Ten Reasons to Ignore the U.S. News Rankings

College Search & Selection
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<p>Just so dead wrong. There is substantial overlap in the quality of the students at Michigan and Northwestern. The only reason Northwestern has slightly higher average stats is that it has a much smaller entering class, about 1/3 the size of Michigan’s, so it doesn’t need to reach as deep into into its applicant pool. Michigan needs to offer admission to roughly 3 times as many applicants as Northwestern, to fill a class roughly 3 times larger. It’s as if Michigan admits a class comparable to Northwestern’s, then admits two more classes of equal size out of who’s remaining in the applicant pool. But that first third of Michigan’s class is every bit as well qualified as Northwestern’s class.</p>

<p>Fall 2011 </p>

<p>Applicant pool:
Northwestern 30,926
Michigan 38,584</p>

<p>Admitted:
Northwestern 5,575
Michigan 16,073</p>

<p>Enrolled freshmen:
Northwestern 2,107
Michigan 6,236</p>

<p>Freshmen in top 10% of HS class:
Northwestern 92%
Michigan 95%</p>

<p>Middle 50% GPA:
Northwestern N/A
Michigan 3.7-3.9</p>

<p>% 700+ SAT CR:
Northwestern 60%
Michigan 25%</p>

<p>% 700+ SAT M:
Northwestern 65%
Michigan 50%</p>

<p>Middle 50% ACT:
Northwestern 31-34
Michigan 28-32</p>

<p>% ACT 30+:
Northwestern 88%
Michigan 55%</p>

<p>It seems pretty apparent that while Michigan is saying that to be admitted you need to be in the top 10% of your HS class, they need to accept a broader range of SAT/ACT scores, i.e., dip deeper into the applicant pool on that one dimension than Northwestern does. But the top third to top half the class are kids you’d be hard-pressed to distinguish from those who enroll at Northwestern.</p>

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<p>Bingo! This is exactly why railing against rankings is a waste of time. No matter how well you succeed in discrediting this or that ranking, if it goes away it will simply be replaced by some new ranking. </p>

<p>The reason for this is that humans are social mammals, and social mammals are pretty much hard-wired to arrange themselves into hierarchies. Think about it. Baboons, chimps, lions, wolves, elephants, horses…the list goes on and on. Nearly every mammal species that lives in groups organizes itself into a society based on a social hierarchy. And every member of that troop or herd knows exactly who is on top, who the up-and-comers are. who is on bottom, etc.</p>

<p>And humans are the most socially complex of them all. Consequently it’s in our nature to perpetually rank nearly everything: sports teams, movies, presidents, cars, computers, cell phone plans, professions, states, countries…and colleges. School grades, job performance evaluations, and the Guinness Book of World Records are all expressions of this ranking mania.</p>

<p>The gold mine that USNew hit upon was that no one had ever done a comprehensive, formal ranking of US colleges. There was widespread informal acceptance that some colleges were better than others and the old-line exclusive schools in the Northeast were regarded as better than many of the others. But it hadn’t been formally spelled out, top to bottom. </p>

<p>And once USNews hit upon this it took off like wildfire - because it tapped in to our need to rank anything and everything. And indeed, following the USNews model, the wider rankings biz has taken off, with many imitators ranking not only colleges but grad schools, professional schools, doctors, lawyers…everything.</p>

<p>So go ahead and gripe about about USNews if you want. But please recognize that all your outrage and energetic bellyaching will accomplish exactly zero. Chances are excellent that USNews will sail on completely unimpeded by your complaints. And if by some miracle USNews college rankings are brought down they will be immediately replaced by their competitors with other rankings that have their own set of flaws. </p>

<p>And please don’t kid yourself, since all rankings have flaws and weaknesses, that you are going to make the entire college ranking game go away. You would be trying to overthrow human nature. Not gonna happen.</p>

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<p>1/3 is not most he said MOST</p>

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<p>Hit it square on the head, coureur. Don’t think you’ll hear any objections to that one!</p>

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<p>coureur, although I agree with a lot of what you say, my question is…how did we survive without rankings? Somehow all of us who matriculated in the pre-internet, pre-rank-everything era found our way to the “right” colleges for us. Are rankings guides really helping more than objective data such as I have linked earlier?</p>

<p>My problem with the emphasis on subjective “best” rankings is that, in my opinion, the elite-college arms race already permeates our culture more than it should. The pressure doesn’t just start junior or senior year when kids are making up their college lists. It begins in middle school, grade school, even preschool. Those who think their kids are so special and deserve every advantage can drown out the voices of those who don’t have them. And they are doing this because they are bound and determined to get their kids into “top” colleges. I have seen this in our school district, with a group of strident parents who claimed their gifted kids weren’t being stimulated enough even in advanced-level classes, and sued the strapped public school district to expend huge resources to give them more. And mind you, these are people whose kids get into places like Stanford, Brown, Penn, University of Chicago, and great LACs even without accommodations for their specialness.</p>

