For both. Good ranking from Times, QS and ARWU can enhance the reputation of a school both domestic and globally. I think when US New did the reputation survey, it helped some schools.
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Perhaps there are additional academic metrics that are weighted between 0.5-3%, though I don’t know. But I think the reputation survey is the big area where the “peer quality” effect is going to be grabbed. Whether it’s accurate or not is something else entirely, but if a school has a low admissions rate (even if not a factor for USNWR ranks anymore), it probably does impact the impression of folks filling out the survey.
Additionally, I think it would be worth including measurements on how students perform on certifications when students are required to pass licensure tests, including how the students’ performance on those licensure exams differs from what would have been projected based on the students’ background/tests upon entering the university.
I do think it’s worth reflecting on what seeking “peer quality” means and its impacts on our country. I totally understand the desire to have intellectual peers and the intellectual stimulation that can create. But I think there are a couple of things to think about:
- What do we mean by academic peers?
- How many instances of students who “don’t test well” do we know where we remain impressed with them intellectually?
- How many instances do we know of people who do test well who are not laser-focused academically but make valuable intellectual contributions to a discussion?
- How much intellectual stimulation is created by diverse viewpoints? People can think about what types of social and academic interactions your students have experienced already. Most public schools in the U.S. are based on location and gathering students from the same neighborhood(s), which generally have very similar incomes, race, educational levels, and increasingly, political beliefs, etc. The same can be said for private schools, except that students may be coming from a wider geographic area. Generally, there are bubbles that we are in, and if seeking a student population that has the “peer quality” sought, are our students being kept in a similar bubble? When we think about our country, how much of the division is there because there hasn’t been sufficient interaction between bubbles? (Rural vs suburban vs urban, coasts vs. inland, red vs. blue, in addition to religion, socioeconomics, race, educational backgrounds, etc.)
USNWR noted that it dropped high school class rank as a factor in part due to a large increase over time in high schools that don’t rank. So apparently it didn’t add as much data value as it used to.
Leaving in standardized test scores among admitted students feels like something ripe for manipulation in the test-optional world. Perhaps not, though, since everyone’s CDS reported 25-75 range keeps going up due to test-optional policies. I guess as long as they figure out a way to equitably compare TO schools to those that revert to requiring SAT/ACT scores it doesn’t matter.
Either way, I agree with you both that the value some higher education consumers place on selectivity and high school performance of admitted students seems underrepresented in the current algorithm. May not matter in the top 20 or so, I guess, since they’re all absurdly difficult to get into these days, but at other rungs of the ladder it might be a differentiator.
Harvard, the second “best” school in Cambridge, Massachusetts.
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The irony is that I expect many ‘peers’ who fill out the survey have been biased by rankings, at least to some extent. It’s one big circular error.
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most parents who follow this closely want their kids to have the best OUTCOMES possible; be it law school, med school, finance, grad school or just income after college. No one really cares if their kid goes to the school with the “smartest” students but gets Bs (since they will not get into top med schools or law schools, or even finance after so-so grades). That is why ALL the schools (except for perhaps cal tech and MIT have MASSIVE grade inflation. The “market” doesn’t care which school has the “best” students, only which have the best outcomes. (also likely why WSJ went that way). The hardest part of harvard is getting in.
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and “reputation” is not nearly as important as LSAT or MCAT scores, so USNWR really needs to drop that.
Undoubtedly so.
This circular logic is widespread even among the general public.
Ask someone to name the best schools in the country (they’ll name the usual suspects). Now ask how they know those are the best. They’ll say because they always rank at the top of lists of best schools.
“Well, why do they rank at the top?”
“Because they’re the best schools.”
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The 1=“Marginal” / 5=“Distinguished” reputation survey seems to correlated more with a combination of past USNWR ranking and grad school research reputation than admission selectivity. For example, in a previous year, the highest scoring colleges were as follows. Berkeley is ranked in the same range as HYPSM, yet Berkley is notably less selective than HYPSM. A similar pattern occurs further down the list, which public flagships doing better than their USNWR ranking.
1 . Harvard, MIT, Stanford – 4.9 out of 5
4. Princeton, Yale – 4.8 out of 5
6. Berkeley – 4.7 out of 5
Schools for which reputation survey was an especially strong point compared to USNWR ranking
- UT Austin – 25 places higher
- Wisconsin – 19 places higher
- Michigan – 16 places higher
- Berkeley – 15 places higher
- GeorgiaTech – 14 places higher
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if you can get through Berkeley with an A- GPA you certainly will have more grit and problem solving skills than a vanderbilt grad with the same GPA.
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Boom. Mike drop.
Yeah, Wesleyan only has about 200 grad students in a limited number of departments. So obviously that is a very different situation from a research university like Princeton, although also a distinction from a pure LAC like Swarthmore.
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So I think you are just confirming none of this rankings business really makes sense for that purpose.
What sorts of pros and cons are presented by different formats of institutions very much depends on your field-specific goals for your college education, and your goals for your next steps after college.
So there is no one right answer as to whether Princeton should be considered along with Yale, or Swarthmore, or both, or neither. It all just depends on the individual student.
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Ironic as it may be it seems the most prolific participants in this thread tend to be those that say they care the least.
In the real world that also seems to be the case as we have friends who always highlight that their kid could have gone to a higher ranked school. It really doesn’t matter as long as the kid is happy.
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…and as long as everyone else knows it!
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Per capita placement studies which include LACs usually find LACs mixed in with research universities right from the top. So it is very unclear that having high-reputation graduate and professional schools creates any sort of halo effect for the college.
I think a good baseline rule is you should care about things like the reputation, selectivity, and so on of whatever unit will admit you and grant your degree. As soon as you start thinking the “prestige” of other units at that institution will somehow rub off on you too, I think you are in very dangerous territory.
A ranking is only “legit” to the extent that the person looking at it agrees with the criteria by which the things were ranked. Inherently that’s the problem with any of these ranks.
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Also, University of Richmond has 700 grad students and offers a MBA program among others. Still ranked as a LAC.
correct. I think most people thought how many kids a school rejects is irrelevant to the educational experience and outcomes of its students (and USNWR everntually dropped seletivity entirely); Reputation is equally useless! I do think after decades of shaming USNWR … e.g. malcolm gladwell comparing the rankings to benefitting talent agency schools (tulane, etc…) vs boot camp schools (UC berkeley, UCLA etc…); I think “most” of the criteria is converging … I do think there is interesting info within
that students can use (for example what’s it like to be at a campus (vanderbilt) where 70% of kids can full pay $87,000 a year…
It has been mentioned a couple of times upthread, but I’ll mention it again: USNWR is working straight off of Carnegie Classifications. It can be argued that maybe they shouldn’t do that, but where each school ended up under this methodology wasn’t their choice. This is why the service academies are in Liberal Arts Colleges, eg.
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