Tufts' Reputation

Colleges and Universities A-Z Tufts University
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<p>I’m not sure what you don’t understand. Just because the accepted students have high stats doesn’t mean the waitlisted students don’t have higher stats.</p>

<p>You Tufts supporters cannot seem to look at your school objectively. You take criticisms against your school as if they were directed at you personally. You cannot even fathom the possibility that Tufts practices yield protection. You just take the Tufts admissions officer’s word for it. But what is he supposed to say?</p>

<p>I am not going to keep beating this dead horse. I am obviously causing hurt feelings and that is not what I want to do. So I’ll leave things at that. If believing that Tufts could not possibly practice yield protection helps you sleep at night, then so be it.</p>

262

<p>Ummmm…yeah, quantify all the waitlisted students and then we can talk–till then, I am pretty sure there is more to students when they are both in the top 10% of a class (or 6%) and both have SAT scores in the 700 for every subject. At that point it becomes about the person(their “fit”)–which is what Tufts strives for: people that will jibe well in their community.</p>

263

<p>@Buzzers, can we all agree that no satisfaction can be had (for you, or for the rest of us) in continuing what is, anyway, a wholly pointless argument? </p>

<p>We don’t waitlist top students because they are so tops, and there isn’t a need to continue debating whether or not we do that because we don’t. Let’s say, hypothetically, infinitetime is earnest in his argument (and not simply demonstrating the truth of his username), it still doesn’t change the reality of what we do. Barking at the moon won’t make the moon waitlist students.</p>

<p>While I’m not normally one to stand in the way of a hearty debate, please, for the sake of us all, stop arguing this point.</p>

264

<p>These are all related threads pertaining to Tufts’ reputation: </p>

<p><a href=“http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/tufts-university/982024-usnwr-rankings.html[/url]”>http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/tufts-university/982024-usnwr-rankings.html&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

<p><a href=“http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/tufts-university/1014194-tufts-syndrome.html[/url]”>http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/tufts-university/1014194-tufts-syndrome.html&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

<p><a href=“http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/tufts-university/46266-whats-so-called-tufts-syndrome.html[/url]”>http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/tufts-university/46266-whats-so-called-tufts-syndrome.html&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

<p><a href=“http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/tufts-university/48708-tufts-really-full-iv-rejects.html[/url]”>http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/tufts-university/48708-tufts-really-full-iv-rejects.html&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

<p>I am surprised to see so many questions about a school’s reputation. One doesn’t find quite this level of discussion among the threads of other schools. </p>

<p>Personally, I think Tufts compares quite favorably to some of the bigger NESCAC schools like Wesleyan and to some of the smaller, science/technology-centered universities like Rochester and Rice. In the Boston area, where I live, I see Tufts viewed among many people – from a reputational standpoint – in the same light as BC and Brandeis.</p>

265

<p>Wesleyan probably, but BC and Brandeis? Not here, that’s for sure. In our district the kids who applied to Tufts are traditionally the ones applying to Cornell, Dartmouth, Penn, Northwestern, Hopkins, etc. And yes, as a backup for the ones applying to HYP, Stanford, etc.</p>

266

<p>^^Agreed. In our school district, Tufts is generally harder to get into than BC, Brandeis or Rochester. More of a peer to Cornell in terms of difficulty in admission (some kids get into Cornell who don’t get into Tufts, and a few vice versa).</p>

267

<p>I wasn’t saying that the difficulty of getting admitted was the same at BC or Brandeis. I was simply saying that many people, in my neck of the words (just outside of Boston), view Tufts, BC and Brandeis as very good schools and roughly equal in reputation. The operative word here is roughly. Most people don’t make the fine distinctions that those on CC do. When you’re ranked 28th, 31th and 34th respectively in USN&WR, the differences in the minds of most people between the schools is quite small.</p>

268

<p>Here are the Peer Assessments from USN&WR. BC and Brandeis are a tad lower than Tufts. </p>

<p>Of the private schools, Tufts is in there with Wake Forest, Brandeis, BC, CWRU, Rensselaer, Rochester, GWU and BU. BTW – Cornell’s PA is 4.5. </p>

