<p>One more whack and this horse will be dead. TU has the most important rankings stat going for it – student selectivity. Even though that is a small part of the USNWR formula, it is the thing that drives the bus. Selective schools will also have good reputations, good freshman retention, good 6 year grad rates and (by definiton) good rankings. Because of the lag effects of Katrina on the 6 year grad rate, TU currently has a disconnect in its data that pulls down its ranking. But that’s temporary.</p>
<p>TU has a 26% acceptance rate, a 29-32 ACT range and 58% of students in the top 10% of HS class. That’s pretty comparable to, say, Lehigh – 31% acceptance, 1220-1410 SAT (which equates to 27-33) and 60% top 10. USNWR gives Lehigh a “selectivity rank” of 43 and an overall rank of 40. That’s the neighborhood where TU should wind up in once the lag effect rolls off. That’s where TU was before Katrina. </p>
<p>Lehigh gets overall ranked so much higher than TU because it has an 86% 6 year grad rate vs. TU’s 76%. </p>
<p>@momwantstoknow Sure. There are two factors. The first is that a major component of the USNWR calculations is the 6 year graduation rate. Katrina hit in 2005. So that means freshmen entering that year would have been expected to graduate in 4 years, or 2009, but because of study abroad, majors that take longer like architecture, people taking gap years and other factors, USNWR looks more heavily at how many people that entered in 2005 graduated no later than 2011. As one might expect, Tulane lost a number of freshmen and sophomore students to transferring because of the storm. So graduation rates for the entering classes of 2004 and 2005 were the most severely affected. Now if they only looked at one year, the latest year, the Katrina effect would be gone. But the second factor is that they use an average of some previous number of years, and according to northwesty the Katrina year and the year prior, which was also heavily affected as I mentioned, are still in their calculations. Assuming he is correct, it explains most of the 8-14 place shortfall compared to where one would think Tulane would be.</p>
<p>There is no question, whatever the explanation, that the 6 year graduation rate being lower than schools like Miami, USC and NYU is dragging the ranking down. That is a simple mathematical fact. I think, however, that if one stops to think about it, does any of this really speak to how “good” one university is relative to another? I find USNWR’s rationalization that the higher percentage of students that stay to graduate, the better a school must be, to be wildly simplistic. There are a dozen reasons at least a school such as Tulane might see somewhat higher migration than a USC or others, none of which would have anything to do with the quality of the school per se. That’s not to say that getting graduation rates up shouldn’t be a priority. As I said already, it would be a good thing for the school for reasons not directly related to what I, at least, consider quality factors. Sure, to the extent it supports the finances of the school and creates a more stable cohort there are some implications in that direction. But the quality of the direct education of any given student? I think not.</p>
<p>TU’s USNWR ranking would be about ten spots higher if it had a normal 6 year graduation rate for a school of its caliber. But it currently has a 76% 6 year grad rate. Every single school in the top 50 is in the 80s or 90s. So TU’s ranking gets CRUSHED by this.</p>
<p>For the 2015 rankings, USNWR is using an average of the following years for 6 year grad rate:</p>
<p>For this metric, that is the most recent data available. FYI, they are measuring the outcomes of the classes that STARTED in the fall of that year.</p>
<p>So basically, the 2015 edition of USNWR ranking is measuring the classes that were MOST affected by Katrina. The kids who were returning sophs, the kids who were incoming frosh, and the kids that enrolled the two years after Katrina. It is probably three more years until you get completely past Katrina and also start to see the data for the “new” Tulane. </p>
<p>The 6 year grad rate is guaranteed to go up year over year over year over year. Tulane has been retaining 90% of the freshman classes that started in 2008 and following. The majority of your attrition happens with freshman. So when those classes start hitting the 6 year data set, TU will be reporting a 6 year grad rate in the 80s rather than the 70s. Which will put TU (all other trends continuing) back in the top 50. Compare the 6 year grad rates of #32 NYU (84%), #40 Lehigh (86%), #42 BU (84%), #48 Miami (82%) and you can see what will likely happen as the older TU classes roll off.</p>
<p>Here’s my final word on this topic until this time next year. Here’s some comparative data on a few schools so you all can see where TU might wind up if/when it is no longer burdened with its sore thumb 6 year grad rate data that goes back a full ten years to Katrina time.</p>
<p>The admissions data below is for the Fall 2013 class. The frosh retention data is for the Fall 2012 class. The 6 year grad rate data is for the Fall 2004-2007 classes (so an extremely lagging data set).</p>
<h1>40 Lehigh. ACT 28-32; SAT 1220-1410; frosh retention 93.9%; 6 year grad rate 85.8%.</h1>
<h1>42 BU. SAT 1190-1390; retention 92%; grad rate 84%.</h1>
<h1>48 Miami. ACT 28-32; SAT 1230-1420; retention 91.3%; grad rate 82%.</h1>
<h1>54 Tulane. ACT 29-32; SAT 1240-1400; retention 90%; grad rate 76%.</h1>
<p>Norhtwesty, the data above show TU’s 6 year graduation rate has improved after Katrina (70% before K, and 75% after) so why are people pointing to Katrina for lowering the 6 yr grad rate and the falling USNWR rank? Certainly there is room for improvement and improving that metric will help TU.
