I am sure every guidance counselor in America is wondering how West Point and Annapolis are ranked #1 and #2 in the GC rankings when precious few even have a student that is either interested in or suited for those schools. Not that they aren’t great but my point is obvious.
The LAC rankings are more polluted by money than the NU rankings. The rank in terms of Undergraduate Teaching Quality is much more logical. There is a point where endowment is of little relevance to an LAC.
Northeastern has "gamed’ the rankings by only admitting students with a high probability of graduating, raised its freshman retention rate to 97%, 6 year graduation rate to 84%, reduced class size, built new STEM buildings, increased research funding to $127 million and developed a somewhat defined, leafy campus in the middle of the city. They also have an alternative entry route for new freshmen similar to BU, USC and Cornell.
There are ways schools “game” the system that in no way improve the school.
For example, admitting students over the summer or in the spring (rather than the fall) means they don’t count for reporting. Test scores don’t count. Freshman retention doesn’t count. Graduation rates don’t count.
How does this make any sense? A school can purposefully lower their admissions standards and effectively hide these students from calculations? Are they not part of the student body? Are they not in the classroom? Are they not striving to earn degrees?
What’s next making another low test scoring group test optional? Also being done when a school doesn’t accept test scores from International students.
What relevance is an apples to oranges comparison of schools when one admits students for the fall and requires scores from all students. And the other shifts say 10% out of the fall (and off the board) and has say 15% international? That’s a full 25% of the students that whose scores don’t count. What relevance then is a 25/75 (middle 50%) view of that school?
How easy would it be to make all students count so there was no way to game the system that way?
All for giving kids a chance. But they absolutely should count.
@MurphyBrown BU and Cornell offer guaranteed sophomore transfer to some freshmen applicants who didn’t quite make the cut for freshman admission. BU offers January admission to its CGS London program, USC offers January admission to applicants for September. At Northeastern it is the NUIn program. In all these cases the stats for these students do not factor into the rankings.
@Much2learn@marvin100 There is a ranking out there that does what you guys are discussing. Parchment preference ranking. It actually compares what university students pick when they have multiple choices, but it too has odd results that don’t align with what folks would expect, maybe because parchment is not used by all high school students. Harvard fell badly in the latest ranking. But ranking this way, like almost every system that tries to rank universities has its own issues. At best parchment is a trailing indicator. So after a decade of rising in other rankings, a school night start doing better in parchment because students perception of that school starts to change
@ClarinetDad16 test optional schools get to suppress all the bad test scores (because students don’t submit them). Why no complaints about that? I wonder how dome of these sports dominated LACs would fare in the rankings if they were test score mandatory.
@Much2learn I do actually think Northeastern is a better schoo than all the schools you compared it to. Very good education, the benefits of co/op learning, and excellent location. Tons of job prospects coming out of school.
I never went there, and don’t have a kid that attends. I just think it is a very good value for what you get…, a graduate with an actual job.
@TomSrOfBoston. Yes and what is wrong with that since 23% is already subjective. It is pretty obvious with LACs endowment is too heavily considered in the overall ranking. There is a point where it is not relevant.
@Sapper119 Because many of these college administrators may be thinking of the way a school was 15 or 20 years ago. And we all have our prejudices of course. Subjective criteria are an avenue for the top 1% of schools to stay in the 1%.
@TomSrOfBoston, when you mention the admissions focus of NEU which led to their rankings rise, did that also mean a sharp decline in diverse socio-economic outreach? Do you know if the PELL grant recipients at NEU dropped dramatically as well?
That’s certainly one way to increase your grad rate and freshman retention rate – admit more posh kids vs. the poorer ones. While it may benefit those who are admitted (per @RightCoaster 's post 254) does it pull back from serving the “greater good”? Has anyone questioned this?
@T26E4 15.5% of Northeastern undergrads are Pell eligible which classifies them as an “Engine of Inequality” according to this website: https://edtrust.org/engines-of-inequality/
I don’t know what the historical figures would be but it has likely decreased.
It is nice that many elite schools can enroll more Pell students thanks to their huge endowments and that state colleges can do so due to government appropriations. But for schools like Northeastern and BU with small endowments it is a challenge. Someone has to pay the bills! Both NU and BU have special entry and financial aid programs for a limited number of disadvantaged students, primarily residents of Boston.
So some colleges are between a rock and a hard place: either be a Dropout Factory or an Engine of inequality. I am glad that Northeastern and BU have become the latter.
Wouldn’t it be more valuable to measure outcomes than tally inputs?
i think US News is looking at it wrong.
College is an investment and rather than peer review or incoming test scores it should be about getting a great education at an affordable cost where alumni are successful.