<p>3.7 , PURDUE
3.6 , Tufts
3.6 , UC IRVINE
3.6 , U FLORIDA
3.6 , OHIO STATE
3.6 , U MARYLAND
3.6 , U MINNESOTA
3.6 , INDIANA U
3.5 , Wake Forest
3.5 , Brandeis
3.5 , Boston College
3.5 , Case Western
3.5 , Rensselaer
3.5 , UC S BARBARA
3.5 , TEXAS A&M
3.5 , U IOWA
3.4 , U Rochester
3.4 , George Washington
3.4 , Boston University
3.4 , U PITTSBURGH
3.4 , U GEORGIA
3.4 , MICHIGAN ST</p>

269

<p>From afar, I think it’s fair to say that Tufts’ outstanding reputation among informed sources in these parts draws more from aspects such as:the outstanding quality of the undergraduates who attend; the reputation of some of its professional schools; being among the “best” of the institutions for those who prefer similar “tweener” size; and its location near Boston. Rather than from its reputation as a research powerhouse, competing with much larger institutions at the graduate level. The latter highly influences PA scores, IMO.</p>

<p>But I can see where you may be right, there is undoubtedly a segment of people who have not been through the selective college admissions game themselves,who pull out a US News and take what it says at face value, without much further scrutiny or analysis.</p>

<p>IMO employers & grad schools are more concerned with the quality of the candidates than the quality of their professors. (The latter is probably fine, with the PA being more a function of size/ quantity IMO).
For that, one might better look to the US News “selectivity” column, rather than the “PA” column.</p>

<p>But I can see where some people might prefer it if all those columns were saying the same thing, from the perspective of recognition from the proverbial “man on the street”. I guess that uniform level of external recognition is something you have to decide you don’t care so very much about, as a top priority, if you decide to choose Tufts. Because there probably isn’t much that can be done to change the US News results, given its size & resources, etc.</p>

270

<p>^^monydad-
I think you are right on the mark with your observations.
All I would add is that I have inquired of someone with far more knowledge than I about why Tufts’ peer assessment in USNWR is at 3.6, in a range with the above schools, rather than closer to 4.0, with schools like WashU and others. He said that this is a “lagging indicator” and that the USNWR PA ratings just have not caught up with the times, but that he expects Tufts will be there in the not too distant future.</p>

271

<p>Many of the ratings like US News rely heavily on “reputation”, which is not objective.</p>

<p>In my opinion the most objective - though still flawed - way to rank schools is by SAT scores. This measures the “smarts” of the student body. There are many flaws with this approach, but it is the most objective and therefore best in my view. </p>

<p>At the 75th percentile, Tufts was ranked 26th among all national universities and liberal arts schools [combining both of US News categories]. </p>

<p>See the list below for 2010. </p>

<p>[Top</a> 500 Ranked Universities for Highest SAT 75th Percentile Scores](<a href=“USA University College Directory - U.S. University Directory - State Universities and College Rankings”>Top 500 Ranked Colleges - Highest SAT 75th Percentile Scores)</p>

272

<p>I can’t agree.</p>

<p>SATs alone are not even the best way to evaluate quality of the student body, much less quality of the university.</p>

<p>Selectivity and student body quality is not fully captured by test scores alone. There are many high testers who are pretty mediocre people who add little, and many somewhat lower testers who will be the
nation’s next movers and shakers. The truly most selective institutions attempt to sort these out via a holisitic admissions process that looks at lots more than test scores. Therefore student body quality is best measured by a combination of test scores and admission %. </p>

<p>Moreover, quality of a university is not fully captured by student body quality anyway.</p>

<p>The student body credentials at high school only speaks to the function of the university’s admissions office before the students even show up, not to what goes on at the university once those students get there.</p>

<p>Imagine Tufts’ student body taught entirely by temp and part-time professors, earning minimum wage, with the level of publishing and scholarship of a typical community college. Versus Tufts’ student body taught by Tufts faculty. Your method would evaluate these two universities as being equal. That says that the professors, the resources the school offers these students once these elite students with high SATs get there, are completely irrelevant when measuring the quality of a university.</p>

