Tulane crushes it in the US News Rankings

Colleges and Universities A-Z Tulane University
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Tulane is part of the Colonial Group.

The Colonial Group is a consortium of fourteen universities formed by the Provosts of the universities, and supported by the Institutional Research offices through data exchanges and information sharing.

BOSTON COLLEGE
Chestnut Hill, Massachusetts

BOSTON UNIVERSITY
Boston, Massachusetts

BRANDEIS UNIVERSITY
Waltham, Massachusetts

GEORGE WASHINGTON UNIVERSITY
Washington, D.C.

LEHIGH UNIVERSITY
Lehigh, Pennsylvania

NEW YORK UNIVERSITY
New York, New York

NORTHEASTERN UNIVERSITY
Boston, Massachusetts

SOUTHERN METHODIST UNIVERSITY
Dallas, Texas

SYRACUSE UNIVERSITY
Syracuse, New York

TUFTS UNIVERSITY
Medford, Massachusetts

TULANE UNIVERSITY
New Orleans, Louisiana

UNIVERSITY OF MIAMI
Coral Gables, Florida

UNIVERSITY OF NOTRE DAME
South Bend, Indiana

WAKE FOREST UNIVERSITY
Winston-Salem, North Carolina

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All I can tell you, @suzy100, is that I have seen numerous reports that Tulane has released since around 1998 that list the schools I mention in various charts for comparison in various areas. I don’t think they care a whit about Fiske Guide, and I think the point isn’t “peer” in the strict sense of academic stats of incoming students. For their purposes, it is a mix of schools that have many similar characteristics (more on that in a sec), and I think the fact that Duke, Vanderbilt, etc. are considered more selective than Tulane for admissions is part of why they keep them in the group. After all, what good is strategic and other analysis if you are not comparing yourself to schools that are both better than you in certain areas as well as behind you?

But peer in this case means what I alluded to earlier. Take WUSTL. Or Vanderbilt. All three schools have almost identical enrollment each freshman class; they all have engineering (remember, Tulane had all the engineering departments when this started), architecture, business, science and liberal arts; all have a medical school and a law school, and in these particular cases they all have very similarly situated campuses relative to a major city, although that won’t always be the case. I am sure someone from Tulane that is involved in this area could point to many more similarities. Of course there are some significant differences besides the incoming stats for those schools, such as their endowment. But when it comes to making comparisons for the purposes of planning and improving, these are peer schools in that sense of the word and also, as I said, have aspects where Tulane aspires to meet their metrics.

I honestly am not sure why this would cause any kind of kerfuffle, other than, I suppose, a misunderstanding of what the purpose of this group is. It is really nothing to get excited about for people outside the school, I wouldn’t think. As far as this Colonial Consortium, I never see it referenced and can find no mentions of it on the Tulane site, but that was only a quick search. I will find out more and let everyone know, since it seems to be of interest. Again we are wandering off topic (although not as far off as the other discussion, since rankings and peers kind of go together). I might start a new thread and pull some of these posts over, depending on what I find out.

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I wouldn’t get too worked up about what the “right” peer group is.

First, Tulane wouldn’t be the first organization to trend towards “marrying up” in picking what it considers its peers to be. I wouldn’t be surprised if there were some stretches on the peer list that WashU or Vandy uses internally.

Second, I’d bet that FC’s group is mostly used internally for benchmarking and operations. From the perspective of faculty and university administrators, that list makes a lot of sense – mid-size, private, selective, urban, research oriented universities located mostly in the southeast region of the country. Coincidentally, back in the 1950s Vandy led an effort to form an athletic conference called the Magnolia League – sort of a southern Ivy League – with Duke, Rice, Tulane and SMU as the founding schools.

That group doesn’t make as much sense (and likely isn’t much used for) recruitment of undergraduates, which is the focus of the USNWR and other rankings. We all know what those kind of peer lists say, which is fine for that purpose.

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FC’s peer list draws heavily from the membership list of the AAU. That’s 62 schools. The AAU is a big deal to faculty and university administrators, and unknown and unimportant to everyone else. If you eliminate the state schools and the Ivies and apply some geography filters, that’s pretty much the list you get.

Or if you were forming a new athletic conference on a blank sheet of paper, you’d also easily get a somewhat similar list.

Start with Tulane, Vandy, Wake, Duke. All southern, private, strong academics, play D1 sports. Then add Rice and Miami – geographically (if not culturally) southern, strong academics, also play D1 sports. If they played D1 sports, Emory and WUSTL would also be obvious members. That would be 8 and you’d be done. Southern Ivy League. With 6 of the 8 being AAU members.

So FC’s peer group isn’t crazy. It’s just not the list of peers you’d get from ranking undergraduate admissions selectivity. Which is USNWR pretty much.

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@northwesty - an athletic conference like this would never happen for economic reasons.

But for sake of conversation, and the parameters were private research universities based in the Southern U.S.:

  • Duke
  • Vanderbilt
  • Rice
  • Vanderbilt
  • Wake Forest
  • Miami
  • Tulane
  • Davidson

note - St Louis is Midwestern not Southern

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No idea where you got Davidson. It is an LAC, not a research university. It is not a member of AAU, it does not offer a Ph.D. degree in anything as far as I can see on their web site.

