@PrimeMeridian - you can actually collapse “Buy Your Way Up” and “Don’t Upset The Customers” into one whopping 55% theme because they are really two sides of the same coin. “Financial resources per student” (10%) is a thinly disguised proxy for how much the college can discount its tuition. The higher the tuition, the higher the discount. That difference between the official tuition and the actual price charged is duly noted on the expense side of the ledger when, in reality, it is a reflection of how many wealthy families are willing to subsidize everyone else by paying the full sticker price (I believe the correct economic term is, “price insensitive”.) So, even though Mr. Morse is at pains to reassure everyone that money spent on fancy dorms, rock climbing walls and Mongolian grills aren’t covered in this category - they really are.
I think there are lots of problems with the US News ranking. To me, one of the worst is using the same criteria to judge schools that are very different. Is anybody going to choose between Harvard and Yale based on 4-year graduation rate? Is anybody really deciding on whether to attend a military academy or a private LAC based on US News criteria? It’s just silly.
I will take this opportunity to again promote the best college rating system of them all: http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/college-search-selection/978040-ranking-colleges-by-prestigiosity-p36.html
@Hunt , where does UMBC stand in your ranking?
Regardless of who looks at them, the rankings tend to have a negative impact on less-than-top ranked schools, which is why they are so contentious. High achieving students are more swayed by rankings, and these are the types of students that every school wants to have.
High achieving students are attracted to highly ranked colleges, and colleges become highly ranked by having a lot of high achieving students… see why less-than-top ranked colleges hate the system?
Good news for those schools is there are more high achieving students than elite colleges. And with the way financial aid works, a lot of those kids are going to non-elite schools (or at least less elite schools) because of cost of attendance.
Typically, it’s the most elite schools that give the best need-based FA.
“Typically, it’s the most elite schools that give the best need-based FA.”
Also, the most elite schools typically give the worst merit-based FA.
Typically, the schools a notch or two below the most elite level give the best merit-based FA.
So fish where the fish are for your particular kid.
“Good news for those schools is there are more high achieving students than elite colleges.”
The top 1% of HS students is about 50,000 kids per year.
The top 15 USNWR universities only have about 15,000 seats for those kids per year.
It isn’t covered, because there are not students on College Confidential begging for tips on how to get into UMBC.
It would be silly to evaluate UMBC using the same criteria that you would use to evaluate a highly selective school. Again, that’s one of my biggest beefs with the US News ratings. For example, if you are a high-stats kids and want to study with other high-stats kids, you can’t just look at the overall stats of a school like UMBC, the way you can for Harvard. You have to look at the honors program (if there is one, I don’t know), and find out about that. That’s just one example.
So UMBC is unranked. It is even worse than 156 that USNWR shows. Bruni would not approve.
So I just looked up D1’s Ph.D program in USNWR’s ranking. It ranks #2. It is a state school. The number #1 program is also a state school. In fact, 16 out of the top 25 schools in this ranking are state schools.
I guess I should suddenly be touting this ranking system. But really, D1 chose this program because of her advisor. He is top notch in his field, but even more important, is incredibly supportive. He is such an advocate for her. When I read horror stories of how an advisor in a Ph.D program can basically ruin your career before it is even started, I am filled with relief that she found such a great mentor to guide her.
@PrimeMeridian I understand that the elites are often the best in terms of need based aid. A lot of kids can go to one for the same out of pocket or even less than they could their state flagship. Pretty much a no-brainer in terms of a decision.
But that isn’t the group of kids I was referencing. Its kids whose parents are expected to be at/near full pay but who do not have the ability to pay at/near full freight. Putting aside the could’ve, would’ve, should’ve discussion that has been had here too many times to count (to the extent it was interesting at one point, seems to me it no longer is unless someone is new here and wants to hear about people using earwax and used dental floss to make candles for light and heat to save money in 529 plans) and judgments that go with it. Reality is, there are a lot of families who are in this situation. And from what I have seen (here and personally with friends/relatives), an increasing number of kids (with elite school stats/pedigrees) are going to state flagships, directional publics and non-elite LACs with lower CoA (either based on lower tuition costs, merit aid or a combination of the two). Those schools benefit from that reality (and from what I have seen often cultivate those benefits).
So the less than top ranked US News schools can find some comfort in the fact that will continue to get these elite stats/pedigree kids and kids who otherwise do not gain admittance to the top ranked US News schools because there are not enough spots in those schools for elite stats/pedigree kids in general.
Consider how UMBC fares with my ranking strategy themes (post# 19).
These are the 3 heavy-hitter themes that comprise nearly 80% of USNWR’s weighting methodology:
-
**22.5% “Your incumbent Congressman always gets reelected” **
UMBC will never get voted Homecoming Queen or get voted to the homecoming royal court, because UMBC isn’t already popular. -
**25.1% “Buy your way up” **
UMBC has an 80 million dollar endowment-- that’s right-- “illion” with an “m”, not a “b”. My kids’ highschools both have endowments larger than that.
3)** 30.0% “Don’t upset the customers” **
UMBC’s graduation rate isn’t waaaaay up there.
No matter how virtuous a school is, if it’s not already popular (theme 1) and can’t exploit the other 2 strategy themes, then it’ll never garner enough points in USNWR’s system to get itself out of obscurity.
