I happened across this thread: http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/vanderbilt-university/1499752-is-vanderbilt-set-to-rise-up-the-us-news-rankings-soon.html
And I was curious as to what you guys thought might happen to Rice. Will it rise? Fall? Stay the same? It certainly seems to be doing some things right (such as the recent economics revamping and the leadership program), but will that really make a difference?
I really don’t want to come across as terse, but as a junior at Rice I don’t care. Like as you advance in your major you start to realize how detached those rankings are from the actual classes you’re taking and your relationships with professors and fellow students and what you learn, not to mention job placement for your major. Things like your professor introducing a new assignment from last year are the things that you actually develop opinions about, and those rankings start to feel really shallow and like the result of administrative statistics magic. If Rice dropped 10 spots for some reason I really wouldn’t care at all because not only does it not have a cause-effect relationship with the quality of my courses, but it also probably won’t affect my job placement. That’s because a lot of employers already have formed opinions on schools they recruit at, and even if they’re really unfamiliar with your school and have to choose between you and a similar applicant, they will probably go off of a gut feeling about the interview instead of school ranking.
Also I don’t want this to sound negative! It’s more just like an explanation of what current students (based solely off of my opinion) really care about. It can be hard as a high schooler to know what will be important to you in two years, and it’s almost never ranking 