The big issue with the USNWR, and the reason all universities work hard behind closed doors to improve their rank, is it helps attract the most desired target group for all universities…the well funded students(WFS). It’s very expensive to run a university and they all need WFS. As the COA grows at private U’s the competition to attract the WFS grows as well. The parents of WFS will pay for highly ranked private universiites. The lower the rank for a private university the more attractive their state flagship becomes. It stinks but all U’s have to play the game and the score has more to do with reputation and wealth than quality of UG education.</p>
Because for one of those years Tulane reported an N/A which, as I understood the reporting on this at the time (2012, the year the Katrina class would have hit the 6 year graduation mark), USNWR essentially filled in a zero for Tulane or did something that considerably lowered the value. That N/A is still stuck in the equation for another couple of years, apparently. Also, you have to keep in mind that other schools weren’t static, but in many cases were able to improve their rates considerably. Tulane has only recently been able to bring a lot of focus to the issue, having other fish to fry. But apparently freshman retention was up to 93% this year, which is far better than a decade ago and should result in better 6 year rates down the road.</p>
<p>hmmmm…A score of N/A means the data was not used because it would cause an abnormal result. N/A does not mean a zero or lower score was used. N/A is used to protect a schools ranking not to punish it for factors beyond its control. I suspect the N/A helped protect Tulane from falling further by not using that data. Nonetheless, the improving retention and graduation rates moving forward will help. </p>
<p>I understand what you are saying, and that is what I thought USNWR would do as well. But what I am trying to tell you is that I remember reading at the time that they did something else that actually penalized Tulane. I cannot remember the details, but I remember it because Scott Cowen, the president at the time, and Tulane complained to USNWR and got nowhere with them.</p>
<p>In any case, we are all correct that things should be free of any effect in a couple of years, and Tulane is seeing a lot of bright spots in various areas considered by USNWR, including these statistics.</p>
<p>It’s interesting how people consider universities ranked higher as their peers but never consider a lower ranked U as a peer. I also wish U’s would spend as much time, energy, and effort on lowering the COA as they spend on growing their wealth. </p>
<p>Nicely put, @bud123. The other thought that came to mind when I read that article is that this is yet another example of how USNWR uses factors that they claim relates to making up the “best” universities for undergraduates, but these factors can easily be shot down as being only weakly correlated or even non-correlated to the undergraduate educational experience. For the endowment argument, an analogy to major league sports teams comes to mind. There is always an assumption that large market teams (“big endowments”) will be the best, but small market teams (“smaller endowments”) consistently make the playoffs and often make it to the championship games and sometimes win. That is because they have good management and an eye for talent, two factors that could quite easily apply to colleges and universities. Not to mention (no real sports analogy here I don’t think) that some of these schools focus a higher proportion of their endowments towards undergraduates than others that are highly research (graduate school) focused. Or I could tweak the analogy to say that the entire team organization (baseball is the one that works best here) is like the university, and the major league squad is the graduate school, while the minor leagues is like undergraduate. If the small market team uses its more limited resources towards its farm system, it might be a better place to want to play during your minor league years than for a major market team that spent all its money on free agents and the major league squad.</p>
<p>In other words it just isn’t so simple as saying that a bigger endowment means a better undergraduate experience, as is true of almost every factor USNWR uses. That has always been my argument about these rankings. They are inherently flawed from the start with ludicrous assumptions, which then gets further polluted with poor or misused data. But the data doesn’t really matter if the model is wrong from the start.</p>
<p>The other thing I noticed was a very funny, highly satiric comment after the article. The commenter said that all GW needs to do is build more Textile Museums. Apparently they have (the only) one now, so if they build more and USNWR makes that a ranking criteria, they will zoom up the list.</p>
