The right thing? If you asked 10 people you’d get 11 answers
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Also - if you look at the “scores” out of 100, there are only a few points difference between SLACs #10-25. A lot of these schools received 85-90 points. So, looking at the top 2 Maine schools, Bowdoin, #9, received a 92/100 while Bates, #24, received a 87/100. Really, I think, with SLACS, it’s all about fit, major, geography, vibe, etc. Many great options out there!
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To me, this is the crazy part.
So many of the kids that attend the schools are wealthy - and want the “wealthy” life that kids provide and I’m not talking about career outcomes although they expect that too.
But they’re choosing schools that are rewarded - or not - based on how they deal with the other part of the socioeconomic scale.
Frankly - and I might be naive for saying that - but I don’t think that many “rich kids” with the silver spoon would want to live with a pell eligible kid.
I may be wrong - but I don’t see it any differently than one stays at a high end hotel and the other the Super 8 - and those two crowds don’t necessarily congregate.
My point simply being - these wealthy families love rank - but given how the rank happens, it may be in part totally opposite of what would bring them comfort - and I highly doubt most know.
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I think #1 and #4 are common amongst many kids who are able to pivot OOS - no matter where they live - short of the highly reputed schools or from within the states that make it tough to leave financially.
Do you (or anyone) know what the rationale was was removing class size? I think most of the other factors make more sense, or I understand the rationale. But smaller class is generally a good thing, I think – I understand that there are other good things, too, that may outweigh it for some kids.
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I believe it’s because some schools (notably a certain school in the north east) were gaming this metric. So USNWR is now using faculty to student ratio instead as a proxy.
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I see private schools with wealthy kids moving down generally and publics moving up in many cases. One factor driving that is social mobility (which I agree with as a factor to assess school quality); I assume another factor is removing class size (so large publics with larger class sizes generally) move up. I wonder which of these is the bigger driver of changes…
I am interested in the larger publics and the privates that did well under both ranking schemes, the ones that didn’t change much…
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I thought it was because colleges were gaming the system with that metric (cough, northeastern, cough). They limited enrollment to 19 students and also didn’t increase the number of classes, making it very difficult for students to get classes they wanted.
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The revised rankings are just as bad as WSJ. Class size, resources spent per student, terminal degrees held by faculty, and high school class standing all seem pretty relevant and were dropped entirely as factors.
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Interesting. Thanks to both who responded! That makes sense, but sometimes addressing the one problem leads to others…but access to classes absolutely matters. SO there’s that.
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I do not know. Frankly, for me the only important factor is undergrad teaching.
Social re-engineering is fine for some schools but that is not how I choose a college.
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Seems to me and we’ll find out - when you have a criteria, you’ll have someone who finds a way to exploit it.
Sadly, I imagine those guying to Tufts, Wake, Brandeis, Tulane, etc. have a moment of unhappiness this AM or those considering ED, etc. might be “reviewing” once they see the new #s.
Hopefully not - but it’s likely because someone who saw Wake or Tufts as a close to the top school might now be swapping someone else in - we’ll find out.
I wonder if Reed is a good history lesson or a good school for folks to look at in context - as they’re far lower in the LAC rank that others seem to place them in societal perception.
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Since these are all pretty close in overall score…SLACs #17-25 include: Colgate, Haverford, W&L, Bates, Colby, Richmond. Not too much change from last year, but worth including!
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I’m not sure I agree. Resources spent per student seems like a secondary indicator – what really matters is whether the money that is spent is spent effectively in terms of educational outcomes (and I don’t mean just salary, though a positive investment is important). Terminal degrees held by faculty also seems less important for undergrad education – again, it’s how those degrees translate into educational outcomes. I don’t fully understand what high school class standing is – like how many kids were ranked #1, etc? My kid was very clear (as a kid with a high class rank) that kids know how to game that, taking the courses that offer weights and then not necessarily taking AP or IB exams… SO I can sort of guess that. And some schools are so much more competitive than others.
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I wonder how much of social mobility score is simply the ability to admit more lower income students due to state subsidized tuition. That says very little about the quality of the education received once admitted.
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I hope, if anything, these revised rankings (USNWR and WSJ) will be a wake up call to students and parents to look beyond the rankings, and consider the factors that matter most to them.
Is Tufts worse today than it was last week? Wake Forest is whining about how the new metrics affected them and favored public schools, but if they are proud of what they offer, then why bother? Is Rutgers (which has issues that @citivas mentioned above) suddenly going to be attracting the CS and engineering kids that it was losing to OOS publics?
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I do wonder how much these ranking changes will really have an effect. Will more oos students start applying to the lower ranked UC at full oos tuition? Will NJ students finally embrace Rutgers? I am skeptical on both counts.
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Yeah, rankings notoriously can create an artificial sense of the scale of differences that might really just be little more than statistical noise, even more so when inclusion and weightings of factors is essentially arbitrary.
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The metric measures their graduation rate, not acceptance rate.
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Relevant, for sure, but with all kinds of issues: the gaming of class size (to the detriment of students) as noted by cinnamon1212, which makes student/faculty ratio a better overall metric; the focus on terminal degree hurting schools that, for instance, hire industry-leading artists and writers who however only have an MA, or whatever. The new metrics seem to allow for less gaming and more flexibilty in the interest of students’ educations, as well to work against a focus on wealthy students as a means to ranking success (notice that the biggest drops all occur among schools whose percentage of students from the top 1% is at the top of the heap: WashU, Colgate, Colby, etc.).
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