…and the grad school and undergrad rankings need to be kept separate and referenced/considered in their proper contexts. For instance, don’t use grad school rankings to predict undergraduate quality, and vice-versa.
I catch myself doing that sometimes (using grad rankings as a proxy for undergrad program strength) – I need to work on that too.
People love to point to parchment, but it is literally garbage in garbage out:
Case in point:
https://www.parchment.com/u/college/1325-Johns-Hopkins-University/profile
Check out the accepted tab for previous year:
Academic Performance for accepted “JHU applicants” (138 total) from Parchment:
28
Avg ACT
1955
Avg SAT
3.9
Avg GPA
Compared to JHU admit profile from last year:
ACT Range: 32-35
SAT Range: 2150 to 2350
Average GPA: 3.93
Basically it is a bunch of self-reported completely unreliable data. There accepted students are either imaginary or are literally at the bottom of the class from a testing perspective.
Same with other schools like Penn:
https://www.parchment.com/u/college/1519-University-of-Pennsylvania/profile
Academic Performance for accepted “Penn applicants” (161 total) from Parchment for previous year:
26
Avg ACT
1959
Avg SAT
3.9
Avg GPA
Do these actually look like students admitted to Penn? But ofcourse, you still have foolish users citing this source.
Enjoying the discussion. You can quibble hear or there, but I think @Alexandre has the groupings just about right in my view.
My only question, and I’m just a newbie at the whole process, being from CA, is the general perception that Cal and UCLA are in different tiers? I know the admissions statistics point to Cal being a more difficult admit than UCLA, but not by whole lot.
Seems odd to bother ranking 8 highly prestige schools on their own. There aren’t even that many permutations, even with ties, and the schools themselves are educationally uneven enough to make a broad rank kind of “who cares.”
Raking by colleges/schools and/or broad majors might be a bit more interesting/informative.
Are very many people really going to argue Dartmouth school should be ranked above Cornell for undergrad engineering?
Or that Yale should be ranked above Penn/Wharton for undergrad business?
I think there is a bit of a difference in likely outcomes based on departments/schools within the Universities.
even in the broader rankings Chrchill has Cal tech “clearly” above the other schools… unless you’re studying many of the humanities/social sciences. That’s just silly. (Not picking on Chrchill, but few/none of these schools really do everything well.)
I see everyone on this thread has gotten their own personal ranking system. :-@ The rankings are only as good as the criteria they use, and most of the criteria on this thread is entirely opinion which with $.25 will get me a cup of coffee… make that $2.75 at Starbucks. ~O) So in the end, use the ranking with the CRITERIA you like, and then refine from that using your major and other intrinsic things like location.
Personally I use USNWR rankings because I like their criteria, but that is ONLY a starting point.
agree with @Alexandre
@cu123
In my opinion, the biggest issue with ranks is that the objective/meaning is never clear. The criteria are clear, but what does the order mean?
Is this the order a generic student should prefer them? How much different is the order for a academically focused student vs. a student who is more motivated by financial outcomes?
The shift in quality as you move down the USN list is quite gradual. There is a lot of noise in the comparison.
Regarding the Chicago, Penn discussion, I can’t imagine that they are likely to compete for the same kid, which makes them very difficult to compare. For an individual student one or the other is likely to be clearly better.
@VANDEMORY1342 I could support your tiers. I do think that MIT and cal tech are sui gen Reis. In their areas, they are tops. But a humanities or social,science for most social sciences student would not put MIT anywhere near top two tiers.
Don’t get me wrong, you are getting basically the same quality of student until you reach about 15 or so on the USNWR (including LAC’s which have there own ranking), they differ slightly in what the AO’s are looking for but they are all top notch students and not really differentiable between schools. An applicant should differentiate these schools base on major and other intangibles, as I alluded to above. Does it matter is you go to #1 or #10…no, it depends on what motivates you, major, etc. Also, there is this idea that you can be successful and recruited at any school, well most any school, and that is absolutely true. However the difference is that from major state universities (as an example) only the top 10-30% (based on GPA) are recruited for great jobs/grad schools, at the top 10 Universities, almost all students are recruited (e.g. 84% of UChicago grads go to top 14 law schools, and I can quote other stats from other top 10 schools). Frankly it just has to do with the quality of student they start out with.
@Chrchill Hate to break it to you, but you are taking USNews rankings way too literally. The USnews college ranking matters in creating tiers, top 10 top 20 etc. People do not look at which top 10 school is ranked higher and think it is the more prestigious etc. If it was so Harvard and Stanford would be considered less prestigious than Princeton. Being able to sustain a top spot in the top 10 for decades is what benefits schools. Within the top 10 people widely recognize HYPSM as the top tier, no matter where they are ranked in the top 10.
Some goes for grad schools. Btw you just assumed that I do not challenge grad school rankings. HSW are considered the top business schools because they have been ranked the top 3 forever and also because the dominate by most/many metrics outside the Usnews rankings, and they have established themselves as the top biz schools in the public perception. Same goes for medical school. Penn Med has not only been ranked in the top 3-5 for a very long time but it can many medical breakthroughs and that is why it is considered as one of the best.
For example, the fact that Chicago Law is ranked top 4 for the first time this year doesnt make it a top 4 law school. It takes much mire time to prove that it is the 4th best law school instead of Columbia, the widely accepted top 4th school and the public perception needs to change as well.
