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<p>It looks like you’re quoting a source here. Would you mind providing a link? thanks</p>
<p>Is it possible that the UCs are not actually lying about the class rank numbers, rather they are just getting most of their students from really weak high schools. I mean, it’s not hard to be in the top 10% of your freshman class if only 10% of your class is college bound.</p>
<p>“I’m looking this up and getting the impression that they want the top 12.5% of the state’s high school graduates, which may not be evenly distributed among high schools.”</p>
<p>^Yup, and I agree with al6200. I lived in a crappy part of LA before-filled with a lot of people who don’t care for college. I moved to a much more academically competitive school afterwards where everyone was practically college bound. Thus, I found out some people from my old school made it to some of the top UC’s while some of my current classmates didn’t even get into the mid-tier UC’s (SD/I) when they were definitely more if not equally qualified. So basically, yeah, the UC’s intention is to take the top students from all California schools. Personally, I think it’s unfair, but I guess, what do you expect from a public school system?</p>
<p>I’ve said it before. Their ranking methodology is FUBAR anyways. Fixing one bad data point isn’t going to change that.</p>
<p>Hopefully, this issue can be resolved without too much more drama.</p>
<p>Have they found any discrepancies concerning WashU’s rank?</p>
<p>[News:</a> The Best University? - Inside Higher Ed](<a href=“http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2009/06/09/clemson]News:”>http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2009/06/09/clemson)
"…he university’s president, James F. Barker, took a very different approach in his peer assessments. Barker, too, rated his institution as “strong” – but he gave no other university in the country that high a mark, handing out 18 "good"s (3’s), 94 "adequate"s (2’s), 126 "marginal"s, and 21 “don’t know"s in the 2009 ranking. Because U.S. News’s “national universities” category includes not only well-regarded public institutions such as the Universities of California at Berkeley, Michigan, and North Carolina at Chapel Hill, but also private universities such as Harvard, Stanford, and Yale, Barker has rated his institution more highly than all of those.”
“The request from U.S. News is to measure the academic quality of undergraduate programs,” Barker said. “It did not say research programs, it did not say prestige. It did not say size of endowments, or anything other than undergraduate education. And I took that charge seriously, measuring what I would think would be the full package of the undergraduate experience,” including faculty-student ratio, relationships between faculty and students in and out of class … do they spend time having lunch together.</p>
<p>“I believe that Clemson does that better than anyone,” he said.</p>
<p>Why do we even use Peer Assessment when there are people who are so strongly biased like this man? However, I’ll admit there is a chance that Clemson does offer a comparable undergraduate experience (excluding prestige obviously), but still, using opinions of others to create a ranking seems ridiculous.</p>
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Eligible in Local Context: <a href=“http://www.universityofcalifornia.edu/admissions/undergrad_adm/paths_to_adm/freshman/local_eligibility.html[/url]”>http://www.universityofcalifornia.edu/admissions/undergrad_adm/paths_to_adm/freshman/local_eligibility.html</a></p>
<p>" I’ll admit there is a chance that Clemson does offer a comparable undergraduate experience (excluding prestige obviously), but still, using opinions of others to create a ranking seems ridiculous."</p>
<p>haha, you’ve obviously never been there then. The campus is nice but it’s definitely not a strong school academically, the hillbilly backwardness of a great deal of the students there makes it hilarious that anyone, even the president, would claim it is a better school than UCB, UVa, UNC, and Umich., let alone a Harvard or Yale. Maybe in agricultural studies.</p>
<p>So now USC doesn’t just cheat in sports, but in academic rankings too?</p>
<p>Sorry, had to be said. :-p</p>
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<p>this sort of stuff is the kind of stuff that has started to make me think about transferring. it seems the entire mentality of the school is so image focused and will improve its image by any means necessary. i can’t imagine that any of the schools that are as good as USC has made itself out to be go through such shady processes to improve their reputation. it all just seems so painfully obvious and unethical, it is like they don’t even try to hide it.</p>
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<p>We don’t even have to assume bias to know that this methodology is fatally flawed (although I don’t doubt that bias is rampant). It is simply not credible that every college official knows enough about every other college in the country to formulate a useful assessment. The vast majority of the peer assessments are inevitably based on reputation, or bias, or both.</p>
<p>In fact, IMO the entire notion of rankings is fatally flawed.</p>
<p>Seems like USC cheats in college rankings in addition to football and basketball recruiting too huh? Haha</p>
<p>I am pleased all of this is “gaming” information is finally coming out and I hope reaching a critical mass to once and for all bury USNWR (its only money maker are these inane lists). In addition to what’s going on at USC and Clemson, I have maintained that any ranking system that has UC Santa Barbara, Irvine and Davis in the top 50 ranked over UT, UF, Penn State (flagship unis.), Tulane, GWU, and Miami, as does USNWR, is a joke. </p>
<p>These UC schools are gaming the system with their artificially high estimated top 10 percent of high school class numbers. For example, Davis reports 96 percent, whereas Harvard reports 95 percent, Stanford reports 91 percent, Vanderbilt 80. This is juxtaposed with these UC schools’ low SAT/ACT achievement. Davis: average SAT1160/ACT24; Irvine: SAT1120/ACT24; SB: SAT1185/ACT25. By any reasonable standard these numbers are atrocious for purported top 50 schools. Ridiculous.</p>
<p>Anybody who has ever worked in a private corporation knows that it’s a game of survival, and about 99% of the people will stretch any truth, round up, round down, forge signatures, backdate reports, and outright lie to keep their jobs. I don’t see why that survival instinct would disappear just because one has a PhD and is running a college. I’m NOT saying it’s ok…I’m saying that USC and Clemson are the first to get exposed, and once someone starts to look into the other schools, many of the big names will follow.</p>
<p>I’m glad USC was caught on this! My opinion is that it is absurd for USC to count adjucts in their National Academly membership.</p>
<p>-A tenure track faculty has devoted a good portion of their career to an institution. </p>
<p>-An adjuct who is a National Academly member could be paid loads of money to give an occasional lecture.</p>
<p>There is a profound difference between and adjuct a tenure track faculty…, and counting retired professors when usnews is asking for full time is also very hard to explain. These ranking are only worth so much and should always be taken with a grain of salt, however I do care about lying and misleading the media and public.</p>
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<p>I think he already graduated it said, i might be wrong</p>
<p>I think Sam went to Northwestern undergrad and Stanford grad, or vice versa. Also went to high school in Williamstown, MA, as I recall.</p>
<p>Sam Lee – the article says he is a current graduate student at USC but all of his listings make it clear that he is an NU grad. Is anyone else bothered by these tactics?</p>
<p>Is he reallly a grad student at USC or just pretending to be… seem to be many postings trashing other universities and trying to pump up NU.</p>