<p>"haha or you could just say it jumped 5 spots, not almost 6."</p>
<p>or you could go cry to your mom for your cold sobering reality check, which has just been made apparent by your depicting an insignificant discrepancy (if you can call it that) in my writing, which obviously bothered you to an extent.</p>
<p>no one ever talked about 10 years. however, you must obviously be so insecure in your argument that you find it necessary to stretch my wording in order to cover some ground. and i believe it is statistically possible for usc to climb at its current rate (or relatively close) within the "vicinity of the next 5 years or so" as i previously mentioned, verbatim may i add.
rankings are based on a point system accumulated through various factors, such as peer assessment and average sat scores. it is possible to increase by any given fold at any given year based on the point system.</p>
<p>wow such hostility. you are funny. just make a better argument next time or atleast a realistic one. i have no problem with your writing, just you and the other posters arguments. if anyone is a terrible typer who makes plenty of typing errors it is me. i believe you stated that other poster meant "if the current statistical rate of change for cal's, ucla's, and usc's rankings are held constant, usc will pass ucla and cal soon". and i clearly explained why USC could not continue to rise statistically at the same pace. no need for such hostility. i believe you are the one who needs a reality check if you think USC is going to or has a good chance of surpassing UC Berkeley in the very near future. i just found it interesting how clearly it went up 5 spots you put that it almost went up 6. just found it funny and shows your bias. no need to get worked up about it. just be a bit more realistic next time you are argueing about something.</p>
<p>"and i believe it is statistically possible for usc to climb at its current rate (or relatively close) within the "vicinity of the next 5 years or so""</p>
<p>Enough said. Clearly that is statistically unrealistic if you evaluate how low USC's stats were and how high they are now. it just simply is not possible for it to increase that much in the next five years again. it would be the top school in the country. i dont undertand how you dont understand this.</p>
<p>"If you evaluate how much USC has improved over the past 10-15 years, from a school that had SAT averages in the 1070 (old SAT) range, to a school with an average of well over 2000 (new SAT), you would realize if it continued to improve at the same rate over the next ten years, it would likely surpass Harvard statistically."</p>
<ul>
<li><p>SAT scores are one of many factors in the rankings (remember Harvard has a gigantic endowment, ~9% acceptance rate, etc.)</p></li>
<li><p>Harvard is not UCLA/Berkeley. Reaching Berkeley and reaching Harvard (at the undergraduate level) are completely different.</p></li>
</ul>
<p>"3.9 for USC is way way below a 4.7 for UC Berkeley"</p>
<ul>
<li>Exactly. Because USC's peer assessment value is below Berkeley's and still only 6 spots behind, USC clearly is showing strengths in other ways as well. Not to mention that at 4.7 Berkeley won't be going much higher but USC is continuing to improve.</li>
</ul>
<p>ucchris: i believe the reason he stated that it increased "almost 6" spots is because that is how many spots USC would have to increase in order to match Berkeley, assuming Berkeley stays at 21.</p>
<p>"and i believe it is statistically possible for usc to climb at its current rate (or relatively close) within the "vicinity of the next 5 years or so""</p>
<p>Enough said. Clearly that is statistically unrealistic if you evaluate how low USC's stats were and how high they are now. it just simply is not possible for it to increase that much in the next five years again. it would be the top school statistically in the country. i dont undertand how you dont comprehend this.</p>
<p>"- SAT scores are one of many factors in the rankings (remember Harvard has a gigantic endowment, ~9% acceptance rate, etc."</p>
<p>Ok we could go over how USC had a GPA average of just above a 3.0 and now has a GPA average of close to 4.0. Again, no way to improve at the same rate as before. So both GPA cannot improve even close to the same rate as it has, neither can SAT. These are the two largest factors in admissions criteria. So the only area it could greatly improve for rankings is it's peer assessment score, which does not change nearly as quickly as GPA and SAT averages can. it is a long process to change national faculty bodies perception of a university. so that may change slightly over the near future, but drastically is not likely or even realistic. Also, if you feel USC's accetance rate can fall at the same rate as it has, from well over 50% to under 25% in the near future, you are nuts. That would meen in the next few years to maintain that rate, USC's acceptance rate would have to fall from 25% to under 12%. That is ridiculous. Hopefully you understand statistically how ridiculous your argument is.</p>
<p>no hostility intended. sorry if it came out that way.</p>
<p>what i mean to say, however, is the usnwr rankings are based on a point system - however let me clarify:
assume Princeton is ranked number one with an assessment score of 100 in the year 2007. this score is obviously made up for the sake of argument (i dont know if the actual points are released). princeton is already number one so according to ucchris's argument there is no more room for statistical improvement for poor old princeton. however if, say alumni donations go up next year for princeton EVERYTHING else remaining constant including everything else of other schools remaining constant or relative, then princeton's points say go up to 120 and assume it still remains number one. statistically it has indeed improved (by 20%), although the ranking remains unchanged. and that is what i mean by the possibility of continual statistical improvement, regardless of current ranking.</p>
<p>get it now?
