www.usnews.com/education/articles/2010/08/17/methodology-undergraduate-ranking-criteria-and-weights-2011)</p>