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I did that last night for myself, LOL. I already had it from before, so just had to update the numbers.
It is of course methodologically meaningless, but it was fun nonetheless. Mine isn’t perfect because I left out the all women or military academies, though that would be easy to fix. But otherwise pretty complete for the top 50 or so. I aggregated the 4 best known US rankings (USN, Niche, Forbes, WSJ) and both averaged their scores and computed the median score. Arguably the median is more relevant since many colleges had an outlier score among the 4.
If you cared, I could summarize the top 10-20 but assumed no one would so didn’t…
(To be clear, I generally don’t believe in the rankings, so I did this purely to see if any surprising patterns emerged and not because I believe its of any real insight.)
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Of course, a ranking formula also requires that the variables be quantifiable.
Or could they do something like have each college send an application for ranking with various essays in addition to quantifiable measures, and then assign two application readers to score each application. Then send all of the scored applications to a ranking committee that makes decisions behind closed doors.
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"Please answer the following prompt in 500 words or fewer:
Describe a situation in which your institution made a decision that impacted the lives of others."
lol
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Strong pass.
Yet most rankings come to relatively similar conclusions.
I have a feeling that Vanderbilt will wish they had stepped aside for an hour or a day, calmed down, and never hit the “send” key.
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“Lady doth protest too much”?
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Money and affordability. They have the money and can afford a top OOS public or private. It’s also a small state and going away is a long held tradition.
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I don’t see anything objectionable here. When nearly every private outside the T15 moves down, it’s due to systematic changes and not the fault of an individual institution.
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I think the LACs that are not among the very elite are losing market share to the large “complete college experience” schools like the top publics with big-time sports, large awesome college towns, and a diversity of majors.
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I am not a Merced skeptic. We visited and toured. We looked at it as a possibility. My child fell in love with, and was accepted to, another school so didn’t end up at UCM.
I don’t want to turn this thread into one discussing the pro and cons of UCM. I’ll direct you to a some recent posts on the UCM forum.
Bobcat Day April 24, 2023
Recent Visit April 14, 2023
Honest Opinion from UCM Skeptic April 22, 2022
No need, my point was simply that, as skeptical as I am of college ratings, I do hope this recognition of UC Merced gets some more additional consideration from applicants. Too often we see UC applicants say things like, I’d be happy anywhere…except Merced. And I always thought it was a shame. It’s not for everywhere, but it could work well for some, but too few will even open their minds to it to ever find out. If something positive can come from these ratings, I hope that it’s getting some of these really solid schools more serious consideration by a wider applicant pool, rather being viewed as some kind of UC purgatory.
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I grew up about 40 miles north of Merced in a similar town. Personally I would not want to go to school in anything remotely like my home town.
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Another version. 2023 National University Rankings | Washington Monthly
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UC Merced definitely needs some love. Props to all the UC’s for continously improving. Congratulations to UC Riverside for getting accepted to the exclusive club that is the AAU membership.
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are the UC’s continuously improving? or do you mean moving up in the ranks? is that the same thing?
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Deleted
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Is it me or Georgetown is way up?
Many of us would argue that the real “complete college experience” would very much include attendance at a small college with a great student to teacher ratio, ample opportunity for meaningful research and faculty interaction, focus on student development, plenty of sports and other activities involving classmates you actually know and rightfully view as a student peer (as opposed to professional league farm system players), and the many wonderful communities in which many of these schools are located.
You may be right about market share. Do you have a cite?
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