<p>Byerly has written flattering things about Chicago in other postings, and I think he genuinely means to give good advice. Furthermore, I think his advice has merit. The effect does build on itself, and people who ignore that would be in serious denial.</p>
<p>It is not the case that every applicant to Chicago is well informed about the school and wants "the life of the mind." Just go to an admissions office presentation and count the number of students or parents who ask about the "pre-med major", the "business major", or the "engineering major." With stiff competition from the Ivies and Stanford, who DO court and get their shares of brilliant top scholars, it may just not be possible for Chicago to fill a class 100% with kids who yearn for intellectualism. What to do with this situation goes to the very soul of ths amazing institution. I don't know what the right answer is, but I think something needs to be done.</p>
<p>The fall in the USNews rankings can be denied up to a point, but it is beginning to hurt. I personally know of applicants who apply to Chicago because it "the school with an Ivy quality, but much easier to get into" -- and they went. That is not a good development for the long term.</p>
<p>And why shouldn't a wonderful school like Chicago be in the top 10 in the USNews rankings? If specialized schools like MIT and Caltech can do it -- their applicant are highly self-selecting too -- so can Chicago.</p>
<p>I think that Jacknjill's point ought to be considered very carefully. True, we have slid significantly in the USNWR rankings, but where would we be in a ranking system which was based solely on the values which are important to Chicago? As I'm sure anyone would agree with me when I say that Chicago prides itself on its academic atmosphere, that measures like student/faculty ratio, quality of students, and access to faculty are key. As posted here previously, the University of Texas has a ranking which solely examines these aspects (and not futile things like Alumni giving rate!). </p>
<p>What I find amazing about this entire site is that it approaches the ranking system much more methodically, and indeed seems much more scientific than USNWR. But, out of all of its merits, I think its greatest accomplishment is in demystifying the hype that USNWR created that a #9 school is way better than a #10 school and acknowledge that there are clusters of schools which are all equally as good, and decisions to attend one or the other really do fall on personal preferences. For instance, according to their results, it would be appropriate of me to sit here and brag that Chicago placed second in the country to CalTech, but the ranking agrees that these differences are indeed insignificant. Since he was not as interested in selling magazine copies, the researcher at Univ. of Texas did not have a problem with placing CalTech,Harvard,MIT,Princeton,Stanford,UofC,and Yale in the same category, and when considering institutions not primarily science-oriented, he placed all those above except MIT and CalTech as tied for #1. Is it just me or does this make much more sense?</p>
<p>It is amusing indeed to see anyone hyping a five year old "ranking" by the highly partisan and transparently biassed Professor Leiter of Texas.</p>
<p>If you want to test the value of the USNews rankings by another measure, it is far better to look at the "Revealed Preference" study, revised and expanded in December 2005, which tells us how the "customers" (ie, the top students themselves, when picking among alternatives open to them) rank the elite schools.</p>
<p>This ranking - based SOLEY on real world decisions made by the "customers" - strikes me as the only measure that really counts in the end.</p>
<p>The academic pecking order is indeed rigid and slow to change, and there is a "winner take all" aspect to it. But make no mistake: the "winners" benefit enormously in many ways: better students, better faculty who prefer working with those better students, and greater support - financial and otherwise - in order to maintain and enhance a school's status.</p>
<p>As for USNews, its ability to improve its rankings are largely dependent on the ability of others to force schools generally to supply more and better information to measure "student satisfaction" and "value added" etc etc.</p>
<p>The new Carnegie classifications - which will be incorporated into the USNews "America's Best Colleges" for the 2008 edition (they are out too late to use them for the upcoming 2007 edition) will help rationalize some things, allowing more categories based on size and "mission" thyan currently. For example, it is something of a joke, IMHO, to have tiny Caltech - an academic boutique - in the same "National Universities" ranking with huge, multi-purpose megaschools such as Berkeley.</p>
<p>I love how Leiter, who ranked his own institution in the 5th peer group is extremely biased, yet the ranking compiled by Harvard students themselves is not. I sure hope adcoms don't read these posts, Byerly, or else I think they would be greatly concerned about your reasoning abilities.</p>
