<p>thanks for all the great input i got with my last post
however here's the list of top grad school feeders. smith didn't make it?!?! any comments?
<a href="http://www.wsjclassroomedition.com/pdfs/wsj_college_092503.pdf%5B/url%5D">http://www.wsjclassroomedition.com/pdfs/wsj_college_092503.pdf</a></p>
<p>So what's it tell you? You did see that the list was for the MOST EXPENSIVE med and law schools, those with the largest numbers of legacies, and MBA programs without financial aid.</p>
<p>It is not a list of grad school feeders, no less of "top" grad school feders. In fact, the article is mistitled - it is a list of feeders to the most expensive PROFESSIONAL schools - not a single grad school is included in the survey; in fact, not a single grad school (of whatever quality) is even mentioned. They need a good editor.</p>
<p>"So for medicine, our schools were Columbia; Harvard; Johns Hopkins; the University of California, San Francisco; and Yale, while our MBA programs were Chicago; Dartmouth's Tuck School; Harvard; MIT's Sloan School; and Penn's Wharton School. In law, we looked at Chicago; Columbia; Harvard; Michigan; and Yale."</p>
<p>I'd suggest a list that <em>excludes</em> Stanford from <em>all</em> of the grad/professional schools; excludes Duke, Cornell and Dartmouth from med schools but includes SF; includes Dartmouths Tuck B school but excludes Northwesterns Kellogg (a far better B school) has a serious built-in bias. Those are just a few omissions. I could go on and on.</p>
<p>Certainly not raining on Smith's parade with that list! ;)</p>
<p>The WJS methodology was even more idiotic than Newsweek's "America's Best High Schools." The US NEWS rankings aren't fit for use by anything more than an incontinent parrot.</p>
<p>Now that I think of it, the only rankings I've seen on CC worth anything were TheDad's "Top 50 Colleges" or whatever it was, posted a couple of years back.</p>
<p>
[quote]
The US NEWS rankings aren't fit for use by anything more than an incontinent parrot.
[/quote]
Where do you get these...I love it!! <em>LOL</em></p>
<p>In addition to the obvious flaws in methodology cited above, the Wall Street Journal also looked at only a single year. Anyone who has looked at college statistics know that is a cardinal sin, especially when looking at small colleges, where annual fluctuations of one or two students can have a huge impact on a percentage basis.</p>
<p>well, you know what's even more important for you as an individual student than grad placement %s, is whether students which perform high enough can get into good grad schools. Smith has on average higher quality students than some places, and lower quality than others, but students which do well enough in terms of GPA and research can get into top grad schools, and that's what counts. Supposedly a girl to graduate with the most recent class won a bunch of awards like best thesis for her major, had an exceptional GPA, and was accepted into every grad school to which she applied. (She's going to Harvard) You just need to perform to your potential yourself, and not worry so much about what everyone around you is doing.</p>