<p>but the acceptance rate and SAT scores. didn’t the UF prez look at SAT scores?</p>
<p>lol…</p>
<p>Venkat</p>
<p>I agree that I think that he ranked a number of schools he probably doesn’t know much about and he generally gave them a 2 instead of a “don’t know”. But if you look at the rest of his rankings, it looks like what he did (with the exception of Dartmouth) was he picked the strongest school in a given state and then ranked the others in that state in comparison. For example, in NY, once he picked Columbia at the top, he then felt that NYU and Cornell were good but not quite as good and after that he put Fordham, Rochester and other schools that he felt were lower than NYU and Cornell. </p>
<p>If you look at it that way, his choices make more sense. For example, once you give Georgetown a 3 (which I believe is too low), then American and George Washington wind up lower.</p>
<p>The only problem with the system is that it is operated by humans. Never ignore the importance of the single nail, so to speak. </p>
<p>So how much manipulation of these numbers is ongoing in the peer assessment?</p>
<p>other than giving UF a very generous ranking, as he should, since he’s the president…, everything else looks okay from a relative standpoint. boston college cannot be happy with him…</p>
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<p>I wouldn’t call it cooking as much as general ignorance and trying to fulfill an agenda.</p>
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<p>I would say the majority of people filling these surveys out are fools like this FL guy or certainly wouldn’t be concerned about picking a school based on their aggregate opinions where one school comes out at 4.5 vs another coming out at 4.3, even though such a discrepancy makes a huge difference in the overall rankings.</p>
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<p>In some cases, it looks like he wasn’t even looking in the right row on the form; nevermind looking up or knowing the relative differences in SAT scores. In theory, it shouldn’t require looking anything up but is supposed to reflect his aggregated “expert” knowledge on the relative differences among colleges as an “expert” in the field.</p>
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But that’s the point…it’s kind of hard to ask a computer for subjective opinion.</p>
<p>PA probably shouldn’t be out of 5. Maybe 10 or 100 or something else. A 4.5 vs a 4.4 might be a differnece of 5 spots if you consider how 3+ schools are tied for one spot.</p>
<p>Most of these guys don’t know much about the schools they are rating, so if you have too many low ball a school out of ignorance it could affect rankings. This wouldn’t be a big deal if people didn;t put a huge emphasis on rankings (most of them are probably on CC though). The rankings are good in showing which schools are “peers”. They aren’t good in that people interpret them as “Harvard is THE BEST school in the country. NYU is outside the top 30, not worth going to.” Maybe if US News put a huge disclaimer on their rankings or if people were smarter, rankings would be better.</p>
<p>I think there’s something to be said for how PA is done, it just shouldn’t be nearly as high as 25% of the total score.</p>
<p>^^^^So that no public shools would rate in the top fifty right? I mean, PA is the only thing that saves them from oblivion at USNWR according to their order of importance factors.</p>
<p>From the article</p>
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<p>Hallelujah, I couldn’t say it better myself. </p>
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<p>Umm … cooking the results versus fulfilling an agenda … seems like two on the same see-saw to me.</p>
<p>He obviously fears his Floridian competition and desires to prevent them from rising in the rankings.</p>
<p>The technique of asking industry leaders for peer review of their competitors of actually a commonly accepted practice…</p>
<p>You are have only two options to choose from. It’s either a Distinguished school (5) or a Strong school (4)… By process of elimination, if it is not: Your institution, H, Y, P, S, M, top public, then it’s not a Distinguished school. :-P</p>
<p>I believe the PA scores are oversimplified… If PA scores can be accurately predicated by hard data… then what is the use of PA scores to being with :-P</p>
<p>I think it’s revealing to look at how Machen rated the schools he had the most direct familiarity with:</p>
<p>Vanderbilt (where he did his undergrad): “strong” (4)
St. Louis U (DDS): “good” (3)
U of Iowa (MS, PhD): “strong” (4)
UNC Chapel Hill (professor, administrator): “strong” (4)
U of Michigan (professor, administrator): “distinguished” (5)
U of Utah (president): “strong” (4)
U of Florida (president): “distinguished” (5) </p>
<p>These are on the whole very positive marks, but notice that he did not uniformly give the institutions with which he’s been affiliated—those from which he graduated or where he previously worked, for which higher ratings would tend to pad his own credentials–the highest marks. He’s clearly making distinctions here. </p>
