US NEWS Ranking, A few surprises

@circuitrider Our instate is about $36k per year. Free tuition (17-21k) if you make under $61k. Aid if you are URM or make under 90k for a family of 4. Full price for the rest of us. Everybody pays the extremely high room and board fees.

Jumping in a bit late, but I have a few questions:
Which college ranking is given the most weight by the general population? US News or WSJ?
How would colleges know which applicants are Pell Grant eligible? I’m assuming some will want to game the system by recruiting these students.
What was Stanford’s ranking last year?
Do you think the ranking is a self-fulfilling prophesy?

I don’t think so. Thirty years ago, before the herd effect had time to set in, the top LACs and Ivy League were not that far apart statistically. As recently as 1996, Wesleyan had an acceptance rate of 36% which would have tied it with Penn and been within shooting distance of Cornell (33%.)

“It would be totally typical for a high school senior who is interested in rank to want to compare, say, Elon (#1 regional U in the south), Emory (#19 national U), High Point (#1 regional college in south) and Davidson (#10 national LAC), but they can’t, because they’re on 4 different lists.”

It would be unfair to the regional universities to use the same criteria in the rankings since many are smaller and lack the endowments and other resources that national universities have that smaller regional schools may not. If the HS senior is interested in all four schools, the candidate should look at each and he advantages of smaller schools or larger schools when it comes to academic and campus life.

In real life outside these forums, probably most people look mostly at their local community colleges and public universities.

It is also in a lower population state with less in state student demand, and less complaining from in state parents about access to the flagship, so it can take more advantage of the out of state cash cows like New Jersey. It also has less of a commitment to access for students from lower income backgrounds (only about 15% Pell Grant), reducing financial aid costs. It also acts like a private school in some ways, such as using legacy preference.

USNWR rankings may have been designed to reflect conventional wisdom about college rankings.

Pell Grant eligibility can be determined using information from financial aid applications, or whether a student actually receives a Pell Grant. In application reading at a need blind school, it is not hard to make a good guess whether a student is from a lower half income family that us likely to be Pell Grant eligible.

However, adding Pell Grant students could be expensive in financial aid terms.

@Fisherman99 “UC Riverside’s jump up of 39 spaces is the nations greatest gain in US News & World report rankings. UC Riverside graduates more low-income (Pell Grant) students (at a 73% rate…24% higher than the national average) than any University in the United States.”

Yep, but unfortunately using other ranking criteria that is important to students and families like selectivity, reputation, access to quality faculty, graduation rates, earning potential, etc. is just as important as a college that has low-income students.

The WSJ has UC Riverside at #272.

All true. But the post I was responding to said that “Cal and UCLA are WAY better than UMich.” I disagree. Do you agree with “Cal and UCLA being WAY better than UMich”?

Also, UMich has the endowment money to expand the number of students receiving Pell grants. Cal and UCLA, not so much.

Additonally, UMich also has the 2nd largest R&D budget. According to this link, Cal and UCLA are not in the Top 20.

https://www.bestcolleges.com/features/colleges-with-highest-research-and-development-expenditures/

The Pell grant eligible population is quite large, probably about half of 18 year olds. A college’s friendliness to students from lower half income backgrounds in terms of financial aid, friendliness to transfer-from-community-college pathways, admission criteria that are not so heavily tipped toward upper-income characteristics (e.g. legacy, expensive extracurriculars), etc. can be a very significant factor for a large number of potential college students, who greatly outnumber of “upper middle class who will not get financial aid” demographic that is common on these forums.

Here are the two news releases from Duke in response to the two rankings. Duke does not care about other rankings.
https://www.dukechronicle.com/article/2018/09/duke-ties-with-harvard-and-yale-in-wall-street-journal-student-outcomes-ranking
https://www.dukechronicle.com/article/2018/09/duke-university-us-news-and-world-report-rankings-2019

If this is stock picking, I would definitely pick WSJ/THE. Why? In case, just in case, you are stupid enough to use any ranking to pick a school (remember, it doesn’t matter how many admissions you or your kid receives, you/your kid can only pick one) and that ranking goes out of business, and the other ranking ranks your school extremely low for whatever reason, you are totally screwed. US News rankings have been in business for more than 30 years but it is going down. WSJ/THE is only in the business for 3 years and even Duke issued news release responding to its results. It is less popular to general public now. But those in the know and have the money to pay ~70K per year are those reading WSJ.

