A variety of ways, but admission rates can be among the most misleading for many reasons.
For example, Berkeley and UCLA have very misleadingly low admit rates. Both great schools so let’s not get on a tangent, but they are the two top publics in Cal, a popular location, and apply to all the UCsbon one form is as simple as checking a box. So the kid who is crossing his fingers to get into UC Santa Cruz is also applying to two schools that he has less than a 1% chance of getting into. So year in and year out they have artificially inflated denominators. Even Harvard with all its name recondition does not enjoy that advantage because you have to bother with the application. Then there’s U Chicago, that has become quite good at convincing every kid they really do have a chance, all for the sake of inflating their denominator to keep up with Stanford’s admission rate.
I’d say admit rate coupled with qualification stats of their entering student body. And adding some measure of high school course rigor would really help.
Good to see that you are not going by pure admissions rates. At the same time, you stated that it appears that this list did not use selectivity as a major ranking determinant. This is true, but I feel like all of the top 10 schools for this list are pretty selective (except for maybe BYU).
They show no one getting merit aid at University of Chicago, when clearly there is a lot of merit aid at Chicago.
The list basically give lots of credit for schools who discount tuition on provide more aid in general. The difference between some schools ranked in the 50s and others in 200s is MINIMAL.
@OHMomof2
Thanks for the LAC list. One modification: St. John’s University, which is a LAC, is ranked 25th, so I think it should be third on your list. Although it is ranked in the national LAC lists, it is not an elite school, making it another unusual institution on the list.
This is a list in Money magazine, making financial matters, both paying tuition and earnings after graduation, the important factors. If Architectural Digest rated colleges, it would look for the most beautiful or the most interesting buildings. There are lists for the best small town colleges, the best food in dorms, most beautiful girls, most books in the library. There is no one right poll, not one ranking that is ‘the’ correct one. I find USNWR use of #of apps to be rather useless, or the yield rate.
Use the list which helps you or your child select the best college. Colleges like to brag they are ‘ranked in the top 10 of schools in the southeast’ or ‘named best for most beautiful cheerleaders’ or’best party school’so magazines and poll creates will continue to come up with rankings.
@MiddleburyDad2, the fall admittance rate that USNews reports can be misleading and manipulated in all sorts of ways. Columbia doesn’t count a big part of their undergraduate student body (those in SGS, which has a much higher admit rate). Cornell and USC give out guaranteed transfers so those count as denies instead of admits in the fall statistics (and USC takes a ton of transfers).
I agree that admit rates and selectivity is hard to pin down with across-the-board measures, but some level of analysis of how hard a given school is to get into is relevant. It’s not the only thing, but it matters.
@MiddleburyDad2, relevant when crafting an application strategy, maybe.
Otherwise, how is it relevant when a big chunk of the student body came in through other means? Almost half of the bachelors that USC awards doesn’t go to the fall admits that USC reports admit rate and other stats for. So what does USC’s admit rate tell you?
Lists like this are increasingly relevant with the explosion in college costs. College is one of the few products where different people pay vastly different prices for the same thing.
I have to agree with @GTAustin , the list is very useful in comparing your state flagship vs. private schools. Our state flagship (Michigan) has an instate yield of > 80%, which is no surprise considering the huge price difference for full pay in-state students vs OOS publics and privates. I expect that other families have similar experiences.
The top of the list mostly agrees with many of the global university lists. I also like that the admission/selectivity issue has little bearing on this list.
Considering that financial circumstances will differ (differing amount of fin aid or no; differing amount of merit aid or no; in-state or not), this list is near worthless.
Assuming a school’s admission rate is accurately and fairly reported, it is interesting for several reasons.
First, a low admission rate and high average scores is a signal to applicants that a school may have many attractive qualities (such as top faculty, excellent facilities, relatively small classes, good need-based aid, etc.) In a free market with abundant, reasonably accurate, publicly available information, it is reasonable to expect that the best students will tend to gravitate to the best colleges. Second, being surrounded by highly capable peers may have significant effects on the learning environment. The pace of instruction will tend to be faster; classroom and dining hall discussions may be more interesting; the extracurricular environment will tend to be richer. Third, admission selectivity is a filtering and signaling mechanism to employers and grad schools. Some of the highest paying employers (investment banks in particular) recruit almost exclusively at the most selective schools. In effect, they let the college admission office do their employee screening.
Student selectivity counts for only 12.5% of the USNWR rankings. Forbes doesn’t use it at all.
Yet if you ranked only by average SAT M+CR scores, you’d come rather close to generating the same set of top colleges that both USN and Forbes identify.
Nevertheless, it must be the case that if you measure relevant outcomes, there must be some schools that overperform and some that underperform with respect to student selectivity (or with respect to cost). Although any college ranking is liable to distortion and error, still, it’s potentially very helpful to be able to identify schools that are very good but not too expensive, or very good but not too selective. There are just too many colleges to evaluate them all one by one in depth (unless you want to limit yourself to the local market).
What I like about this list is that a greater focus is on the outcome and reinforces the notion that you can still be successful without going to a tippy top school. The fact that Texas A&M does well on this list as well as in the #1 spot on the list for schools that kids can actually get into is great. Texas A&M has lower SAT/ACT scores but still their graduates are successful. Maybe this list as well as other similar rankings can allow both parents and students to look broader for better fits both financially and academically without the constant pressure to be accepted to a “top ranked school per USNWR”. I was astounded at St. Mary’s in SA position. Never would have considered it previously, but now it would as least take a look.
It is hard to generalize the cost of a public college and use it in any ranking. For us, UMich is always the best value from in state. They should have separated the ranking of public college into in-state and OOS.