Us news 2011

Colleges and Universities A-Z University of California - San Diego
1

<p>Robert Morse reports that U.S. News is considering five changes to its college rankings methodology:</p>

<ol>
<li><p>We may add high school counselors' rankings of colleges as part of the academic reputation component, which is now 25% of the America's Best Colleges rankings. To do this, we would reduce the weight of the regular peer assessment survey for the National Universities and Liberal Arts Colleges categories</p></li>
<li><p>We are considering combining the scores from the current peer assessment survey rating done by college academics with the scores and high school counselors' ranking of colleges. That combination of scores could be called the "undergraduate academic reputation index.</p></li>
<li><p>We are considering adding the admit yield—the percentage of students that the school accepts that enroll at that school in the fall—back into the rankings. ...</p></li>
<li><p>We may slightly increase the weight of the "predicted graduation rate" that currently accounts for 5% of the National Universities and Liberal Arts Colleges rankings. ...</p></li>
<li><p>We are contemplating eliminating the Third Tier from all the National Universities, Liberal Arts Colleges, Master's Universities, and Baccalaureate Colleges rankings tables in print and online. We would extend the numerically ranking to the top 75% of all schools in each category, up from the top 50% now. There would still be the bottom 25 percent of each category listed alphabetically, and that group might be renamed to something like the 4th Quartile. We believe that the data is strong enough to numerically rank more schools, and the public is asking for more sequential rankings since it's less confusing than listing schools in tiers.</p></li>
</ol>

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<p>How do you think UCSD will do with the new changes to the US NEWS?</p>

<p>Do you think it will finally beat UCLA or perhaps tie? </p>

<p>Or are you worried that UCSD will drop in the ranks? (not likely in my opinion!)</p>

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<p>PS I LOVE UCSD! If I didn't get into Berkeley, I would have gone there.</p>

2

<p>I don’t know about the other ones, but number three might hurt public schools like UCSD. Many of my friends applied to UCSD even when they knew they would get into better schools because they got a fee waiver (allowing for four UC choices) as applying to UCSD would only entail an extra click of the mouse for them.</p>

3

<p>hrmm…I wonder what pros they would get out of asking HS counselors. I guess they could better measure how the students at their schools feel about certain universities?</p>

<p>They better know what they’re doing if they consider admit yield. That turns things more towards the direction of “popularity contest”</p>

4

<p>Those are the stupidest methods of ranking universities that I’ve seen. High school counselor’s opinions make a university’s programs better? Ridiculous. I don’t care where UCSD ends up on that list.</p>

5

<p>From one year to the next a given school could move in the rating because of the way the rating is done. The schools themselves don’t change as much as the rating system, so what is the value of any rating?</p>

<p>Does US News publish the raw components used in their rating? If they do, each person could download the list and weight the components in a manner that reflects what they think is relevant. I think that would be much more useful.</p>

6

<p>US News doesn’t do that, but ARWU([Academic</a> Ranking of World Universities (ARWU)](<a href=“http://www.arwu.org/]Academic”>http://www.arwu.org/)) does. US News just seems like it makes up the rankings in comparison xD</p>

7

<p>The fact that US News factors in alumni donations into a school’s ranking says enough about its ranking system.</p>

8

<p>I checked the ARWU, and it says that UCSD engineering is ranked higher than CalTech…looking at their methodology it looks sound but…wow how in the world??</p>