Rankings can be useful to put a school that wasn’t on the map on someone’s radar. But only if a bump in ratings is accompanied by a comparable bump in quality (rigor, caliber of students, academic standards to get a degree in a certain discipline). In and of themselves- no Fortune 100 company is developing a recruiting strategy for their global talent operation based on a two point movement between college number 12 and 14.
So what does this mean practically? If you have a kid who cares about academic rigor (some do, some don’t) he or she is likely to “feel” a real difference between a school rated number 10 and one rated 100. That doesn’t mean that he or she can’t find his “peeps” at the lower ranked school, and it doesn’t mean that the actual academic offerings in a given department are sub-par. But the kid will need more initiative to tap into what’s there.
Can a kid major in Classics at University of New Hampshire and get an experience similar to that of Berkeley, Chicago, Michigan? Maybe- with a whole lot of energy. Develop an independent study with a professor who has expertise in the area of interest. Go abroad for a year to an institution with deeper chops in this area. So it’s not just the highly subjective ranking- there are universities which by some pretty objective measures have deeper and more intense expertise in particular areas.
Does it matter for your kid? I don’t know- I don’t know your kid. If I’m hiring for an entry level rotational program in manufacturing management or financial management I need kids who can read, write, analyze, summarize, develop an independent hypothesis about something and then figure out what research is required in order to get to an answer. So I like kids who studied something which teaches them that-- and excelling at a college which has high standards is a good marker (not the only marker) that the kid works hard and has the right kind of skills.
Econ is a very tough major at some colleges, and is the default “easy major” for varsity athletes who don’t have time to study at other colleges. Philosophy is going to be incredible rigorous at Princeton but less so at University of New Haven.
Rankings can be a quick shortcut to employers-- but there is usually some in depth knowledge about a particular college that goes beyond the ranking as well.
Nuance. And of course- it depends. There are kids majoring in beer pong EVERYWHERE so if you have a kid who isn’t going to class very often and isn’t going to be writing an honors thesis on the differences between Mao and Lenin and how that legacy plays out in modern Sino/Russian relations, then it almost doesn’t matter what ranking you use.
The individual ranks don’t matter, that is, until there’s a drastic move up or down by one college or another (like Chicago) - then, suddenly all H*** breaks loose because, in truth, we have internalized the ranking pecking order to the point where it becomes self-fulfilling prophecy. I think it’s only a matter of time before they all begin to use some derivative of College Scorecard’s data points - it’s public information (although, who knows for how long) and we seem to be in the midst of a “bottom line” mentality regarding just about everything.
I do think rankings are pretty valuable in making decisions as parents and students. Do we choose the dream school ranked number 25, or go with the scholarship school ranked 110, what about the bigger scholarship ranked 430… still in the running? What’s the return on investment going to be with the bigger name brand, the lower name brand, and the school no one has heard of or has a dubious reputation? The various rankings do matter, at least to our family, in the final scheme of things.
Obviously it has always been a great school. But back in 1990 it was USNWR #20 and last in the Ivy League. Did you know that?
Penn was able to move up the ladder by (among other things obviously) aggressively pioneering the use of ED as a way to “manage” yield and admission rates.
You may not be impressed today by the moves recently made by Chicago or NEU. But those moves are quite likely to impress people 10 years from now.
These moves already impress people. Proof is the just above 7.6% admit rate at UChicagp last year. These rankings are important for admissions, alumni contributions and placement. But attempting a level of granularity where, as per UNWR for example, UChicago and Yale are 3rd and Columbia and Stanford are 4th is not credible. Looking at these schools in tiers or cohorts makes more sense.
I am not a big fan of rankings, but there is certainly some value in noticing big moves, even in a flawed ranking system. Big moves are a tipoff that something meaningful may be happening. Take Northeastern as an example. I thought I knew what I needed to know about Northeastern --which wasn’t much, because it was the 7th or 8th best local school in a locality that wasn’t mine. The rankings increase tells me to look again, to see whether I should re-examine my assumptions. Maybe, on investigation, I conclude that that it’s all smoke and mirrors, or maybe – more likely – I see that some things have changed, and I ought to adjust my opinion.
The fact that the ratings are highly imperfect and often misleading doesn’t mean that they don’t communicate anything meaningful. All of the good-faith systems do. It’s just not a single number in an index of quality that can be compared precisely to another institution’s number.
One of the reasons University of Chicago had a lot more applicants and a lower %age of admissions is because last year is when they changed to using the FAFSA along with a very shirt form of their own…and away from the Profile. This made the school much more financially accessible for some applicants. They didn’t have to pay tomcomolete the Profile…and the non-custodial parent information was no longer needed.
Their applications went up…quite a bit.
You have to wonder if this new financial aid initiative had anything to do,with it. My bet…yes.
Anytime you are dealing with ranking data, you need to look at the methodology. If the reasons behind the methodology are important to you, then that data will be the most “trustworthy.”
The Ivy League schools will always rank higher than state flagship schools if scores and retention are part of the methodology simply because the state flagship schools will be required to have broader admissions standards to accommodate more state students. But, that doesn’t mean that an extremely bright, achieving student attending an honors college at a state flagship is less deprived of an education than a student at an Ivy. Sometimes being the “big fish in the little pond” will mean more opportunities for research, studying abroad, access to professors, leadership opportunities in extracurricular activities, fellowships, etc.
In the end, you must learn to bloom where you’re planted.
@northwesty, my view of Penn is the same as it’s always been: it’s on the same tier of Ivy/equivalents that it’s always been along with Cornell and Northwestern. It has one of the best b-schools in the world (just like Medill is one of the top j-schools in the world and Hotel at Cornell is tops in that field). Now Cornell is last among the Ivies but nobody is less willing to hire from Cornell and more willing to hire from Penn .because of the rankings change.
@PurpleTitan Disagree that “no one is less willing to hire from Cornell” than Penn. There is a pecking order. even if individual distinctions between some schools in the same cohort make no meaningful difference, those differences do exist between different tiers.
Name these companies that are less likely to hire at Penn than Cornell, @Chrchill (and not the ones targeting Wharton either as Hotel also has companies that target there).