<p>"But make no mistake: the "winners" benefit enormously in many ways: better students, better faculty who prefer working with those better students, and greater support - financial and otherwise - in order to maintain and enhance a school's status."</p>
<p>However one wishes to define 'better' students, there is no doubt that since Harvard has won the 'name' sweepstakes hands-down, public hs vals and sals that have never heard of U of C will put in an app to Harvard because they and their GC's have heard of it. This adds to Harvard mystique - and the next batch of students give it a shot.</p>
<p>it's about time that Byerly be banished to the Harvard site. I often wonder why it is that people who knock U of C seem to be connected in some fashion with Ivy League schools.</p>
<p>Byerly has consistently knocked the student body of U of C by making reference to attracting better students. Why should he care?</p>
<p>It's time we ignore people like him. Isn't the purpose of attending college, to get a good education? U Chicago offers as good an academic experience as anywhere.</p>
<p>Professor Leiter's biases are informed as much by his powerful hatreds as by his loves. An interesting provocateur, perhaps, but too wrapped up in himself for my taste, and unwilling EVER to admit his mistakes - even simple statistical errors - which are legion..</p>
<p>
[quote]
"But make no mistake: the "winners" benefit enormously in many ways: better students, better faculty who prefer working with those better students, and greater support - financial and otherwise - in order to maintain and enhance a school's status."
[/quote]
</p>
<p>It is interesting that this comment would probably not come from a UofC alum, as they'd notice the logical failure in the conclusion - correlation versus causation. It is equally probable that the school's status is what attracts the "winners", not that the presence of the "winners" leads to the status. </p>
<p>I suspect most folks do not appreciate the efforts to which the top elites go to in cultivating their image and reputation. It is also why there are so many curious distortions in their admissions policies - why some sort of national level fame (intel, math olympiad, olympics etc) is such a big factor in admissions. Such fame is an instant press release/news item for the school once the student accepts. And don't think those news items in the local paper (John Jones, winner of the junior national bowling title, enrolls at princeton...) occur haphazardly.</p>
<p>Chicago, noble, pure and morally superior as its adherants may view themselves, is not above bragging about the individual achievements of its applicants, students and faculty where an opportunity to do so presents itself. They simply need to do so more effectively.</p>
<p>Doing an inadequate job in recruiting top students, convincing them to matriculate, and publicizing the achievements of those who DO matriculate in order to attract similarly attractive applicants in the future is hardly a "virtue" IMHO.</p>
<p>Chicago is an excellent school which shouldn't be rationalizing away its failure to improve the quality of it student body further.</p>
<p>This all begs the question of who is better coming out of their 4 year experience. There is increasing evidence that many employers and others in academe are wondering if Harvard doesn't dumb down its talented pool, while on the other hand, U of C has always had the reputation and earned prestige of taking a remarkably talented pool and making it even better. This is perhaps why the #1 source for Fortune 500 CEO's hired in 2004 & 2005 came from the U of C (tied with the Univ. of Texas) and and the Ivy League, and Harvard in particular have seen a steady decline over the past decade. And, perhaps this is why the WSJ maintains that though Harvard has the name recognition, that it trails U of C by a large margin in over all political and economic influence over the past 30 years. And, why there are article like this appearing in major US magazines by unhappy Harvard alumni:</p>
<p>Chicago's unhappy alumni typically blog that they learned too much.</p>
<p>This is perhaps why Harvard students seem so bothered by U of C students. They know their SAT scores as a pool are about 20 or so points higher and Harvard is on paper much more selective (let's ignore for a minute a recent analysis done on the parents forum that looked at the number of applicants who actually have the numbers etc to be admitted, which made the actual acceptance rate about 35 to 40%), then why is Chicago considered America's most intellectual school and its students the brilliant ones? It must grow tiresome hearing "yes Harvard, oh so prestigious," and "yes Chicago, oh so intellectual." That has got to be an aggravation.</p>
<p>I believe Chicago should remain precisely as it is, taking students precisely as it does, with one exception, a little more financial aid to bring it in line with what is offered to need based students at the Ivy's, and to offer merit aid so as to capture students those students who have Chicago as their first choice, but don't attend because another good college offered more merit $$$.</p>
<p>I'm kind of insulted by this. I got accepted into Chicago. Do you mean to say that I am not as good of a student as someone who was accepted into Harvard?</p>