and i want you to know, i dont care which school passes which. rankings to me are a hole lot of bs. im just stating the facts and possibilities.</p>
<p>who says USC would be the top school in the country if it continued to increase at this rate for 5 more years? 26 spots in 5 years? is the endowment also going to increase by 3x? 4x? 5x? will its acceptance rate go from 25% to 9%? Will it's peer assessment value also shoot up to 4.9?</p>
<p>"it just simply is not possible for it to increase that much in the next five years again. it would be the top school statistically in the country."</p>
<p>ucchris stated that USC would become the best school in the country if it continued to grow at its current rate.</p>
<p>also, i do not believe i argued that USC will continue to grow at its current rate for the next 5 years. i was simply refuting an argument that if it did, it would become the highest ranked school in the country.</p>
<p>no one said it would be the top school in the country, but you stated that ""i believe it is statistically possible for usc to climb at its current rate (or relatively close) within the "vicinity of the next 5 years or so"". And i stated that a rate of change of that nature would make it statistically the top school in country in terms of SAT and GPA. and of course that is not going to happen. im not sure what else their is to argue about with you guys. You were the ones stating that is was realistic for it to continue to climb at its current rate and then pass UC Berkeley, and statistically clearly that is not realistic for it to continue to increase statistically at its current rate from the recent past. my point has been made. im done argueing this with you guys. if you believe that usc can continue to rise at the same pace in the near future as it has in the recent past statistically, you are crazy. it is not possible. but believe what you want. the only way, other obviously that using basic stats, to prove to you you are incorrect will be to look at the rankings in the near future.</p>
<p>other schools' points can drop requiring less improvement for USC. as was stated earlier, UC budgets are not exactly strong right now.</p>
<p>also, i never said it was realistic for USC to climb at its current rate for the next 5 years. it would be wise to make sure you remember who said what.</p>
<p>sorry, i am mixing both of you guys up. vonska argued that. i agree that is it more realistic for usc to pass uc berkeley than it is for usc increase statistically at its current rate over the past 10 or 15 years. however this is only because it is litterely statistically impossible for usc to maintain its growth from the past 10-15 years, and with the rankings changes can be made to the formula's weighting system and USC could increase slightly over the next few years and UC Berkeley could drop. I just feel this is not likely, especially not enough for USC to pass up UC Berkeley. Im tired. goodnight guys.</p>
<p>i can't judge likeliness with my limited knowledge, but i wouldn't be surprised. i guess time will tell. USC, Berkeley, UCLA, UCSD...they're all good. i just like to bring counterarguments when people offer such strong opinions about a ranking system. later</p>
<p>I'm not sure if these scores are for Pen's Class of 2011 or 2010 though. Might be 2011 and in that case not matter for the rankings coming out this august.
Regardless, I wouldn't expect Penn to drop in the ranking even if the median SAT range did fall by 10 or 20 points. The acceptance rate has dropped significantly (in both '06 and '07), and the endowment has grown signficantly in that same period of time (at a much higher rate than that at most of its peers).</p>
<p>Yeah, I said that the only reason Penn might drop or become tied with Duke is that Duke's SAT scores increased and Penn's decreased (both slight changes).</p>
<p>Acceptance Rate is not factored into the US News rankings either, though I know its rate decreased from 23% to 19% in just a few years.</p>
<p>USC is in that group of schools that gets hurt by the USNWR methodology and the 25% weight accorded to the Peer Assessment. No one can say with any certainty just what PA measures, but it seems to:</p>
<p>1 favor publics and their large research efforts over other universities that don’t have this research focus
2 favor schools with large graduate programs over schools without that
3 favor schools with high historical prestige, but whose statistical advantage TODAY across a variety of measurements has been narrowed, if not completely eliminated
4 favor secular schools over institutions with a religious history (BYU is at 3.1
5 disfavor schools in the South (and in the West to a lesser extent vs the Northeast and other regions
6 favor strong engineering, science schools
7 favor schools close to NYC and other major urban/media centers (LA/Chicago)</p>
<p>As a result, some schools that are very, very close in student quality and many other measures have some pretty lopsided differences in PA scoring, eg, </p>
<p>3.9 USC vs.
4.3 UCLA</p>
<p>3.8 W&M vs.
4.3 U Virginia</p>
<p>3.5 Wake Forest vs.
4.2 U North Carolina
4.5 Duke</p>
<p>3.9 Notre Dame or 3.6 Boston College vs.
4.5 U Michigan</p>
<p>3.7 Tufts vs.
4.4 Brown
4.5 U Penn
4.6 Cornell, Columbia</p>
<p>Without a big change in PA scores, USC ascent up the rankings will stall and the school will probably not break into the Top 25, much less the Top 20 or Top 10.</p>