@Hapworth re: your post #130: This thread will never make it to 8 pages.
This tread made me run upstairs and pull out last years Fiske book to see the ratings from the school were my daughter ultimately enrolled. I donât think Fiske is perfect but what I do like is while they have ârankingsâ there is no list. So there is no âbestâ school in any category. When we looked through it we didnât think, âOh, Vanderbilt has 4 pens and Rice has 5 so RIce must be a better school.â We did look at the ratings to get a general idea of whether they seemed to have good academics and why maybe 1 school would have 2 pens and another would have 5. But youâd have to read the descriptions to get to that (or look at other sources). We were curious which were considered âpartyâ schools, etc. But mostly, we appreciated the write-ups on each school. Itâs the type of information you donât get anywhere else. And itâs mostly positive which we liked. It helped us to see what students liked about the schools they chose and gave us an idea of the environment there.
The school where my daughter ended up was not really on her radar at first. Sheâd heard of it and kept seeing it when researching schools in her major. And the description in the Fiske guide was intriguing to her. But at one point she took it off her list because she was running out of time and energy in the application process, she hadnât taken the recommended SAT subject tests and she hadnât visited and they were big on demonstrated interest. She was completely done with applying and about a week before the deadline announced she regretted not applying there and thought she was going to give it a shot. We supported her but told her not to get her hopes up because of the tests and lack of demonstrated interest, and it was generally a reach school. She was shocked when admitted and after a visit decided it was a great fit for her. The point of this long story is that Iâm not sure this school would have been on her radar if it wasnât for Fiske. It gave her a picture of the school that I would say is relatively accurate that she wouldnât have found anywhere else unless actively looking for it.
P.S. We made it to 8 pages!
As a counter to one of the posts.
Vanderbilt Notre Dame Boston College are certainly beautiful campuses and facilities. As warm weather destinations not so much.
UNC and Emory are a bit milder but really humid and hot on the shoulders of the school year.
Itâs not like weather experiences by most of the southern California schools as a comparison.
Ha! you were wrong - your 5 pen rating has been reduced to a 4.5 pen rating.
On a slightly more serious note, and off my soapbox - Fiske is, essentially, a collection of summaries of how colleges self-describe. So long as one takes into consideration that these arenât âhonest, unbiasedâ evaluations but collections of selling points by administrators and the most satisfied students, it is useful.
I still have issues with the opacity of their categories and the descriptions of the colleges which they choose to review as âthe most selectiveâ. I am pretty sure that their list has a >90% overlap with the list of colleges that the Raj Chetty et al. identified as the preferred colleges for the kids from the wealthiest families.
Again, Fiske claims that they do not consider âprestigeâ, but they very clearly selected their list of colleges to review based on these being the 320 or so most âprestigiousâ colleges in the USA + the colleges in the UK and in Canada which people in the USA perceive as âprestigiousâ.
However, for those 320 colleges, the Fiske guide seems like a decent set of summaries of the (mostly) positive aspects of each of these colleges. Just ignore the pens.
I will start scoring with penguins instead, since everybody loves penguins.
???
Fiske is just a book with data in it. Quibble about the source or the usefulness or quality. Use it or donât use it. Lament that it misleads the gullible and inexperienced. All valid points. It is a summary of incredibly complex information generated by real human beings, and therefore inherently inaccurate. Should go without saying that there is no right answer to âwhat is best school?â
FWIW, I like reading the lists, and think there is insight to be had. Perfect? No. Embedded bias? Of course. If someone takes any resource as gospel, without any critical evaluation, that is on them.
But why people get so riled up about this to get mean or angry to strangers on the internet, I have no idea. It is just a book.
MODERATORâS NOTE:
Feel free to critique the source material but refrain from debating with individual posters. And no further comparisons to USNWR.
I think itâs worth reminding folk that the Fiske book does not contain lists. The lists in this thread were created by the OP. The book itself is meant to be thumbed through at oneâs leisure, one college at a time. I think the authors would be embarrassed to know we were reducing it to a few decimal points on a 5 point scale.
Iâm not a big prestige person. I got the Fiske guide after several neighbors with older kids recommended it, saying they found the descriptions to be spot on. TBHâŠnever even paid any attention to pens until this thread!
It may be related to to the earlier comments that x.5 scores were added due to feedback. All schools previouly were 3, 4, 5 but based on feedback they added .5 scores. They then segmented schools so that some of the 4âs became 4.5âs while others became 4.0âs
The Fiske ratings for Academics is based on âa judgment about the overall academic climate of the institution, including its reputation in the academic world, the quality of the faculty, the level of teaching and research, the academic ability of students, the quality of libraries and other facilities, and the level of academic seriousness among students and faculty membersâ.
