<p>Just to clarify - USNWR uses 2 yrs old data. So the spike in SAT scores, alumni giving, and w/e impact Morty has will not be felt in this rankings. We are starting to see the payoff of a strong past 5 yrs. NU has been slowly but surely improving in the rankings going from 14 to T-12th to 1 point away from 9th. </p>
<p>As a NU grad, I think the USNWR rankings matter. It’s a perception thing. I want people who are smart enough to know the rankings but not smart enough to pick up on their relative unimportance to think that NU > UChicago. In reality, we can recognize that NU is a better fit for some people than Columbia and a worse fit than Notre Dame for different people. However, the rankings do have a mystique about them.</p>
<p>Most environments do not have people who graduated from a top 20 school. That’s just the statistics of it. That doesn’t mean we can’t want to be rated highly by the only public quantification of undergrad strength.</p>
<p>Go Cats!</p>
<p>Seriously though, Columbia is 4th? Really? Either I’m super ignorant, or this is just wrong.</p>
<p>^^…just wrong.
But then, Penn is way beyond where it should be too, and MIT and CalTech should either get their own mini-category or should be higher.
WIth respect to Columbia, in my mind it’s pretty much on a par with Chicago and JHU (although harder to get into than JHU because neither JHU nor Baltimore are as appealing).</p>
<p>Err which part is wrong? I made 3 separate points, so I’ll defend each of them</p>
<p>The data is trailing because it takes far too long to compile things like alumni giving rate. Also, the 6-year graduation rate inherently means its 2 yrs behind when an entering was “supposed” to graduate.</p>
<p>In terms of their relevance, I make a series of subjective and relative statements. Unless I am lying to myself, they are true by their very definition (To thine ownself be true?). If you mistakenly think that I assert my views need to be extrapolated, then I’m sorry. The rankings do have a mystique bc they are one of the sole sources of evaluating undergraduate education values. Good or bad, it just is and years of sales data proves it. If I am to understand your username correctly, you are not an NU alum. While my parents certainly have NU pride, there is no substitute for actually going somewhere for 4 years and knowing that you truly “are” Northwestern, and not vicariously.</p>
<p>Do you really think that Columbia is legitimately 4th? is that what you disagree with? If Columbia is on par with UChicago and JHU then makes coming up with what you think the rankings should be almost impossible. If you do HYP in the top 3 (and no, I will not accept any argument that Columbia is better than any of those on any standard beyond city size) then the best you can do is Columbia in a 3-way tie btw Columbia-UC-JHU. Oh yea, apparently Stanford is chopped liver in that rankings.</p>
<p>I think the rankings are pretty straightforward. At least when I applied I got into Rochester really early, then washU and Emory pretty early, then NU and then waitlisted and extended waitlisted at Columbia and rejected at Stanford. Makes sense to me!</p>
<p>NUraider - I’m not sure I understand, are you saying that because you were admitted to NU but waitlisted at Columbia and rejected at Stanford the rankings make sense? What do the rankings mean then when my daughter was admitted to Yale and Dartmouth but waitlisted at NU? (Which is where she attends.) I don’t really care for an answer but I thought your logic way off.</p>
<p>Two separate and seemingly contradictory, but really just nuanced, thoughts:
The rankings do make sense, its only that you are looking at too small a sample size and too small a variation. If you get in at Harvard you will definitely get in at UIC or Wisconsin-Milwaukee. In the grand scheme of colleges, the difference between Columbia and NU (#4 and #12) is minimal. It’s only at the top that we perceive the difference. The gap between the top 10 and a school ranked #100-500 is going to demonstrate the admissions results we expect on a nearly perfect basis.
1A. The sample size is also too small. There are (presumably) far more cases of a Harvard/Yale rejection and NU acceptance than vice-versa. Even the Kansas City Royals beat the Yankees occasionally. But looking at that one game where KC beats the Yanks doesn’t mean that the Royals are actually better.</p>
<ol>
<li>The rankings also aren’t designed to be admissions predictors. Just because you can get into NU doesn’t mean you have a similar likelihood @ JHU, UChicago, or Duke. There is a culture fit that the top schools have the luxury of recruiting on. NU and UChicago both have enough applications that they can look at a candidate with the “right” SATs, GPA, and ECs and reject that person. A varsity athlete who talks about attending social events and Homecoming is a better fit @ NU than UChicago. An essay that references late nights in HS comparing the relative worth of Dickinson and Kant to societal values is better off in Hyde Park.
