<p>The National Association for College Admission Counseling conducted a survey from both admissions officers and high school counselors. Here are the main results from the survey:</p>
<p>"Asked to evaluate the U.S. News rankings on a scale of 1 to 100, with 1 as "strenuous objection," 50 as complete neutrality and 100 as "strong support," the average score given by college admissions officers was 38.5 while the average score of high school counselors was 28.7.
Asked whether the title the magazine uses for the rankings, "America's Best Colleges," is accurate, only 2.4 percent of high school counselors and 3.3 percent of college admissions counselors said they agreed. Majorities (51.3 percent for college admissions officers and 61.9 percent for high school counselors) said that it was not accurate at all, with the remainder seeing it as somewhat accurate.
In several questions, the respondents suggest that the rankings do damage of various kinds. Solid majorities of respondents (68.4 percent of high school counselors and 54.2 percent of college admissions officials) agreed that the rankings offer "misleading" information to the public. Very similar majorities agreed that the rankings encourage "counter-productive behavior" by colleges. And large majorities (more than 80 percent for each group) agree or somewhat agree that the rankings end up creating "greater confusion" for students and families."</p>
<p>As no huge fan of the rankings, I thought these results were pretty interesting. I agree with Mr. Morse that this will hopefully alter the methodology for the rankings. However, I think that the magazines are meant to benefit (and hopefully educate) the high school students looking for information. The problem is that people elevate these rankings to biblical proportions and refuse to take them with pragmatic skepticism. There is an intelligent way to use the rankings, and the problem is many people do not use them that way. They judge an entire college by what a magazine says, which is beyond shortsighted. This report implied that the rankings system is worthless or in need of sever alterations, but they offer another option for people in a world when all schools are increasingly viewed as the same.</p>
<p>On a side note, I would be very interested in what sorts of colleges/high schools were being represented in this survey.</p>
<p>USNWR is simply tapping into a human frailty/fault/weakness…to sell magazines. Nothing more and nothing less. What is that weakness?</p>
<p>People are interested in being perceived as better than everyone else: PRESTIGE HOUNDS. So they can supposedly get ahead and make more money, so they can once again be perceived as better than everyone else and be permanent prestige hounds.</p>
<p>Rankins are a joke. The only people who really care about them are over-stressed HS students and people who actually work in academia.</p>
<p>I see students on here making fun of other students because ones school is ranked #65 and the other is ranked #97. It’s such snobbery.</p>
<p>Of course, some schools carry national recognition and prestige (Harvard, Yale, ect.), but once you get out of that top handful of colleges they all blend together.</p>
<p>I always tell kids to pick whatever school they will enjoy being at the most for 4-5 years and makes sense for their situation.</p>
<p>I suspect many college admissions officers have an ax to grind, and that many HS GCs are not very well informed about many colleges beyond the ones in and around their home states. US News is tapped into a national market for higher education. Is that a bad thing? Would it be better if most of the best students chose local or regional colleges based largely on word-of-mouth reputations, family ties, and recruiting efforts? This must have been the norm even at tippy top schools until fairly recently.</p>
<p>I think the rankings matter if one looks at them with a somewhat critical eye. The actual criteria from the quality of the student body, to student-faculty ration to faculty reputations and financial resources DO matter in the quality of education. </p>
<p>I also disagree with the contention that, once you get out of the top 10 or so universities, all are pretty much the same. In both the state I went to college and the one I live in now, there is a huge discrepancy between the 40-55 flagship Big Ten school and the 100< other publics: in terms of the quality of the students, the renown of the faculty, companies that recruit there, the percentage of students sent on to top grad/med/law schools, financial resources and on and on. Is there a huge gap between 40 and 47? No. Is there a fundamental difference between that school at 47 and one at 107? Yes, I believe so.</p>
<p>OTOH, I believe that the formula has become horribly skewed towards private universities.</p>
<p>I am starting to wonder if this trend has any validity now that the mismanagement of state government finances has resulted in slashing of budgets. This will become even more apparent when the stimulus money runs out in a few years. I would be wary of applying to certain state schools now with this uncertainty (particularly with financial aid).</p>
<p>Maybe private schools offer better education? Of course there is no evidence of this, But because certain types of schools come out tops does not mean the formula is invalid</p>
<p>It was a conscious change in how they weighted input data. If one goes back to the year-by-year rankings, one finds a single year’s change where Cal, Michigan and UVA all immediately dropped from being in (or near) the top 10 (believe Cal was 6) to being outside the top 20.</p>
<p>I agree and MIchigan and Berkeley did not seem like the only schools which got affected by the methodology too. UChicago was ranked like in the top 6 or 7 lol. A quick glance at the previous rankings suggest one thing which makes sense- very few schools participated at the beginning probably because they did not know or understand what type of data USNEWSR was asking for. As more schools joined, and data collection improved Berkeley and MIchigan went down. </p>
<p>The methodology does not inherently “favor” private schools. It just measures factors which seem like a marker for good undergraduate education but which are more common in private schools. For example, if they included number of majors in the ranking and diversity of academic offerings, public schools will improve in the ranking, while smaller schools might go down. This methodology addition affects private schools. That does not change the fact though that in theory a diversity of academic classes is a “marker of a good school.”</p>
There IS evidence of this from NSF data on PhDs generated by former undergraduate students per capita to the number of Rhodes Scholar a school generates. Publics do not tend to show up favorably in many comparisons, even against schools with similar admissions standards. </p>
<p>The only measures by which publics ever turn out favorably are those counting the number of top faculty (ignoring per capita distribution) and graduate school performance. None of this ever points to their undergraduate students becoming successful.</p>
<p>The US News rankings are very useful and very accurate. They help students and parents make enlightened decisions. Public schools are less selective, even the best public schools. Therefore they tend to be ranked lower, as they should be.</p>
<p>What do you think of last year’s USNews College Survey?
HS GC: Oh, the rankings are horrible. People should not pay attention to them, especially if they value their sanity. </p>
<p>What publication do you use the most in discussing potential schoois with parents and students?
HS GC: Probably, the USNews of a few years ago. Kids tend to leave their copies in our office. We do not buy the recent one. </p>