New University Prestige Rankings

College Search & Selection
21

<p>That’s fine. But counselors are not going to be deciding where I work.</p>

<p>I mean, let’s be honest, counselors have decided to dedicate their life to being a high school employee who helps high school kids attend college; the majority of whom will probably end up going to a state flagship or community college albeit for that rate 1% who decide to go out of state.</p>

<p>It’s noble that they have dedicated their life to helping high schoolers. Seriously, it’s sublime. But the majority of high school counselors aren’t necessarily from “elite privates.” USNWR does it haphazardly. The reason for their number is to make something statistically significant. And yes, the scores could reflect high school counselors. But my argument is that post graduation and +20 years, you won’t be at a cocktail party with your high school counselor.</p>

<p>Much like the opinion of the opinion of a 10 year old, or the drug addict, or my high school math teacher don’t matter. That’s not to say high school counselors are 10 year olds or drug addicts or whatever. Quite the antithesis. And that’s not to say that there aren’t brilliant high school counselors. There are.</p>

<p>But in a world where 29% of Americans can’t name the sitting Vice President or 46% can’t define the Bill of Rights, I have come to realize that the individuals whose opinions actually matter for prestige, namely employers, are seldom represented. And if they are, it’s almost always imperfect.</p>

22

<p>

The survey was performed by Gallup. They know how to take surveys. </p>

<p>They asked an open ended question to name the best US university overall and a backup.</p>

<p>

</p>

<p>You said you wanted the opinion of the general public…this is the only survey I’ve seen of the general public. Why are you arguing with the subjective opinion of “everyone”?</p>

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<p>^I understand. Which is why USNWR constructed the counselor rankings from America’s Best High Schools. These are the Top 100 Gold Medal High Schools in America.</p>

<p>

[America’s</a> Best High Schools: Gold Medal List - US News and World Report](<a href=“http://education.usnews.rankingsandreviews.com/education/high-schools/articles/2009/12/09/americas-best-high-schools-gold-medal-list]America’s”>http://education.usnews.rankingsandreviews.com/education/high-schools/articles/2009/12/09/americas-best-high-schools-gold-medal-list)</p>

<p>These schools send most of their students to elite universities</p>

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</p>

<p>You are right. Perhaps the audience I was targeting are people who are inside the “college game.”
As buzzers pointed out, I don’t care about the opinions of a drug addict, a prostitute, a cab worker, etc.
But perhaps I do value a fellow CCer’s view on college because he is in the “college game” along with me.
And people who play the “college game” are those in college (deans, students, etc) and those in high school (principal, counselors, students, etc). That’s what I mean by public opinion.
Employers play it too. Especially entry level employers. But I don’t have data on that. </p>

<p>I’m sorry I wasn’t too specific. As self-conceited as I am, I do realize that the vast majority of America have trouble naming the Vice President and cannot define the Bill of Rights. I also realize that they don’t care about prestige of universities but of the gas prices that are rising.</p>

25

<p>I would never even consider majoring in computer engineering, but okay, I’ll play along.</p>

<p>Yale, for a ton of reasons that have nothing to do with prestige. </p>

<p>UIUC has a 17:1 student-faculty ratio, 7% out of state students, 5.6% international enrollment, a student body size of over 30,000, huge greek life, and a far lower caliber student body than Yale.</p>

<p>Yale has a 6:1 student-faculty ratio, 94% out of state students, 8.9% international enrollment, a student body of under 6,000, residential college system, and a far higher caliber student body than UIUC.</p>

<p>Yale is the easy choice on academics alone. Add in quality of life factors and it becomes even easier to choose.</p>

26

<p>To everyone flipping out about the Gallup Poll, it’s from 2003. We now live in 2011. Since 2003 we still have some occupancy in Iraq, we had a major economic downturn, we elected a black guy president, and the unfortunate rise of “snookie” and Justin Bieber.</p>

<p>To MrPrince, that ranking on high schools uses the number of students who took AP tests. A lot of criticism has been given to high school rankings because schools will have kids take AP exams, even if they didn’t ever take the class (the school covers the charges). They don’t use the performance of students on the test, just the number of kids who take the test. That doesn’t really speak much to me about a high school.</p>

27

<p>

Yes, very true. Gallup hasn’t conducted a new poll…so, it’s currently best we got for general public opinion.</p>