âAn academics rating of four pens suggests that the institution is above average even by these standards and that is has some particularly distinguishing academic feature, such as especially rich course offerings or an especially serious academic atmosphere.â
Iâm sorry, but making these weighty number of pen assignments in which so many people take stock based on such comical criteria as âlevel of academic seriousnessâ and âespecially serious academic atmosphere.â?? I just cant get the image of Animal House out of my mind hearing these pompous, pretentious standards that sound like they were written by undergraduates at Faber College seeking to lampoon this entire exercise.
As with any rating of this type, the challenge is that itâs an âoverallâ rating and no one goes to a college to get an overall degree, equally weighted in all majors offered.
Purdue was mentioned earlier. Looked at in aggregate, averaging all of the programs, the rating may be appropriate. If youâre looking to be a Mechanical Engineering major, I donât think many people would put it â1.5 pensâ behind Haverford College, just to pick one.
The descriptions of each program are probably the most valuable part of the book and kudos to them for not summing everything up in a "rankingâ or âlistâ. Assigning âpensâ as a rating is probably a marketing/marketplace necessity.
I think that the reason why some get upset over the pen rating system for academics is simply because they are assessing schools primarily based upon this rating and a favorite school was not included in the category that the reader deemed warranted.
The Fiske Guide also gives ratings for Social Life & for Quality of Life.
The Fiske Guide To Colleges urges readers to place its ratings in context by reading the accompanying 3 page write-up for each school.
It is also important to note that the Fiske Guide To Colleges is not a system of rating and then ranking colleges & universities. It is a guidebook designed to help consumers better understand their options in the field of higher education. How any individual reader organizes or uses the information provided is up to that person.
It is fine to challenge & question any aspect of the Fiske Guide To Colleges 2020 edition. After all, that is a primary purpose of education. But it is also important how one challenges & questions the information presented.
If the Fiske Guide results in readersâ investigation of new schools or causes readers to reassess or to reaffirm already held beliefs about a particular school, then it has served a worthy purpose.
Agree with this. The Fiske Guide isnât even available online like the others and doesnât present itself as a rating system. The school narratives are the core of the guide, the pens just a minor, but unique and interesting, feature that group schools together in the opinion of the author.
DEAN WORMER: Youâre out! Finished at Faber! Expelled! I want you off this campus at 9:00 Monday morning! And Iâm sure youâll be happy to know that I have notified your local draft boards and told them that you are now all, ALL eligible for military service.
This comes right after the part that makes me laugh the hardest: Blutarskyâs GPA, after being at Faber for something like six years: zero POINT zero.
But D-Day didnât even have a GPA. :lol:
Where are the âmiddleâ UCs?
I see UCs Berkeley, Los Angeles, and San Diego ranked in the Fiske top academic group, which is usual for them in the various ranking systems. But how many pens did Fiske award to UCs Davis, Irivne, and Santa Barbara?
They ususally do pretty well in most college ranking systems, but on this thread I didnât see them in any academic group. Did I miss them? Please advise.
University of California at Davis (UC-Davis):
4 Pens for Academics
3 Telephones for Social Life
4 Stars for Quality of Life
âBicycles are the norm at Davis. Donât come without one.â
ââŠDavis scientists âŠdiscovered how to optimize grape growing for Californiaâs wine industry.â
âThe closest thing to a cow college in the UC system, but with a cultured upscale feel.â
âPremed, prevet, food scienceâyou name it. If the subject lives and breathes, you can study it here. A small-town alternative to the bright lights of UC-Berkeley and UCLAâŠthe work is hard.â
Overlaps = the 8 other UCs.
UC-Santa Barbara:
4 Pens for Academics
4 Telephones for Social Life
4 Stars for Quality of Life
UC-Santa Barbara has the same ratings as does Vanderbilt University although they are not overlap schools.
Overlaps: UCLA, UC-San Diego, UCal-Berkeley, UC-Irvine, & UC-Davis.
âUC Santa Barbaraâs campus 1,000 acre campus is bordered on two sides by the Pacific Ocean.â
UC-Irvine:
4 Pens for Academics
2 Telephones for Social Life
3 Stars for Quality of Life
Overlaps = the other 8 UCs.
âPremed is the featured attraction, along with computer science and engineering.â
âYou have to find the social life on this campus. It wonât find you.â