Questions&Comments about Chicago and Penn in US News Rankings

College Search & Selection
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<p>After looking at the new US News rankings, I had a few questions and comments about the two schools I know best, Chicago and Penn. (Note, I saw the rankings in a bookstore and don't have the mag in front of me, so some of my statistics may be a little off).</p>

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<li><p>First, how is Penn's selectivity rank so high? I believe it's selectivity rank was at #5, but I traditionally thought that it was less selective than, say, Brown, Columbia, Dartmouth, MIT, etc. Is this because Penn has 99% of its students from the top ten% of their high school class? Btw, having 99% of the incoming class be from the top ten percent of their HS class seems a bit suspect to me - I'd like to think that even top colleges sometimes give more of a chance to a student that might be, say, in the second decile of his HS class.</p></li>
<li><p>Does anyone know if there's been much change in the PA scores for these two schools over - literally - the past couple decades? These numbers really never seem to change - I think Penn may have gotten a bump from 4.4 to 4.5 at some point, and Chicago's stayed in the 4.7-4.6 range forever. </p></li>
<li><p>Why is Chicago's graduation and retention rank so low? I don't recall exactly, but I think Chicago's grad reten rank was maybe at the bottom of top 20, but the actual number seemed quite comparable to peer schools - Chicago had a grad/reten rank of around 93%, schools like Penn and Duke had about 95% on this front, yet were ranked much higher for this portion of the ranking.</p></li>
<li><p>Of the top ten schools, Chicago has the most potential for improvement in the numbers that are the most manipulable. It's rated quite well (in the top 5-6) for Peer Assessment, financial resources, and faculty resources, which are traditionally the most difficult areas to improve. </p></li>
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<p>On the other hand, Chicago was ranked lower in selectivity (#15), graduation/retention rate (#17, I believe), and alumni giving (at a 33% giving rate, in comparison to say 39% at Penn or 36% at Columbia). </p>

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<li>Selectivity, graduation/reten rank, and alum giving seem like they can be improved considerably over the span of 2-3 years. For example, with the direction the new administration is taking the U of C, I think it's possible for Chicago to be in the top dozen for selectivity (rather than at #15), and, similarly, grad/reten rating could improve as well. Also, with a bit more of a push on the alum giving front, it doesn't seem that hard to go from, say, a 33% alum giving rate to 35% or so (and closer to Columbia, etc.). </li>
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<p>General Thoughts?</p>

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<p>I’m thinking selectivity could actually be in the top 10 in the next few years with the addition of Nondorf. Alumni giving is slowly progressing, with the university encouraging all exiting graduates to donate, even if it’s $10. In the last few years, the donation rate of the outgoing class has gone up to about 80%.</p>

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<p>Agreed. Chicago could actually probably move up to 4th nationally in a few years if it really wanted to manipulate statistics (since it’s only 2 points away from 4th). Hopefully, it won’t come to that and there will only be a gradual increase in the statistics of the incoming class.</p>

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<p>I think Chicago’s PA score was actually higher in the late 80s, and then started to fade as the University began to have problems in the 90s. I don’t see why a score of 4.8 or 4.9 wouldn’t eventually be possible.</p>

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<p>Yeah, I think Penn’s playing the rankings a bit too seriously with this statistic. Chicago in recent years has been a bit more serious with this as well, going from 80% to 86% in two years. This will probably increase further in the coming years, although I hope it will never get above 95%.</p>

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<p>Penn’s jump is largely due to the surprisingly high “top-10 % in HS”. At 99%, it’s higher than HYP (~95%) and UC Berkeley/UCLA (98/97%), the California flapships that value GPA the most. It’s also significantly higher than what Penn had last year. The 99% actually matches its ADMITTED stats. So there’s a question whether the 99% really comes from the enrolled pool. I personally find it hard to believe there weren’t more candidates that were outside the top-10% but had something amazing enough to get into Penn. Like phuriku, I suspect this is a concious move from the Penn admission to play the ranking game more aggressively. The end result is that it’s ranked #6 in selectivity even though the SAT range is lower than many peers. USN thinks it’s more selective than Stanford which we all know it’s untrue. The “99%” has paid a huge dividend for Penn.</p>

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<p>“Penn’s jump is largely due to the surprisingly high “top-10 % in HS”.”</p>

<p>Pardon, but just how much is this worth?</p>

<p>I’m curious, looking for reasons why Amherst fell second to Williams this year. In addition to a poor P.A. score, only 79 percent of Amherst’s Class of 2012 were in the top tenth of their HS classes, and I’m wondering if this may have been another detrimental contributor.</p>