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</p>

<p>Well good for you Manarius. Instead, I could ask you college X and college Y which are the same size, same location level (How about Cornell and UNC Chapel Hill for ug business?)
The campus looks beautiful in both universities. Both universities have a huge university feel. And most people cannot decide. USually people go for the more prestigious university.</p>

<p>I know this is subjective tonality and may come as a shock to you, but the academics you’ve described (one that has completely disregarded rankings) and prestige have a thin line inbetween them. It’s easy to confuse them.
My point is that people don’t maturely think like you. To a lot of people, prestige is important. Just stick around CC a little longer after decisions period. You’ll find hordes of prestige battles. And I’m here to solve that.</p>

29

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</p>

<p>manarius, can you help us a little and tell us how you determined the bold above?</p>

<p>thanks</p>

30

<p>^You mean other than common sense? Okay.</p>

<p>Yale Middle 50% scores:
CR- 700-800
M- 700-780
W- 700-790</p>

<p>ACT- 30-34</p>

<p>96% in top 10% of high school class.</p>

<p>UIUC Middle 50% Scores:
CR- 540-660
M- 660-770</p>

<p>ACT- 26-31</p>

<p>57.5% in top 10%</p>

<p>All info taken from 09-10 common data sets</p>

31

<p>I feel this is so trivial that is shouldn’t even have a factor to prospective students, unless they are of the “Martha’s Vineyard Country Club American Royalty WASP” brand.</p>

32

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</p>

<p>manarius, yes, I figured that you would give this type of answer in determining the caliber of the student body</p>

<p>you realize what you have just done, don’t you ?</p>

<p>you stated that you didn’t care about rankings </p>

<p>and when asked about which school you would go to for computer engineering, you used metrics such as </p>

<p>student:faculty ratio,
SAT scores,
ACT scores
top 10% of class </p>

<p>to help in your decision</p>

<p>ALL OF WHICH ARE USED IN DETERMINING THE USNWR RANKINGS…</p>

33

<p>This ranking is silly. What outcome can one actually obtain from a high-prestige school? Usually high-paying employment that is restricted based on so-called target schools. So, the most relevant data would be on schools sending students to fields like investment banking. There’s an effort to produce such data under way here: <a href=“http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/investment-banking/1119871-ug-representation-ib-firm.html[/url]”>http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/investment-banking/1119871-ug-representation-ib-firm.html&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

<p>Yeah, there probably are some people who want to be able to brag to their high school counselors about where they are going to college. Those people are idiots. I’m not sure what you intend to accomplish by pandering to fools.</p>

<p>BTW, I’d take UIUC or Purdue over Yale. Not relevant to this thread, but there you go.</p>

34

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</p>

<p>Alright, let me help you out.</p>

<p>I never once bashed the US News rankings. They are certainly flawed, but there’s not a better ranking out there right now. The “ranking” I had an issue with was the completely useless “prestige ranking” in this thread. The reason that I cited those statistics is because they have a direct and substantial effect on the educational experience. Prestige and reputation do not.</p>

<p>If I was being influenced by rankings here, then I would have picked UIUC by a mile. It is ranked in the top 5 colleges in the country for Computer Engineering, while I don’t believe Yale is inside of the top 20.</p>

35

<p>japanoko, why does your rhetoric always suggest that you’re trying to start an argument with everyone?</p>

36

<p>

But according to YOUR raking, Berkeley is tied with Dartmouth, and Dartmouth is as prestigious as, at least in the real world, 3 other Ivies, isn’t it? In fact, Dartmouth would rival HYPSM in Salary Scale according to payscale.com. You missed that in your criteria, obvously. How can you just disregard what the employers think and what they value!!! They’re often the ones that define how prestigious the school is, not just what the students, HS counselors and professors think. </p>

<p>BTW, where did you get the 4.4 of Berkeley’s Selectivity Ranking?</p>

37

<p>MrPrince, you want the value of the school brand? </p>

<p>Here it is – <a href=“http://www.timeshighereducation.co.uk/Journals/THE/THE/10_March_2011/attachments/Brand%20focus.pdf[/url]”>http://www.timeshighereducation.co.uk/Journals/THE/THE/10_March_2011/attachments/Brand%20focus.pdf&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

