Unique would mean that no one else in the country offers similar experiences. That is not the case. Northeastern is unique in the extent to which the market their co-op experiences, but they are not unique in the availability or breadth of them.
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That is consistent with what we see.
I agree. Plenty of people matriculate to NEU, have good experiences, and have great outcomes. No one seems to question that part. But both things can be true: NEU can offer great things while also artificially inflating what they offer to plump up their rankings/perception.
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I’m curious about your view on this particular point. I think most of us would agree that, even with the variability in school quality and competitiveness, class rank would be a highly relevant factor to asses the strength of the student body at a given school, and to the extent rankings are used, I would join you in favoring rankings that include it. Like you, I think who attends a school is a significant consideration (though I myself have a somewhat broad view of “student quality” that certainly includes academic competence).
But as it stands, I think (I’m not one to spend all day reviewing CDS reports) it’s the case that most schools only receive class rank from 15 to 25% of the applicant pool. If it’s that low, do you think it ought to be weighted heavily in rankings? It’s not a rhetorical question, I promise. I’m genuinely curious about how people view this defect in the data.
In this context, NEU is much more helpful. There are other universities that are abbreviated to NU…NEU helps to eliminate any confusion.
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Seems right, but we’ll see if there are long term effects. Eventually, perception becomes reality, so if Tulane’s down in the '70’s or lower '60’s for awhile, it will come to be conventional wisdom that it’s “not as good” as UConn and Michigan State and whichever schools rose above it in the rankings. Which could hurt applications eventually and perpetuate itself. Because as always-flawed and ridiculous as these things are, they are a shorthand the market uses to differentiate tiers of schools. To the extent some consumers care about prestige and rankings, this is what they look at.
We should actually expand the list, though, beyond just the Wake, NYU, Tufts, Tulane category. Others (mostly thought of as “rich kid”) privates dropped a long way, too: Brandeis, Villanova, Miami (FL), Pepperdine and Fordham, in particular, pop out. My sense is that those schools will have a tougher time recuperating whatever reputational benefits they received from being further up the list than Wake Forest and NYU will. Because they’ve been “passed” by a lot of significantly less expensive options that students can get into.
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Ye It’s like USC now even is ok with U of SC.
And how many DUs are there ? Or OU?
What bugs me is when people have it wrong.
U of Colorado is not UC Boulder, as an example.
NEU is easily identifiable. And a proper abbreviation (imho).
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I think so. Unfortunately, politics has really entered the room where people form opinions of various institutions, including higher ed. Those unfortunate community events you reference, which I agree were not a great look, has had the effect of damaging Oberlin’s rep with a % of the US consuming public.
But it’s still a great school. 49 does seem low for them.
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Is that necessarily a bad thing, though. With applications highly concentrated at a fraction of all colleges, I don’t think it would be the end of the world if the applicant pool was spread among a greater number of schools. So what if XYZ school’s acceptance rate climbs from 15% to 25%? Does a school need to reject the highest possible number of candidates to be a “good” school?
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In fairness, though, I think South Carolinians have probably referred to their flagship public university as USC for a long time.
And both the University of Colorado and University of Denver have only themselves to blame for people getting it wrong, by flipping letters around and referring to themselves as CU and DU! 
Miami University is in Oxford Ohio
University of Miami is in Coral Gables Florida.
But just say to most people “my daughter goes to Miami” they say oh that must be a great place to go visit in the winter….lol
Well - so many - IU, OU, etc. and it’s not just them - there’s several at least DUs.
I mean, NEU makes sense.
But I digress - that doesn’t dictate they are or aren’t a good school.
Let’s be honest - when your school looks good in US News or whatever ranking, you gloat.
When it doesn’t loo as good, you raise holy hell and trash rankings.
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Not really. They are at the very bottom of the rankings for Pell enrollment among selective colleges, and what few Pell students they do enroll too often don’t graduate on time or at all.
If the rankings are as close and compressed as I assume they are, getting low or no points on 5% of the available total can cause a school to take a tumble.
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I think many schools cater to the wealthy - especially those need aware - and personally, that is no a criteria i’d consider. Yes, I want my kids to experience diversity - but at the same time, how many factors can an individual track?
Colleges are businesses - non profits but not charitable organizations. They are there to be financially viable. And yes, many factor in economics into the equation.
They all market, many add unnecessary luxuries and the like.
While their intents may be pure, the reality of life is that most can’t be in reality.
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Fair enough. Can’t argue that as a systematic effect, spreading out some applications wouldn’t be a positive side effect. I was just talking from the POV of individual schools whacked by the new methodology.
I guess yield is where the rubber hits the road for individual institutions. It’s been noted by many of the T25 or so schools that they could fill their classes several times over with identically-credentialed applicants who receive rejection letters (although query how many of those they reject end up at other highly selective places in the T25). How far down the pecking order is that true? At some point I would think the overall quality of incoming freshmen suffers, though I have no idea how many rungs on the rankings ladder (and how many years of lower external perception) it would take for that to kick in.
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I agree USNWR had to drop class rankings as most HSs don’t rank students anymore, for a variety of reasons. The reasons class rank has been dropped by many HSs include the nonstandardization of US high school curricula, incents grade grubbing, incents taking honors/AP/DE classes before students may be ready, rewards competitive behavior rather than collaboration, creates a more intense HS environment, can negatively impact mental health, and may disadvantage lower ranked students at strong high schools in the college admission process.
The first reason and last reason work together in a sense, and are important. There are relatively strong HSs (primarily talking in terms of curriculum) where virtually all graduates attend top 10-15% schools (nearly 3,000 4 year colleges), and there are HSs where the top students are not college ready (notably seen in TX with the top 6% auto-admits, which I’m not saying is the wrong way to admit to the state unis).
I don’t see HSs reversing course on ranking students.
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I think if a school honestly thinks of itself as excellent in terms of student quality, teaching quality, quality of student life, and the effort they put into these things, they have every right to protest at a drop in their ranking. why shouldn’t they have a chance to defend themselves? especially when many of us who have no ties to these schools have a gut reaction that their low ranking might not be an accurate reflection of their quality? we can make fun of them but they might have a point.
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Interesting factoid: nu.edu is neither Northeastern nor Northwestern, it is National University in San Diego.
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If you look at the detail section under Rankings, you should be able to see a number out of 100. For the liberal arts colleges, the top 2 were high (e.g. 98/100), but so many others were neck and neck (e.g. 86, 87, 88, 89, 90 out of 100). Not much difference between #10 and #25 on the liberal arts colleges list in terms of overall points. My guess is the university list is similar.
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For a very limited audience.
We already have half a dozen major ranking sources posted here. Choose the one you like best.