If you combine the ordinal ranking from US News and WSJ and then reorder based on that, the top schools look like this:
1 Stanford
2 MIT
3 Harvard
4 Yale
5 Princeton
6 Columbia
7 Penn
8 Duke
9 Chicago
10 Hopkins
11 Cal Tech
12 Cornell
13 Northwestern
14 Dartmouth
15 WUSTL
16 Brown
17 Rice
18 Vanderbilt
19 Notre Dame
20 USC
Seems like a better order to me than either one individually.
Observation… on the criteria of “Outcomes” as measured …a sample of closely ranked Publics vs LACs
**
Outcomes – does the college generate good and appropriate outputs? Does it add value to the students who attend? The Outcomes area represents 40 per cent of the overall ranking. Within this we look at:
Graduation rate (11%)
Value added to graduate salary (12%)
Value added to the loan repayment rate (7%)
Academic reputation (10%)
**
College/Univ/ Overall Rank /Outcomes score
LACs vs Publics
Williams /22 /37.7 UMIch /24 /38.2
Middlebury /36/33 UCB /37 /34.8
Bowdoin /44 /31.9 UIUC /48 /35.6
Bucknell /53 /30.5 UF /56 /35.6
Oberlin /61 /28.8 MSU /62 /32.9
Occidental /83 /27 Texas A&M /79 /31.7
@i012575 I am not sure what your point is, but I would Williams vs. Michigan or Middlebury vs. UCB being a difficult decision, depending on the student. It doesn’t seem unreasonable to me.
^^ the much slighted Publics do an equal or even better job when it comes to “Outcomes” than their “tony” LAC counterparts.
Since when is academic reputation considered an “outcome” ?
Not to be a fly in the ointment but wouldn’t common sense dictate that one’s ranking is completely subjective based on their intended major? For instance CMU(not even in the top 20) could be argued as #1 for a prospective CS major. Overall University rankings seem irrelevant since students area of interests at a particular institution can be narrowed down significantly.
Also, other than Money Magazine, there is little consideration of cost in these formulas. These ranking threads are, for the most part, a waste of time.
Overall college rankings of any kind seem kinda pointless because depending on what a student is looking for, college X may be better than college Y. For example, if you’re studying media & communications, how does the fact that university X has a high ranking because it published tons of research papers on economics or physics have any impact on the quality of the undergrad education you will receive?
So perhaps general rankings are mostly useful as a measure of public prestige - in other words, brand recognition that may (or may not) help you get a better job. Then use subject rankings (based on student resources, outcomes, class size, graduation rates, alumni giving, etc. for that field) to see what school might do better at educating students in X fields.
First of all, anyone slighting the great public universities is way off base. The US has amazing state universities, full stop.
But I’m still very skeptical of “outcome” data. Where do they get it? Is it self-reported? I’ve never been asked for my “outcome” or salary information by my alma mater or any other institution. Is it Payscale? Because that’s not remotely reliable.
I also think it’s important to remember that salary outcome is not particularly representative of anything. Many, many exceedingly well educated people make life choices that do not maximize their earnings potential. For instance, no amount of money would get me to work for Wall Street, even though i-banking and consulting were the most common and lucrative jobs for my peer group upon graduation. I have friends who spent time in that world and left, shaking their heads, to do less lucrative things that they felt better about.
@marvin100 wrote:
Apparently, college scorecard can cross-reference your FAFSA application ten years ago with your current income tax return.
Ah, so that data is only for [“federally aided students.”](Documentation | College Scorecard) Is that sufficiently representative?
This Brookings Institute piece has some similar (but of course better developed haha) criticisms:
[Deconstructing and reconstructing the College Scorecard](Deconstructing and reconstructing the College Scorecard)
See especially paragraph 3, which includes this sentence, “This is likely to lead users to believe that the association between a college and the salaries of those who attended is the valued added by that institution (bang for the buck) whereas it really reflects to a significant degree the academic preparation and family background of the students admitted.”
^^So, basically, no matter what ranking system one uses or how many different bells and whistles, it’s always going to boil down to a question of how many rich students can the college feed and care for?
Not quite. It means it’s complicated, and any analysis of a ranking must begin with an analysis of its metrics and methods. No ranking is conclusive, of course, but as consumers of ranking lists, we can begin by examining which methods and metrics correspond best with our values and priorities. @circuitrider
Most ranking systems are only useful for the poor and wealthy. For everyone in the middle, I agree with @Zinhead , if cost is not considered the rankings are useless. It is no surprise that most students attend their state schools which offer the best value for most families.
I, for one, am happy that UChicago got a bit of comeuppance in this ranking, being placed at #13. The USNEWS love for UChicago (at #3!) has gotten very much out of hand, with the school consistently crawling its way from essentially nowhere to top 5 in a matter of a few years. There is a Chicago “homer” somewhere inside USNEWS that is forcing this school down our throats in a valiant attempt to generate prestige for a nerd academy.
So do you think there is a significant difference between #3 and #13?
Yes --huge difference in perception: being “top ten” is enormously valuable. 13 is not 3, by a long shot.
I doubt that. All of the top schools game the USNEWS ranking system. For a long time UChicago did a poor job of playing the game. In the past decade or so, they have have done a much better job paying attention to the things that count in the rankings. It doesn’t necessarily make it better school, but it makes the administration happy.
That is yet another problem with the rankings. There isn’t a significant difference between 3 and 13 and certainly not by a long shot. And that would be true if the rankings were actually of something objective. But they are not which makes it even more true.
No doubt we see a lot of people on CC with the same view though as yours. Huge difference in perception? Seems to me that is very much an emotional rather than an intellectual statement.