Year to year rankings and actual established perception of the schools are not the same. That is my view and as you see i am very consistent with it.
Columbia and Chicago are not more prestigious or selective than Penn. If they were they would be routinely preferred over Penn , just like HYPSM are routinely preferred over Penn, Columbia and Chicago. Also separating Wharton is just pointless. (Would you separate Chicago’s Econ department from the rest of Chicago?) The whole point about Chicago and Columbia being above Penn is in your mind, and not supported by anything really.
Btw Chicago and Columbia don’t have a better English department than Penn and your claim about the vast majority of academic subject being better is also not true (1 or 2 positions on USnews doesnt make them better, and in fact for quite a few pen is ranked higher). Of course there are subjects like econ and math where chicago is clearly superior.
@Penn95 Are you busting on UChicago again, it only means we’ll have to gang up on Penn. :)>-
@CU123 lol this is fun. i am not really busting on Chicago though. just trying to remain objective and burst some bubbles lol.
I like the parchment model though if the data is suspect, I agree you have to consider that. There are so many flaws in US News that you couldn’t discuss it in one post. So let’s look at the chief way schools use to manipulate it, yield rate. Schools with early decision benefit in the rankings as their yield is artificially higher than EA or even SCEA. If you accepted 1000 kids in RD say and then moved 20% of them to ED, your yield goes up, your acceptance rate goes down, even though nothing in the class has changed, it’s the same students. Here’s a tiering of schools by early action vs decision:
HYPSM - all early action, honestly these are schools that don’t have to worry about yield, except against each other
early action, sc or flexible - chicago, caltech, georgetown, uva, notre dame, the other main component in US News is reputation, so you have to figure all these schools do well in reputation to make up for having EA. Especially Chicago, which has to have a superb reputation to be in the top-5 once in a while.
early decision - the other five ivies, northwestern, rice, duke, jhu, cmu
UCs don’t have any kind of early program.
So if you monitor if any of the ED colleges move more students to early, they should move up, without the college changing one bit.
@theloniusmonk Anything that is self reported is highly suspect to the point of being unusable. Literally can be manipulated by anyone with a computer and I wouldn’t want to even talk about over and under representations. I agree that USNWR can be manipulated by admissions but acceptance rate is only 10% of the 12.5% of the total weight which is given for student selectivity, the other 90% is based on ACT/SAT scores of incoming class and high school rank. Most of the weighting is reputation, grad and retention rates, faculty resources, and alumni giving. Alumni giving counts for 5%, 4 times as much as acceptance rate. Might want to shore up there before going for something that counts for 1.25%. I don’t see where yield is even represented in the criteria so can you show that to me??? Probably should actually read the criteria before commenting on it. Just sayin.
@theloniusmonk that is true, but the catch for ED is to get top-notch students to actually be willing to commit to the school. Some schools are very good at doing just that, which this is also a form of revealed preference. Btw SCEA also protects yield, not by as much as ED, but it also does.
@CU123 - looks like you’re right, yield is out, I did a quick search on and it may have been eliminated because it was highly, if not fully, correlated with acceptance rate. If yield goes up, acceptance rate goes down, so no need to have both. Give that though, colleges have on record used ED to lower acceptance rate simply to go up in the rankings.
@penn95, why would top-notch students who could get into one of HYPSM, apply anywhere else ED, if they can get into one of those schools, they’re not applying ED to any other ivy. They may still choose to not attend one of HYPSM, but would definitely want the option.
Student selectivity is worth 1/8 of the USNews formula. The largest chunk of that is test scores, about 8% of the total score. So if a school wanted to game the USNews ranking through admissions, they’d admit higher test scores. Then they’d check that students are in the top 10% of their class (~3% of the total). Last, they’d lower their admit rate – so, increase the number of apps or decrease class sizes. Admit rate is a whopping 1.25% of the score.
USNews’ main aim is to attempt to quantify the overall academic quality at a school. They do take alumni giving into account, which points to overall satisfaction… and endowment, which pays for things in addition to academics… but mostly they try to define academic strength at the undergrad level.
Personally I use USNWR rankings because I like their criteria ...
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Me too (for the most part.) I’d chuck alumni giving and the GC scores.
... but that is ONLY a starting point.
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Agree. It’s good enough for purposes of building an initial set of realistic, high-quality reach-match-safety schools (assuming you only recognize a few “top” colleges, or local colleges, and want “more like this”.)
@Penn95 You really are clueless and totally inconsistent. Clearly you are on a UChicago bashing missio0n. Spour grapes? . UChicago Law school was ranked second for several decades. It lost a spot or two for a while as its faculty was poached. I t has always been in top five. Chicago has been top business schools forever including top 3/2. You simply must face the fact that UPenn if a fine lesser Ivy. It has Wharton and all the rest is pretty party school driven. Penn is weak in numerous academic subjects. It is a professional school, and that’s fine. Chicago’ yield this year will be sky high and entering class will have highest test scores ever. (It already leads the nation with Cal tech in that field.)
Guys, Chicago and Penn are peers. Both are very good at a lot of things; Penn isn’t just Wharton and Chicago isn’t just Econ. They just have different academic and social vibes. Can we agree on those points?