<p>The rankings offer little more than information that those are the schools where kids with similarly high GPA's and SAT/ACT scores hang out. Which may be a big deal if that is the environment one seeks. </p>
<p>An aside: James Watson earned his Ph.D. at Indiana, he earned his S.B. in 1947 at the University of Chicago.</p>
<p>It's what you learn and what you do with your education that matters. If students goes on to graduate school, rarely are they asked where they go their BAs. If one does well in undergrad and can go to a top grad school, isn't that where the focus should go? By then you are specialized, have a career goal and can narrow down the selection.</p>
<p>"Well dad, I don't know what all the guidebooks are talking about. This place doesn't seem that out there or liberal to me." </p>
<p>I think we can safely assume that she wasn't wearing a tee-shirt that said, "Impeach Clinton" or "I love Bush" FWIW, I'm not sure if you can correctly gauge the degree of being "liberal" of a school unless you can agree on the slant of the yardstick. A school can be a lot less liberal than the average and still be way left of center. While the students may not hang banners with "Conservatives are not welcome here" or have few other visible signs, the composition of the faculty and student body would nonetheless leave a formidable imprint on one's experience.</p>
<br>
<blockquote> <p>What also happens, Coureur, is that there is a bigger pool of very talented and promising students at the more selective and presitigious colleges and so it also stands to reason that there are more of these graduates in some of these fields because this is where lots of them came from.<< </p> </blockquote>
<br>
<p>It's a lot more than just a numbers game. To begin with, the vast majority of very smart people do NOT go to an Ivy or other top-tier school. There are over 4000 colleges in the US, and exactly 8 of them comprise the Ivy League. There are perhaps another 15 or 20 or so top tier schools. Those 20 or 30 top schools cannot possibly hold a majority nor even a large minority of the very smart students in the US.</p>
<p>The name of the school really does matter in certain circumstances. Consider the educational makeup of the current US Supreme Court:</p>
<p>Justice - college/law school</p>
<p>Roberts - Harvard/Harvard
Stevens - Chicago/Northwestern
Scalia - Georgetown/Harvard
Kennedy - Stanford/Harvard
Souter - Harvard/Harvard
Thomas - Holy Cross/Yale
Ginsburg - Cornell/Harvard, Columbia
Breyer - Stanford/Harvard
Alito - Princeton/Yale</p>
<p>So 100% of the current court holds at least one degree from a top tier school and eight of nine hold an Ivy degree. In no way does the Ivy League produce 89% of the lawyers smart enough to serve on the court, not with 4000 other colleges out there. No, there is something else going on -- namely that a fancy degree is a de facto requirement for the job. Nine for nine just can't be merely chance or a run of good luck.</p>
<p>
[quote]
FWIW, I'm not sure if you can correctly gauge the degree of being "liberal" of a school unless you can agree on the slant of the yardstick. A school can be a lot less liberal than the average and still be way left of center.
[/quote]
Xiggi - do you detect the incongruity of those two consecutive sentences?</p>
<p>I agree that at those levels it does matter
I know a federal judge, and she selects her clerks from less than 6 or 7 universities- she argues "she has to weed them out some way" , even though she did not attend any of those universities, nor would have she been admitted.</p>
<p>
[quote]
[Quote]
FWIW, I'm not sure if you can correctly gauge the degree of being "liberal" of a school unless you can agree on the slant of the yardstick. A school can be a lot less liberal than the average and still be way left of center.
[/quote]
Xiggi - do you detect the incongruity of those two consecutive sentences?
