<p>^ I think that’s true to a degree, but right after HYPS on the Rhodes list is West Point. <a href=“Office of the American Secretary | The Rhodes Scholarships”>http://www.rhodesscholar.org/assets/uploads/Rhodes%20Scholarships_Number%20of%20Winners%20by%20Institution_11_25_13.pdf</a></p>
<p>One of my kids was accepted to the NUin. The additional cost would have been around $11K, above the already high price. He was not interested in going abroad, certainly not for his first semester. If he had been offered a simple spring admit, he might have taken it. It bugged me that the semester abroad was REQUIRED and not optional. I know other kids that received a spring admit at U Maryland. They did fine, even though it was a bit tough to be stuck at home in the fall when their friends all went off to college. American does something similar with a Washington fall semester.</p>
<p>I was surprisingly impressed by Northeastern. A work colleague went there when it was a rather unattractive commuter campus and was surprised when I told him how nice the campus was (for an urban institution). My kid liked the campus better than BU. </p>
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<p>The evaluation process also prizes athletic achievements per Rhodes’ Anglo-Saxon ideal man*. This means the evaluators who were associated or themselves Rhodes scholars from older generations tended to have biases which favored certain colleges/student types over others.</p>
<p>One illustration of this was brought home by an older alum from the '80s who recounted how a close college classmate nominated for the Rhodes knew his chances were sunk the moment one interviewer, a retired 3-star general made a homophobic quip about our college at the start of the interview. </p>
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<li>It was once a fellowship only open to Anglo-Saxon males from Britain, her colonies, Germany, and the US.<br></li>
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<p>From all accounts of folks who attended NEU, the campus has made many campus improvements from the '90s onward. The campus was already quite nice when I first saw it in the early '00s when given a tour by friends who were alums…and improved further since. </p>
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<p>How do Cal and UCLA differ in this regard? </p>
<p>How do the other UC schools handle transfers? </p>
<p>And, should one wonder how accurate the reports on selectivity, graduation, and others are at schools that have Spring admits, extensive transfers, and rely on guesstimates and creative accounting to report GPA and class ranks? </p>
<p>Fwiw, there are plenty of schools that do have straight admissions in the Fall and very few transfers. How do the address those balancing and physical issues that seem to plague others enough to implement deferred enrollment and … gaming tools? </p>
<p>@xiggi: well, I would say that relying on selectivity (except as a broad differentiator) to decide on schools is kind of stupid.</p>
<p>@nanotechnology : Well, the “Prestigious Awards” category also includes NSF fellowships and the like (more of those, in fact), that are strictly academic and where old-boy-networks likely aren’t in play. BTW, not all Ivies do well in that category while a lot of LACs (some of which you’ve never heard of) really shine. I attribute that to better advising/more personal attention at LACs.</p>
<p>On a broader point, if you want to aim for Wall Street, say, it probably behooves you to go to a Street target (some of which are publics, BTW). That said, those companies will take talent from anywhere. If you can’t afford to be full-pay (and aren’t in-state in CA, MI, VA, IN, or NC . . .or maybe TX, IL, or WI) but are good enough to get in to an Ivy/equivalent, you can probably get good merit money at a LAC. Then it’s up to you, though there would still be several paths to a front office role.</p>
<p>@bclintonk : Yep, indeed, by alumni acheivement measures, Cal is roughly Ivy-equivalent. Granted, the alumni acheivements are generally reached by the top of the spectrum, but some of them must have been CC transfers.</p>
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<p>Except for the context of THIS thread, I am happy to agree with you. Selectivity is only one small element of the admissions’ puzzle, but in some cases it is important. Take the example of Cal, a school that is actively recruiting full pay OOS and internationals. Part of its attraction is the prestige associated with its past and its graduate schools. Do the interested parties REALLY look beyond the “ranking” declaring Cal the best public school research university in the country? Do they really scratch the surface to ascertain that a couple of semesters later the “peers” would be Junior College transfers, Spring admits, and a few other exceptions to the … reported statistics? </p>