<p>You miss the point, which is whether Chicago can do a better job of recruiting more strong applicants and, more importantly, convincing a larger fraction of those it does admit to matriculate. </p>
<p>There are many strong students at Chicago, which is an excellent school. I do wonder, however, whether the 2/3 of admits who choose to go elsewhere are, uniformly, weaker than those who accept the offer.</p>
<p>The people who chose to go to Chicago, I believe, are just looking for something different. It doesn't make them "better" or "worse" -- just different. When you get down to it, there are some schools that are of equal excellence -- Harvard, Yale, Princeton, Stanford, Chicago, etc, are all among those ranks.</p>
<p>Regarding the first link you posted Byerly:</p>
<p>"We close by reminding readers that measures of revealed preference
are just that: measures of desirability based on students and families making college choices. They do not necessarily correspond to educational quality." </p>
<p>This was in the last sentence of the conclusion. I understand your point and I agree that having happier students will promote a better atmosphere and students will be more motivated, which would help the faculty be more in motivated. However, I chose (or will choose) colleges based on their educational quality. Yes, to be honest I think I would have more fun at a 'party school' than at UChicago (as much as I like learning, I have other interests too, but this is off topic), but where I'm from, you go to college to learn. </p>
<p>Regarding the third link,</p>
<p>"Why dont elite universities simply raise their prices? Because a universitys status depends heavily on the average intellectual ability of its students, elite universities need top students every bit as much as top students feel the need to attend elite institutions. This co-dependence creates multiple positive-feedback loops that amplify the rewards for a university that succeeds in its efforts to recruit top students and faculty. The result is a quintessential winner-take-all market, in which success breeds success and failure breeds failure. " </p>
<p>As far as I see, this article talks more about the financial aspect of college admission. Obviously for a college to get better, they need better students...</p>
<p>Byerly: What do you have against Professor Professor Leiter, and why? How do you know so much about him? I'm not saying your wrong with what your saying about him, but I think your reasoning would help. </p>
<p>I wish Professor Leiter's rankings were more up top date. A lot can happen in 5 years...</p>
<p>The educase/Hansmann article is an interesting polemic, but hardly supported by hard data.</p>
<p>He calls higher ed an associative good, a term he evidently developed, to argue that matriculation choice is made by considerations of associating with "high quality" people, alums, faculty, current students all part of the mix. Never mind that he avoids any discussion of what is meant by "quality". Never mind that he avoids any discussion of the relevance of this as a decison metric. </p>
<p>And, in fact, whether or not his argument is true (which I doubt, as most economists would consider matriculation choice to be much more complex), it is also irrelevant, as much study has shown that WHERE one attends is not very important. What is important is the characteristics of the student.</p>
<p>Anyway, more power to those who want to homogenize higher ed by having colleges market, segment, recruit, and admit in similar ways. Personally, I'm glad they don't. And I'm glad some folks fixate on rankings and other trivial fluff. That leaves more room for the institutions and the students who don't fixate on the rankings.</p>
<p>The students who chose not to attend by in large choose lesser ranked schools, so their numbers may be lower or (my guess) about the same as those who choose to attend. As has been pointed, out Chicago's student SAT etc scores are about the same and often better than those attending other top 15 schools (4 Ivies have lower scores), I don't see how the student pool could be much better in any significant way numbers wise. And those students who do decide to go to Chicago, who with their numbers could have gone elsewhere, there is something special about them, they above all others are willing to accept the academic challenge that is Chicago.</p>
<p>As a current student at Chicago, I can attest to the fact that 95% of my friends who applied to the ivies were waitlisted, and had they got in, would have gone there. Kids here, for the most part, are not happy here. The school has horrible morale issues, and I think it needs to reform in order to attract the brightest students in the future.</p>
<p>Is there any statistical support that can be cited for the proposition, advanced by several posters here, that the majority of Chicago's admits, who choose to go elsewhere, in fact choose "lesser-ranked schools" rather than higher-ranked schools?</p>
<p>This seems counter-intuitive.</p>
<p>Compare: "We offered, they declined: Many admits choose other prestigious universities" (Stanford)</p>