“Personally, I think that incoming class test scores (ideally combined with GPA if available) are a better measure of “selectivity” or “excellence” or whatever you want to call it than admit rates.”
I agree. Admit rate is just a function of how popular something is among high school students. As if high school students set any kind of curve for knowledge or taste. It’s a good thing, then, admit rate is less than 1.5% of the USNWR ranking.
Anyway, I don’t see what’s so hard about looking at the USN or similar rankings as shades of gray, rather than blunt, discrete, 1>2>3>4>5 and so forth.
The major weightage categories are:
Undergraduate Academic Reputation (22.5%) – 2/3rds of this is reputation by survey of academicians; 1/3rd is survey of high school counselors.
Student Selectivity (12.5%) – acceptance rate is only 10% of this category. A major portion (65%) is standardized test scores, which many public universities de-emphasize in favor of GPAs, because SAT scores have been correlated to economic levels. This one is a negative for publics.
Faculty Resources (20%) – 35% of this is Faculty Compensation (adjusted for geographic variations) – this again favors privates over publics. Privates most likely can afford to pay their faculty better (does that mean better undgraduate teaching? We don’t know). Class size is another item that falls under this category.
Graduation and Retention Rates (22.5%) – this goes against publics which try to cater for a larger/poorer section of society. A more affluent population is likely to also graduate. Helps privates which have grade inflation, allowing a larger set to graduate even if they don’t necessarily do that well.
Financial Resources and Alumni Giving (15%) – directly help privates over publics in the rankings.Can easily be manipulated by a motivated college.
Graduation Rate Performance (7.5%) – an indicator of what the college is doing to help people graduate
Why these percentages for these categories? What if we tweak them one way or the other? Would that be less reasonable?
Seems to me that the percentages and criteria are designed for privates to come out on top!
To an extent, numerical rankings really exaggerate differences when in reality, #6 and #17 can easily switch places.
For example, academics rank Cal #6 and USN’s overall ranking has Cal #20 (Parchment in 2015 has Cal #14 among RUs and Forbes 2015 has Cal #20 among RUs, BTW). People may think “wow, the difference between #6 & #20 is HUGE”, but I have 1-17 as all Ivy/equivalents and qualitatively, the undergraduate experience at Ivy Dartmouth will be more different from the undergraduate experience at Ivy Cornell or Ivy-equivalent Caltech than the difference will be between Ivy Cornell and non-Ivy (granted, near-Ivy) UMich.
BTW, my tiers based off of alumni achivements, if you really want to break down in to fine detail:
1-5: HYPSM
6-12 (in alphabetical order): Brown, Chicago, Columbia, Cornell, Dartmouth, Northwestern, Penn
13-15: Cal, Caltech, Duke
16-17: Georgetown, Rice
18: JHU
19-21: Michigan, ND, Tufts
22-23: CMU, UVa
“Good universities/colleges” being the 10-20 RU’s and tons of LACs in the half-tier below #23.
Where I consider 1-17 Ivies/equivalents and 18-23 Near-Ivies.
And I consider 1-5, 6-17, 18-23, and 24+ (to maybe 40) to be only half-tiers that almost don’t differ. So while you can argue that HYPSM is a tier above ND & UMich while those two are a clear tier above DePaul & MSU, ND & UMich are close enough to both Cal/Georgetown/Cornell/Columbia and WashU/UCLA/RPI/USC that it should come down to fit.
And you should take in to account special programs/majors as well. So while I’d put NYU overall in the “good uni” category (while UIUC may barely make that level), in terms of opportunities, NYU Stern/Tisch/Courant and UIUC CS/Engineering are at least at the “near-Ivy” level if not the “Ivy-equivalent” level.
Rankings are indeed “designed” with an agenda. In the case of USNWR, designed by a buffoon with no bona fides at all suitable for evaluating educational institutions. Originally only the reputation surveys were used, but publics scored too high and the formula had to be revised and tweaked to generate the “right” answer. Oddly enough, the “right” answer is to elevate wealthy institutions that serve a super-elite population. Is that how we should define the “best” colleges? The rich ones that spend $25M/year on advertising and educate the most easily taught students?
You could probably lock Princeton’s freshman class in the library for four years and they would come out with a impressive wealth of knowledge and experience.
But what would happen if we took North Texas’ freshman class and swapped them for Princeton’s? Could “the best college in the country” transform them into something special? Since students of that ilk never attend and since we don’t measure outcomes well anyway, we don’t know.