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<p>It’s worth 40% of selectivity, which is 15% of total ranking.</p>

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<p>I’m always amused by comments that accuse some schools of “playing the rankings game” while others remain “above the fray”.</p>

<p>Anyone who believes that any of the schools listed in the top 20-30 of USNWR aren’t scrapping for each and every point in an effort to climb in the rankings is extremely naive.</p>

<p>Yes, as hard as it is to believe, I’d bet you lunch that HYP have people tasked with managing this activity. Would they ever publicly admit this? Of course not…</p>

<p>I think you can examine any school at/near the top of this list and know that they are ranked accurately, based on the intense effort undertaken to maximize their scores.</p>

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<p>Must be because they transfer to Penn ;)</p>

<p>Seriously though, I met 2 UChicago transfers, one into College and one into Wharton.</p>

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<p>The top 10% category is completely mis-leading. If you will notice some colleges report that less than 50% of admitted students have a high school ranking. Why is this? Because private schools have stopped ranking their students. (I think one major reason private schools stopped ranking is because colleges didn’t want them to because they would have more difficulty accepting their kids ranked below the top 10%). I can tell you our school had about 10% of the kids accepted to the very best schools and only 3% of those were in the top 10% of the class.
Personal opinion-get rid of the class ranking category because without private school participation it means nothing.</p>

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<p>It appears that Chicago is getting really serious with US News ranking. Its actions begin to resemble that of WashU.</p>

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<p>I still think Wash U has the oldest and most significant manipulations to increase rank in the US News rankings, but I think schools like Penn, Chicago, etc. are following suit to some degree.</p>

<p>With schools with lesser national brand recognition (like a Chicago or Penn, which nationally are not as well known as Columbia, Stanford, etc.), the rankings are one way to signify legitimacy. A school like Stanford will continue to thrive whether its ranked #1 or #11, but I think schools like Penn and Chicago (and Wash U) are a bit more relient on maintaining good standing.</p>

<p>Who knows though, I think what others are claiming may be right - all schools take the rankings very seriously and commission people to assess how to improve in the rankings. I’m certain harvard, Princeton, etc. are keen to maintain their very high rankings.</p>

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<p>Where did you see Chicago’s retention rate to be so low? According to this page [Best</a> Colleges - Education - US News and World Report](<a href=“http://colleges.usnews.rankingsandreviews.com/best-colleges/national-freshmen-least-most-likely-return]Best”>http://colleges.usnews.rankingsandreviews.com/best-colleges/national-freshmen-least-most-likely-return), it is 97.8%, only 1% below Yale, which has the highest freshman retention rate. And according to <a href=“http://colleges.usnews.rankingsandreviews.com/best-colleges/highest-grad-rate[/url]”>http://colleges.usnews.rankingsandreviews.com/best-colleges/highest-grad-rate&lt;/a&gt;, Chicago’s 4 year graduation rate is 86%, which is below some of its ivy peers, but not too far below them. It is actually ahead of Dartmouth and Brown. </p>

<p>So if the freshman retention rate is 97.8%, what makes the graduation rate so much lower? Do some students drop out later on? Do some graduate in 5 or 6 years?</p>

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<p>Penn probably sends a newsletter to developmental/athletic recruits: “Hey, do us a favor…Transfer to a non-ranking HS. Then you’ll be golden! :)”</p>

<p>But seriously…99% is an absurd number. And it is for a rather lame metric in determining selectivity, at least for the upper echelon of schools. HYP could make their classes 100% vals/sals, let alone 100% in the top 10%, if they really wanted to.</p>

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<p>Penn is quite notorious for manipulating their numbers over the years. Note that they have never made public their CDS.</p>

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<p>These rankings on USNWR are so bad… They cause schools to do shady things just to look good.</p>

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<p>i wonder who the couple people not in the top 10% are at Penn…</p>

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<p>UChicago jumped 6 spots from #15 in 2007 to #9 in 2008.</p>

<p>“Most manipulable in the top 10 - UChicago”. Oh yeah, UChicago officials/officers talked to USNWR officials about “misreporting data, needed ‘updated’ corrections stat.” hahaha</p>

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<p>“It appears that Chicago is getting really serious with US News ranking. Its actions begin to resemble that of WashU”</p>

<p>Haha. Eight years ago, when my oldest was applying to college, the most mail (like every week) came from Wash U. This year, my high school junior has been getting the most mail (also about every week, and it started sophomore year) from UChicago.</p>