<p>Admittedly, the ranking guides can’t be blamed for all of the rush to evaluate everything relative to everything else. But I do think they contribute to the hysteria (just browse through this website if you want proof) and an overly cutthroat culture in some of our schools. Kids who are comfortable with how they measure up against their peers (or truly don’t care what they think) do fine. But kids who are super-competitive by nature, or being pushed by their parents, contribute to an environment in schools that, in my opinion, inhibits learning for learning’s sake and pushes “regular-smart” kids to the side as their ambitious peers hoard attention from teachers, coaches and counselors while they compile their academic and extracurricular credentials. When students are focused on “how things look” for college admissions, rather than exploring what genuinely interests them and working collaboratively with their peers, it can create a stressful, negative environment. And that’s just the kids–the parents can be even more insufferable.</p>

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<ol>
<li>Lunch-table college gossip.</li>
<li>That place cousin George looked at.</li>
<li>Big thick books that profiled colleges by SATs and “Offered Majors”.</li>
<li>The clueless GC.</li>
<li>Brochures in the mail.</li>
</ol>

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<p>This same argument could be made regarding human systems of government. Humans will seek to establish a system of governance by nature. “So there’s no point in overthrowing your totalitarian regime! It will just be replaced by a new government!”</p>

<p>The thing is, while it’s true that all systems of government are flawed, some are vastly preferable to others. Your futility argument doesn’t work, in fact the correct conclusion is the opposite: if the system is inevitably going to exist, all the more reason to make it as good a system as possible.</p>

<p>If we are going to rank chess players, should we rank them by a USNWR-like system (perhaps a formula comprised of a player’s income, peer assessment, number of matches played this year, and number of twitter followers) or should we use the ELO chess system?</p>

<p>There’s a big difference between these two systems, and I can’t accept your futility argument that if the status quo for chess players is the lousy USNWR-like rankings, they would be silly to strive for something like the ELO rankings.</p>

<p>ELO rankings are vastly preferable because they are based purely on outcomes, rather than popularity, wealth, pedigree, or other weak proxy measures of chess skill. A good chess player will earn a good ELO ranking regardless of how he managed to become good. It’s a pure meritocracy. Perfect? No, not perfect, but pure as a ranking system in the sense of being completely merit-based, outcome-based, and transparent.</p>

<p>Of course, developing an outcome-based system like this for rating something as complex as colleges is no mean feat, but deliverance from the status quo garbage rankings we have at present is absolutely worth striving for.</p>

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<p>Good question.</p>

<p>The PA scores may benefit the rankings of some schools with strong research environments. Does that strength necessarily come at the expense of good teaching? Maybe in some cases. However, universities exist not only to teach existing knowledge but also to create new knowledge. In other words, one mission of research universities is to do research. </p>

<p>I would not expect a distinguished scholar who is also an excellent teacher to stay long at any old college. Chances are the pay isn’t high enough, the students aren’t challenging enough, and the facilities (labs, libraries) aren’t good enough for cutting-edge research. So the wealthiest, most selective schools get more of both (good research, good teaching). If I had to pick one or the other for a typical good undergraduate student, I’d go for good teaching and small classes. That’s what you get at many LACs. In some cases they also offer pretty good research opportunities. How do you identify which ones do and which don’t? You could start with annual research expenditures, the percentage of faculty with PhDs, and whether the professors in your intended major got them from top departments. Then dig around the web sites, go visit, see if the bulletin boards post lots of research/internship opportunities, and ask questions.</p>

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<p>^^ What’s the ELO system for ranking colleges, and what is the evidence it will produce radically different results than the existing approaches? I find it hard to believe that for many schools with big classes, low salaries, low admission standards, lousy aid, low graduation rates, etc., you will find evidence of excellent learning outcomes. </p>

<p>I do like the NSSE approach ([How</a> to make NSSE college scores work for you - USATODAY.com](<a href=“http://www.usatoday.com/news/education/nsse.htm]How”>http://www.usatoday.com/news/education/nsse.htm)). It uses very detailed surveys that ask about things like how many 5-/10-/10-page papers a school assigns or how much interaction occurs among professors and students. Unfortunately, it is hard to implement. Many popular schools have not been assessed. LACs seem to get high engagement scores; big state universities, not so much.</p>

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<p>What’s your weak proxy method for ranking chess players (head circumference+bank account balance+SAT score?) and how does it compare with ELO score?</p>