God, the defensiveness! Michigan sure wins or at least ties with Berkeley in the category of “whose alums get most upset if the college doesn’t get its propers.” If you’re satisfied with your Michigan education, why is it so important to your ego?
"God, the defensiveness! Michigan sure wins or at least ties with Berkeley in the category of “whose alums get most upset if the college doesn’t get its propers.”
Because of certain posters who always like to infer that Michigan is not as good as its real peers. It isn’t defensiveness, it’s simply getting the facts out. You don’t see me negatively commenting on posters such as PurpleTitan. He gets it. I wish other would get with it!
Where is @UCBChemEGrad? He is the biggest UCB supporter.
All these threads are like pissing contest, sorry for the reference, but I read year after year. I’ve learned to ignore the bashing. USC often receives the most bashing. I will correct the misinformation. Not being defensive.
@Pizzagirl Why do you always get mad whenever someone try to defend UC Berkeley? This has happened in other threads too. It seems like you have something against UCB.
It’s the patheticness of the “needing to defend,” as if the world will crumble if some stranger on a message board doesn’t genuflect at the mere mention of Michigan or Berkeley. It’s childish. If you’re satisfied with your education, and you know it’s high quality, you don’t need to worry about what others think. Michigan and Berkeley quality speak for themselves; the kinds of people who slavishly follow USN ratings aren’t people worth impressing anyway.
Do you think you are the only poster interested in “getting the facts out”?
Once again, let’s repeat the question you asked.
“What other rankings besides USNWR, have USC over Michigan? Or at least a dozen or so other schools over Michigan?”
Of those two questions, the one that matters more to you must be the second one. You’re not just arguing that Michigan and USC should trade a few places in the US News ranking, are you? You sincerely believe that fewer than a dozen or so other schools are “better” as undergraduate institutions than Michigan, right? I’ve responded to your question by citing 3 other rankings that place at least a dozen schools over Michigan (Forbes, Parchment, and College Factual). Yet, the part of my response you seize on is the fact that in ONE of the rankings we’ve cited (including USNWR), Michigan is higher than USC. Then you attempt to poison the well by casting doubt on the Parchment ranking … without ever taking issue with what should be (to you) the most important part of my responses, which is that 4 rankings all place at least at least a dozen or so other schools over Michigan. By the way, if you want a 5th, there’s stateuniversity.com, which places 34 schools over Michigan (including LACs, but no, not including USC).
Look, as far as I’m concerned, 24th among Forbes/RUs, or 29th among US News national universities, are excellent rankings. All the top ~50 or so colleges can reasonably be considered “peers”. If you’re not satisfied that 24th or 29th is good enough, and choose to believe that the USNWR “peers” get it right (placing Michigan in a tie at 13th), then fine. However, it does seem to me that if that’s true, then a lot of objective data should be pointing in the same direction. That does not seem to be the case.
You can suggest “East Coast bias” and “agendas” if you like, although you might make a more convincing argument if you just point to some numbers. BobWallace and PurpleTitan both make a good point that we ought to be looking at outcomes. But you know, it’s possible that an outcomes-based ranking will only point back to pretty much the same set of top schools that US News gives us. Look at PurpleTitan’s list in post #42. For that matter, look at Forbes, the most outcome-oriented of the major rankings. Its top schools are, by and large, the same as the USNWR top schools.
I’ve looked at one kind of outcome, PhD production. After adjusting for school size and average SAT scores, the schools I see at the very top are indeed different (in many cases) than the schools at the top of the US News pile. They aren’t Ivies, but they aren’t big publics like Michigan and Berkeley either. They are small technical institutes and liberal arts colleges, some very selective (like CalTech and Carleton), others not so much (like NM Mines and Allegheny College). http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/discussion/comment/17572046#Comment_17572046 , post #7
If you want an “assessment” that looks more comprehensively at something other than “inputs”, check out the National Survey of Student Engagement. It doesn’t look at outcomes, but it does assess the amount of student engagement in such areas as class discussion, reading loads, writing assignments, and faculty office hour contacts.
The question was asked to see what sources you would be using to see where USC is ranked higher than Michigan. I absolutely knew that you would go through all the listings you were aware of to prove your point that Michigan is properly placed by USNWR. You found parchment and you didn’t disappoint tk.