<p>I can’t agree.</p>

<p>I believe most people would not agree.</p>

<p>There is a “Laissez-faire” theory of college ranking that put forward that college students sort institution quality out for themselves, so that, by an “Invisible Hand”, student quality is a proxy for university quality; and "Laissez-faire"rankings were done on that basis. However, even the Laissez-faire rankings took more into account than SAT scores when establishing student body, and then institution, quality. They also took admit % into account, for one, as does US News’ selectivity rankings, and other factors as well- such as admissions yield . Theory being: how good can the university be, if nobody who is admitted wants to go there?? A valid question, perhaps.</p>

<p><a href=“http://collegeadmissions.tripod.com/sitebuildercontent/sitebuilderfiles/laissez-faire-1999-2000.txt[/url]”>http://collegeadmissions.tripod.com/sitebuildercontent/sitebuilderfiles/laissez-faire-1999-2000.txt&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

<p>Mind you I am not advocating those particular factors either, necessarily. However I do agree with these other evaluators that SATs are part of the equation, but not the answer in and of themselves.</p>

<p>But beyond that, I agree with US News that it is appropriate to attempt to measure what the university offers to students once they get there. However inadequate US News’ attempts to do so, via PA, faculty resources measures, class size measures, etc., the effort is worth making. If there is indeed an “Invisible Hand” at play, this is very much part of the data that these students should somehow be internalizing if they are to make those decisions appropriately.</p>

273

<p>I agree SAT isn’t the only criteria…and tuftsfan did concede it was flawed. Yet I think he is pointing out to the idea that objective data should perhaps be emphasized more than subjective data which is arbitrary and not really quantifiable.</p>

274

<p>Response to “monydad” two above: </p>

<p>according to a quantitative rating system that evaluates “head to head” student acceptance situations between schools… last year [2010] Tufts was ranked #27 among all national universities and liberal arts schools. </p>

<p><a href="http://college./colleg…isCategory=ALL%5B/url%5D">http://college./colleg…isCategory=ALL</a></p>

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<p><a href="http://www./blog/2009/…lege-rankings/%5B/url%5D">http://www./blog/2009/…lege-rankings/</a></p>

<p>An explanation of the rating system by “**************” is below. </p>

<p>We have implemented the MyChances College Rankings based on revealed student preference. In this system, the college admissions process is treated like a chess tournament. The colleges play matches (which occur when 2 colleges admit the same student). In each match, there is a winner (the college that the student ends up attending) and a loser. The winner gains points; the loser forfeits them. When a high-ranked school beats a low ranked school, the high-ranked school gains few points, and the low-ranked school loses few points. If a low-ranked school beats a high-ranked opponent, it gains more points than if it beat an equally-matched opponent. After playing many games, the colleges that students prefer rise naturally to the top of the rankings.</p>

<p>Does the method of revealed student preference meet the 3 criteria outlined above? I believe it does.</p>

<p>Consider point #1 (gaming the system). Imagine that MIT wanted to beat out Harvard by trying hard to avoid admitting any students that they thought would be admitted to Harvard. They would end up succeeding in a model based on acceptance rate and yield (since their yield would likely increase), but their actual student body would be less qualified. In the revealed preference model, however, they would be less successful. They would not compete head-to-head with Harvard, so would ‘win’ more. But they would be winning against weaker ‘opponents’, earning fewer points for each victory.</p>

<p>For point #2 (relevance), the idea of revealed preference is that it aggregates the sum total of what matters to students – whatever those factors might be. It is likely that students behave rationally (by attending the school that they find most desirable). So long as other students share similar values, then revealed preference rankings will work well in explaining, and even guiding, their decisions.</p>

<p>For point #3 (stability), the tournament style system is simple and straightforward. It is responsive to changes in student preference over time. It does not rely on aggregations of various statistical factors, or college faculty survey results; nor does it depend upon arbitrary weighting of those factors.</p>

<p>The details of the procedure that we use to generate the rankings, and our use of chess-style Elo points, will be explained in a later post. For an academic treatment of a similar college ranking system, I recommend the working paper, “A Revealed Preference Ranking of U.S. Colleges and Universities,” 2005, by Christopher Avery, Mark Glickman, Caroline Hoxby, and Andrew Metrick (free link).</p>

