<p>Well Sam Lee, generally when things are objective they are in the form of numbers. Unless I'm very much mistaken, the change in graduation rate is indeed a number.</p>
<p>BTW someone else said all private PA > public PA. This is false. Tufts, BC, and Wake are all trumped in PA by UCSD, Wisconsin, UCI, Ilinois, UCSB, penn STate, UCD, Texas, Maryland, Iowa, Indiana, Minnesota, and Arizona. I mean these are some decent schools, but if someone believes that Arizona is better than the trio I mentioned they are very much mistaken. Thus PA is not valid.</p>
<p>It depends what you mean by 'better'. Schools like Indiana and Arizona might have better resources, facilities, more well known faculty, more enjoyable social scene, etc. However, on average, the academic qualifications of the undergrad student body is not as strong as Tufts, BC, WFU. People choose to go to college for many different reasons and avg SAT and acceptance rate are not always the top two, nor should they be.</p>
<p>If you like numbers here are a few: Members of the National Academy of Science-WF 2, BC 2, Tufts 5, Arizona 29. Number of major faculty awards won in last year(Guggenheim etc,) WF 5, BC 4, Tufts 6, Arizona 23. </p>
<p>Maybe the academics know something you don't.</p>
<p>
[quote]
People choose to go to college for many different reasons and avg SAT and acceptance rate are not always the top two, nor should they be.
[/quote]
Agreed, and I may add that acceptance rate and test scores do not always mean that one student body is better than another, or that the school with the lower acceptance rate and better test scores provides a better education than the other one.</p>
<p>KK and Untitled--why are these not important? They are some of the major indicators of superior faculty as seen by their peers. These are people who are among the best thinkers and contributors in their fields. These are the people Ivy schools covet and hire away as tenured profs for huge salaries and the type Northwestern and UVa are trying very hard to attract.</p>
<p>Numbers don't necessarily reflect facts. It depends on how the numbers are derived. Actual graduation rate is a factual number. However, "predicted graduation rate" isn't. </p>
<p>
</p>
<p>I am not aware of any proven scientific theory that correlates predicted graduation rate with characteristics of entering class and the institution. Some people don't graduate for reasons that got nothing to do with their SAT scores/schools they attend.</p>
<p>Actually, Northwestern has been doing great in terms of number of NAS or NAAS recently. I think it was 2003 when NU tied with Harvard for having an astonishing 10 or 11 (I don't remember which) faculty members awarded NAAS. In terms of average salary, NU is sixth! I was surprised to learn that!</p>
<p>barrons you are sounding quite silly. Wow, Arizona had a lot of members of that society. Arizona also has almost 29,000 undergrads. The schools I mentioned put more emphasis on the undergraduate level. I doubt many of these "star" professors you mention teach all of the classes. What are the rates of TAs teaching classes? One knock on Harvard is that there is a divide between the faculty and the students. Quoting from the US News Harvard article: "students sill complained about the inaccessibility of faculty as well as the qualiity of instruction and advising". Many of these faculty have their own agenda and teaching is secondary. </p>
<p>
[quote]
Numbers don't necessarily reflect facts. It depends on how the numbers are derived. Actual graduation rate is a factual number. However, "predicted graduation rate" isn't.
[/quote]
How isn't it? It is a fact that these schools thought x amount of kids were going to graduate. Some schools went to greater lengths to graduate more such as the public school UCI. </p>
<p>
[quote]
acceptance rate and test scores do not always mean that one student body is better than another
[/quote]
That's insane. If you aren't going to use numbers than what are you going to use? Numbers don't lie, people lie and are biased, this is why the PA is bogus.</p>
<p>That is another issue and hard to get a handle on. But I know if I wanted to study astronomy UA would be at the top of the list. You pick out one school but most of the schools considererd among the best also have the top membership numbers and high numbers for faculty annual awards. I doubt that is just a coinicidence. I know at most of the top state schools nearly all faculty have to teach both undergrad and grad level classes.</p>
<p>Some say the best teachers are at JC's--I don't see too many people turning down H for a JC.</p>
<p>1st - The numbers that everyone goes off are of the accepted applicants. Not the enrolled applicants. The stats differ, many top students at non-top 25 colleges don't go there.</p>
<p>2nd - Numbers can be manipulated. You can have a "fast track" application, you can be a private school and take the best combined SAT, you can advertise your butt off and raise your applications.</p>
<p>3rd - Many public schools get discredited because of their size. For example, lets say we have two schools with an enrolled ACT range of 25-30. One is a private school with 4,000 students, another is a public with 28,000 students. Many would say that both schools have a good amount of talented students, however, that's not necessarily the case, when there are 7,000 kids at the public school with that 30 ACT, and only 1,000 at the private. </p>
<p>4th - Publics have to have their admissions audited in order to receive funding from the state. They have to be accurate, they can't manipulate their numbers. Many privates hide their common data sets, others use things like the fast track applications, don't require test scores, etc. </p>
<p>That's why numbers aren't 100% correct. Because not everyone plays by the same rules.</p>
<p>
[quote]
How isn't it? It is a fact that these schools thought x amount of kids were going to graduate. Some schools went to greater lengths to graduate more such as the public school UCI.
[/quote]
</p>
<p>Hmmm...this is getting a bit ridiculous. Just because you put "it is a fact" before something doesn't make it a fact! How about if I put "it is a fact that these presidents, deans of schools give PA scores"? :) Actually schools don't predict or "thought" x amount of kids are going to graduate. Schools don't do the prediction, USNews does. But let's just suppose school do the prediction, like you claimed. How do they do it? Don't they need to make some kind of subjective assumption? Only God, not you, nor schools nor US News would know why and if someone is going to graduate or not. "Prediction" by definition has subjective element or is subject to error. In a way, I am not understanding you. You attack the PA rigorously while thinking all other categories are flawless. It's strange.</p>
<p>
[quote]
While numbers dont like, many of them can be VERY easily manipulated by colleges.
[/quote]
If you aren't going to have at least some faith in the numbers, than you might as well throw the whole system out. Then colleges could just make up whatever they want you are saying.</p>
<p>
[quote]
1st - The numbers that everyone goes off are of the accepted applicants. Not the enrolled applicants. The stats differ, many top students at non-top 25 colleges don't go there.
[/quote]
I dunno about that. I know at Wake the accepted students average SAT is 1400 or possibly higher. The SAT in the US News is 70 points lower than that.</p>
<p>Everyone can argue about the other categories, but I think that PA deserves to be under the most scrutiny because it accouts for the largest part of the US News formula, thus a semi-drastic change in the rankings will ensue.</p>
<p>The numbers are for enrolled students and depending on the school the accepted students' SAT avg can differ substantially from enrolled students' SAT. For example, I know at Colgate and Bucknell that accepted students' SAT avg is ~ 40 points higher than enrolled students SAT avg because the ones bringing the avg up the most are the ones most likely to get into and matriculate at Princeton, Dartmouth, Williams instead. </p>
<p>Haven't read all of the posts in this thread, but, the OP's ranking (sans PA) looks pretty good... WUSTL is high, but otherwise, it's pretty good (better than the USNWR rank anyway) ... interesting that Brown shoots up a huge 5 spots without the flawed "peer assessment" boosting into a Top 10 spot - something i've long argued is its place. Further, all Ivies (save Cornell) also secure Top 10 positions - something else I've long argued.</p>
<p>I thought so, especially because it is supposed to focus on undergraduate rankings. This may just be a coincidence, but my rankings identified UVA as the cream of the crop as far as publics are concerned. Most would agree that UVA gives a more intimate undergraduate experience than other publics such as Michigan and UCB.</p>