There are regional biases, too. It is next to impossible for a NJ resident to get in to Princeton, but that NJ student has a shot @ Stanford bc there are fewer east coasters willing to go 3,000 miles. Running counter to that issue is that some schools have some stronger ties to local HS than others. Kids from New Trier and Glenbrook N or S often get accepted bc NU has a strong relationship with those HS. If those kids (who otherwise have good applications) went to a HS where their likelihood to attend was unclear, it is equally unclear if they would get in.
Note: I don’t intend to turn this into a debate on whether not local, wealthy HS represent reverse-AA or somehow are less qualified applicants. It is true that those HS turn out disproportionate amounts of NU acceptances and matriculations.</li>
</ol>
<p>Synthesis: use the rankings as what they are: an admittedly flawed, but not altogether useless, means of evaluating the “quality” of undergraduate schools</p>
<p>Thank God NU is up there. I’m from MD and I am so sick of people saying, “Oh, Northwestern? I’ve never heard of it. Is it in Washington State?” They literally have no idea what a good school NU is and it drives me crazy! </p>
<p>What’s even worse is when they talk about the kid in my class ranked #2 (I was #4) and how he’s going to Notre Dame and how marvelous that is, what a great school, how well he did, etc. (grr hulk smash I DID WELL TOO POSSIBLY BETTER I WANT MY BROWNIE POINTS)</p>
<p>ETA: Don’t mean to sound like a snob or say that ND is terrible or anything…just that NU is better and it’s finally getting some cred :P</p>
<p>^NU has been “up there” since the first ranking came out more than two decades ago. It even cracked in the top-10 three times in the 90s. But I guess more people read USN now than before.</p>
<p>I was saying that when I applied I wasn’t good enough to be at a top ten school but was for 11-20. Yeah it gets to be a crapshoot up in the top 10. Atmc maybe your daughter seemed too good for nu and they wanted to test her dedication, I’m pretty sure they do that to protect their yield. Think about it: nu had a ivy league reject syndrome a while ago but now not so much My comment makes sense if you think about it in terms of top 10 vs not top ten. Sorry I thought that was implied.</p>
<p>This “ivy league reject syndrome” concept so liberally applied to top-tier non-ivy schools is a self-perpetuating byproduct of elitist insecurity. Each top tier school is looking for a particular type of student, and as such, be it Top 10 or Top 11-20 or w.e “rank” determined by some newspaper and their statistics, admissions is going to be a crapshoot. Your acceptance rate merely helps fuel these myths of some alleged syndrome, but let us not forget Twain: “Lies, damned lies, and statistics.” I am so sick of hearing excellent schools be it NU, WashU, Vandy, UChicago, Tufts, etc. etc. etc. marginalized in this manner. Here’s a shocker: The difference between Harvard and “insert Top 20 school here” may be astronomically different as you think - not because of quality of experience, but because of the “flavor,” character, or nature of your undergraduate experience. And, to maintain said experience, one school may reject you while another will accept. Once colleges become this selective, who will accept you or not does not depend on some artificial rank or BS measure of acceptance rate - and that is why the admissions game is a crapshoot.
/somewhat tangential rant</p>
<p>The belief that top schools “yield protect” might be true or it might not be.</p>
<p>But here’s what happens:
Kid A gets into NU but waitlisted/rejected at a “top 10 school” (remember that time NU was 1 pt away from being #9? Regardless, let’s draw an arbitrary line at 9).
Kid B gets in at a top 10 school, but waitlisted/rejected 2 NU.</p>
<p>If you want, you can justify it as Kid A was fulfilling his academic destiny, but Kid B was a yield protect situation.</p>
<p>You put NU/Hopkins/Rice/Tufts in an impossible situation when you do that. You don’t let them have standards that are fair. You forbid them from looking at a kid who is a HYP accept and passing without some ulterior motive.</p>
<p>With that in mind, I have heard way too much that WUSTL actually does this and their W/L is notoriously large. So they’re mucking it up for the rest of us 11-20 schools!!!</p>
<p>Don’t foget that they Obama and<em>all</em>that*jaz–I mean nobel laureates… or am I just repeating their ad copy? also, Didnt UC until this yr usually have a 40 something acceptance rate, while NU was always lower in the 20s? It is the lake view., which is a local thing. The nobel thing is int’l. We’re always seeing Cass Sunstein on Night line, eg.</p>
<p>Realize that NU still gets many, many more applicants than Chicago does (26k vs 20k, IIRC). Chicago will have to maintain rigourous applicant pool growth for at least another one or two years if it wants to catch up (although since Chicago has a smaller undergraduate population, its acceptance rate will be lower for the same number of applicants).</p>