<p>Hmm… i wonder where Hawkette goes to school ? ? ? ?</p>
<p>^ Did she not say she went to Washington University in St.L?</p>
<p>I actually find many of her posts informative as they’re factual data. It’s just that, her interpretation gets sometimes screwed. Nevertheless, her posts are interesting.</p>
<p>Oh haha Hawkette is an actual user?
Why didn’t she make the rankings then?</p>
<p>I think it’s laughable to rank schools solely on the stats of their incoming students, that’s ridiculous</p>
<p>Noob, I took Hawkette’s methodology and applied it to the USNWR top 100. I’ve seen her/his work re. top 50 lists. I was curious to see what would happen to some current USNWR top 50 schools and those not in the top 50 when going all the way down the list of 100 using Hawkette’s criteria. As I surmised, there were some real eye opening shifts in positions – some schools jumping (i.e. Tulane and BYU) and others plummeting (UC schools). Other schools’ rankings held true to USNWR.</p>
<p>^^^^And that means her methodology is good?</p>
<p>Harvardgator,
Thanks for your effort and contribution and for updating the numbers that I presented earlier. As you know, the USNWR site from which I got my numbers is only updated for students that entered college in Fall, 2007. It looks like Peterson’s with Fall, 2008 data is a better site for getting this information earlier so I hope all aspiring students and families will recognize this and visit their website. USNWR will update their site in August. </p>
<p>With regard to your and others’ comments, I want to reiterate that I don’t think a simplistic ranking based on the single statistic of standardized test scores should be the final word on a college’s ranking. Standardized test scores, however, do have the benefit of being just that–standardized–and thus their use for comparison across colleges is certainly an appropriate tool and unquestionably the best one we have for making these comparisons of student body strength and depth. </p>
<p>While the standardized test rankings are very relevant to evaluating and comparing colleges, my personal view is that student body strength is only one of the four key elements for choosing an undergraduate academic environment. Those elements are:</p>
<ol>
<li> Strong peers</li>
<li> Small class sizes</li>
<li> Excellent teachers/institutional commitment to quality classroom teaching</li>
<li> Deep resources and a willingness to spend them on undergraduate students</li>
</ol>
<p>A college’s ability to deliver in all four sections is what distinguishes the premier undergraduate academic experiences. </p>
<p>I would also add there are many, many non-academic considerations that can trump these issues and, for undergraduate college choice, I fully agree with that. There are 150+ hours per week that each student will have outside of class and I cannot stress enough the importance of that in the college selection process.</p>
<p>Why is it so hard to take this type of ranking for what it is, another piece to the puzzle we call - choosing the right college. It is one tool available in making a decision. If it is the only tool, then you are more likely to make a less than best fit choice.</p>
<p>I think the people that react negatively to this type of info, are current college students that take it personally when their schools dont’t list as well as they would have hoped.</p>
<p>I think SAT metrics should not really be used in comparing relatively small specialized schools with large diverse universities that may comprise 10 or more individual colleges. Why? Because kids self-select their peer group and academic focus. The seniors in the Electrical Engineering program at a large state public have little to do with the kids in the Sports Management program…yet SAT averages blend it all together. </p>
<p>You can see this more clearly if you start looking at GRE scores of a cross-section of schools, which are available for specific colleges or even programs. It is interesting, for example, that the top-30 schools in engineering all have GRE quant scores within 20 points of each other…no real meaningful differences yet you’d never know that by blindly using SAT scores across the whole school.</p>
<p>Regarding the jump in rankings for BYU:</p>
<p>BYU ranked much higher until this year, when it took a major tumble for some reason I still haven’t figured out yet. It has been ranked in the upper 60s range for years before falling out of the top 100. It is not the purpose of this thread, but I would love to know what happened to BYU for them to fall so far in only one year.</p>
<p>I agree, BYU should be a top 60 school, it inexplicably dropped 40 spots, I don’t know if it’s because of the peer assessment rate? Selectivity, and graduation/retention rates shouldn’t change drastically.</p>
<p>rogracer,
I understand your criticism and agree that, as applied to a self-selecting field like engineering, there is some legitimacy to your comments. However, there is great student fluidity int the selection of college majors outside of engineering and a few other fields. In addition, whether the department is engineering or sports management or some other, the standardized test scores will still likely be a fundamental element of the original Admit/Deny admissions decision.</p>
<p>The real and much greater folly is that universites such as you describe, with 10 embedded colleges, can be encapsulated in a single Peer Assessment score. I have long argued that the student in an Engineering field doesn’t really care or know anything about the experience of the student in Sports Management and trying to judge the faculty contribution in these disparate fields is impossible.</p>
<p>^I agree with the last paragraph. As an engineering major, I didn’t look at the US News overall rankings since I don’t really care about the other majors at a college other than engineering. I only looked at the US News engineering rankings to see what the peer assesment scores were.</p>
<p>BYU is a religiously affiliated school with a conservative mien. Within academia, that is a pretty deadly combination when the time comes to award Peer Assessment scores. The reality is that BYU regularly turns out some of the brightest, most well-prepared graduates in the USA. Their USNWR ranking is not reflective of its position/respect in the real world.</p>
<p>Actually I think it is quite remarkable that the better publics with a large range of college majors even come <em>close</em> to the SAT averages of the much smaller more focused schools. The real question is will a potential student be interacting with high-quality students in his likely area of study? To answer that, it might be better to look at GRE scores for the larger more diverse universities that have so many programs.</p>
<p>Penn State is probably really low because of their failure to offer any real scholarships to high-scoring students. It is one of the most expensive state schools. Most public schools are giving high-scoring kids full rides, but Penn State has very very few, and they come in very small amounts. It has been harder and harder to get in recently, but the fact remains that students scoring 700+ are getting full rides from Pitt or Temple. Also after financial aid, which is terrible at Penn Sate, for many families, Penn State does not present significant cost savings over private schools.</p>
<p>hawkette, as a parent looking to help guide their daughter through the college selection process, I appreciate your listing since it is another tool to use, along with many others, in finding the right fit. Unfortunately, we are looking primarily at LAC’s so the list is not as helpful to us. There are some great colleges that downplay the SAT/ACT results or don’t require them at all.</p>
<p>is it possible for someone to do the same SAT/ACT results for Liberal Arts Colleges?</p>
<br>
<br>
<p>+1</p>
<p>Trying to provide an overall rank for universities with a huge variety of programs available is impossible.</p>
<p>+1 to the request for LAC rankings using this method.</p>