<p>I think that Pomona signed the petition because the administration is *<strong><em>ed that the college's ranking has dropped from 4 to 7 over the past few years (weird...4 to 7...47). I sure hope that its us news rank goes up next year, and will be *</em></strong>ed if it drops below is current low. This is one area where Pomona can use some improvement.</p>
<p>Also, I'm just curious: when does US News release its 2008 college rankings?</p>
<p>i heard they release it in August
well bowdoin dropped from 4 to 7 after petitioning about this whole ranking thing
but i think as far as pomona and bowdoin are in Top 10, itz all good :)</p>
<p>I likes to hear more about Bowdoin dropping from four to seven? When was it ranked four? I saw it was six for several years and then last year dropped to seventh as Midd pulled ahead.</p>
<p>"Indeed, Bowdoin College watched its ranking slip from fourth to eighth in the '90s as it balanced its budget rather than keep pace with peers' spending increases. 'Evaluating education in a way that rewards institutions for building Jacuzzis and rock walls as much as for investing in what happens in the classroom is a system that is leading us in the wrong direction,' says Anthony Marx, president of Amherst College."
<a href="http://www.time.com/time/nation/article/0,8599,1601485,00.html%5B/url%5D">http://www.time.com/time/nation/article/0,8599,1601485,00.html</a></p>
<p>
That's what I think. It's stats look at least as good as all those, and it is arguably better in many areas than AWS. It is clearly a cut above schools like Carleton or Bowdoin or Haverford.</p>
<p>Williams, Amherst, Swarthmore and Pomona are all so similar in terms of academics and selectivity that it's almost impossible to distinguish one as "better" than another. It's ridiculous that Pomona is only number 7...***? Pomona should be ranked somwhere in the top four.</p>
<p>
[quote]
It is clearly a cut above schools like Carleton or Bowdoin or Haverford.
[/quote]
</p>
<p>Really? Do you two have any data to support that, because from what I'm looking at (avg. test scores, % in top 10%, class sizes, etc.) Reed is more on par with schools in the 15-20 range than the top 5.</p>
<p>I believe A.E.'s post was in response to brassmonkey's comment about Pomona, not Reed.</p>
<p>Reed and Pomona are both in the top ten for producing future PhDs (researchers and professors). See <a href="http://web.reed.edu/ir/phdrank.html%5B/url%5D">http://web.reed.edu/ir/phdrank.html</a>. This is just one narrow measure.</p>
<p>1) From what I understand, the peer assessment is completed by college presidents, a group of people who are savvy enough to base reputation more on who their neighbor is. For example, the new President of Haverford was the head of oncology @ Penn and trained @ Haverford, Yale and Harvard Med (and was my attending when I was a resident). It’s funny to think that such smart people can’t think beyond their geography. While other college presidents may not have such credentials, at the minimum, they are all reputable academicians and managers. </p>
<p>2) One reason why Pomona “ranks so low” is because the ranking system is not a science and these schools are so close in quality (that’s why hundred year old colleges can move from #5-10 in one year). If you lift your head from your desk when examining the rankings and take a less “near sighted” view, not only will you see what you really need to be focusing on in the world, but you will also see that these schools are the top 10 out of THOUSANDS. In that perspective, is there really a difference? Movements from #5 to 10 are on the nano scale. Whether you have 5 hairs on your head or 10, people will still say you’re bald. Of course, for some, it’s always fun to tease out such minutia.</p>
<p>3) “Cut above Haverford”… I’m assuming that you just mean SAT scores, acceptance rates and endowment figures. If you’re referring to anything else, let’s see…</p>
<p>Nobel winners: HC=4, Swat=5, Amherst=4, Williams=1, Pomona=0</p>
<p>The sciences: HC was the 1st college/university to teach modern biology (aka molecular) to undergrads and still does it best. Along with Williams, it is the only LAC to have received full Howard Hughes Medical Institute funding for the last 8 years… and a school ½ the size as WC getting the same amount too. It also has produced the current Head of Biomedical research @ Johns Hopkins and the recent head of Chemistry @ MIT. The only Academy of Science member to teach @ a LAC teaches Physics @ HC. </p>
<p>Languages: Haverford students have access to the best language departments (out of these 5 schools) at nearby BMC. BMC’s archaeology is also # 1 too.</p>
<p>BMC: Let’s not underestimate a college that has produced Harvard’s current (and 1st female) president. Don’t you think there is tremendous synergy in educational offerings in departments such as English, political science, economics, philosophy, ect… when there are 2 top colleges that are seamlessly integrated as the bi-college compared to those schools with none?</p>
<p>Location: Sorry, but the action and power is on the east coast and especially along the NE corridor. Education is more than the ivory tower and having the opportunity to head down to DC to be a part of conferences, protests and demonstrations promotes a feeling of empowerment and confidence that is very important to instill when young. Haverford and Swat students usually have such opportunities 1-2 times a year and what they learn from such exciting experiences compliment rigorous academics and is what they carry into adulthood.</p>
<p>The US News rankings are easy to manipulate at the higher levels. All the colleges have to do is tinker with a few non-academic related parameters, and voila! They are suddenly going up in the rankings.</p>
<p>In the past, Pomona has sent out letters containing dollar bills to its alumni. The alumni were instructed to then send the dollar bills back to the college as "donations." Why? Because the percent of alumni donating to the college was one of the factors that was dragging down Pomona's ranking compared to Williams, Swarthmore, etc. </p>
<p>I know this for a fact...I got one of the letters.</p>
<p>
[quote]
I believe A.E.'s post was in response to brassmonkey's comment about Pomona, not Reed
[/quote]
</p>
<p>My mistake. I agree completely that Pomona is as good as ASW.</p>
<p>
[quote]
From what I understand, the peer assessment is completed by college presidents, a group of people who are savvy enough to base reputation more on who their neighbor is. For example, the new President of Haverford was the head of oncology @ Penn and trained @ Haverford, Yale and Harvard Med (and was my attending when I was a resident). Its funny to think that such smart people cant think beyond their geography. While other college presidents may not have such credentials, at the minimum, they are all reputable academicians and managers.