<p>Further what would preclude Cal and the UC to push the envelope even further and (re)build a system that enrolls a MINIMUM of Fall admits with only super high scorers, full pays, and athletes for the Bears? Increase the number of Spring admits and start admitting your “real” freshman in the second year by opening the floodgates to the De Anza or Santa Monica who might have completed their remedial classes in English and Algebra? After all, those giant lecture halls could be filled with second year transfers just as well as with September Freshmen! </p>
<p>What would be the reaction of Morse and his acolytes be if Cal forwarded numbers of such a reportable true Freshman class? Overnight, it would jump in the category of HYPS in terms of selectivity – or even lower! 100,000 applicants for 2,000 admitted! How great would that be? As long as the school can continue to obfuscate a substantial number of the students that are sought to graduate, why not maximize the process to the extreme? </p>
<p>Fwiw, like it or not, but the USNews rankings are playing a HUGE role in the marketing of a school that attempts to transform itself to recruit beyond its local and regional platform. </p>
<p>UC transfer policies have nothing to do with gaming the USNWR rankings, since the policies existed from before there were USNWR rankings.</p>
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<p>Again, that is simply one part of the argument! Chicken and egg story! What came first is still not relevant to the discussion about how schools can game and distort the rankings, and how the people in charge of presenting what should be COMPARABLE data do look the other way.</p>
<p>The transfer policies are different from the Spring admits. For the first, it would be up to the rankings outfits that created the Common Data Set to incorporate additional details or find a system that better reflects the reality, especially since they DO take in account graduation rates and expected graduation rates in their methodology. In so many words, should Princeton and Cal be measured on the same scale when the data is culled from different tables? You might think that is fair, and I think it is only fair if fully disclosed and explained! The sad reality is that the outcome is presented as a strict number, and THAT is a gross misrepresentation. </p>
<p>In terms of Spring admits, and the exclusion permitted by Morse, there is only one word to describe it, and that words is UNACCEPTABLE! There are NO reasons why a school should be allowed to count all applications but present a LOWER admit rate for that year than the real one. The Spring part is none other than lipstick on a pig. It is not a matter of a school adapting policies to please USNews as much as the reporting "agencies’ participating in presenting faulty data. </p>
<p>My example in the previous posts, albeit extreme, shows HOW a school could reinvent itself and pretending to be a whole different animal than it actually is by simply placing different qualifiers onto its expected frosh and sophomore class. As the rule stands, nothing precludes school to divide their entering classes into PRE-fall admits, guaranteed transfers (see UT Texas) and a Winter or Spring entry. In a matter of a couple of semesters, the entire program becomes a rolling affair with the possibility of presenting data to Morse that is a figment of their creativity. </p>
<p>The current rules encourage gamesmanship. And the schools know it! </p>
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<p>We liked it a lot too.</p>
<p>I wonder how a school that has been, as far as I know, a co-op school, was ever considered to be a school for part timers? </p>
<p>@xiggi:</p>
<p>Sure, but suckers will be born every day. I can’t say that I have much sympathy for those people who can’t be bothered to research schools more thoroughly than looking at USN rankings.</p>
<p>BTW, Cal has alum achievement rates that are Ivy-level, so those CC transfers and spring admits don’t seem to negatively affect them much (or their regular admit class is even more impressive).</p>
<p>I personally don’t think Cal is overranked by USN as I do Vanderbilt, which, despite impressive entering test scores, has unimpressive alum achievement rates.</p>
<p>@pizzagirl @PurpleTitan </p>
<p>This is a neat tool for checking the geographic distribution of students at various colleges. It can save you some work and your secret identity. Enjoy.</p>
<p><a href=“http://chronicle.com/article/Where-Does-Your-Freshman-Class/129547/#id=204501”>http://chronicle.com/article/Where-Does-Your-Freshman-Class/129547/#id=204501</a></p>
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<p>Unfortunately what we THINK in terms of overranking or underranking is not very relevant. What should be relevant is that the rankings should not require the “little” thumbs on the scale that have marked the direction of the process by Morse. He has been plenty clear about his passion for the “intangibles” and the reasons why he clings to part of the “formula” he knows are not up to par, starting with a manipulated and misleading Peer Assessment survey that does NOT hold the responders to the scope of the subject – nor its integrity. </p>