<p>Now that is highly tongue in cheek, but one could make an argument that service to ones community and the world in general is a highly relevant part of today’s education, especially in a world as interconnected as ours is now compared to even 50 years ago, and certainly compared to when the Ivies were setting all the standards. Many students choose Tulane because of its commitment to service, and Tulane is always among the leaders of students who spend a year or more devoted to Teach for America, the Peace Corps and similar organizations. That certainly makes it a “best choice” for those students, but high school students that only use the rankings to make their school lists will never know that because USNWR ignores that kind of factor. Non-traditional? Sure, but it shows how arbitrary, and potentially irrelevant, the factors used by USNWR are.</p>
<p>I am not advocating there should be a new set of rankings using that kind of criteria; that would be equally arbitrary and useless for students that have no interest in that kind of thing. Which is exactly the problem of trying to label something as complex as a university and its educational experience as “best”. Sigh, I didn’t mean to get on my soapbox about this again. But there you have it. JMHO.</p>
<p>“Norhtwesty, the data above show TU’s 6 year graduation rate has improved after Katrina (70% before K, and 75% after) so why are people pointing to Katrina for lowering the 6 yr grad rate and the falling USNWR rank?”</p>
<p>Bud – you are not reading the data correctly. It is very clear that Katrina is TOTALLY baked into the numbers. Let me explain.</p>
<p>This year’s data set for USNWR begins with the class of students that STARTED COLLEGE at TU in 2004. So that class would have been rising sophs when Katrina hit in Fall 2005. No surprise that that class turned out as an awful 70% 6 year grad rate. The school shuts down for a semester. All your students involuntarily attend college at another university for a semester. They scatter all over the place and make new friends where they wind up. The continued existence of the university is seriously in doubt. Departments, majors and professors get axed. Can you think of something that would put a bigger hitch in your 6 year grad rate giddyup? </p>
<p>The next class used by USNWR starts in 2005 – that’s the Katrina freshmen. I don’t know how USNWR actually uses the N/A. Presumably the actual stats for that class are as bad as the 2004 numbers or worse. </p>
<p>The 2006 class came out as 75% – better than the 70% 2004 nadir but still pretty bad. That class would have been filling out applications to TU while the school was closed in Fall 2005, and would have shown up in Nola in Fall 2006 when the city and the school were still a big mess. No surprise that a lot of those kids would have bailed. 2007 was 76%; probably pretty similar situation to the 2006 class. </p>
<p>Four years from now, the USNWR data set will be for the classes beginning at TU in 2008, 2009, 2010, 2011. Tulane HAS ALREADY RETAINED those frosh classes at a 90-ish% clip. The majority of your attrition for 6 year grad rates comes between frosh and soph year. So TU’s 6 year grad rate is pretty much ALREADY DETERMINED. It will come out in the mid-80s. Which will put TU’s ranking in the mid-40s for USNWR. </p>
<p>All it will take is time for the Katrina effects to wear off. As USNWR does its numbers, though, that process will take a full 13 years. The 2011 starting class graduates in spring 2016; then add two years to get to spring 2018. Which will then be used by USNWR in their 2019 rankings book that comes out in the fall of 2018. Exactly 13 years after Katrina. QED.</p>
<p>Awww gee NTD, and here I thought you were already convinced it was a gimmick. In my most cynical mode I think they do in fact do it just to sell magazines/ad space. In my most charitable mode I think they are just terribly wrong and misguided, not to mention ignorant of anything resembling the scientific method and statistical rigor.</p>
<p>I was always a bit suspicious of them, and your earlier comments here contributed to this skepticism. I am now going through the college admission “process” with my daughter, and despite being a less able student than her Tulane sibling, she is easily able to get into schools that only rank a bit lower (according to USNWR). It’s silly.</p>
<p>Totally silly. I love that my kids both were so happy where they went to school, although neither came close to going to the highest ranked school possible for them. I cannot even begin to stress enough how that factor received no consideration. In my D’s case, going to a top 3 ranked school was indeed open to her. Both of their successes post-undergrad is testimony to how little consideration rankings should receive.</p>
<p>Glad your D is on the hunt now. If I can be of any help at all, don’t hesitate to PM me.</p>