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<p>You need an ELO system for colleges before you try to argue that</p>

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<p>Your analogy is a very poor one because you are analogizing the cosmic with the trivial. The difference here is that governments actually control the world’s economies, large armies, and national laws and judiciaries. In other words the stakes are enormously higher. Choosing a form of government can literally be a matter of life and death - for individuals and for populations. The importance of some kid choosing between college A and college B means almost nothing compared with a people choosing to be governed by a democracy or a totalitarian regime. If some kid relies on USNews to guide his college search, no one is going end up dead, or oppressed, or in jail because of it.</p>

<p>Which is why all this angst over USNews is rather misplaced. It’s a college ranking list for crying out loud, not some manifesto for world order. It’s a bit of fun to argue over and for teenagers to obsess over - kinda like deciding who is the greatest baseball player of all time. Well, pick the combination of baseball stats you like and have at it. I’m sure you can find someone at the local sports bar who will argue for a different player.</p>

<p>Your search for rankings by outcomes is commendable, but I suspect that you are assuming that everyone will agree with your personal definition of constitutes a desirable “outcome.” Which of course won’t happen. There are many outcomes of a college education and many different opinions on how to weight and value them. Not everyone may place the same value on the exact benefits of a college education that you deem most important. </p>

<p>A good “outcome” can be defined in many ways and not necessarily based on some abstract measures of classroom learning.
For some the key outcome may be income. Which colleges’ graduates earn the most money?<br>
Or grad/professional school placement. Which colleges get the highest percentage of graduates into advanced study?<br>
Or employment. Which colleges have highest percentage of graduates getting good jobs right away?<br>
Or athletic glory. Which colleges offer the best opportunity for being a proud alumnus cheering wildly in the stands as good ol’ Alma Mater wins yet another national championship?<br>
Or maybe even prestige. Which colleges imbue their graduates with the most prestige for having gone there?</p>

<p>Some of these may seem frivolous or even foolish to you, but others may take them quite seriously. Thus I think your search for “outcome” isn’t going to solve anything either. It will just produce another bunch of lists and rankings to squabble over.</p>

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<p>As somebody who went to one of the most competitive high schools in my region and has friends in competitive schools in other parts of the US, I see how these rankings can exasperate the hyper competitive environment. Obviously, I don’t know how it used to be before, but my guess is that people would just obssess over general tiers of schools rather than numerical ranking spots. Now, these rankings seem like a much more precise way to quantify your achievements over those of others, “Oh, she got into #X school, but the school I got into is ranked 5 spots above”. The implicit message is that getting into a higher ranked school means you were more successful and “achieved” more than that person. I’m not saying this is the attitude of the majority of students, and even in my competitive high school this sentiment was found among a relatively small minority, but what I believe happens is that it intensifies the competition amongst the naturally competitive. The result? Every single action, every single second, is calculated and judged by how “useful” it is for getting into THE top colleges. “The person that got into Harvard last year played piano? OMG, I’ve never played an instrument, but even though I hate the piano I MUST start now or else be forced to settle for mediocre Cornell!” (I use Cornell because for some unfair reason it’s constantly being bashed here in CC) People sacrifice pursuing their true passions for the sake of making themselves competitive. Also, sometimes they join clubs and run for positions just to put it in their college application; then, they don’t bother to do an ounce of work. I understand joining a club just to explore and then deciding that you don’t have enough time/are not interested anymore/it’s not run well/etc., but the moral thing would then be to make room for those that truly are willing to work hard and not putting it in your application as an activity you devoted a lot of time to. Again, I’ve seen this in my school and have heard of it happening in others, and the result almost always is that the people invested in the activity are forced to pick up the slack. </p>

<p>These are just complaints regarding extra curricular activities. I’ve also read (sometimes here in CC) of massive cheating scandals in high schools and huge percentages of kids in certain schools taking ADD drugs to improve their performance. The drug problem might be more of a result of the availability of these medications, and cheating has always existed, but rankings likes US News seem to further push students to resort to these measures, especially when there are groups of strict parents that view them as an irrefutable source. I don’t think the majority of parents and students in the US care that much about these rankings, especially considering that many are focusing on just being able to go to ANY college, but those that live in competitive districts and/or are subject to certain social expectations seem to be increasingly stressed by the perceptions these rankings create. </p>

<p>P.S. This is all based on a mix of personal observations, reports of friends and things I’ve read. Feel free to correct me if there are any gross misconceptions.</p>

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<p>On the contrary, my analogy worked perfectly because it caused you to completely drop your original argument and take up this new one:</p>

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<p>Now instead of your futility argument (“you can’t make rankings go away”), you retreat to this trivialization argument (“rankings don’t matter - who cares?”)</p>

