Schools that are ranked too low?

College Search & Selection
1

<p>I've always thought that Wesleyan deserves a higher ranking. If you ever talk with someone about liberal arts schools, Wesleyan always comes up. It seems to be considered as one of the best. However, it is not ranked all that high. I'm not biased or anything, since I don't go there. I've heard similar things about Macalaster and Hamilton.</p>

<p>Any other schools like this?</p>

2

<p>Reed College</p>

3

<p>Every school that I got into. Alternatively, every school I was rejected from is clearly overrated and I don’t understand how it got to be so highly ranked.</p>

4

<p>Groucho Marx might say the exact opposite.</p>

5

<p>Haha whenhen, I don’t mean it in that way. I don’t currently attend any school, and have not been accepted/rejected to any yet.</p>

6

<p>Perhaps because rankings have no validity for anything except describing prestige. And since rankings ** determine** prestige, that means that they really mean nothing.</p>

7

<p>It’s a never ending cycle. Find the most bought/prestigious car brands (Lets say Honda and Toyota). Then start publishing a top car brands list in the NYTimes. Put Honda and Toyota at the top.</p>

<p>Fast forward 100 years. Who’s probably at the top?</p>

<p>My next point in the same scheme…</p>

<p>My ranking is based solely on how much owners of the car like it, what kind of engine it has, and how safe it is. Are those important? Ehh, probably not as much as some other things to some people. But a lot of people are too lazy to look up the actual stats, test drive, etc. so people rely too much on rankings.</p>

<p>That’s why I don’t like the rankings</p>

8

<p>Wesleyan already is ranked #17 in the USNWR “national” LACs list. That’s out of 270 schools just in the Carnegie “Baccalaureate Colleges—Arts & Sciences” class (not to mention nearly 400 more in the “Baccalaureate Colleges—Diverse Fields” class). How much higher would it need to be to convince you it’s prestigious enough?</p>

<p>Average SAT M+CR score is highly predictive of the overall US News rank. If you removed all the other criteria - even though SATs count for only 7.5% - you’d wind up with nearly the same rankings. The spread between Williams (#1) and Wesleyan in 75th percentile M+CR is all of 50 points. Let’s suppose, for the sake of argument, that going to college with high-scoring students actually makes a difference in the quality of classroom instruction. And maybe it does, given big enough spreads. Maybe it suggests professors will teach at a faster pace or ask more challenging questions. If that’s true, how much do you think those 50 points matter? </p>

<p>At least one research paper does report different levels of academic rigor (as expressed by course examination questions) in liberal arts colleges across different Barron’s categories of admissions selectivity. However, Wesleyan is in the highest (“Most Competitive”) class along with about 30-40 other LACs. I’d be quite surprised if any research finds a clear difference in academic rigor as you move up the rankings within that group.</p>

9

<p>Wesleyan clearly deserves to be ranked in the top 5 or 10 LACs. It’s considered to be a “Little Ivy” and one of the top colleges in the country. And no, I don’t go there, nor am I applying there.</p>

<p>Rankings are extremely stupid anyway.</p>

10

<p>Everyone should look up methodologies before babbling. Rankings are important to some degree, but there are other factors at work. As we see more college goers, pedigree may or may not become more important. A college diploma is the new high school diploma as they say. We’ve seen it with business and law and we may start seeing it in other fields such as pharmacy and nursing as these fields become saturated. On the flip side, some may question the validity of rankings. Forbes for example, bases rankings of Ratemyprofessor reviews. </p>

<p>[Ph.D.'s</a> From Top Political-Science Programs Dominate Hiring, Research Finds - Faculty - The Chronicle of Higher Education](<a href=“Ph.D.'s From Top Political-Science Programs Dominate Hiring, Research Finds”>Ph.D.'s From Top Political-Science Programs Dominate Hiring, Research Finds)</p>

<p>And when looking at prestige, you’re supposed to use QS rankings anyway.</p>