275

<p>Flaws of the Revealed Preference study have been detailed many times on CC , it is another form of backhanded “Invisible Hand” ranking method, which does not directly evaluate anything that actually goes on at the unversities. However the RP approach does not use SATs at all, so presumably per #271 you do not like it much. Per your terms, it does not evaluate “quality”,as, per you, SATs do best, rather merely “popularity”. </p>

<p>If your point is various ordered lists have been, and can be, constructed, using various approaches and criteria, where Tufts falls out someplace between #25 and #30, I have no argument with that.</p>

276

<p>“. . .no one here cares about perceived prestige and instead cares about quality of academics and student life.”</p>

<p>I’m applying to several ivies, but Tufts is my number one choice for that very reason.</p>

277

<p>Hi Monydad, </p>

<p>I do believe that SAT’s are the best method - though still flawed. You discussed student preferences, so I showed, even using student preferences Tufts is still a top school. </p>

<p>Bear in mind if Tufts wanted to improve its “stats”, it would make its application essays “easier”, thereby increasing the number of students applying and improving its acceptance rate like many other schools. </p>

<p>I do not try to hide my bias (see my name), I believe Tufts is a very good and underrated school. </p>

<p>I believe anyone who looks deeply at the school will come to the same conclusion. My intent in posting is to undercut simplistic arguments like “tufts a school full of Ivy rejects” or “tufts syndrome” only applies to Tufts and get students to evaluate for themselves. </p>

<p>I happen to believe if students take the time to learn about the school, more often than not, they will be very impressed.</p>

278

<p>Tufts has 91% of people accepted in the top 10% of their class; SAT scores up to par with ivies; the mean student population in the top 6% of their class; a 7 to 1 student teacher ratio; a really selective acceptance rate (in the top 20 most selective schools in the nation); teaches community and how to change the world and is big on internationalism, study abroad, and community service; is well known in international relations and in pre-med; despite not having a business school, Tufts ties for second in the number of undergraduate alumni who are now fortune 100 CEO’s (tied with Upenn and Dartmouth…Harvard is first); ties Harvard and JHU in the number of Fulbright scholars with 17;is a place where students are reported to be one of the happiest; has excellent academics; has students that just have high stats, but also are creative and witty (hence their essays for admissions); and is considered to be one of the little ivies.</p>

<p>… Rest assured Tuftsfan, that while i disagree that SAT scores are all that should be measured, I also disagree with the idea that subjective data should be measured too. If you look at the Times ranking of world universities, which uses objective data, Tufts is ranked 53rd in the world–ahead of both Brown and Dartmouth.</p>

<p>… People who says Tufts is an ivy reject usually only mean from Harvard, Princeton, and Yale…yet by that standard, that includes Duke, U of Chicago, and even Cornell, Dartmouth, U penn, Columbia, Brown, etc. Tufts is a little ivy, it’s been said to be not liberal arts, but not even national university–it’s a niche–in between—getting the national research benefit of a national university and the small size of a liberal arts. I always see Tufts as one of the top schools in the nation and a very underrated school (and by underrated, i mean underrated by people who don’t matter at all yet like to spend their time on CC to make it seem like they do). At the end of the day, revealed preferences, etc. are all subjective things that don’t indicate the actually people who matter in the world.</p>

<p>I wouldn’t let these people get to you.</p>

279

<p>Tufts has fantastic medical and dental schools, not to mention the Fletcher School for would-be diplomats. :wink: Wall Street ain’t everything.</p>

<p>Tufts is also strong in fields like nutrition and physical and occupational therapy.</p>

<p>I went there for English (MA), which just goes to show that I wasn’t thinking in career terms. :slight_smile: But, while I was there, I got a part-time job at Little, Brown, and that eventually led to my career in advertising, so I guess I did OK as a “Jumbo.”</p>

280

<p>BTW, when I was growing up in Greater Boston, my mom always had a rule about choosing doctors: Make sure they went to Tufts Medical School. She would look for the Tufts diploma on their office walls. Seriously! Even way back then, Tufts had a reputation for having a great <em>clinically oriented</em> medical school. </p>

<p>While I was a graduate student at Tufts, I had my dental work done by a female student at Tufts Dental School. Best. Dentist. Ever.</p>

<p>OK, I know this is slightly off-topic. Just wanted to mention that native Bostonians have always known about Tufts as a health-care powerhouse.</p>