<p>I was just wondering how you all think TU will fair in the next set of rankings. I think that the statistics following Katrina are still hurting TU, but will those stats be counted in these upcoming rankings? I don't know much about the ranking process. (Honestly, that TU can hold its own and even after facing the worst natural disaster in US history, never drop below 51 or so in the country is a testament to Tulane's overall academic excellence.)</p>
<p>For what it's worth, I'm currently a HS senior and have already been accepted and sent in my deposit to TU, so it doesn't matter much to me personally, but I know how it affects others... I am just curious.</p>
<p>Unfortunately, Tulane gets hit in 2 areas based on the formula USNWR uses. The highest percentage one is peer assessment. While this has gotten better, there are still a lot of people that only remember that Tulane was closed for a semester and cut a few programs like some of the engineering, and just assume the school is still down, when the opposite is the truth. Hard to fight that kind of ignorance (I mean that in the literal sense, not as a pejorative) especially since there is really no reason to expect someone at the University of Idaho, for example, to know what is going on at Tulane. This is one of my major complaints about the USNWR rankings, although I have many.</p>
<p>Second is the 6 year graduation rates. This will be the 6th year since Katrina, so in fact Tulane will not even be able to report a meaningful number on this. I believe the administration has written to USNWR about this issue and appealed for some kind of consideration in this regard, but I don’t think USNWR did anything. Personally I think that is outrageous, since a disaster like Katrina and this kind of aftermath says nothing about the quality of the school. USNWR justifies using graduation rates as a partial measure of how good a school is by reasoning that the higher the % that graduate who enrolled as freshmen, the more highly those students think of the school and the better job the school is doing. Without arguing whether or not that is correct, how does having students leave because of Katrina fit that rubric? It doesn’t and there should be some correction, but I guess there won’t be. I hope I am wrong and that USNWR is, in fact, planning some kind of fix for this situation.</p>
<p>So assuming they don’t fix that, I would say it will be difficult for Tulane to make any major move up, even though in fact virtually everything is positive. Retention rates and graduation rates going forward are up, the academic credentials of the incoming students are higher than ever, and most other factors that USNWR uses to measure in their precious formula are better than before. But I think these two factors, especially the graduation rate issue, will hold Tulane back for now. We will see.</p>
<p>Congrats on your choice of Tulane, I am sure you will have a wonderful 4 years there.</p>
<p>Thank you for your response. It was very informative. </p>
<p>
That’s very unfortunate. I would hope they would have some clemency about this. What do you think will happen, then? Will TU be unranked altogether? </p>
<p>
Thank you! I am sure of that as well. I honestly can’t wait! It’s such a great school, regardless of the arbitrary numbers.</p>
<p>I don’t think Tulane will be unranked. USNWR uses an average of 4 years of graduation rate data, and right now Tulane is still affected by Katrina for all 4 years being measured.
So this year they will be using the classes that entered in 2001-2004, or in other words classes that should have graduated no later than 2008-2011. If Tulane doesn’t report the actual Katrina year, then USNWR will simply use 3 years of data, as they state in that quote. It won’t be until they use the classes that entered in 2006-2009 that Tulane will be free of the Katrina impingement, quite a ways off. In two years clean data will start coming in, but because they average it will take 3 more to completely work its way out of the calculation, unless USNWR changes something.</p>
<p>This is 16% of the calculation, but in addition USNWR has some hocus-pocus factor called “Graduation Rate Performance” which claims to compare actual graduation rates to what one would expect given the quality of the student body.
