<p>Nothing has happened to Michigan viiv. It still has the overall academics that only a few top schools can match/beat.</p>
<p>what happened to TULANE??? Anyone know why in hell its not in the top 50 National Universities anymore and why it dropped, and UMIAMI is now 47th? TU is my dream school</p>
<p>Yes, I can tell you exactly why. USNWR uses, as part of their formula, the 4 and 6 year graduation rates. Here is the info from their website:</p>
<p>
The fact that USNWR “predicts” graduation rates based on test scores just goes to show how totally bogus this is. The line about being “well received” by researchers made me laugh out loud. USNWR rankings are being blasted more every year. There are so many myriad factors that go into whether a student stays to graduate from that school that it is laughable. Another quote:
and
This is what really hurt Tulane and will next year also. USNWR made no allowance for the biggest disaster ever in US history, Katrina. In fact, next year Tulane won’t even report a six year graduation rate because it will be 6 years after Katrina.</p>
<p>The President of Tulane, Scott Cowen, has apparently sent a letter or is contemplating sending one (I am not sure which is more accurate at this point in time) to USNWR protesting the application of a formula to a school that clearly deserved consideration for some kind of exception, or at least an explanatory note. <a href=“Unavailable”>Unavailable; Haters on here will say it is whining, but that would just show how foolish they are. It is hard to overstate the incredible devatation Katrina caused, and how miraculous Tulane’s comeback is.</p>
<p>It was only one spot, and you really shouldn’t be worried about the rankings anyway. They are truly garbage. I mean come on, they are using high school counselor ratings now. Anyone that has any experience in this area knows that is a total joke, filled with regional bias among other problems. I am thrilled it is your dream school. Be comforted by the facts that Tulane got more applications than any other private school, that the last three classes have been the strongest in the school’s history, and that it is indeed a great place to go to school.</p>
<p>
Where does it say that USNWR used four-year graduation rates for scoring?</p>
<p>A lot? It was one, and it was a reason, not an excuse. Only someone that is completely out of touch with reality would call Katrina an “excuse”. dwnkboy is famous on the Tulane boards for this kind of post. I knew someone like him would come along. Facts are not excuses. There are a lot of schools that have free applications. They do not get nearly as many applications as Tulane. With regard to the yield rate, the Tulane strategy has been explained to you before, but you choose to just keep being this way for no good reason. I will take the three highest academic classes in Tulane’s history, the fact that 2 Presidential Scholar winners chose Tulane (the same as Duke and Vandy, and 2 more than Emory), and the numerous honors Tulane has received in the last year for its role in the recovery of New Orleans and other reasons as sufficient refutation of your argument.</p>
<p>Oh, and to answer your first question, yes, I would still have a problem with the rankings even if Tulane was ranked in the top 20. They don’t measure what they purport to measure in the least. How can there possibly be a “best” college? But if you are talking largely academics (and in the end, isn’t that what a college is supposed to be mostly about?) then how can a school like UC Davis be ranked where it is (#39) when a full 17-18%% of their students don’t even achieve the national average on the SAT CR test, about 12% on the math, and 17% on the writing. That’s disgraceful, not for UC Davis but for USNWR to call that the 39th best college.</p>
<p>GoBlue81 - I may have been in error on the 4 year rate being used. Doesn’t change anything I posted, since Katrina is 5 years ago now and so its effect on Tulane’s 6-year graduation rate would be largest this year and next. In fact, Tulane probably would have been better off if they did use the 4 year rate, since the Katrina effect on that stat would be largely gone. Not 100%, since obviously a school doesn’t recover in just a year from something like Katrina, but mostly.</p>
<p>From US News:
Graduation and Freshman retention (20 percent for the National Universities and National Liberal Arts Colleges and 25 percent for Regional Universities and Regional Colleges). The higher the proportion of freshmen who return to campus for sophomore year and eventually graduate, the better a school is apt to be at offering the classes and services that students need to succeed. This measure has two components: six-year graduation rate (80 percent of the retention score) and freshman retention rate (20 percent). The graduation rate indicates the average proportion of a graduating class who earned a degree in six years or less; we consider freshman classes that started from fall 2000 through fall 2003. Freshman retention indicates the average proportion of freshmen who entered the school in the fall of 2005 through fall 2008 and returned the following fall.</p>
<p>Also from US News:
Graduation rate performance (7.5 percent; for National Universities and National Liberal Arts Colleges only). This indicator of added value shows the effect of the college’s programs and policies on the graduation rate of students after controlling for spending and student characteristics such as test scores and the proportion receiving Pell grants. We measure the difference between a school’s six-year graduation rate for the class that entered in 2003 and the rate we predicted for the class. If the actual graduation rate is higher than the predicted rate, the college is enhancing achievement.</p>
<p>So actually it has counted against TU in two major categories, 27.5% of the total score.</p>
<p>Some things speak for themselves.</p>
<p>Tulane stopped officially updating their average GPA a few years ago because of the discrepencies in grading systems around the country. Through other communications I happen to know the average UW GPA this year was 3.6. Believe it, don’t believe it, I really do not care. For public information, they choose instead to use top 10%, etc. You have old information.</p>
<p>I specifically am NOT being disparaging towards UC Davis, I am reporting their own statistics from their common data set. It is a very fine school, it just is not the 39th “best” school in the country if one is focusing on the academic selectivity. That is obvious. The flaws in the California GPA system (and nearly all the kids at UC Davis are from CA) have been extensively reported elsewhere.</p>
<p>Please show me where I insulted a student.</p>
<p>In any case, this thread is not about Tulane. The poster (#202) asked a specific question about Tulane, it was correctly answered, you felt the need to make a snide remark. That’s enough.</p>
<p>As Benetode said, some posts speak for themselves.</p>
<p>Yep. Best “defense” there is.</p>