I remember you posted that about BU…I would 100% do what the BU AO said.
I do not understand why any counselor would think they know better.
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I have nothing to back this but it seems a lot of schools have made that jump - almost so that numbers overall must be up. Today schools like BU, Northeastern, Tulane, NYU, UMD, UF and more seemed to have jumped into a high respectable / desirable category vs just being regular schools b4. They’re closer to Harvard than say Hofstra whereas b4 I’m not sure that was the case.
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I doubt that either Harvard or Hofstra would agree.
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Harvard admissions rate is 5%, Hofstra is 69%, BU is 20.1%. It is indubitably true that BU selectivity is closer to Harvard’s than Hofstra’s. Same for Northeastern. Tulane is even lower I believe.
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Aren’t BU and Northeastern two of the schools that aggressively gamed the USNWR rankings?
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Northeastern has that rep. Hadn’t heard that about bu.
Fwiw, as for quality of education, I they are probably all much closer than the “selectivity” suggests.
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Maybe shouldn’t have used names. My point is the schools I’ve mentioned and more seemed to have jumped to a more near elite tier from where I remember them growing up.
@ucbalumnus I remember Oklahoma was caught cheating in rank, Temples MBA. Penn, UCB are others who have bent or let US News know they reported faulty data with no consequence. Frankly it’s an honor system thing. Even Columbia was accused when they jumped to 2nd.
Others I think accused of gaming have been Clemson (not sure if formally caught).
There’s really no way to know.
Gaming is not necessarily cheating or lying. Colleges that game the rankings may do stuff like having one 19 student class and one 29 student class instead of two 24 student classes. Or they may strongly favor in admission higher test scores and class rank above the threshold to count favorably in the USNWR rankings.
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I agree. It defeats the spirit tho. I read years back one school had everyone donate $1. Increased giving %. Etc
Anyway once they r ranked the coverages misse the oops. The school has the benefit.
Good example of the pace at which BU is trying to climb. 20% is outdated now. Last year they were 14%.
In context— 25 years ago, the Ivies were over 20%.
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I didn’t think about other state’s schools growing up. Of course I had heard of neighboring state’s flagships, and I knew of the schools in the ACC because I watched sports as a teenager. But I didn’t know (and didn’t care) if one state’s flagship was somehow better than another state’s flagship. It never mattered to me, and honestly the thought never crossed my mind.
Today, I really can’t think of one meaningful academic difference between UFL, UMD, UNC, UVA, Texas, UCLA, Purdue, UMass, etc. A student can go to any of them, choose from a multitude of majors/minors, learn with 20K-50K other teenagers, and in the end it makes no difference.
It honestly boggles my mind that someone would care so much if one is ranked 30 spots higher by some successfully-marketed magazine article. Sure, choose sunny California over frigid Minnesota. Or choose a red state over a blue state, if that makes a difference to a family. But to target #36 over #63 simply because of the ranking sounds absurd to me.
Not saying you said that. I kind of agree with you in that the people who do care about 27 spots in a ranking have decided some flagships are more “elite” than they were considered thirty years ago. It’s just that I can’t figure out what makes one “Top 75 public” elite and the other pedestrian, in a way that makes sense to me.
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It is absurd - and I’m thinking more about rank/reputation - but a lot of that is from selectivity. Add Florida State. At one point they quoted 17K of 74K or 23% acceptance. And someone posted the stats from a UMD info session this year - and they were off the charts high.
We’ve read this year of 4.6 and 1500+ getting turned down at UF and UMD - now, maybe their essays were typo filled or the LORs said - don’t take them, don’t take them.
I agree with what you said - every flagship has smart kids, and at most, kids that are Ivy worthy or got into Ivies. Maybe they go to a school because it’s cheap or close to mom or what not. So UVA and Michigan are great. But guess what - Kansas has lots of kids that could get into both.
But we’ve allowed ourselves to do this with rankings and with things like college confidential where kids and respondents talk about ranking (although many respondents try to bring the rank part down to size).
When I was saying to “near elite” - yes, I was talking about ranking because in many ways that’s where we see - this school is better, etc. but also selectivity.
Some just seem to be more on a pedestal than others - and many have “joined” that pedestal in recent years - is all i was trying to say - at least in my perception.
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I’m with you that there is no real difference in career paths for students attending top state flagships. However, a lot of the bashing of rankings on this site leads people to say things like there is no material difference in outcome from students attending top state flagships and private universities ranked in the top 18. There are opportunities that are available for top students at the elite private universities that essentially aren’t available to 99.9% of students at the best state flagships. Students are often attacked for “chasing prestige” while, in limited cases & situations, that ‘prestige’ genuinely matters a great deal.
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Actually, there can be meaningful differences in the majors offered and access to the majors (i.e. where the majors are capacity limited and, if so, when and how the additionally competitive admission process occurs), if the student is interest in the majors in question.
These differences do not necessarily have anything to do with general admission selectivity or prestige.
But even majors…is there a difference in MIS at highly rated Arizona vs say Western Kentucky or Arkansas ? I don’t know but I imagine you can get the same education at both.
Or journalism at Syracuse vs MTSU ? Can you not get the same education?
Yes extras or quality of faculty may be different but the education itself - can’t you learn the same ?
So even that, to some degree, may be perception vs reality driven.
Sure some schools will have access to more things but for the most part - a finance major at Michigan vs Colorado or Bama or Kennesaw State……from learning, preparation for life ….probably not so different.
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What I meant was that if the major does not exist at a given school (e.g. mechanical engineering at UNC-CH) or is inaccessible (e.g. CS at UCLA or UT Austin if one does not have direct admission), then students wanting the major may find the school less desirable than some other school where the major exists and is accessible.
There can also be quality and academic fit differences within the major across different schools, although such differences are not necessarily correlated with prestige or rankings.
There’re a lot more nuances, in both breadth and depth, in what similar-sounding college courses may cover. College courses are designed with the students who would take these courses in mind. Also, a great (perhaps greater) part of learning in a class is to study and to tackle problems with fellow students. Unless you think all students who go to these schools are the same, colleges aren’t interchangeable.
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I get it. I’m just trying to play devil’s advocate in the entire - is one really better because of the ranking thing.
An engineer at Lamar had to meet the same standards as the one at Purdue. Now one school might exceed those standards but in general both students has access to that required standard.
Are the students likely a higher caliber at one ? Yes and you see that in change major rates. Are facilities likely superior at one ? Yes.
Can both gain a quality education and equivalent outcomes ? Yes. Each student is different. One will exceed the other in aggregate outcomes but any student has the ability to maximize their own opportunity.
However, there are differences in programs that are not related to ranking or prestige.
For example, while ABET-accredited engineering programs all meet a fairly high standard, they do have variations in subarea emphases and options, curricular organization, and accessibility (e.g. secondary admission) that can make some better academic fits than others for any given student. These differences are not ranking or prestige based.
Some liberal arts majors can have significant variations across colleges in subarea emphases and options (e.g. history, biology, and math, particularly at smaller colleges and departments), while others have somewhat less variation (e.g. physics, although some small physics departments may be unable to offer all of the core upper level physics courses at a reasonable frequency).