The problem as I see it, is that too many CC posters look at USNWR as the gospel when it comes to overall college rankings. The so called, “objective data” that so many here love to point out when using USNWR, has been easily manipulated by certain private universities who have been gaming their numbers in order to climb the ladder towards to the top. USC is one example, but there are others. I know their latest undergraduate rankings will be coming out soon, but this is a good discussion for newer members who put way to much faith in a flawed rating beauty contest.
I found Parchment and several others, too.
So what am I missing? What other academic, undergraduate-focused rankings (or individual metrics) show that Michigan is not properly placed (more or less) by USNWR? I’m aware of the PA scores. I’m also aware of ARWU and other global rankings that look at publication and citation volumes. I don’t think those numbers are too relevant to the needs of most undergraduates, but they do tend to align better with the PA scores w.r.t. the top American public universities.
Here’s yet another ranking: http://www.thebestcolleges.org/rankings/top-50/
This one places Michigan 21st.
That’s not a huge jump from 29th in my book, but If you subtract the 5 LACs above it, then you do get closer to the US News PA position for national universities.
This ranking adds measures for “economic value” and “quality of life” (e.g. “Cost of Living Index of city/town”). For sure, Ann Arbor is a great college town, and the full sticker price is only $25K (if you’re a Michigan resident that is). Several other state universities do very well in this ranking.
You make an underlying assumption that students are making decisions based on quality of education. This assumption is so fundamental to your being that you don’t even realize it exists, otherwise you could not possibly call this string of logic prima facie proof of your premise. I call it prima facie proof that 18 year olds are subject to strong influence of marketing, branding, and perceived “prestige”.
There is a lot of evidence for the latter here on CC. How often do we see posts like “What Top 20 college can I get into?” or “Which college has more prestige?” And certainly the Chicago example shows the substantial influence marketing has. In addition, the colleges themselves understand the importance of advertising, marketing, and branding, as evidenced by the large and growing amounts they spend on it that I cited earlier. If quality is what matters, not marketing, why are colleges doing this? Why does Harvard spend $25,000,000 per year on advertising? According to your world view, they are wasting that money and they would be much better off investing the $25,000,000 per year on improving their quality, since high school students are arbiters of quality and will choose on that basis and no other. Is Harvard stupid? Have you considered writing to the presidents of of the elite colleges to explain the millions of dollars they are wasting every year on advertising that cannot possibly influence the quality-seeking high schoolers’ choices?
It’s really fundamentally ridiculous to believe that high school students have even the slightest capability of making the correct decision you assume. We have agreed that measuring and understanding outcomes from college is difficult. If it is difficult for the educational community, and difficult for us, how can one possibly assume it is easy for high school students?
At best, we can give high schoolers credit not for being able to determine the best colleges based on actual quality of education but rather for being able to choose based on similar characteristics to what college rankings use. A college with lots of money to spend, small class sizes, fame, heritage, smart students, a big marketing budget, and noted faculty is more attractive than a college with less of those goodies. The question of actual quality of education remains elusive, however.
"The problem as I see it, is that too many CC posters look at USNWR as the gospel when it comes to overall college rankings. "
That’s only a problem if your ego is tied up in a) where your school places and b) making sure everyone else around you knows it and gives it the proper “respect.”
What does it to do to your ego that Michigan is only a really, really excellent school but not in the extreme elite? Isn’t it like the proverbial Angels dancing on the head of a pin? It’s like when Duke people are soooo compelled to point out that they’re basically HYPSM or thisclose.
Why can’t excellence be enough internal satisfaction for you?
“. I know their latest undergraduate rankings will be coming out soon, but this is a good discussion for newer members who put way to much faith in a flawed rating beauty contest”
If it’s such a flawed contest, why is it so important for you to win it?
Caring about where your favorite school ranks on these lists is the academic equivalent of getting all irate because your favorite sports team is ranked poorly in a preseason poll.
In case you forgot Pizzagirl, the title of this thread is “US News and Public Universities.” My discussion is all about the thread. Your discussion includes this remark:
“What does it to do to your ego that Michigan is only a really, really excellent school but not in the extreme elite?”
When have I ever even hinted that I feel Michigan should be listed among the extreme elite? I know there are a handful or so of research universities in this country that are a bit better overall than Michigan at the undergraduate level. I am just so tired of reading remarks by those posters here who are complete slaves to USNWR and actually believe that Michigan is not among the very best schools in this country based on its not being in the top 20-25. You’re not one of those types, but plenty of them exist.