<p>Students at high end engineering schools oftentimes take more than 4 years to graduate. Another metric that hurts tech schools and schools with large engineering programs.</p>
<p>rjk: US News uses 6-year graduation rates, not 4-year graduation rates. Which is how Chicago got hurt even more than Caltech and MIT.</p>
<p>Stanford with its notorious grade inflation (average 3.56, second only to Brown) can not graduate students in four years is inexcusable.</p>
<p>'rjk: US News uses 6-year graduation rates, not 4-year graduation rates. Which is how Chicago got hurt even more than Caltech and MIT."</p>
<p>Why am I constantly reading about 4 year graduation rates here on CC?</p>
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Are you sure? On their website, they list the schools with 4-year graduation rate.</p>
<p>^ I think it might be a combination of the two…would have to pull up USNWR methodology.</p>
<p>^^So if that is the case, those schools without engineering departments, or large engineering departments, have an unfair advantage. Sounds like par for the course at USNWR.</p>
<p>[How</a> We Calculate the College Rankings - US News and World Report](<a href=“http://www.usnews.com/articles/education/best-colleges/2009/08/19/how-we-calculate-the-college-rankings.html?PageNr=3]How”>http://www.usnews.com/articles/education/best-colleges/2009/08/19/how-we-calculate-the-college-rankings.html?PageNr=3)</p>
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<p>It is only 6-year graduation rates which are factored in. So it’s not the a TYPE of school that gets affected by the rankings, such as engineering schools. It’s the DIFFICULTY of the school.</p>
<p>^^^So then why would they list schools with a 4 year graduation rate? USNWR baffles!</p>
<p>^ It’s a combo of 6-year grad rate (80%) and retention rate (20%)…this was for last year. Also, there is a 5% weighting on graduation rate performance, which is controversial since tougher schools are penalized.
[Methodology:</a> Undergraduate Ranking Criteria and Weights - US News and World Report](<a href=“http://www.usnews.com/articles/education/best-colleges/2009/08/19/methodology-undergraduate-ranking-criteria-and-weights.html]Methodology:”>http://www.usnews.com/articles/education/best-colleges/2009/08/19/methodology-undergraduate-ranking-criteria-and-weights.html)</p>
<p>USNWR is kind of a joke, so you should have learned to expect it by now. They don’t really know how to sell magazines like other companies, which is why they have to depend on the hype produced by their college rankings… which is how we got into this mess in the first place.</p>
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Stanford is located in the Asian population center of US, SF Bay area with about 35% Asian while New York probably have less than 10%. Stanford has 23% while Columbia has about 17% Asian. If you normalize these with the local population, Columbia or other comparable schools probably admits 2-3 times more Asian than Stanford.</p>
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<p>I gotcha. I forgot Columbia only gets NYC applications and Stanford only gets SFBA applications. Normalizing by local populations makes complete sense for nationally (and internationally) reaching universities.</p>
<p>^^Look at the percent that each school take locally. Stanford takes more than 40% from California. You can check the Columbia number.</p>
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<p>Columbia is 25% New York and Stanford is 43% California. New York is 6.27% of the US by population while California is 11.9% by population. What’s your point?</p>
<p>Also, your original statement, “In their zeal not to become another Berkeley with 40% Asian, Stanford artificially lowers their SAT and as a result, their graduation rate is lower”, implies that Asians have higher SAT scores and graduation rates (which is statistically probably true). However, Stanford has more Asians, so therefore by your logic, regardless of its “Asian acceptance rate”, it should have a higher SAT score and graduation rate due to these Asians, right?</p>
<p>There’s a disconnect somewhere in there.</p>
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Stanford’s overall SAT score is lower and the Asian they accepted also have lower scores. By lowering the SAT scores, the Asians lost their advantage in admission to Stanford and it can then use other factors to select a class to its satisfaction.
It is an established fact that Asian as a group generally score higher than other group on SAT. You can check the College Board statistics. You can also check the graduation rate by ethnic groups here:</p>
<p>[College</a> Navigator - Columbia University in the City of New York](<a href=“College Navigator - Search Results”>College Navigator - Columbia University in the City of New York)</p>
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A lot of them take co-term programs to get a BS and a MS in 5 years. Just worry about Dartmouth… Stanford is fine.</p>
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<p>Sure. It’s just not helping your argument. I don’t even think you have a cohesive argument anymore.</p>
<p>Thanks for the link. Columbia has a 5% better 4-year graduation rate (which I, again, attributed partially to Stanford having 5-year masters), but is about 1.5% worse in 6-year graduation rate and 3% worse in 8-year graduation rate.</p>
<p>Point?</p>
<p>^^ Here is what I posted in #23:
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<p>I don’t see anything controversial about the rankings others than from the top. Everything else seems in order. Its the lack of a shake up that I question whether these are the legitimate rankings.</p>