<p>Fwiw, a correct reranking of the first page of the USNews might not change the order considerably as about every school ranked below Cal or Michigan would score lower but not force a rearranging of the chairs. </p>
<p>PS I am not sure how one measures alum achievement rates at the UG level. Are you considering the top quartile or the bottom one? The average? The superstars? Or the ones who end up going on to prestigious graduate schools? </p>
<p>Acheivements.</p>
<p>“American Leaders”, entrance in to elite professional schools, PhDs, and prestigious awards (so generally the top but usually as a percentage of the total graduating class):</p>
<p><a href=“Ivy-equivalents - College Search & Selection - College Confidential Forums”>Ivy-equivalents - College Search & Selection - College Confidential Forums; </p>
<p>^^ That geographic distribution tool is a nice idea, but it measures 2010 freshman class. Those students have already graduated. Some colleges now have drastically different distributions, especially those with OOS scholarships.</p>
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<p>Seriously? That rings a bell! Oh yes, the ridiculous monikers Leaders and Legends in the Big Whatever Football conference. I am afraid to have to consider such sources just a form of entertainment. Perhaps we should add the Who is Who(m) in the mix! </p>
<p>@xiggi:</p>
<p>The name is stupid, but it’s essentially a ranking by “Who’s who” of business, government, and arts leaders culled by Forbes (actually, the Center for College Affordability and Productivity). . . .did you think the Big Ten made that ranking?!?). You can argue about the relevance or the criteria (for instance, of the elite professional schools that the WSJ picked, 12 are on the East Coast and only 2 are in the Midwest and 1 on the West Coast when, if you add up the M7 b-schools and T6 law schools, the distribution is more like 8-3-2), but the reason I like these outcomes-based rankings is because they’re slightly more relevant than something like admission rate or yield rate (does it matter all that much how many other people want to get in to a school or go to a school when trying to determine the quality of a school? BYU, Georgia Southern, UAlaska-Fairbanks, and something called Spalding University are top 10 in yield, for instance) and aren’t really gameable. And if schools try to game that system by helping their students try to win prestigious awards or gain them admission in to PhD programs or elite grad schools or somehow propel them in to success in the business/government/arts world, that’s generally a <em>good</em> thing (as opposed to lying about their numbers or playing games with them).</p>
<p>“did you think the Big Ten made that ranking?!?”</p>
<p>Of course not! I was just deriding the morons who came up with that silly name. As far as the American Leaders, I am not sure if Vedder created it, borrowed it, or manipulated it for his Center for College Affordability and Productivity. </p>
<p>Fwiw, it is shame that Vedder, who has made a few reasonable points about the escalation of the cost of education has tied his name to Forbes, and vice versa for Forbes when they wanted to steal a bit of the USNews thunder. This desire of being different at all cost is what has contributed to the laughable methodology, which has only been dwarfed by the Washington Monthly in terms of silliness. </p>
<p>As far as the WSJ and similar exercises, I am not certain if it is worth debating the relevance of the professional schools and their feeders. In the past, some here have devoted much energy in ranking the PhD programs after controlling the size of the programs. Search Interestedad posts for several threads on that issue. </p>
<p>If there were a smart way to measure “outcomes” it might get some traction, but the current formats are falling way short. </p>
<p>@OHMomof2:
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<p>Whoever wrote that Northeastern was a college for part timers was not a student nor an alumnus. Full time NU students were on coop since 1906. The university also had a large part time evening division that was not coop. This was prior to the 1970’s when there were few other opportuniites for working adults to get a college dregee in the Boston area. There were no community colleges and no public university in the Boston area at that time. As those institutions developed, NU scaled back its part time programs significantly. Some still hold this heritage aginst Northeastern.</p>
<p>SC also just started taking the Common Ap a couple years ago. Obvious huge jump in applicants!</p>
<p>@xiggi:</p>
<p>“Fall way short” compared to what? I’d take these 4 measures over most of the stuff that goes in to USNews (and some of the other stuff that goes in to Forbes).</p>