Should be gift article:
https://wapo.st/3MsAkLb
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This is exactly right.
True, but it was a small percentage and when it was dropped I donât think the rankings changed much.
The biggest pieces of the rankings were and continue to be (with current weights)
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grad and retention rates (22%) and add in social mobility which is pell grant grad and retention (5%) brings this factor to 27% of the total. As we know grad and retention rates are closely related to student/family finances.
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peer survey - 20% (only 34% of the 4,838 survey recipients complete this section last year, and as we know some VP/Deans say they give this to low level staffers to complete, so itâs kind of a joke)
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Faculty Resources (20%)
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Financial Resources per Student (10%)
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Bingo. Who are we kidding here? The vitriol for US News has always perplexed me a bit, even as to my own reactions and views. Nobody puts a gun to anyoneâs head to read those rankings, and yet when they come out even the most skeptical among us canât wait to click and see where our favorite school lands on the list and then either praise or criticize the ranking. The consumer market for higher ed will always chase scarcity if it is within their means. What has changed is the distribution of information. When I was a kid, I had literally never heard the words âAmherstâ or âPomonaâ. Today I would know even if I were otherwise situated as I had been.
With or without rankings, we care about and celebrate our kids getting into low acceptance rate schools because it indicates that they cleared a high hurdle and achieved, on at least one measure, elite status, which in turn says something about us. Itâs not really any different than having a kid who is an elite athlete; you canât help but be proud of it. And when you have one, you tend to show up at competitions as an observer with a little different skip in your step, as it were, because yours is the one or among the few everyone is watching. Humility is often feigned, but itâs human nature to feel a little boost about oneself when connected to greatness. Thatâs my opinion of it anyway.
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And in large part, as I mentioned earlier, it was USNWR that started the acceptance rate feeding frenzy. Readers want it because USNWR made acceptance rate âa thing.â
As there has been a deemphasis on test scores over the last few years, that factor is much less important these days. Always nice to have but not necessary, by and large.
At least in my casual conversations with current HS parents, I donât quite get that sense. The tests are still taken by most students, thus continue to be a â4(or 2)-digit seal of excellenceâ for some parents.
Worse, most parents havenât caught on that since âtest optionalâ the SAT/ACT ranges appearing in âclass-of profilesâ are now artificially high because a majority of admitted students didnât disclose their lower scores, which would have corrected the ârealâ average.
Interesting, and I donât disgree with your averages assessment. Importance of scores might depend on where you live. Definitely not as much a thing in my area of the Northeast as it used to be. I am a tutor and have seen the change.
My busy time is now in the summer and fall, when students are doing apps. I used to be much busier late fall through spring, when many more kids prepped for tests. I digress.
The colleges are responsible for employee burnout. They all went test optional, yet encourage more apps with advertising, as has been mentioned. They bring in seasonal app readers too, so when the seasonal readers are gone, I imagine itâs incredibly hectic for the remaining staff.
I know there are still high schools that limit apps. So much of this issue would be avoided if all high schools did this. Itâs all down to too many applications. There is no question that students are applying to way too many colleges. They apply to colleges they have no intention of attending. One or two safeties is adequate, but they apply to six or seven.
And again, this will digress into something different so I will leave it there.
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Thanks for that insight - that actually does make sense!
They might still be a source of pride to parents (as applicable), but since the test-optional-option many parents may no longer see the need to âchaseâ a target number for admission purposes.
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My Daughter was ahead of me - she didnât see the point in spending time prepping for a meaningless test, given other options of how to spend her time. So she didnât. I required that she take the test once. She did. Applied test optional. Got in. She was right. Iâm chastened, and would now think that the only reason to take a test would be if youâre trying to compensate for something else missing (or applying to MIT).
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Iâve got to think that itâs the stress of that low yield rate, knowing that if you donât hit your target, the institution doesnât make its budget, potentially starting a self-reinforcing crisis in subsequent years, layoffs of employees, etc.
And if you go over ⊠a whole different type of crisis.
Has to be the most stressful job in the university. Your success depends on so many independent unknowns ⊠and masses of 18 year olds.
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I wonder if this is an issue for canadian universities that admit largely on the basis of GPA and test scores?
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True, but as of common appâs March 1 report, only 43% of students had reported a score in at least one of their apps (again common app only). As always, there are relatively fewer URMs applying with test scores as compared to whites and Asians. The biggest missing application pieces by volume are the UC and CSU apps which as we know are all test blind.
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I was talking to someone several years ago who had been the AD at one of the highly selective schools often mentioned here on CC. She said that every year, after a million late nights and the kind of workload that had the team bickering about whose preferred candidates would be given an offer, they admitted and yielded an amazing class, only to be given the mandate of bettering that the next year. It was stressful and exhausting.
