<p>--"aren't most of the colleges planning a strike?"</p>
<p>--"most colleges? no. just a significant amount of liberal arts colleges who, i think, are just upset at their rankings! they need to stop crying and be truthful with themselves (they all know that if they were all ranked in the top 10 of the LACs that they wouldn't be pulling this stunt!)"</p>
<p>Pomona is with that movement, and they ARE a top 10 LAC</p>
<p>Here we go!
Predictions for Top 20</p>
<p>1) Harvard
2) Princeton
3) Yale
3) MIT
5) Caltech
6) Stanford
6) UPenn
6) Duke
9) Columbia
9) Dartmouth
9) Cornell
12) Chicago
13) WUSTL
13) Brown
15) Northwestern
16) JHU
17) Rice
18) Emory
19) Notre Dame
19) Georgetown</p>
<p>Also I'll add overall score..</p>
<p>100: Harvard
99: Princeton
97: Yale, MIT
95: Caltech
94: Stanford, UPenn, Duke
90: Columbia, Dartmouth, Cornell
89: Chicago
88: WUSTL, Brown
86: Northwestern
84: JHU
82: Rice
81: Emory
79: Notre Dame, Georgetown</p>
<p>So, if this were to be right...</p>
<p>Changes in Overall Score</p>
<p>INCREASE
Harvard: +1
MIT: +3
Caltech: +1
UPenn: +1
Duke: +2
Columbia: +1
Dartmouth: +1
Cornell: +3
WUSTL: +1
Brown: +3
Rice: +1
Emory: +1
Notre Dame: +1
Georgetown: +1</p>
<p>NO CHANGE
Stanford
Chicago
Northwestern
JHU</p>
<p>DECREASE
Yale: -1
Princeton: -1</p>
<p>Columbia == Cornell>>?? Won't happen. Chicago is going to drop. Duke is going to be 7~</p>
<p>by the way this USNWR got leaked a long time ago...</p>
<p>"Brown: +3"</p>
<p>-Umm.... ok</p>
<p>truazn - why can't cornell = columbia?</p>
<p>TruAzn, what is the leaked ranking ?</p>
<p>Columbia has much higher stats all around than Cornell, so they can't be equal on US News. I think Duke is gonna be 6-7 , maybe tied with Penn .</p>
<p>And I don't think any school will rise/fall by more than 2. No school has changed that much.</p>
<p>So Coolatroopa,</p>
<p>any reasoning behind your prediction or is it just out of... whim?</p>
<p>
[quote]
Columbia has much higher stats all around than Cornell, so they can't be equal on US News. I think Duke is gonna be 6-7 , maybe tied with Penn .
[/quote]
</p>
<p>While I highly doubt that Cornell will tie with Columbia, I have to disagree with you on stats being the reason why the former ranks lower.</p>
<p>If rankings were purely according to stats, schools like Rice and Northwestern would be ranked with Columbia, not lower than Cornell:</p>
<p>Rice (17th)
CR 650 - 760
Math 680 - 780 </p>
<p>Northwestern (14th)
CR 650 - 740
Math 670 - 760 </p>
<p>Columbia (8th)
CR 660 - 760
Math 660 - 760</p>
<p>Whereas,</p>
<p>Cornell (12th)
CR 620 - 730
Math 660 - 760</p>
<p>As to why Rice and Northwestern rank lower, beats me. My two cents is that they both are at a disadvantage due to their location, but at any rate, it definitely isn't because of stats.</p>
<p>A lot of it was out of whim to be honest.. but as for Brown and Cornell going up.. Cornell has become much more selective over the past few years! </p>
<p>I think that you'll find that it is definitely possible for Cornell and Columbia to be tied in US News...</p>
<p>As for Brown's jump.. I dunno.. I just think that Brown should be higher, lol.</p>
<p>coolatroopa,
In looking at your rankings, are you going by a gut feel or is there any kind of method to your projected rankings? A few of them caught my eye (Cornell in particular). </p>
<p>Should USNWR keep its same weightings, then I think Cornell will have a very difficult time moving up. The school already has strong PA score of 4.6, worth 25% and already much higher than Wash U which you expect to fall behind Cornell from their current tie. The only area where Cornell has a low ranking and you might expect them to be higher is selectivity, but given the great strength of this year's class and the competitive process, all of the other top schools likely saw their selectivity increase as well. Personally, IMO Cornell is heading lower to a level more commensurate with its average student population (mid-teens or lower). </p>
<p>Schools with low PAs could perhaps see the biggest gains if the views of academics catch up with the realities on the ground at the schools that have most improved their student profiles over recent years. If you look at the data, these PAs are significantly at odds with the student competitiveness, eg, </p>
<p>3.2 PA Score-Lehigh
3.5 PA Score-Wake Forest
3.6 PA Score-Boston College
3.7 PA Score-Tufts
3.8 PA Score-William & Mary, NYU
3.9 PA Score-Notre Dame, USC
4.0 PA Score-Emory
4.1 PA Score-Rice, Vanderbilt, Georgetown</p>
<p>In every one of these examples, the PA score is main obstacle to higher ranks as their student profiles equal or exceed nearly all of their similarly ranked competitors. I doubt that ANY of these schools will suffer a decline in their PA and thus are statistically less likely to fall in the rankings. In addition, many of these schools are leaders in the areas of Faculty Resources and Financial Resources while having very similar numbers for Graduation & Retention to much higher ranked colleges.</p>
<p>Lejeune</p>
<p>Stats don't just mean SATs, by "Stats" I also meant things such as faculty:student ratio, graduation rates, alumni giving, and other indicators that don't change a great deal from year to year.</p>
