As user @aegis12 pointed out on a different thread this year, as similar to last year, the “Tufts admissions office did not fill out the field for “% in top 10% of class” for the class of 2021 (which will be used to calculate 2018-2019 US News ranking on September, 2018) like last year, according to the common data set submitted to college board. (tufts is the only school that left this section blank – most other colleges & universities submitted the data). This will influence Tufts’ position on US News ranking for another year, as high school rank counts for 3.25 points of the entire ranking score” and Tufts did not report top 10% of high school class last year for US News, leading it to decline 3~ points in rankings last year. “If Tufts were to report the high school rank of the class of 2020 correctly last year, it would have been ranked at #25 (or #27) (75/100 US News raw score), not at #29 (72/100 US News raw score). Even a point difference (1/100 on US News) makes a difference among the top 30 schools).”
In response, this decline in rankings (due to not reporting top 10% of high school class) may be a leading factor that may have led Tufts this year to have “the smallest increase (in application numbers) – ED application even decreased by 100, while BU saw 20% increase in ED after its upgrade in ranking – in application out of all the top 30 schools (top 30 schools saw 10-15+% increase in application on average; USC hit 13% acceptance rate, 4% decrease from last year after its ranking soared up to #21. USC used to be ranked #40 when Tufts was #27 in the early 2000s. NYU whose ranking went up from #36 to #30 saw 20% increase in applications!!!).” I am sure that @aegis12 did not mean to put down any of these other schools, but Tufts should be more attracting students like these other schools are.
After having had @aegis12’s permission to share his comments, what are the viewpoints of alumni, students, and parents reading this? Should action be taken? I know that most people say that US News rankings do not matter and that many people who know about Tufts and genuinely love Tufts choose Tufts because of the quirky atmosphere, fit, and teaching over “more prestigious” universities (I myself was such a student). But unfortunately, THEY DO. And though one may indicate that reporting top 10% of high school class is unnecessary because many high schools don’t even rank, this decision of the Tufts in not reporting top 10% of high school class will lead to declines in ranking that may deter prospective students who may not clearly understand Tufts’ excellence in undergraduate teaching.
Having lived overseas, I know many international students who base many of their US college options off of rankings. In the long term, this may lead to a decline in University quality if Tufts is unable to attract as many brilliant students.
The only difference is that Brown administration and admissions office immediately (literally in a day) took actions to correct the ranking, while Tufts seems to be largely unaware of this statistical error for two years.
Can someone possibly communicate this with Tufts admissions office?
Regarding the comment above, many international students & students in the West Coast who can’t visit Tufts tend to gauge the school’s excellence through various ranking metrics, notably through the US News. Also, the general public who doesn’t know anything about Tufts might think that Tufts is a less selective and attractive institution than it actually is.
@hudsonvalley51 Sure you may say that they “aren’t so brilliant” but that’s what students do. Imagine if Tufts had been unranked for years. How many of students who currently attend Tufts would be lost? There are some people who would say that 0 would be lost because students at Tufts are just a brilliant students who love Tufts and applied here while disregarding rankings. But that’s not the case.
It’s not that students who don’t know about Tufts (such as certain international students and students on the West Coast) aren’t “brilliant.” It’s because some brilliant individuals base college options partly on rankings only because they have not had the opportunity to be exposed to an environment (Such as in New England) where people know from common knowledge (not rankings) that Tufts is the excellent, undergraduate focused institution it actually is.
In addition, some low income students also don’t have the resources and time to do research and visit college campuses. Rankings are one of their only methods to determine college quality, and you really can’t blame them.
I understand why rankings are important for all the reasons that @Dawala282 listed. However, there are things that really shouldn’t be part of the rankings. Top % of high school class is not a truly meaningful statistic. Many competitive high schools refuse to rank so that information is not available. Quality is so variable among high schools that even where schools rank, that information doesn’t reveal much. The student who is valedictorian at a low performing high school might not crack the top 25% in a very competative school. Why should this information be used to determine a university’s quality? Personally, I would like to see selectivity stop being part of the rankings as well. That would eliminate the school’s incentive to game enrollment by encouraging droves of students to apply. I fail to see how the number of students a school rejects is valuable information.