<p>He did his undergrad at Vanderbilt and thinks it’s a “strong” school, about on a par with UNC Chapel Hill where he got his first teaching job and moved into administration; hard to argue with that, and others in the business obviously agree as Vandy’s overall 4.0 PA score is quite close to UNC’s 4.1, and both are spot-on with the marks Machen gave them. He got his first professional degree at St. Louis U but clearly thinks it’s the weakest of the schools he’s been affiliated with, giving it a 3; again, hard to argue, and academia generally seems to agree, giving SLU an overall PA score of 2.9.</p>
<p>Machen worked in similar capacities as a professor and administrator at UNC and Michigan, and clearly thinks the latter is a notch better, 5 to 4; but that’s not far off the “wisdom of the crowd” which puts Michigan at 4.4 and UNC at 4.1.</p>
<p>Some might argue he’s overrating both Iowa and Utah with 4s. With respect to Iowa, though, he’s not too far off conventional wisdom in the industry which puts Iowa at 3.5.</p>
<p>So it’s only the two schools where he’s been President—Utah and Florida–that others in the industry would say he’s overrating. Utah’s overall PA score is 2.9, more than a full point below what Machen gives it; and Florida’s is 3.6, nearly a point-and-a-half below Machen’s score. So no surprise there: he thinks he’s done a good job leading those schools, or at least wants to make it look like he has. I wonder how many of my own colleagues wouldn’t give themselves perfect 5s if asked to rate their own teaching? But in any event, his individual scores aren’t going to materially affect the ultimate PA ratings of those schools. </p>
<p>As for his in-state competitors, he’s again not far off the mark of industry-wide perceptions:</p>
<p>School / Machen score / Overall PA score</p>
<p>U of Miami / 3 / 3.2
Florida State / 3 / 3.0</p>
<p>Central Florida / 2 / 2.4
South Florida / 2 / 2.5
West Florida / 2 / 1.9</p>
<p>Florida A & M / 1 / 2.0
Florida Atlantic / 1 / 2.1
Florida International / 1 / 2.1
Nova Southeastern / 1 / 1.7
FIT / 1 / 2.1
Barry / 1 / 2.0</p>
<p>On the whole, then—overlooking the forgivable sin of overrating his present and immediate past employer—Machen pretty much nailed it with respect to the schools he’s best positioned to evaluate. He gave the weaker Florida schools lower scores than the national PA ratings do—except the national PA ratings pretty much bottom out around 2.0 or slightly lower, and if you rightly rate U Miami and Florida State at 3, then Central Florida and South Florida a notch below at 2, you have no place else to go but to give the next run below a 1. Besides. Machen may know some things the rest of us don’t know about the weaknesses of these schools. The only outlier here is West Florida, which Machen put in the same category as Central Florida and South Florida, while the rest of the industry put it in the bottom tier. But who’s to say Machen’s not in a better position to know on this one?</p>
<p>On the whole, then, I’m not as dismayed as I initially was by how Machen scored these schools. More troubling is how he scored some schools he’s less well positioned to know anything about. But again, to the extent he’s making idiosyncratic judgments, it’s not likely to affect any school’s overall PA score very much.</p>
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I have to agree with this more than bclintok’s assessment. The 1-2’s he gave out, while giving himself a 5—yeah, right. Florida is a 3.6, Miami a 3.2 and USF a 2.5. That is a separation of 1.2, Yet he rated USF a 2 and UF a 5. And the 1’s he dished out, that is not inside information, that is a diss.</p>
<p>
Note: the posted survey is for the upcoming USNWR rankings to be published in August.</p>
<p>I wonder what he put down for his top 10 “upcoming colleges”, “dedication to undergraduate teaching”, and “renowned undergraduate programs”?</p>
<p>So what about the other Southeastern Conference schools, which Machen presumably keeps a close eye on? Again, apart from overrating his own school, Machen’s scores come close to industry-wide perceptions:</p>
<p>SEC school / Machen score / overall PA score</p>
<p>Alabama / 3 / 2.9
Arkansas / 2 / 2.7
Auburn / 3 / 3.0
Florida / 5 / 3.6
Georgia / 3 / 3.4
Kentucky / 3 / 3.0
LSU / 2 / 2.7
Mississippi / 3 / 2.6
Mississippi State / 2 / 2.3
South Carolina / 3 / 2.9
Tennessee / 2 / 3.0
Vanderbilt / 4 / 4.0</p>
<p>He thinks Vanderbilt is the top school; the industry agrees. He puts Arkansas, LSU, and Mississippi State a notch below the conference average, and generally others in the industry agree. He places most SEC schools squarely in the middle, “good” but not great; that conforms with the industry-wide consensus. Two outliers: he rates Ole’ Miss a notch higher than the industry does, and he rates Tennessee a notch lower. Fine. It’s an opinion, survey, after all. There may be particular things about each of those schools that impress or bother him. If they impress or bother others, they’ll eventually affect the schools PA score; if it’s idiosyncratic to him, it won’t matter. Again, he’s not doing too badly.</p>
<p>From a national perspective:</p>
<p>UF should of been rated strong (almost $600 million in research expenditures last year, and over 100 Graduate & Professional programs ranked).</p>
<p>John Hopkins and Cornell University should of been ranked distinguished.</p>
<p>Other than that: Machen was dead on, and what he did wasn’t even close to what James Barker did at Clemson University.</p>
<p>^^^ and your a gator.</p>
<p>Johns Hopkins should be ranked distinguished. If it wasn’t for our “one time” med school, our PA score would have been a 4.7… beating Columbia, UChicago, and Cornell… Dang it (sarcasm)</p>