Also when you guys say “I don’t think Whatever University should be in the top 20” , what do you mean by that? You’re just ordinary people, most of whom don’t have careers in education or have studied education or have a way to assess colleges other than what’s online or where you or your children attended. So how would you be able to assess which schools “should be” where in relation to others, based on actual QUALITY (different from prestige)? There’s a difference between assessing prestige, because it varies region to region and person to person, and assessing the actual quality of a university. I’m not saying US News rankings are perfect, just that however flawed their process might be, they still have better insight than the average person…
^ You can use a different set of measurements than the ones US News uses if you think they’re looking at the wrong numbers (or that the numbers they use are inaccurate, or inappropriately weighted).
Well that’s true, but you know, we live in a democratic pluralistic society with public access to a lot of information. Ordinary people have a right (a responsibility, even) to weigh in on matters of public interest. Many of us are fairly well educated; this isn’t rocket science.
^^Another case of an OP regretting what they wished for?
You suggested in post #1 that Vanderbilt ought to be bumped up to #8 and UChicago bumped down to #16.
Here’s how Vanderbilt stacks up against UChicago in my prep school matriculation count:
Vanderbilt
2 Ransom Everglades (FL)
18 Harvard-Westlake (CA)
25 Trinity (NY)
27 Dalton (NY)
35 Hotchkiss (CT)
60 San Francisco U HS (CA)
78 Phillips Exeter (NH)
- Horace Mann (NY)*
- College Prep Oakland (CA)*
- Lakeside Seattle (WA)*
(* Vanderbilt didn’t show up in the lists of top matriculations for these schools)
UChicago
10 Ransom Everglades (FL)
11 Harvard-Westlake (CA)
7 Trinity (NY)
16 Dalton (NY)
16 Hotchkiss (CT)
19 San Francisco U HS (CA)
6 Phillips Exeter (NH)
1 Horace Mann (NY)
11 College Prep Oakland (CA)
- Lakeside Seattle (WA)*
(* Chicago didn’t show up in the list of top matriculations for this school)
So Vanderbilt captures more matriculations only at Ransom Everglades, a prep school in Florida.
Vanderbilt’s appeal seems to vary much more widely among these prep schools than UChicago’s does.
I say “seems to” because after all, every matriculation choice is a 2-way decision. For all we know, many Horace Mann students applied to Vanderbilt as their first choice, but were rejected.
From my viewpoint, what schools prep school kids go to doesn’t mean anything in terms of “prestige” since I view schools through my own lens, not the lens of parochial high schoolers.
As for Vandy - from where I sit here in Chicago. It’s easily on par with the other top 20 schools and equally as prestigious. Smart kids have gone there for eons; somehow now that some of those kids are from the NE, that’s supposed to make it more prestigious. Whatever. @@
I would expect the students at “top” prep schools to be less parochial than other HS students. They tend to be affluent, well travelled, get relatively good college advising, and must be fairly prestige-conscious. Their parents tend to be well-educated (I think), are probably rather well-informed about colleges, and (especially the boarding school families) may be less bound to specific states/regions (although one can see regional differences in the prep school matriculations.) Example: Students at San Francisco University HS matriculate at tiny, far-away Middlebury College more often than they do at UCLA and almost as often as they do at Berkeley. That strikes me as an un-parochial pattern (unless you want to claim it just represents a different kind of bias).
I’m not suggesting their choices necessarily represent ground truth about college quality.
I’m suggesting that if we insist on talking about “prestige”, this is one way to operationalize the concept.
“USNWR is attempting to quantify intangible aspects such as “faculty dedication to teaching” on the undergraduate level, which in principle is highly relevant to students.”
merc81 do you believe that faculty dedication to teaching can be measured statistically? Faculty quality can be measured by impact on their field, awards and the significance of its publications. Dedication to undergraduate instruction is impossible to measure.
Interesting analysis by @tk21769.
I agree, this is certainly one valid measurement of “prestige,” for the reason you stated.
I also agree with the others that it would be even more interesting if the numbers could be normalized to take into account the sizes of the colleges. And how amazing it is that many schools with less than 1000 entering freshmen made the list. Really a testament to how highly those schools are viewed at the elite private high schools.
But even without normalization, the names of the colleges of the prestige colleges are pretty much what one would expect:
The Ivies and top little Ivies (Amherst, Williams and a few others) are going to be half of the Top 25.
With most of the other usual suspects also included (Chicago, Stanford, etc.)
So for at least 15-20, there’s really little argument or dispute as to “prestige,” by pretty much any definition of that term.
