<p>Lol, so much Duke hate in this thread.</p>
<p>It has been ranked within the top 8 for the last 20 years, with an average rank of 5.75. It is not just gonna magically drop to 10+ or 20's.</p>
<p>This is same for every school that has been low/high.</p>
<p>^^ You underestimate U.S. News' magical...ness.</p>
<p>Can we have enough people patting themselves on the back for being against the US News rankings? We all know that they're not very good. </p>
<p>Duke and Penn being so high makes me scratch my head every year.</p>
<p>^^ USNWR explains the basics of their methodology, even if you don't agree with it. The whole 2A/2B, <slight gap=""> ranking system doesn't really make sense, since USNWR really doesn't make that great of a distinction between 'groups' of schools.</slight></p>
<p>To each their own. This is a banal, repetitive debate on CC, and one that will surely never be resolved... I would just hope that everyone can find a school that works for them, regardless of whether that school is a 2A school vs. a level 4 school...or USNWR ranked #4 vs #10....</p>
<ol>
<li>Princeton</li>
<li>Harvard</li>
<li>Yale</li>
<li>Stanford</li>
<li>MIT</li>
<li>Penn</li>
<li>Caltech</li>
<li>Chicago</li>
<li>Columbia</li>
<li>Duke </li>
<li>Dartmouth</li>
<li>Cornell University</li>
<li>Washington University in St. Louis</li>
<li>Northwestern</li>
<li>Brown</li>
<li>Johns Hopkins</li>
</ol>
<p>let the ranting/raving begin</p>
<p>o btw, I feel that WashU gets overly-bashed here. I mean, yes, they probably do things to purposefully increase their rankings -- but cut it some slack, it's still a really good university. I've seen people here who were like "Don't Disgrace XXXXXXX University my mentioning WUSTL as its peer"</p>
<p>my $.02</p>
<p>you guys keep putting Berkeley too high.. its a good school, better than most of them, but public schools get screwed by the USNWR rankings</p>
<p>To lend some perspective on the rankings:</p>
<p>Some colleges market hard to increase the numbers of applications they receive to increase their rank and 'selectivity' ratings. From tokenadult in another thread
[quote]
Originally Posted by Business Week
The first phase begins in the spring, when Harvard mails letters to a staggering 70,000-or-so high school juniors
[/quote]
70,000 flattering recruiting letters; if 1 in 3 respond, thats 23,000 applications. With such marketing, more students are motivated to apply, thinking they are somehow being recruited. While flattering at first glance, the letters are part of a marketing plan to increase H's application numbers. More applications means more rejections, which increases the 'selectivity' percentage, increases the ranking, and makes people think H is the 'most' selective college. A tricky business . . .</p>
<p>Online</a> Extra: How Harvard Gets its Best and Brightest</p>
<p>From Sarah Wald of The Boston Globe
[quote]
We don't make the most important decisions in our lives -- whom we marry, where we live, what job we take -- based on an arbitrary rank from a newsmagazine. Let's hope we'll stop doing it for colleges.
[/quote]
Dismissing</a> school rankings - The Boston Globe</p>
<p>
[quote]
UCB down to unranked
[/quote]
huh ?</p>
<p>
[quote]
More applications means more rejections, which increases the 'selectivity' percentage, increases the ranking,
[/quote]
</p>
<p>Acceptance rate accounts for only 1.5% of the entire ranking. The selectivity as a whole accounts for 15% of the ranking. These school marketings have little to no bearing in influencing a school's rank, either to the left or right.</p>
<p>top 15, no methodology so don't ask:
estimated overall score in brackets:</p>
<p>1) Harvard, Princeton (100)
3) Yale (98)
4) Stanford (96)
5) Cal-tech (95)
6) MIT (94)
7) Penn (93)
8) Columbia, Duke (91)
10) Dartmouth,Chicago (90)
12) Cornell (88)
13) Wash U, Northwestern (87)
15) Brown, Johns Hopkins (85)</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>Not so. First, except perhaps at the very top, a factor that accounts for even 1.5% if the total ranking is certainly enough to move many schools up or down one or more places in their overall US News ranking, if they can significantly affect that factor. One of the easiest factors to influence is the number of applications (and therefore the acceptance rate), and that can be done by marketing, application fee waivers, etc---widely employed tricks of the trade. My prediction is that Pitzer College will jump several places in the LAC rankings this year, for example, because they've dramatically increased the size of their applicant pool and cut their acceptance rate by about 1/3, a very significant change as their overall rating is very, very close to a whole lot of schools immediately ahead and immediately behind them in US News. </p>
<p>A larger applicant pool usually means you also have more opportunities to edge up your SAT/ACT and GPA/class rank medians, at least marginally---so now you're into factors that account for a full 15% of your overall US News rating, a very significant part of the whole.</p>