[/quote]
Reed College's president says this about that at <a href="http://www.theatlantic.com/doc/200511/shunning-college-rankings:%5B/url%5D%5Bquote%5D">http://www.theatlantic.com/doc/200511/shunning-college-rankings:
[quote]
</a>... a peer evaluation for which I'm asked to rank some 220 liberal arts schools nationwide into five tiers of quality. Contemplating the latter, I wonder how any human being could possess, in the words of the cover letter, "the broad experience and expertise needed to assess the academic quality" of more than a tiny handful of these institutions. Of course, I could check off "don't know" next to any institution, but if I did so honestly, I would end up ranking only the few schools with which Reed directly competes or about which I happen to know from personal experience. Most of what I may think I know about the others is based on badly outdated information, fragmentary impressions, or the relative place of a school in the rankings-validated and rankings-influenced pecking order.
[/quote]
</p>
<p>i just realized y i didnt apply to pomona</p>
<p>guys, this discussion is getting rather insane. Pomona is ranked the #7 LAC in the country. That's pretty darn good. What difference do numbers even make at this level anyway? It's plain stupid to compare Pomona to schools like Reed, Bryn Mawr, Williams, Haverford, etc. They are all fantastic schools with really smart kids, great facilities/faculties and a wealth of opportunities. I know that I personally selected Pomona based on fit, not rankings, and it seemed like a school that was not numbers obsessed like my high school is. Reading this thread, I am starting to be unsure about this, which makes me sad because I thought Pomona kids wouldn't treat crap like USN&W report so seriously. To me, the fact that they rank Reed so low because they wouldn't participate in the study shows that it's a source that's not to be relied on anyway.</p>
<p>Relax, I don't think it's fair to generalize the attitude of the whole college based on a few CC posters.</p>
<p>And I'm defending those who have posted because most of them have not simply taken the ranking and justified it's supposedly superior ranking on that basis alone but have provided information that puts the rankings into perspective - its follies and foibles included. Whether you like it or not, rankings are a key signal to the student market/body as to a quality of an institution - without them, the college application process would become considerably more chaotic and even less fair.</p>
<p>As long as the discussion is largely constructive, I think we can all come away more enlightened without picking up the obsession with rankings. If anything, this teaches us to observe rankings with a relatively greater dispassionate eye.</p>
<p>BTW, Caltech is not in the Northeastern region (for the earlier posters) and it's still ranked above MIT for National Unis. I was totally o_o by that.</p>
<p>vossron,</p>
<p>My intent was not to legitimize the US NEWs rankings but rather to suggest that arguments can always be made to support or refute its methodology. I also want to point out the observation that some people here on this post seem to be very selective with whether or not they like or not like how things are scored... based on whether those results support or challenge their assumptions. "Well, I support how US NEWs uses, "xyz" and don't like how they score "a" because the outcome of "a" isn't what I like. As demonstrated, schools can fiddle with SAT reporting, acceptance rate has more to do with popularity rather than quality, ect... If you are experienced in research, you will learn to rigorously question ALL you data, even the stuff that you hope to be correct.</p>
<p>Yes, I agree for example acceptance rate data from the schools and these ranking sites always seem to be different for the schools with acceptance rates over 20%.</p>
<p>
<p>Nobel winners: HC=4, Swat=5, Amherst=4, Williams=1, Pomona=0</p>
<p>The sciences: HC was the 1st college/university to teach modern biology (aka molecular) to undergrads and still does it best. Along with Williams, it is the only LAC to have received full Howard Hughes Medical Institute funding for the last 8 years… and a school ½ the size as WC getting the same amount too. It also has produced the current Head of Biomedical research @ Johns Hopkins and the recent head of Chemistry @ MIT. The only Academy of Science member to teach @ a LAC teaches Physics @ HC.
</p>
<p>The Nobel prize argument is a very weak one. As far as I know, all of the Haverford alums except one who were Nobel laureates are dead now, meaning they went to Haverford a long time ago. The other got his Nobel prize over 10 years ago. Maybe Haverford was better than Pomona back then (and, in fact, it is about 50 years older than Pomona), but so what? Current statistics are much more telling, and from all the numbers, Pomona has a higher level of average student, is more selective, and has a lot more endowment per student, which translates directly into a broader range of opportunity for the typical student (which, since the typical student is more intelligent at Pomona than Haverford, he can presumably take advantage).</p>
<p>Furthermore, who cares if it was the first LAC to teach biology? It's older than most LACs! And who cares if it has a few luminaries here and there; what elite LAC hasn't? All of this is statistically insignificant and beside the point: Pomona attracts a higher caliber of student than Haverford.</p>