[/quote]
</p>
<p>Haha, Kluge, finding incongruity in one's own sentences is a daunting task. </p>
<p>While I am not above displaying incongruity in my arguments, I hope you did mean that my sentences were being unsuitable and inappropriate - one of the definitions on incongruity. As far as my particular train of thoughts in the quoted sentences, my point was the level or degree of liberalism at a particulaar school rests mostly in the eye of the beholder and the overall expectations. In this context a school that is moderately liberal -an in my view LESS liberal than the average university in the US- can still be way left of the center of the political affinities of the United States. The last time I checked the result of the past elections, the country did not approve a democratic/liberal majority. On the other hand, the political pendulum at our bastions of higher education rarely seems to swing towards the right and seems -in my view again ... hopelessly- stuck to the far left. </p>
<p>It that is right or wrong is another story. :)</p>
<p>coureur, I would have to agree with you here. One area where the "pedigree" of the school still does matter, is in the prestigious law firms (where many of those justices started out). I know for a fact that at many firms the law degree AND the undergrad degree are discussed around the hiring table. These firms are definitely snobby in this way and feel that the reputation of the firm is reflected in whom they hire. Some exceptions may be in the case of a rainmaker, a high profile person, or someone who was absorbed and snuck in from a merger with another firm. This is often the case even for a prospective lateral hire, where the individual is a proven entity. There are those, who by sheer force of their personalities and ability, make it into these places, but they are the exception. </p>
<p>Medicine, on the other hand, has historically been based on merit rather than on pedigree and has never had the same culture.</p>
<p>< So 100% of the current court holds at least one degree from a top tier school and eight of nine hold an Ivy degree. >
True, but just what are a given person's chances of ever becoming a Supreme Court justice? Since the turnover rate is low and only 9 people at a time can be a Supreme Court justice, the average Harvard Law student has an infinitesimal chance of going this route.</p>
<p>I'm sure that the Harvard Law degree would have plenty of pull on the East Coast, but its halo effect would be much smaller elsewhere. I'm sure that in New Mexico, Arizona and Texas schools have much more pull, and very few lawyers regularly network with Harvard Law graduates.</p>
<p>Where did the recent presidents who appointed those justices go to school? Presidents since Roosevelt:</p>
<p>Truman: No college degree
Eisenhower: West Point
Kennedy: Harvard
Johnson: (now) Texas State University, San Marcos
Nixon: Whittier College
Ford: University of Michigan
Carter: Naval Academy
Reagan: Eureka College
Bush: Yale
Clinton: Georgetown
Bush: Yale
Clinton: Wellesley (just through that in to see if you are awake)</p>
<p>Seems like those without the family and money connections found their way by way of non-elite routes for the most part.</p>
<p>Actually, if you want to get into politics, you might be best served just going to your state's flagship university. According to this article, fully half of the US senate attended public universities for their undergraduate degrees:
<a href="http://www.ctcl.com/pdf/Who_Needs_Harvard.pdf%5B/url%5D">http://www.ctcl.com/pdf/Who_Needs_Harvard.pdf</a></p>
<p>Thanks for all of the input, with most of which I agree. Seeing the responses, however, makes it apparent that I didn't articulate well the question I had in mind. Let me try again.</p>
<p>I take as a given that "fit" -- however defined for a particular student -- should trump prestige. What I'm really asking is whether, in some circumstances, rankings like USNWR's can assist in determining whether a college is a good fit.</p>
<p>Example: student visits lots of campuses, finds two that appear to meet his criteria especially well. The kids seem smart and engaged; the professors seem caring and accessible; the course offerings seem sufficient to meet the student's interests. As far as the student can tell from a visit or two and from reading what there is to read, these two schools are equally good fits.</p>
<p>One of these two schools turns out to be ranked twenty places higher in the USNWR survey. By itself this proves nothing, but does it raise a red flag? Does it suggest that further work is necessary to see if the two schools really are equivalent fits? Sure, the difference in ranking may be explained by factors that are utterly irrelevant to the student's decision. But does it behoove him to try to understand the reasons for the disparity? And if so, how does he do that?</p>
<p>I was just going to post when you clarified above. Yes, rankings can raise a red flag! Check out the data used to rank schools. Is the school lower ranked due to a lower graduation rate? (If so, why are so many students not completing their education at the school?) Is it ranked lower due to student/faculty ratio, or number of classes w/more than 50 students? What is the average class size? (Does your kid want little classes, or does he/she like the anonymity of a large class.) What percentage of alumni donate to the school? (A higher percentage can be seen as a sign of alumni satisfaction with their experience at the college.) and etc. etc. etc. If you check out the data used to create the rankings, you can decide for yourself whether the differences are significant or not. HTH's.</p>
<p>coastparent - Well, most people are familiar with the USNews rankings. In that case, you will find the rankings are explained by weighting many factors such as peer assessment, average class sizes, faculty-student ratio, retention rates, graduation rates and expected graduation rates, SAT ranges, % in top 10 or 25% of the class, % donating alumni and more. </p>
<p>Within the publication is a discussion of the methodology and the weighting of the various factors. Since that's the case, if these objective factors not immediately apparent on a campus visit but become obvious on further examination of the stats, then, yes that <em>might</em> make you want to ask some more questions. </p>
<p>Say, for example that the peer assessment of two of your schools is dissimilar. Theoretically, you might determine that even though that is the case overall, the lower ranked school actually has a better department in the area of your child's interests. Or that might serve upon further research to bear out the rankings. Or two schools may seem to differ in the ranks mainly because one has larger class size and fewer full time faculty, and those things are important to you. And so on!</p>