There are a few that surprised me, though, like NYU and USC. But that’s probably old school thinking, from back in the day when USC was an academic joke.
Although if the numbers were normalized for college size, my guess is the huge schools like USC and Mich might drop off most of those lists.
13 of the USNWR top 20 national universities also are among the top 20 for these elite prep school matriculations.
The following 7 USNWR T20 schools don’t show up among the top 20 matriculations:
Matriculations Rank … USNWR Rank … School
21… 8 … Duke
26 … 7 … MIT
27 … 15 … Vanderbilt
62 … 18 … Rice
63 … 18 … Notre Dame
120 … 10 … Caltech
The following 7 T20 schools by matriculation don’t show up among the USNWR T20 national universities:
Matriculations Rank … USNWR Rank … School
3… 32 … NYU
6 … 23 … USC (Southern Cal)
10 … 29 … Michigan-Ann Arbor
12 … 21 … Georgetown
17 … 27 … Tufts
19 … 21 … Emory
14 … * … Wesleyan (*a LAC)
US News also ranks several state universities much higher than the prep school preference ranks:
Matriculations Rank … USNWR Rank … School
49… 26 … UVa
63 … 34 … Wm & Mary
69 … 30 … UNC-CH
82 … 41 … Wisconsin
89 … 36 … Georgia Tech
However, the top 90 prep school matriculations include 37 LACs.
If we subtract them from the matriculations ranks, the state school ranks for matriculations v. US News would be closer.
Nooo… @circuitrider . I was just pointing out that yall are ranking quality and not prestige which you aren’t in any place to know. I don’t actually care about the prestige, I was just curious
@tk21769 I didn’t say that. I know good and well that UChicago is a better school than Vanderbilt. I said where I’m from don’t know what it is, not that it’s worse than vandy
Oddly enough, on this occasion, I agree with tk, pizzagirl. His interesting approach, looking at where graduates from elite prep schools matriculate, makes sense, in some strange way. But I am not sure how you can compare matriculation of New England prep school into Midwestern and West Coast universities to matriculation into colleges or universities in the Northeast. There is going to be a natural bias for Northeastern institutions. As such, the fact that schools like Cal, Chicago, Michigan, Northwestern, Stanford, WUST etc…are as well represented as top East Coast universities is a testament to their appeal on a national level. You will notice that outside of the Northeast, all the universities represented are elite. Furthermore, normalizing for size for West Coast and Northeast high school matriculants in the case of Michigan makes little, if any, sense. Michigan may enroll freshmen classes of 6,000, but only 300 of those come from CA and another 800 or so from the Northeast. In the case of Cal, more students from California will naturally matriculate, but there will be far fewer from the Northeast. So again, I do not think normalizing in the case of Cal, specifically in the case of students enrolled at elite East Coast prep schools, is necessary.
Here’a what I found (I only included the 25 most popular destination):
Exeter (2013-2015)
Columbia 36
Harvard 33
Yale 32
Georgetown 26
NYU 26
Chicago 25
Princeton 23
Cornell 22
Stanford 22
MIT 21
Brown 20
Michigan 20
Tufts 18
Carnegie Mellon 17
Penn 14
Wesleyan 14
Colby 13
USC 13
Williams 13
Cal 12
Wellesley 12
Dartmouth 11
Amherst 10
Bowdoin 10
Scripps 10
Swarthmore 10
http://www.exeter.edu/documents/college_matriculation.pdf
Andover (2011-2015)
Penn 43
Harvard 41
Yale 38
Chicago 34
Columbia 33
Georgetown 31
Boston College 28
Brown 27
Cornell 26
Stanford 26
NYU 23
Princeton 19
Tufts 19
Dartmouth 17
WUSTL 16
Northwestern 15
UMass-Amherst 15
Carnegie Mellon 14
Michigan 14
MIT 13
McGill 13
UNC-Chapel Hill 13
Bowdoin 12
Colgate 12
UCLA 12
Williams 12
Dalton (2010-2014)
Cornell 35
Yale 30
Penn 27
Columbia 25
Harvard 24