<p>The refutation of that is equally simple: You care. You care enough to post page-long diatribes about futility and triviality. If rankings didn’t matter, you wouldn’t do this.</p>

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<p>Now you revert to a futility argument again. (“There’s no point in finding something better, it still won’t be perfect.”)</p>

<p>I’m not expecting utopia or perfection - as with governments, chess rating systems, or Consumer Reports toaster rating systems, I will look for fairness, outcome basis, and transparency.</p>

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<p>Other than publics getting the shaft due to criteria, I don’t have a problem with them. That being said I’m not making a decision based on rankings anyways. Some schools rank higher but may not have as good of a major as a lower ranked school. Too many variables.</p>

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<p>You obviously care too bobwallace, as does everyone that has posted in this thread</p>

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<p>Do we seriously believe that the measures used in college rankings (class size, graduation rates, selectivity, faculty and financial resources, etc.) have as little to do with learning & performance outcomes as head circumference, etc., have to do with playing chess?</p>

<p>Again, where is the evidence of good collective learning outcomes (not heroic outliers) despite big classes, low pay, low admission standards, low graduation rates, etc.? Although we have no comprehensive tests to directly measure learning outcomes, we do have several outcome measures (payscale, PhD production, law & med school admissions, Who’s Who, etc.) that all point (despite their individual flaws) to the same general set of schools that the input measures expose.</p>

<p>After a while, this gets to be like arguing about evolution or global warming with a religious zealot. You can describe myriad evidence from a wide variety of sources, all pointing in the same direction, yet they will latch on to gaps in the fossil evidence, or speculation that radiocarbon decay rates when the universe was made weren’t the same as observed today. </p>

<p>Of course a college ranking can’t have the precision or consistency of carbon dating. However, I’m trying to imagine a way that multiple, heterogenous measures would all point to similar yet wrong results. I can see that many of these measures (maybe all of them) are linked to money. It does take money to get small classes, big libraries, state-of-the art labs, famous professors, and the best students regardless of ability to pay. So the rankings will favor rich schools. So what? Do we want to devise a measure of some factors (curriculum design, textbooks v. primary source materials, work loads) that may be independent of financial resources? That is much harder to do - and I’m not sure it would yield radically different results - but I’d be all for it. The NSSE is sorta moving in that direction (measuring “engagement”, which presumably can happen at rich or poor schools).</p>

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<p>You have an absurdly skewed view since you only care about which schools are in the top ten or twenty. There’s no other way to imagine that Forbes and USNWR give similar results.</p>

<p>Now compare to the employer recruiter ranking barrons posted - not even close to the same. You are the “religious zealot” in this discussion, worshipping at the Church of Elite Schools and only concerning yourself with measures that confirm their eliteness.</p>

<p>I don’t have an agenda or a bias toward the tippy top or any other schools, I just think toasters should be judged based on how well they toast, not how shiny their cases are or how much they cost to make. </p>

<p>You think it’s easy to create a weak proxy measure formula that’s accurate? Give an example of one in the real world that works, and was developed without the hindsight of comparison to a good outcome model. Use whatever inputs you like - just explain your weak proxy method for ranking chess players that will be accurate compared to ELO.</p>

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<p>Not true. I give a lot of college suggestions on this forum. I don’t recommend top 10 schools (particularly my alma mater) all that often, because it’s not all that often I think they are a good fit for a posting HS student. But when I do recommend a school, I’d like to have some objective basis not only for assessing “fit”, but also for assessing quality.</p>

<p>I think there is a rational relationship between many of the ranking metrics and educational quality. I’m not 100% certain of that, because we don’t have thoroughly reliable measurements for learning outcomes. Even the NSSE assessments of “engagement” make an assumption that engagement leads to good learning outcomes.</p>

<p>So what is your practical alternative that works today? You have suggested plugging in preferences to an online college matcher. That’s not a bad suggestion, but I’ve experimented with it and found the results often inappropriate.</p>

<p>Take an example. The other day, a poster asked for alternatives to UIUC. She wants a smaller school with an urban studies program. She is a URM with a 4.6W GPA and a 750 CR score. I noticed that you recommended … Coppin State. Did you plug “urban studies” and “cheap” to dig that one up?</p>

<p>My recommendation? The “Growth and Structure of Cities” program at Bryn Mawr College. BMC is not a “top 10” school, but it’s a 20-something LAC (with excellent financial aid) that I will stand by over an unranked, thoroughly undistinguished commuter school in an old industrial city. She could do a lot better.</p>

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<p>Bobwallace, you’re completely unfair to tk. He is absolutely not at all top-20 obsessed.</p>