An embarrassment of riches indeed!
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Maybe, but I also think the Jesuit model legitimately encourages good teaching.
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From @citivas -“ Ultimately people need to adult and take responsibility for their actions and not cede it to some business model marketing to them. Of course many don’t…”
Sad but true. Every time we read - I’m applying only to top 20s - chance me.
100% agreed. I have no clue how it ends for my kids in 20 years. If they are happy and can afford life - it’s a win.
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This is why I sincerely think every kid who has the numbers to get admitted to SOME selective US colleges that their family can comfortably afford is already a winner. Because that is already a great deal.
Once that condition is met, if they can then make further choices to get an even better deal, awesome. But that is taking a great thing and making it even better, and as such it is not necessary to make it a great thing in the first place.
So it just kills me that some families and kids are stuck in the mindset that they will be failures if they don’t get admitted to some small set of “top” US colleges. That’s just not remotely accurate, we have so many more colleges which can be great for the right student/family. And no kid should feel like a failure because they make use of such an opportunity.
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USNews needs to be honest that this ranking is primarily driven by tuition cost. If the Ivies didn’t scale their cost based on parental income or UF and UNC were the same “cost” as UVA or UM these rankings would look starkly different.
And I understand that tuition has risen at a rate significantly greater than COL but when your denominator is tuition that drives your ROI up higher with greater or equivalent outcomes. Look at where UNC and UF vs UM and UVA are on Payscale for salaries.
UNC - 312
UF - 212
UM - 110
UVA - 66
It’s a farce…don’t try to say you are representing the “best colleges” because most will infer strongest outcomes and academics. They need to be specific like others used to be I.e. Best Bang for your buck, etc
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Oh, I am not making it up. I personally know MIT PhD graduate who removed his PhD from his resume because he could not find a job in the Boston area… Once he removed it, he found a job. 
Oh, I wasn’t referring to that part, but the other part about differential pay.
Will start a thread when I am free.
From working at major firms around the US I can say that IVY grads will hug the coasts and rarely take jobs in between. Chicago was dominated by BIG grads plus ND. Also few BIG grads really gravitate to NYC or Cali.
Where do UChicago grads go? Or were you hearkening back a hundred years or so and lumping them in with the Big Ten?
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They dont exist in the real world. Did some recruiting at their B School BITD. Never hired one. Maybe they go to NY and work as quants. I dont think most of their students even come from the midwest.
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Dubious accuracy of self-reported data aside, it is pointless to compare Payscale salaries without accounting for factors like COL and academic offerings.
For example, roughly ~27% of UVA undergrads and ~31% of Michigan undergrads are studying engineering, business, architecture, or nursing – all of which offer pretty decent post-graduation salaries – compared to only ~12% of undergrads at UNC Chapel Hill (which doesn’t even have architecture or engineering schools).
One of the many flaws. We agree on that point.
Here is W&L’s response to the drop in the ranking.
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Well, it seems they do exist, and many, in fact, stay in the Midwest.
The official source is > shoot-from-the-hip, opinionated and dated anecdata:
I’m guessing that 39% includes a few who choose to stay in Chicago. But it’s a wild guess. 
And of course you’d expect the city to be dominated by Big 10 grads because most of the schools in the Big 10 are huge, whereas Univ. of Chicago hovers at around 7,500 undergrads.
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With all the colleges having their own LinkedIn posts, I can’t find the info but I have to laugh at the prospect of some intern data gatherer and probably some staff who puts this together - I’d love to see their schools attended - as being responsible for the data compilation that has some schools shivering in fear.
It’s funny how the entirety of their sometimes billions of dollars and certainly hundreds of millions of dollar existence can be so fragile reputationally.
Think of it this way: it’s their Wall Street, and the rankings are their quarterly earnings, except they don’t have quarterly earnings, so they have to get and give all the bad news or all the good news, as the case may be, all at once.
Thinking about it that way it’s no surprise at all that people get puckered up, especially school presidents whose full time job is to have his/her hand out on bended knee to alumni, the people who care most about the news.
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And analogous to corporate earrings, maybe compensation for the administrators is based in part on the rankings?
it would not surprise me in the least if some admin gets some kind of bonus or other kicker for progress in the rankings. I would expect this to be more of a likelihood at larger schools, but that’s just supposing on my part. Can you imagine it’s not on the Northeastern president’s goal list? And after all the fireworks, Vandy’s?
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As a parent of a class of 2024, I’m wondering how admissions priorities are going to be affected at schools like Dartmouth, NYU, Tulane, Vandy. etc. Seems ridiculous to imagine that a single ranking would prompt such a significant alteration in university priorities, but we know it will happen… Any predictions on what we’ll see for this cycle in terms of how the freshman profile will change at the affected schools?
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Vandy is a non-event. They are 18 but I might wonder, do I want to spend my hard earn $$ when the administration whines like a 5 year old that didn’t get their way.
Dartmouth is an Ivy - they could be 118 - it wouldn’t matter.
NYU has, in my opinion, always been overrated but they have NYC as a draw and will be fine.
Tulane will do what they do.
In the end, nothing will change this year.
Why - like businesses, colleges will be reactive and no proactive - so if they suffer any, they’ll adjust after the fact but they’ll continue their current course and hope this is a non-event which it likely will be - especially at the first three.
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