I wouldn’t even know where to start about how bogus this is, but certainly this would really hurt Tulane, given the high quality of the student body. This is another 7.5%, so in total that’s almost a quarter of the ranking system tied to graduation rates. Absurd, especially in these circumstances.</p>
<p>You know your stuff. Thanks for the responses, seriously. </p>
<p>I guess all we can hope for is that Tulane is at least accurately represented. With the flourishing amount of apps, I don’t think it matters too much.</p>
<p>It appears that Tulane was ranked as high as 34 in 1998, and was consistently in the mid to upper 30’s through 1999. Then it dropped a fair amount in 2000. So it would be interesting to know what factor(s) accounted for this. The formula has changed many times over the years, with some factors dropping out, new ones coming in, and weightings being changed.</p>
<p>That alone tells you how unscientific and subjective the entire concept is. On all kinds of levels, one cannot measure what makes a college the “best”; not in absolute terms, and certainly not in relative terms for any given student. However, if one listed the National Universities (as USNWR calls them) in order of average SAT scores, Tulane would be about 29th on the list, maybe one or two better or one or two lower. That is the most accurate I could determine though, based on data posted by others. Is that a good way to do it? No, clearly that is one very narrow aspect of what makes a university/measuring the quality of the students. But I would certainly argue that the quality of your peer students is a much more important factor than using graduation rates as a proxy for quality, even if the graduation rates were unaffected by outside factors such as Katrina. For example, Tulane is one of the more expensive schools out there, certainly more than for most of the students that go to UC Davis. Apologies in advance to UC Davis, I am really not picking on what I think is a perfectly good school. However, does anyone really think that UC Davis, where at least 25% of the students have SAT scores barely above the national average, is a better school at number 39 than Tulane, with average scores for incoming students well above UC Davis but only at #51? It is simply absurd. But UC Davis gets better peer and counselor scores than it would if it were named anything except UC something, and has higher graduation rates than it would if it cost the same as Tulane. Does that make it a better school? A better value for some perhaps, that is certainly a debate that can be had and I would actually argue in the affirmative if attending Tulane meant taking on major debt. But that is a different discussion and not what USNWR purports to measure. UC Davis also has far more local students (<300 miles from home) while Tulane has the most students from >500 miles from home, with the average being almost 900 miles. And New Orleans is not the easiest place to fly in and out of cheaply AND get non-stop flights. This does affect retention and therefore graduation rates, although Tulane has taken steps to deal with this issue. In any case, is homesickness really a measure of quality of the school?</p>
<p>Obviously this is a hot button of mine, lol. There are a few factors that line up against Tulane, and Katrina just made it much worse. I truly wish that rankings at the undergraduate level were completely eliminated, in that they are useless at best and poisoning at worst.</p>
<p>I should think after the graduation rate issue and other after-effects of Katrina are flushed through the system metrics in a few years, Tulane will again be mid 40s. </p>
<p>Once at equilibrium, so to speak, the only way any school can move up in the USNWR rankings is to buy both faculty (improves PA and class size) and students (huge merit scholarships and 100% need FA), as USC has over the past 15 years. If that were to be the case, Tulane would move up into the mid 30’s and eventually into the 20s. But that takes a LOT of money. Anything can be bought, whether it be resources to fit the USNWR metrics, faculty, or student talent.</p>
<p>I generally agree with what DunninLA says. I cannot be sure that I am doing the calculations right, but if I am I think Tulane could actually move up to about 38-40 IF the graduation rates track with current retention rates, i.e. their falloff from the 91% or so freshman retention rate to the eventual graduation rate is similar to other schools that have about the same stats. A small move in the PA as people keep learning that Tulane is doing great would really cement that, maybe even move it to the low 30’s. Of course, who knows what changes in the metrics USNWR will make in the meantime.</p>
<p>Also, of course, so what? LOL. I mean I know it would be nice just because so many people do, in fact, put stock in these rankings. But this really just proves how bogus they are. If nothing else at Tulane changed as far as academics, quality of faculty, quality of students, student happiness, etc. but only that the graduation rate goes to what it appears it will be long term, the ranking would go up 11-15 spots yet it would be the same school it is today. I think that says it all.</p>
<p>You are correct smchls, I think DunninLA has an error there, but the points he makes, and hopefully the points I make in response, are still valid. A spot or two really doesn’t make that much difference. I still the the bigger question is, in an attempt to measure the “best” schools, does weighting graduation rates at nearly 25% make sense to anyone? And does sending out an opinion poll on a topic most people cannot really know about (again, I maintain that most faculty really have little idea of what the quality at other schools really is, especially ones that are further away and they have little interaction with. Obviously the Harvards of this world are an exception) for about another 25% make sense at all either? It is simply worthless to put credibility into this report at all.</p>
<p>Who cares? Reputation and rankings have little to do with the actual caliber of a school. Look no further than the aforementioned ranking process; obviously, not all schools are able to contend for a top 50 spot due to circumstance alone. </p>
<p>I just find it all kind of ridiculous, especially listening to seniors “campaign” for their school, boasting about its ranking as if it’s some pure measure of value.</p>