<p>quote from lejeune: </p>
<p>"confidentialcoll,</p>
<p>Any reason why Duke and Chicago dropped in your predictions?</p>
<p>And this is a bit off topic, but why is it that Brown continually ranks lowest among the Ivies?"</p>
<p>lejeune: </p>
<p>I think the lax scandal should hurt Duke's peer score, I hear the durham (duke's college town) isn't doing too well, and applicants this year fell, the trend is one of decline</p>
<p>chicago, while it might be improving, jumped from 14 to 9 last year, that seems to be inflated (even if they did reassess their numbers), I think their stable position in the rankings is lower for now, perhaps they'll have a longterm upward trend, but the jump seems too much like a short term fluctuation, [usnews relys on rupture in the rankings to sell, if the rankings were stagnant they wouldnt sell as much]</p>
<p>My guess is that brown cares little about the rankings, and so manipulates it's admissions less than other colleges to get ranked higher, at some levels there are trade offs between strenght of incoming class and doing well on usnews factors, for example college X might do well in the rankings by taking nerdy students with high sats and grades and little else, they might not get into a college of similar or better standing and choose to go to college X improving its yeild (and it's other stats), brown in my mind wouldn't do this much, tending to put less of a weightage on test scores. now I suppose all colleges would like to keep rankings high, but at what cost varies from place to place.</p>
<p>"chicago, while it might be improving, jumped from 14 to 9 last year, that seems to be inflated"</p>
<p>-I don't know... I hear they got some more library books this year; they're on their way to number 1....</p>
<p>vouch and signed/</p>
<p>"I think the lax scandal should hurt Duke's peer score, I hear the durham (duke's college town) isn't doing too well, and applicants this year fell, the trend is one of decline"</p>
<p>confidentialcoll,</p>
<ul>
<li>The Peer Assessment score is regarding academics, not lacrosse players, so I don't see why PA score should be hurt. If its PA score does decrease, then it speaks more poorly regarding the PA score than anything else.</li>
<li>Durham is the same as it always has been.</li>
<li>Duke's class of 2010 had a higher average SAT score and class rank than previous year (so selectivity category will increase). The number of applicants decreased by 1%, but Class of 2010 acceptance rate stayed almost exactly the same as previous year.</li>
<li>Alumni giving increased, increasing this category.</li>
<li>Number of faculty increased (increasing the faculty:student ratio).</li>
</ul>
<p>So I think Duke, instead of falling, will either stay the same or go up.</p>
<p>One could argue that, because the faculty at Duke were such judgmental, rush-to-convict idiots during the lacrosse mess, they deserve a lower rating. But I doubt that other academics will come to that conclusion. :)</p>
<p>I'm with thethoughtprocess on this one as Duke will and should go even higher in the ranks. Last year, 3 points separated #8 Duke from #9 (Dartmouth, U Chicago, Columbia) while only 1 point separated Duke from #7 and only 2 points separated them from a tie for #4. The acceptance is a tiny portion of the USNWR methodology (1.5%) and the results there weren't anywhere near as bad as some were speculating a year ago. </p>
<p>IMO Duke belongs in a tie with Stanford at #4 with Stanford and MIT and just behind HYP.</p>
<p>Hopkins sure as hell better recover from a 3 mark drop. That's all I can say. Inexcusable :-P. Maybe the lax win will help.</p>
<p>The main reason that the schools with the lower PA scores are so competitive, is because competition for spots at top schools is so keen. All of the qualified students, who, perhaps ten years ago, might easily have gotten into the schools with the highest PA scores, are now filtering down to the schools with somewhat lower PA scores. The significant increase in applications is directly related to the baby boom explosion of the 50s and 60s.
Also, the number of kids going to college, aside from the baby boomer factor, has jumped exponentially over the past several decades, and keeps on growing. So what do you expect? And again, PA has nothing to do with the quality of the students...It has to do with the assessment of the education at the schools. These two distinct issues that USNWR is looking at should not be confused.</p>
<p>That theory doesn't work, since actually, many schools with high PA scores are somewhat easier to get into than schools with lower PA scores.</p>
<p>Look at Chicago, JHU, and Berkeley (4.6-4.7 scores) - all have higher acceptance rates and lower average SAT's for admits than Dartmouth, Brown, Penn, and Duke (which have 4.4-4.5 PA scores). Just reaffirming that PA score means less and less as time passes.</p>
<p>Also, the schools cited by Hawkette do not have "low" PA scores; just lower by comparison. Schools with a lower PA score can, and certainly do have very high achieving students. Let's try not to constantly confuse the issue by mixing apples and oranges.</p>