GPA and Test Scores, Outcomes, Student Teacher Ratio, class size, and many other stats are much more important in determining the true value of a college or university.
Guessing that the lack of reporting top 10% will kick Tufts out of the top 30. I really dislike rankings like this, but at the end of the day, they factor into application numbers. Maybe I’ll pop into admissions to ask them about it… curious about this year’s acceptance rate too.
Assuming the numbers aren’t that flattering to Tufts, would it hurt them in USNWR ranking if they reported a top 10% number that was not that great versus not reporting it at all?
@CTlawyer a low number could be worse than not reporting a number, but I’m almost sure that 92% of frat years graduated in the top 10% of their high school class.
Although Student Selectivity may be an important factor, how can you compare a student at 50% of class rank in a magnet school with a student at 50% in a neighborhood school?
And, how do you factor in schools that do not report rank (such as many highly competitive private schools)?
Perhaps instead of asking Tufts to report, it would be better to ask more schools NOT to report. If most of the top schools refused to report, US News would need to change their ranking criteria.
@CTlawyer I think they haven’t been reporting because, as many have said, high school rankings are an inaccurate indicator of academic skill and should be eliminated in US News ranking, which I agree as well and perhaps Tufts admissions has realized. Still, making every elite school stop reporting its top 10% of high school class rank to US News is not going to happen overnight.
Even if in the long term, after 5 or 10 years, US News finally stops recording top 10% of high school class rank for all schools, certain people’s perception of Tufts as a great school will be continuously decreasing in those 5 to 10 years because Tufts will be ranked lower than it should be for 5-10 years and was the outlier in not reporting top 10% of class rank from the start. I know US News is all BS and hate to admit this, but US News is what is dominating college choices for many these days.
Tufts should well understand that it doesn’t have the gravitas to stop reporting top 10% to USNWR without consequences. Only the HYPSM-level colleges can do that.
So this means that either Tufts is clueless (unlikely), or that they feel that reporting the actual top 10% is worse than reporting nothing. Neither case is particularly good.
Last year Tufts had 21,000 appliations and accepted 3000. Do they really care if this slight dip in rankings causes them to get only 20,000 applications? That might actually be a benefit.
@hebegebe Interestingly, according to the 2014-2015 common data set, which Tufts reported its last high school rank, 90% of students were ranked in top 10%, almost 100% within the top 25%.
And I totally agree that Tufts doesn’t have the gravitas to change the ranking system, unfortunately.
I hope this can be fixed before the next year’s ranking gets released…
Can someone possibly send an email to: instresearch@tufts.edu (in charge of the institutional evaluation, reporting, etc.) regarding this issue??
As it turns out, Tufts left the section blank for the class of 2021’s fact book, common data set, and all the institutional studies that have been sent to the U.S. News.
This will push Tufts out of top 30 for the first time in the US News with A LOT of repercussions…If this were to continue for the next few years, Tufts might follow the path of Lehigh whose ranking dropped from #31 to #47 just within 5 years.
Can’t believe that both the admissions & administration aren’t aware of this at all.
If they are not filling out the survey, they SHOULD NOT participate in the system.
If they are participating in the system and announce its ranking on social media, etc., Tufts SHOULD fill out the entirety of the survey questions.
Can you email them? If they managed to get #29 leaving the section blank, then what makes you think they will fall in rankings? #29 is where they stand without reporting top 10%, so it’s possible that there are other metrics used for ranking that Tufts has improved upon. I don’t think a drop in ranking is inevitable, however I do think they can do better. It’d be awesome if someone got some information from the university itself about what is going on here.
The admissions office redirected me to the office of institutional research, and they do not pick up the phone. “There is no one here to take your call”.