38

<p>1) caltech is 4.7 not 4.8, do the math</p>

<p>2) why don’t you use your bucketing scheme (4.9 for first five etc.) for PA as well, right now PA has the largest range and therefore the largest impact on differentiating colleges, your current ranking seems to overvalue PA</p>

39

<p>USNews (Scaled) Selectivity Rankings</p>

<p>4.9
1 Cal Tech
2 Yale
3 Harvard
4 MIT
5 Princeton </p>

<p>4.8
6 Columbia
7 Washington U
8 Harvey Mudd
9 Penn
10 Swarthmore </p>

<p>4.7
11 Stanford
12 Dartmouth
13 Brown
14 Pomona
15 Duke </p>

<p>4.6
16 Williams
17 Amherst
18 Northwestern
19 Georgetown
20 Cornell </p>

<p>4.5
21 Notre Dame
22 Claremont McK
23 Rice
24 Haverford
25 Chicago</p>

<p>4.4
26 UC Berkeley
27 Middlebury
27 Tufts
29 JHU
29 Emory </p>

<p>4.3
31 Bowdoin
32 USC
33 Carleton
34 W&L
35 Vanderbilt </p>

<p>4.2
36 Wesleyan
37 UCLA
38 Carnegie Mel
39 Wellesley
40 Davidson </p>

<p>4.1
41 Lehigh
42 Brandeis
43 Hamilton
44 Vassar
45 U Mich </p>

<p>4.0
46 Boston C
47 W&M
48 Barnard
48 UCSD
50 Oberlin
50 UVA</p>

<p>3.9
52 Bard
53 Scripps
54 Kenyon
55 Grinnell </p>

<p>3.8
56 Colgate
56 Macalester
58 Colby
59 NYU
59 Bucknell </p>

<p>3.7
61 U Rochester
62 UNC
63 Ga Tech
64 Wake Forest
65 Whitman </p>

<p>3.6
66 Bates
67 Holy Cross
68 Lafayette
69 Colorado Col
70 Bryn Mawr </p>

<p>3.5
71 Mt Holyoke
72 Trinity
73 Richmond
74 Navy
75 Furman</p>

40

<p>4.9 Harvard 4.9 | 4.9 | 4.9
4.9 MIT 4.9 | 4.9 | 4.9
4.9 Princeton 4.9 | 4.9 | 4.9
4.86 Yale 4.8 | 4.9 |4.9</p>

<h2>4.83 Stanford 4.9 | 4.9 |4.7</h2>

<p>4.73 Columbia 4.6 | 4.8 | 4.8
4.7 Caltech 4.6 | 4.6 |4.9
4.63 Brown 4.4 | 4.8 | 4.7
4.63 Cornell 4.5 | 4.8 | 4.6
4.63 Penn 4.5 | 4.6 | 4.8
4.6 Duke 4.4 | 4.7 | 4.7
4.56 Dartmouth 4.3 | 4.7 | 4.7
4.56 Johns Hopkins 4.5 | 4.8 | 4.4
4.56 UC Berkeley 4.7 / 4.6 | 4.4
4.53 Chicago 4.6 | 4.5 | 4.5
4.53 Northwestern 4.4 | 4.6 | 4.6</p>

<h2>4.5 Georgetown 4.1 | 4.8 | 4.6</h2>

<p>4.43 Wash U 4.1 | 4.4 |4.8
4.33 Carnegie Mellon 4.2 | 4.6 | 4.2
4.33 Notre Dame 3.9 | 4.6 | 4.5
4.33 Rice 4.1 | 4.4 | 4.5
4.3 Michigan 4.4 | 4.4 | 4.1
4.3 Vanderbilt 4.1 | 4.5 | 4.3
4.26 Emory 4.0 | 4.4 | 4.4
4.23 UCLA 4.2 | 4.3 | 4.2
4.23 USC 4.0 | 4.4 | 4.3
4.2 UVA 4.3 | 4.3 | 4.0
4.16 Tufts 3.6 | 4.5 | 4.4</p>

<h2>4.06 UNC Chapel Hill 4.1 | 4.4 | 3.7</h2>

<p>3.83 Wake Forest 3.5 | 4.3 | 3.7</p>

<p>I’m so sorry. You’re absolutely right, collegeconfidentialcol. But I won’t use the bucketing scheme for PA. PA is absolutely the most important ranking of the 3 IMO. So there is no reason to bucket it.</p>