<p>I have not suggested that - where did that come from?</p>
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<p>I noticed that you jumped into that days after it started - I was guessing you searched my postings and looked for a way to try to “one up” me. Looks like I hit pretty close to the mark.</p>
<p>I will summarize for others who haven’t been creepily searching my posts. The young lady in question was agonizing over whether to apply to her state school, normally a financial safety for lots of kids. She didn’t give out a lot of info at first, but I pointed out that Illinois is very expensive for in-state students ($30K+ per year), and that there were OOS schools where she could go for less that might be more appealing (Minn-Morris and UNC-A, public LACs that cost the same or less). She gave out more information in some subsequent posts and others gave some recommendations. I then compared her stats to the list I maintain of large automatic scholarships to look for a true financial safety (<a href=“http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/financial-aid-scholarships/1348012-automatic-full-tuition-full-ride-scholarships.html[/url]”>http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/financial-aid-scholarships/1348012-automatic-full-tuition-full-ride-scholarships.html</a>) and saw that she would qualify for a full ride at Coppin State, a HBCU with urban studies, so I told her she could consider it as a “super safety”. The other schools giving guaranteed scholarships didn’t meet her other requirements (urban studies, located in large city). My contribution, as is usually the case on these forums, was about financial safeties and not match or reach schools.</p>
<p>Bryn Mawr is a fine school, but I don’t consider it a financial safety or an obvious alternative to Illinois.</p>
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<p>I frankly always hope kids end up at their dream / fit / match school, and when I recommend a financial safety (or super safety) the goal is to make sure the kid has financially feasible options when it comes time to choose in the spring. If that doesn’t fit with your elitist sensibilities, I can live with that.</p>
<p>I frankly think this behavior of searching out my posts and attempting to subject what I recommended to a student to ridicule is over the line of sensible behavior for a discussion of the merits of ranking colleges, but maybe the methods of debate are different at “top 5” schools. Was that method also engraved on the walls of your dear old alma mater?</p>
<p>^ Oh, man. I’d been following that thread for days. I’m not creepily searching your posts or trying to one-up you. You’ve given both good advice to that gal, and what in my opinion is not-so-good advice. We all do that (sometimes get it right, sometimes get it wrong). What causes me to pay attention to that advice is an interest in the practical implications of ignoring the rankings (or the background CDS data). What’s the alternate approach? How do you assess quality, in any practical way, once you start investigating schools that are outside your own personal experience?</p>
<p>As for the college matcher, I was referring to your posts 86 & 87.
You mentioned collegedata.com, which prominently features a college matcher.<br>
You recommended “ordering of schools by the one metric actually of interest”, which seemed in context to refer to something like a college matcher process (as opposed to a holistic quality assessment a la US News). If I put words in your mouth, my bad. </p>
<p>As for Coppin State, I mean, I can see how one might pick it out as an HBC super-safety with urban studies. My objection to it is not that it offends my “elitist sensibilities”. I just don’t see any evidence that it’s a very good school, especially for a student with pretty high stats. Fact is, I often recommend fairly obscure colleges (including some of the CTCL schools or public LACs like Geneseo & St. Mary’s College of Md.)</p>
<p>It’s not a retreat from one argument ot another because I wholeheartedly embrace both arguments. College rankings are indeed trivial, especially when compared with truly important questions. And it is indeed a waste of time to tilt at the USNews windmill. But if that’s how you prefer to waste your time, well knock yourself out. We all have our pointless pursuits.</p>
<p>The rankings are basically for college majors that will have 10,000 new grads competing for the same 1,000 jobs.</p>
<p>For majors like computer science or applied mathematics, you can graduate from the 200th ranked school and still have multiple job offers. Furthermore, in the years I have worked in senior engineering and/or engineering management, the group of new grads are from schools with various “mythical rankings”. The Top-10 school grads are sitting right next to the State-U grads who are sitting next to the 2+2 grads (2 years at community college, 2 years at university) who sitting next to local so-called no-name school grads…and ALL of them are reporting to some engineering manager who graduated from the University of No-Name.</p>
<p>Reading posts about how serious folks take rankings, AP courses and the like is funny when it really doesn’t matter if you are taking an “in-demand” major.</p>
<p>The power of “reputation” in today’s culture. </p>
<p>Apple sold 2 million iphone 5’s on the first day of presale and looks to break an iphone release sales record. In head to head component and function analysis by experts, the iphone 5 is not superior to the Samsung S3 which is not in as much demand. Apple has established a superior “reputation”, though apparently not a superior product. It seems inarguable that based on reputation alone, even with tractable data showing no superiority, consumers are selecting the iphone and no doubt convinced it is the best phone.</p>
<p>The majority of USNWR output measures, along with the other ranking system output measures, seem highly related to “reputation”. Whether they are is an empirical question that could be addressed if UNNWR developers had any degree of sophistication and employed common data analytic methods. A simple factor analysis would provided much interpretive information. It may well be 50%-90% of the variance explained by their survey is related to “reputation”. It is important to answer this question to have an initial guage of the utility of the USNWR survey or other similar surveys. It may just as valid to ask your neighbors to rate the various schools if “reputation” is the prominent and possibly sole explanatory factor. </p>
<p>The question to be asking is are there any intrinsic differences in the quality and outcome of educational activities or functions occurring at the various colleges and universities. The answer can only come from assessing pre to post college change in the degree students are increasing their intellectual, interpersonal and social skills at each university. </p>
<p>Short of this, you might well be attending iphoneU convincing yourself and others you have the best educational experience by reputation, even if a careful analysis of what you are getting would prove otherwise.</p>
<p>The Might Max! Wow, these guys are the real deal. I though only a consortium of 1%er endowed universities had a Might Max. I bet the anonymous director must be associated with ipnoneU.</p>
<p>Interesting answer to Jym626 in more ways than one might imagine.</p>
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<p>Just in case, and in order to avoid confusion in the camp of the naive and the gullible, it is good to remember that sarcasm does appear in this forum. If that was not clear enough, just know that the esteemed Stuart expects the reader to wear a red nose and yellow wig when reading his production.</p>
<p>Oh sure, I bet you go around digging up threads that have gone stale and haven’t been commented on for 3 whole days all the time. And it just happened to be the most recent instance of me recommending a school that would come up in a search. And it just happened to occur after one of your “How can you possibly recommend schools without the USNWR to tell you the right answer?” challenges. And then you just happened to find it convenient to use in an attempt to mock me in this thread a short time later. No doubt you think that since you went to a “top 5” school, your schemes are simply too clever for any mere mortal to sniff out.</p>
<p>^ You know, if you are that easily offended, you shouldn’t adopt such a strident, hectoring tone on a public forum. </p>
<p>As Xiggi pointed out, none of us with any experience in these discussions takes USNWR as the Bible. Do you think you are the first person to recognize its shortcomings? You took a rather hard-line position and somebody tried to engage you. If you aren’t persuaded to moderate that position by anything I said, or if you want to write me off as a shill for the magazine, fine.</p>
<p>Actually I said creepy, not offensive. I don’t actually care if you dig up my postings and criticize them either, I’m sure we can all use a little criticism, I just think going about it more openly and honestly would be more appropriate.</p>
<p>To avoid allowing this to completely devolve into off topic personal stuff, I provide for any poor soul patient enough to have read to this point:</p>
<p>I hope the cross admit ranking of interest is not that Parchment effort. When compared with real data released by schools, the parchment numbers seem as valid as the moronic attempts that have been made on … this forum. And that means that those results are unreliable and probably, in large part, made up.</p>