@northwesty, I know you know this and are just using the term “FC’s peer group” for convenience, but for everyone else I just want to be 100% clear. I didn’t make up this group, it is a group I have seen used over and over and over again in various documents Tulane makes available on their web site, and as northwesty and I have said, they are usually (or maybe always) documents that involve benchmarking and issues vital to the school and faculty, but not necessarily involving admissions or comparisons of the students that enroll. Some of the studies might have involved some of those issues, it is impossible for me to remember because there have been so many. What I can say with absolute certainty is that in these documents Tulane itself referred to them as a peer group. I would say take that in the spirit northwesty just outlined.

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There was an athletic conference created as a “sister Ivy” to play football against the Ivy League.

It’s now a full athletic conference and called the Patriot League.

Original football member? Davidson

And btw there is a difference between a peer group and an aspirational peer group. SMU lays that out nicely on their website.

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And once again you avoid taking responsibility for what you actually said.

Emphasis added

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Davidson is a LAC, albeit a quality one. So is Richmond. But – Davidson and Richmond have fairly well established D1 or 1AA (old designations, I know…) sports programs in some sports – moving to D1 in all sports might not be that hard for them. And if Emory were to add D1 sports…

Davidson Wildcats
Duke Blue Devils
Emory Eagles
Miami Hurricanes
Rice Owls
Richmond Spiders
Tulane Green Wave
Vanderbilt Commodores
Wake Forest Demon Deacons

Having nine teams means an eight-game conference schedule in football, which is good – it allows for four non-conference games, which is a good number.

That league would be pretty weak in football but pretty decent in basketball. There are certainly some unique mascots in the league. (as well as the ubiquitous “Eagles” and “Wildcats”)

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Yes, but being D1 has nothing to do with being a research university, and vice versa. Obviously WUSTL is a research university, but as far as I know is not D1 in any sports (but maybe they are in some non-revenue sports, I don’t know). And yes, Davidson is a wonderful school. Fantastic. But… Once again we are wandering far off topic. Let’s drop any discussion of new athletic conferences.

91

If one wants to discuss potential new athletic conferences, please start a new thread. If it involves Tulane I would suggest that from a practical standpoint it is a very theoretical discussion since the AAC is a very new conference that Tulane is highly invested in. But that doesn’t mean it cannot be discussed if people want it. It just doesn’t belong on this thread.

92

FC is showing what the C stands for – chemist.

Tulane’s own stated peer group is how a university research faculty member would see the world. Basically through the glasses of AAU membership. Which is an organization that few people other than university researchers know or care about. If you are talking sports or undergrad admissions, that’s not how you’d look at the world.

Bottom line, Tulane’s stated peer group makes plenty of sense.

But it’s not much relevant to a discussion of the USNWR rankings, which is focused on undergrad education and even more so focused on undergrad admissions selectivity. Which is fairly disconnected from the research/AAU/faculty view of the world.

Apologies for the thread hijack.

MODERATOR’S NOTE:
Sports conference comments have been deleted.

93

Here is the resource tool for peer institutions.

Unfortunately Tulane did not participate:

http://chronicle.com/article/Peers-Interactive-Data/134262/

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Momentary comment on sports divisions and then back to your regularly scheduled programming:
Several of these schools have changed athletic conferences for a variety of reasons. Tulane used to play Rice (in conference), until just a few years ago. In fact both Rice and Tulane explored the possibility of discontinuing their expensive commitment to Div I sports, but both schools ultimately decided to keep them.

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Clarinet – that’s an interesting tool. Every school has a long list of schools it considers peers, many of which are aspirational . But then there’s a much shorter and tighter list of schools where both sides identify the other as peers.

Lots of schools did not participate (Tulane did not), but the results for the matching peers are what you’d expect and more consistent with USNWR type rankings.

Mutual peers for Emory are Northwestern, Vandy and WUSTL.

Vandy matches with WUSTL, Brandeis, Case, Emory, Northwestern, Rochester and USC.

GWU matches with American, BU, NYU and SMU.

BU matches with GWU, NYU, Northeastern and Syracuse.

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The only thing this thread shows is how ambiguous the rankings are as everyone can find something to dispute about it.

Anyone can make a university look good or bad if they choose the right set of data to analyze.

97

All the excitement about 41 but still feel we’re a top 25 school…Here in CA you could go to H.S. ,not take the ACT/SAT, no AP’s, barely graduate, go to a Community College for 2 years and get automatically into UCLA or UCSB or even USC. Save the cost of first 2 yrs, have an easy Fresh/Soph at CC and graduate a top 25 college. No way Tulane is not a top 25…

98

You know, it’s not wild and crazy to imagine Tulane in the low 30s at some point. Why? it was actually in the low 30s back in the mid to late 90s. By the time my sone started back in 2010 it was in the high 40s, I believe. As this Katrina stuff gets taken out of the calculation, perhaps it will go to the 30s again, especially if Fitts proves as adept at fundraising as the Board of Trustees had hoped.

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FYI FWIW:

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Welcome to the world of USNWR ranking mania!