She became a college counselorâŠ
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https://www.usnews.com/education/best-colleges/articles/how-us-news-calculated-the-rankings says (my comments italicized):
- 22% graduation and retention rates â basically a proxy for admission selectivity and family finances to afford college
- 17.6% average six year graduation rate
- 4.4% average first year student retention rate
- 5% social mobility â as above, but for Pell grant students, so a proxy for admission selectivity and financial aid sufficiency / generosity
- 8% graduation rate performance â how graduation rates compare to expected rates based on student characteristics; generally a good thing, unless it is done by reducing curricular rigor
I.e. it still gives the greatest weight to raw graduation and retention rates, rather than the more interesting ones for Pell grant students and graduation rate performance that reflect college treatment effects (financial aid sufficiency / generosity, academic support and advising, etc.) rather than just being selective enough to enroll academically strong students from families who will not run out of money to pay for college that raw graduation rates proxy.
But the raw graduation rates higher weight presumably is ânecessaryâ to give a result that looks like popular notions of what the âbestâ colleges are.
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For their domestic applicants, universities in Canada apparently see high school courses and grading to be consistent enough (at least within each province) that external standardized tests are not needed. In many provinces, there are standardized course final exams worth a portion (usually 30-50%) of the course grade.
However, US high school courses and grades do not seem to be trusted as much. They used to require SAT or ACT for US high school students, but some or all may be test-optional since COVID-19.
But also note that the most desired universities in Canada are huge public universities, and Canada has a much smaller population than the US. Compare the ratio of University of Toronto undergraduates to the population of Canada or Ontario with the ratio of Harvard University undergraduates to the population of the US. So University of Toronto is much less likely to be trying to choose a small subset of applicants who all have top-end grades (and test scores for international applicants) like Harvard University is.
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In the USA, high schools standards are set at the state level, and enforced at the local level, and often not done well, while there is little state or local oversight for private schools or often charter schools. So it is not surprising. The USA needs federal-level oversight and federal-level standards, but that will not happen. Aside from state specific political and financial interests, states are very jealous of their powers, and will not be willing to cede control over teachings standards, even if it is in the best interests of the schools and of the children.
Moreover, when the federal government has decided to set standards, it is done and enforced in the worst way possible - NCLB being a case in point.
Perhaps because we look for the lowest common denominator?
I think the big problem is that the process is frustratingly opaque from the perspective of both the applicant evaluating schools and the schools evaluating applicants.
From the schoolâs perspective, grades can be suspect in an age of grade inflation and test scores are suspect for disadvantaging certain categories of desirable applicants. It can be hard to rank essays where there are multiple readers and each is tasked with weighing the essays of lower-income first-generation applicants against others who may or may not have had the help of a paid counselor. And no matter what process you use, you have no idea how many other schools are on each applicantâs list and where your school ranks. Will $5,000 more in merit aid tip the scale for Students A or Student B? Will a better trained tour guide make the difference? Or will it come down to specific faculty, dorm conditions, job placement rates, or some other factor over which admissions has zero input?
From the applicantâs perspective, how can you tell which school is really âgoodâ among all the glittery marketing campaigns? It is a huge investment, so applicants eagerly cling to rankings as a way to sift through the overwhelming amount of info out there. But, just as the âbestâ high schools tend to be the ones where the rich kids go (often more a reflection of the resources of the families producing the students than any magical quality of the teaching), college rankings tend to favor the schools where the wealthy have long sent their offspring combined with state schools that became more selective in part by accidents of population growth.
The average admissions staff have little control over the factors driving either process, but face a lot of pressure to produce results in spite of them.
I think schools are failing to admit droves of students that would do great things at their institutions while bringing in many students in each class who are fine, but perhaps not as âsparklyâ as hoped. Meanwhile many students are passing over institutions where they could thrive in favor of places where they will pay more just to survive.
I donât see any real âfixâ short of an entire overhaul of the system. Maybe the high cost of education and shrinking pool of applicants eventually will bring about a new era. It seems somethingâs gotta give.
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More because the automatic response is to punish and penalize anybody who is failing. Itâs the American attitude that academic or financial failure is the result and an indication of moral and ethical failures and flaws. Therefore, rather than providing support for failing school systems, they punish them.
Of course, many people in positions of power hate the idea of public education, so the standards and enforcement that they formulate are aimed specifically at providing excuses to eliminate public education.
Letâs not forget about the folks who work in the financial aid offices. I think most are underpaid and under appreciatedâŠand they too get a ton of questions and calls about the awards.
@kelsmom probably can elaborate.