Brown 22
Northwestern 19
Wesleyan 19
Princeton 16
NYU 15
WUSTL 15
Bowdoin 14
Dartmouth 12
Kenyon 11
Colgate 10
Amherst 9
Chicago 9
Williams 9
Barnard 8
Duke 8
Michigan 8
Stanford 8
Hamilton 7
Tufts 7
http://www.dalton.org/program/high_school/college_counseling
Trinity (2011-2015)
Harvard 37
Penn 34
Cornell 29
Brown 28
Columbia 28
Chicago 18
Dartmouth 16
Emory 16
Colgate 15
Duke 14
NYU 12
Northwestern 12
Princeton 11
Johns Hopins 10
Stanford 10
Wesleyan 10
MIT 8
Amherst 7
Georgetown 7
Kenyon 7
Middlebury 7
Tulane 7
Boston College 6
Bowdoin 6
Lehigh 6
Michigan 6
UVa 6
Vanderbilt 6
WUSTL 6
http://www.trinityschoolnyc.org/Page/Our-Program/College-Counseling/Trinity-School-Matriculation
St Paul’s School (2012-2015: only the top 12 destinations are listed)
Georgetown 31
Brown 27
Columbia 21
Harvard 19
Dartmouth 18
Boston College 15
Michigan 14
Penn 14
Princeton 14
Stanford 13
Williams 13
http://www.sps.edu/Page/About-SPS/SPS-Facts
Hotchkiss (2012-2015
Yale 35
Georgetown 28
Middlebury 26
NYU 24
Trinity College 21
Johns Hopkins 19
Cornell 17
Princeton 16
Boston College 14
Dartmouth 14
Harvard 14
Tufts 14
Penn 13
Carnegie Mellon 12
Hamilton 11
Brown 10
Chicago 10
Columbia 10
George Washington 10
Richmond 10
Stanford 10
Wesleyan 10
Hobart & William Smith 9
USC 9
Vermont 9
Colgate 8
Duke 8
Boston University 7
Bowdoin 7
Gettysburg 7
Michigan 7
Northwestern 7
UConn7
UVa 7
Vanderbilt 7
http://www.hotchkiss.org/academics/college-advising/matriculation-list/index.aspx
Lawrenceville (2013-2015)
Princeton University 39
Georgetown University 30
New York University 29
Columbia University 20
Cornell University 19
University of Pennsylvania 19
Brown University 18
Yale University 18
Duke University 16
University of Virginia 16
Stanford University 15
Colgate University 14
Davidson College 14
Dartmouth College 13
Trinity College 13
Williams College 13
University of Chicago 12
Bucknell University 12
Johns Hopkins University 12
Boston College 11
University of Michigan 10
Washington University in St. Louis 10
Northwestern University 9
Carnegie Mellon University 9
Harvard University 9
http://www.lawrenceville.org/academics/college-counseling/matriculation/index.aspx
Harvard Westlake (2011-2015)
USC 134
Michigan 109
NYU 89
Stanford 62
Cornell 59
Penn 59
WUSTL 59
Columbia 58
Brown 44
Harvard 42
Chicago 40
Yale 37
Emory 32
Princeton 30
Wesleyan 30
Cal 27
Boston College 26
Vanderbilt 25
Johns Hopkins 24
UCLA 24
Boston University 22
Duke 22
Kenyon 21
Georgetown 18
http://www.hw.com/aboutHW/School-Profile/Matriculation
College Prep Oakland (2011-2015)
Swarthmore 19
Stanford 17
Carleton 16
Tufts 16
Penn 14
Harvard 13
Barnard 12
Cal 12
WUSTL 12
Wesleyan 12
Chicago 11
Columbia 11
Williams 11
Cornell 10
Georgetown 10
Lewis & Clark 10
Brown 9
Oberlin 9
NYU 8
UCLA 8
Macalester 7
Occidental 7
Amherst 6
UCSB 6
Colgate 5
Duke 5
Emory 5
Reed 5
Rice 5
Scripps 5
http://www.college-prep.org/Page/Academics/College-Counseling
University of San Francisco High School (2011-2015)
Harvard 16
Middlebury 15
NYU 15
Stanford 15
USC 15
WUSTL 13
Cal 12
Colgate 11
Tufts 11
Northwestern 10
Princeton 10
Yale 10
Brown 9
Occidental 9
Colby 8
Dartmouth 8
UCSB 8
Boston University 7
Cornell 7
Whitman 7
Bowdoin 6
Chicago 6
Claremont McKenna 6
Columbia 6
Connecticut College 6
Georgetown 6
Michigan 6
UC-Davis 6
Wesleyan 6
Duke 5
Kenyon 5
Reed 5
UCLA 5
Wellesley 5
http://www.sfuhs.org/page.cfm?p=3720
It is difficult to come to a concrete conclusion other than the following:
- The Ivy League rule, regardless of region
- BC, BU do very well
- In the Midwest, Chicago, Michigan, Northwestern and WUSTL are well represented
- In the South, Duke, Emory and Vanderbilt do ver well
- Georgetown, JHU and UVa are well represented among Mid Atlantic universities
- Cal is well represented among West coast schools
- LACs do very well