@PrimeMeridian “No matter how virtuous a school is, if it’s not already popular (theme 1) and can’t exploit the other 2 strategy themes, then it’ll never garner enough points in USNWR’s system to get itself out of obscurity.”
Well, Northeastern has come a long way. You can do more to improve than it appears, if you really focus on it.
I already mentioned Northeastern in my analysis in post #19.
An article about Northeastern in the Boston Globe:
How to Game the College Rankings
http://www.bostonmagazine.com/news/article/2014/08/26/how-northeastern-gamed-the-college-rankings/3/
The school craftfully leveraged Theme 2) “Buy your way up”.
Instead of relying on the Endowment Fairy to magically put money under its pillow, NEU came up with creative ways to increase revenue:
“According to a study published this year by Research in Higher Education, a mid-30 school like the University of Rochester would have to spend an extra $112 million on faculty salary and student resources alone to rise a total of two spots.”
I think that once you get around #30 the cost to move up further by gaming goes through the roof. You are really playing with the big boys then. Schools with well established names, and lots of money.
I think that schools in the top 30 can move up some by gaming, but breaking in from the outside is going to be tough. That $112 million number is assuming that the other schools see what you are doing and don’t care, but at some point they are going to resist the young upstart. lol
I’ve sorted schools by “Endowment per student” and divided them up by tiers of richness
Ranking of Endowment per student (2015)
unit: millions of dollars per student
(source: Wikipedia)
IN ITS OWN CLASS
2.81 Princeton Univ – surprise!!!
OBSCENELY STINKING SUPER MEGA RICH
2.07 Yale Univ
1.74 Harvard Univ
STINKING SUPER MEGA RICH
1.32 Stanford Univ
1.27 Pomona College
1.22 Amherst College
1.20 Swarthmore College
1.19 Massachusetts Institute of Tech
1.14 Williams College
1.03 Grinnell College
1.00 California Institute of Tech
SUPER MEGA RICH
0.84 Rice Univ
0.80 Wellesley College
0.77 Bowdoin College
0.74 Dartmouth College
0.70 Univ of Notre Dame
0.68 Berea College
0.68 Univ of Richmond
0.65 Washington and Lee Univ
0.60 Smith College
MEGA RICH
0.50 Northwestern Univ
0.50 Univ of Chicago
0.49 Duke Univ
0.48 Trinity Univ (Texas)
0.48 Univ of Pennsylvania
0.47 Washington Univ in St. Louis
0.45 Emory Univ
0.44 Middlebury College
MERELY RICH
0.34 Brown Univ
0.33 Vanderbilt Univ
0.32 Columbia Univ
0.28 Cornell Univ
0.26 Univ of Virginia
0.24 Univ of California, San Francisco
0.23 Univ of Michigan
0.20 Univ of Rochester
UPPER INCOME W KNOCK-OFF DESIGNER HANDBAG
0.17 Texas A&M Univ System (system-wide)
0.17 Lehigh Univ
0.17 Case Western Reserve Univ
0.16 Boston College
0.16 Johns Hopkins Univ
0.15 Texas Christian Univ
0.15 Wake Forest Univ
0.15 Tufts Univ
0.13 Southern Methodist Univ
0.13 Carnegie Mellon Univ
0.11 Univ of Southern California
0.11 Univ of Texas System (system-wide)
0.10 Univ of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
0.10 Univ of Pittsburgh
0.09 Tulane Univ
0.09 Georgetown Univ
0.08 Saint Louis Univ
0.08 Georgia Institute of Tech
0.07 Baylor Univ
0.06 George Washington Univ
0.06 New York Univ
0.06 Purdue Univ (system-wide)
0.06 Ohio State Univ
0.05 Syracuse Univ
0.05 Boston Univ
0.05 Michigan State Univ
0.04 Univ of California, Los Angeles
0.04 Pennsylvania State Univ (system-wide)
0.04 Northeastern University
0.03 Texas Tech Univ (system-wide)
0.03 Univ of Alabama (system-wide)
0.03 Univ of Cincinnati
0.03 Univ of Illinois system (system-wide)
I acknowledge that the dividing line between my precise richness classifications is fuzzy.
Thanks for that list @PrimeMeridian , and I like the creative nature of your category names.
Where do you think the line is drawn where school can truly be “need blind”? For example, if they are earning 4% on their endowment, Princeton could spend $112,400 per student per year without affecting principal. Pretty sweet!
But even Mega-Rich Northwestern would only have $20,000 per student per year at that rate. And once you get into your “Knockoff Handbag” category… it’s a pittance.
Thoughts?
Some of those Knock-off Handbags look like the real thing.
@postmodern "Where do you think the line is drawn where school can truly be “need blind”? For example, if they are earning 4% on their endowment, Princeton could spend $112,400 per student per year without affecting principal. Pretty sweet!
But even Mega-Rich Northwestern would only have $20,000 per student per year at that rate."
Penn, for example has approximately 10,000 undergraduates, and spent about $200 million in 2015 on undergraduate financial aid. That implies that, on average, Penn spends about $20,000 per undergrad, annually.
So, it looks like your $20,000 per student to meet need may be about right.