Actually this new Pell Grant thing will accelerate the elimination of middle class from those top private schools. For example, in this News from Brown – Meet the Class of 2021 article (https://news.brown.edu/articles/2017/09/firstyear), it states

So about 12% have free rides and 57% are full pay. Only about less than 1/3 of its students receive partial financial aids. Those middle class who receive partial aids will suffer if more free rides are given to those Pell receivers, given that financial aid budget is limited.

@WildestDream, yes UGA did make a nice move from 54 to 46. As far as the comparison with UT, I believe UGA was “ahead” of Texas by a couple spots last year as well with UT being #56 and now tied at #49. Florida was a surprise to me as well. UGA also moved from #16 last year Public University to #13 this year, whereas Florida came in at #8. I don’t get UCLA at #1 Public university though. Sorry Bruins fans! It’s getting harder for UC students to graduate in four years and at UCLA, it’s very hard to change majors.

Interesting how the resentment of the “upper middle class” is against the lower SES people who are the most under-represented (and probably still will be even if the college becomes more friendly to them) rather than those from the top 3% or so who consume 57% of the college’s seats.

While it’s nice that USNWR added some social factors to the rankings, it’s not something that most are interested in when evaluating a university.

I don’t understand how the Pell Grant thing will accelerate the elimination of middle class from top private schools. They are measuring the graduation rate of Pell Grant recipients in each school, not the percentage of Pell Graduate recipients in the student population

“The top 1000 students at the University of Florida are quite a lot smarter as a group than the top 1000 at BC, Rochester, Brandeis or BU. That’s just the way it is - the math makes it so (in addition to all the merit scholarships available for top students at UF). Believe it.”

Highly doubtful.

@Nomorelurker Actually, UCLA’s 4 year graduation rate has been steadily increasing since 2000 and is currently at 78%. Berkeley is similar.
https://www.apb.ucla.edu/campus-statistics/graduation-ttd

Pell Grant graduation rates are weighted at 2.5 percent.

I usually use extreme case to explain. Say the school only has 2 Pell receivers and 1 does not graduate, the graduation rate is 50%. That is pretty bad. To lower my risk, I need more people in the group so even if some don’t work out, I still get good number.

No matter what these rankings say or not say, I still think that it is absolutely insane to pay $200K plus for an undergraduate education. Perhaps there are a few schools out there that by the end of the day and assuming of course one has the money and the ability to get in could put a stamp in ones life. Maybe an Ivy is worth the money. All these comparisons between Michigan vs UCLA vs Texas are absolutely silly. These are all great schools that offer incredible opportunities especially if you are instate. If you live in Florida or Texas or any other state where you have some great options it is absolutely ridiculous to attend another out of state of school UNLESS lots of or merit or financial aid is being offered and balances or tips the scales. Lots of kids with incredible stats end up going to schools such as Alabama, South Carolina or even cheaper OOS options. Chances are that these high achieving students will end up doing well at these schools since they either end up in Honors or have access to special programs where at school such as Michigan, they might have this chance.

And lets not forget that for millions of students out there this is what matters

Check out the full AP Top 25 below:

Here is a look at how the entire poll played out:

  1. Alabama
  2. Clemson
  3. Georgia
  4. Ohio State
  5. Oklahoma
  6. Wisconsin
  7. Auburn
  8. Notre Dame
  9. Stanford
  10. Washington
  11. Penn State
  12. LSU
  13. Virginia Tech
  14. West Virginia
  15. TCU
  16. Mississippi State
  17. Boise State
  18. UCF
  19. Michigan
  20. Oregon
  21. Miami
  22. USC
  23. Arizona State
  24. Oklahoma State
  25. Michigan State

@ccdad99 Having a greater share of Pell recipients affects the stats. https://www.insidehighered.com/admissions/article/2018/09/10/us-news-says-it-has-shifted-rankings-focus-social-mobility-has-it

@ucbalumnus I’m not reading resentment, but rather prediction, that this new Pell-eligible hook may squeeze out both seats and financial aid for those just above the Pell threshold. (Resenting the full payers may not make sense if there is cross subsidization.)