<p>Moreover, schools that are obsessed with their US News ranking (i.e., most of them) don't focus on a single factor. They're simultaneously trying to affect EVERY factor that could move them up in the rankings---or at a minimum, keep them from slipping behind their more aggressive peers. So while they're furiously trying to increase their applicant pool to increase selectivity, they're also busy raising faculty salaries, for example---since faculty salaries weigh very heavily in the "faculty resources" category (faculty salary = 35% of faculty resources, and faculty resources = 20% of total rating). And they're setting enrollment caps of 19 a large number of courses that once enrolled 20 to 25 students, since the factor "class size 1-19 students" accounts for a very substantial 30% of the "faculty resources" category. </p>
<p>Bottom line, many of the factors that make up the US News rankings are relatively easy to manipulate, and schools are increasingly aggressive in doing so. To me it speaks of upside-down priorities, but it's a reality of the modern postsecondary educational enterprise.</p>
<p>How it should be (top 10)</p>
<p>1) Harvard, Yale
3) Princeton
4) Stanford, MIT
6) Caltech
7) Columbia
8) UPenn, Duke
10) Chicago, Dartmouth</p>
<p>Boring! These rankings all look the same to me. Who cares if Stanford is 2,5, or 6...the top 10 is always the same usual suspects. I only look at the rankings to see the movement among the mid tier 1 schools.</p>
<p>no, kevin spacey is keyser soze</p>
<p>Berkeley isn't a top 20 because relative to the top schools its undergraduate students have crappy SAT scores. Stanford, USC and UCLA all have higher SAT score averages than Berkeley, in that order, and so it's not even top 3 in it's own state! How then can it expect to be top 20 in the country? The ONLY thing saving Berkeley in the US news rankings is the absurd about of weighting given to the reputation score (i.e. The make sure P/H/S/Y come out on top score). On any objective measure (Endowment per student, Student/Faculty Ratio, GPA, SAT, etc.) it's not even top 30! And it says something about student satisfaction when the alumni give rate isn't even top 100. As far as I am concerned, any school that relies that heavily on its reputation and not on it's objective and quantifiable merits is OVERRATED. </p>
<p>Take away peer perception score and just look at hard data and no matter how you weigh the information Berkeley falls flat on its face.</p>
<p>^^^</p>
<p>Good post</p>
<p>In b4 Berkeley trolls' graduate argument, this is a undergrad college ranking,</p>
<p>
[quote]
relative to the top schools its undergraduate students have crappy SAT scores. Stanford, USC and UCLA all have higher SAT score averages than Berkeley
[/quote]
</p>
<p>Er, what's your source? These are Berkeley's newest ranges:</p>
<p>CR: 620-730
M: 650-770
W: 620-730</p>
<p>For a median of 2060. This is above UCLA's and USC's and about 100 points behind Stanford. It's not too far behind Cornell. Berkeley also does not superscore the SAT.</p>
<p>And what does selectivity have to do with being a top 20 school for undergrad education? Not even US News thinks it's that important, giving it only 1.5% of the total ranking.</p>
<p>
[quote]
and so it's not even top 3 in it's own state!
[/quote]
</p>
<p>Berkeley, before and even today, remains the most selective public school in the US. (The service academies are another issue.)</p>
<p>
[quote]
The ONLY thing saving Berkeley in the US news rankings is the absurd about of weighting given to the reputation score
[/quote]
</p>
<p>Of course, it has nothing to do with its ~90% graduation rate (U Chicago 90%, Caltech: 89%, WUStL: 91%, Emory: 87%, Vanderbilt: 89%), its 97% retention rate (basically the same as the top-15 schools that vary between 96% and 98%), its class sizes being 62% under 20 and 14% over 50 (MIT: 61% / 14%, Cornell: 60% / 16%, JHU: 66% / 11%, Harvard: 69% / 11%), and its overall high selectivity (based on acceptance rate, % in the top%, and median SAT scores).</p>
<p>
[quote]
no matter how you weigh the information Berkeley falls flat on its face.
[/quote]
</p>
<p>And yet, it still manages to rank highly... odd how that works.</p>
<p>Believe it or not, some people find many of US News' other metrics ("faculty resources," for example, where Stanford somehow isn't in the top 10 and Yale barely makes top 10) are even more absurd than peer assessment. ;)</p>
<p>when is this year's issue coming out anyway?</p>
<p>Add 5 to rankings of both UPenn and WashU. They manipulate their admissions policies and stats to maximize their USNWR rankings. Subtract 2 for MIT (and other science focussed schools). MIT gets penalized by USNWR criteria because it ignores low SAT CR scores for internationals(10% of undergrads) and largely ignores them for others. Also, large lectures are common in frosh math/science GIRs (designed to equalize students' foundations in core courses) and MIT gets penalized for these under USNWR criteria despite having small recitation sections attached to these lectures, also taught by phds.. Subtract 1-2 from Northwestern and other schools with large theater / performing arts schools, since stats are less relevant to these programs. You do the math.</p>