<p>Though I am not thrilled with the particular methodology chosen by USNWR, I do like the idea of rankings. Why?</p>
<p>They are especially helpful to schools that are up and coming. More information is good, and the rankings are a short hand way of advertising schools that are of (very roughly) comparable quality. In my lifetime, I've seen Stanford move up dramatically in prestige, Northwestern from the mid-70s and, and to a greater or lesser extent WUSTL, Duke, and Vanderbilt. I remember when Kellogg was rated the Number One MBA program (was that in 1982?). This shocked the leaders and people argued (rightly) that this was an exaggeration. But over time, Kellogg's reputation has grown and it has become cemented in the public mind as a top place. The early rankings stunt helped with publicizing the real changes that were taking place in the faculty and its students.</p>
<p>Great LACs and schools such as Harvey Mudd can use the ratings to show how well their students stack up against the better known leaders.</p>
<p>Even professors have only a vague sense of when changes are occurring, but parents have even less of a sense of how schools change. You might say, Just give people a huge book with all the big stats and let them figure it out themselves! But this places a huge burden on parents, students, and on schools trying to show themselves to have improved.</p>
<p>Are the rankings entirely fair, or even relevant for everyone? No. Do many students slavishly adhere to the rankings in a failed quest for prestige and life certainty? Yes. And of course, I'd like to see improved rankings. But I'd much rather have awful though somewhat fact-based rankings than rely on pure hearsay or expecting parents to troll through the stats as deeply as people on CC do when researching schools. And of course in the end, FIT matters most of all.</p>
<p>Home >> Opinion
UPDATED: 10:14, February 12, 2006
"I'm not member of Skull and Bones", Yale President</p>
<p>Richard Levin (R), President of Yale University, with People's Daily Online Washington-based correspondent Tang Yong in his office.</p>
<p>Tang: The college ranking is one of the most controversial things in America. The US News and World Report ranking is the most read one for ranking undergraduate institutions. But many prestigious pubic schools, say UC Berkeley, University of Michigan, University of Virginia, are complaining the ranking is unfair for them. I once interviewed University of Michigan President and she grumbled that the gap between Michigan and Yale may not be as big as the US News and World Report ranking suggests.</p>
<p>Levin: Yes, I agree. The ranking is unfair for public universities. Private institutions get credit for the fact they have larger endowments and more financial resources. But actually state universities have the support of their state governments. Though they don't have endowments but their annual grant is very large. That is the first discrimination against state universities.</p>
<p>The second discrimination is alumni giving. Private schools are better in this because they depend on alumni giving. State universities get resources directly from the state government. If you put these two factors in it, probably it will take about 10 or 20 scores off from private universities. If you look at the quality of the faculty at UC Berkeley, it should be among top ten and even top five.</p>
<p>Some of the international rankings, like the ones done by the Financial Times in London and Shanghai Jiaotong University in China, have different bias. Their bias is toward scientific publication and scientific achievement, leaving aside lots of other important things like excellence in humanities and professional schools. In those rankings Yale is quite low, which I think is also incorrect.</p>
<p>Tang: So there is no perfect ranking.</p>
<p>Levin: Yes, no perfect rankings. </p>
<p>I agree with everything posted above, and would only add the rankings must be taken with a big grain of salt. One of the measures used for ranking purposes is faculty compensation. Faculty salaries reflect local cost-of-living realities, so colleges in relatively rural locations (Ithaca or Hanover) get marked down in the rankings compared to those in pricey spots like Manhattan or Cambridge.</p>
<p>You cannot look at Supreme Court Justices to see where they went to school because in the days they went to school, it was not that difficult to go to an Ivy League School! I am middle aged (I have a high school senior) and went to Yale, my brother and sister went Ivy League, pretty much everyone I knew from my prep school went Ivy, Little Ivy or somewhere like Wellesley. That's the way it was. I actually had some Bs on my high school transcript! No way most of my Yale classmates would have gotten in today. No one tutored for the SATs- we just took them., once.
You absolutely cannot compare what kids go through today. And I am younger than most of the people on the Supreme Court - many of them went to Ivies before there were SATs and if you came from the right background and had decent grades it was pretty automatic.
Many of this country's brightest young people are in State Universities because of cost. I have a good friend who turned down Yale to live at home and go to U. Wisconsin, where she stayed to get her M.D. She ended up the head of her department at Mass. General over all the Harvard trained doctors. Why? She was the best at what she did. And she has no regrets - she had a blast a Wisconsin and has kept many of her college friends.
There are many reasons people choose the colleges they do.</p>
<p>Two points to ponder:</p>
<p>a) The Ivy League and other presitigious northeast schools are pretigious, in large part, because they are located where the money was in the United States in the 19th and 20th centuries. Schools where rich people go = prestige.</p>
<p>b) You can cut through a lot of the fog of the various rating systems by simply looking at per student endowment. I think you'll find that correlates very closely with consumer demand. Why? Because schools with large per student endowments tend to offer a product that costs more to produce than they sell it for. If the Honda dealer ran a half-price sale on Accords, customers would be lined up around the block, too. There are some exceptions, but not many. Of all the non New England schools that could have shot to the top of the charts, why have once regional schools like Stanford, Duke, and WUSTL climbed to prestigious national rankings? Hint: look at the endowments.</p>
<p>Very interesting point.</p>