Last year when I was trying to choose which school to attend for the class of 2022, I initially followed the various college rankings to get their idea about who’s the “best”.
Even though I was accepted to some prestigious universities, when all was said and done, I didn’t care much about whether or not the school I was interested in attending had ranked the highest. In the end, I chose a campus based in large part on its location — a place where I felt I would enjoy living for the next four years. Of course there was also the need for the college to be respected in the field I am majoring in, but being perceived as “Ivy League quality” or having the highest ranking just didn’t matter to me.
Of the schools which I was accepted that I felt offered all those things I wanted, I chose one that is near the beach so that I could do many of the outside-of-the-classroom things I enjoyed before college — i.e., surfing and other water sports.
“In fact, I’m always surprised that anyone would be interested in both Harvard and Stanford, or both UCLA and Cal. They have such completely different vibes that it’s hard for me to imagine how anyone could think both would be a good fit.”
I do agree with you that there are clear differences between certain colleges, i.e., Harvard vs Stanford and UCLA and Berkeley. I myself liked Stanford and UCLA over Harvard and Berkeley. In fact, our kid only applied to one top school (Stanford) because he felt other top schools would not be a good fit for him. Only Yale intrigued him enough for him to consider applying there. But really, I think it takes a lot of effort to apply to many colleges that I think kids make a mistake in thinking they can do great jobs on all applications. Our kid put approximately 60% of his time and effort into Stanford application, 35% time and effort into a UC common application and 5% time and effort into an Honors College application. After that, he had no energy or time to submit any other application. I do believe the quality suffers if you submit too many applications.
Most of the expensive NE colleges am familiar with are pretty good at offering enough need-based FA to keep tuition within the same ballpark as the top flagship universities outside that region, often a 50% discount rate. What is surprising is how many self-described “middle-class” families cannot afford their own in-state tuition AND continue to vote for the same state legislators who are starving said state systems of proper funding.
I read more than I post, so I know he took a gap year and is about to start his freshman year soon, correct? I hope he’s excited. Wishing him all the best.
What’s another ranking system? The QS Employability ranking for 2019 just came out. This is an “outcomes ranking” that many students would be interested in. What schools tend to impress employers? What schools translate into tangible results, namely, jobs? MIT comes out on top, followed by Stanford and UCLA which tie for 2nd place (BBC lists UCLA in 3rd place which is a misquote of the QS survey which actually shows it tied with Stanford). Is this ranking more significant than USNWR? Maybe.
The whole Pell grant graduation rates have nothing to do with the academic quality of the University, it does have everything to do with USNWR trying to affect admissions policies on a social issue. Curious if there will be any pushback on this.
As a proud UCLA grad, I certainly relish an international ranking that places my alma mater in a 2nd place tie with Stanford and ahead of the likes of Harvard, Cambridge, Berkeley, Oxford etc.
However, this is the most subjective of all subjective rankings. ;
It’s not that subjective since it actually measures employment rates and alumni outcomes (i.e. where the grads work). It goes beyond merely asking employers who they would hire, but where the graduates actually ended up getting hired. It even takes into account the quality of employers. In other words, just because 100% of MIT grads got jobs as burger flippers by McDonalds down the street doesn’t count. The jobs and the firms have to be of high quality (this is the largest weighting in the survey). The survey also factors in the state of the local economy. Graduates who live in areas where the economy isn’t very good and jobs are few aren’t necessarily penalized. The methodology looks robust.
This being an outcomes survey makes it more relevant to high school students looking for schools to enroll in.
@CU123 - There won’t be any pushback because this is just USNews leading from the rear. The fact that so little changed in the top 30 places means the most elite universities were already recruiting low income students. A competitor can only move up if it can get the money from someplace and merit-based schools are already cash strapped.
I should point out that the 3rd largest component, Partnerships with Employers per Faculty (25%), has little to do with student outcomes (especially for US schools).
Keep in mind that a most US based institutions don’t participate/report on the 2nd part (work placement-related partnerships).
A survey is a sampling of a universe of respondents. It’s not supposed to be a complete inventory of every single respondent that may possibly exist out there. That would be a logistical impossibility, as even census takers would know. The larger the sample size, the better the survey would be, but a survey can never provide total coverage of the entire universe.
All surveys have strengths and limitations. The strength of the QS employability survey is its focus on outcomes rather than on academic prestige (which has largely been the purview of USNWR and other rankings, where peer assessment from other academics are given great weight). The QS ranking polls business owners, not other academics. This is the job market talking, not the ivory tower.
Even if there is an overlap between prestige and outcomes (as there should be), the QS survey is mainly about the latter. It collects data from a large sample size of respondents (42000 employers), asking them which schools they think produce high quality graduates they are likely to employ in their businesses. Then the survey measures how many of these graduates are actually employed within 12 months of graduation.
This is the largest and most comprehensive survey of its kind that I know of. If anyone knows of other surveys with similar scope and methodologies, feel free to post them here.
You must know the background of companies which publish those rankings to have proper perspective of their importance. If Goldman Sachs upgraded a stock, people take notice. If a small firm downgraded it at the same time, people ignore it.
Times Higher Education (THE) is a weekly magazine based in London, reporting specifically on news and issues related to higher education. It is the United Kingdom’s leading publication in its field. Times Higher Education World University Rankings is an annual publication of university rankings by Times Higher Education (THE) magazine. The publisher had collaborated with Quacquarelli Symonds (QS) to publish the joint THE–QS World University Rankings from 2004 to 2009 before it turned to Thomson Reuters for a new ranking system. THE Rankings is often considered as one of the most widely observed university rankings together with Academic Ranking of World Universities and QS World University Rankings. It is often praised for having a new, improved ranking methodology since 2010.
According to an article in November 2011on Inside Higher Ed (https://www.insidehighered.com/views/2010/11/11/state-rankings)
I can tell you in Japan and other parts of Asia, THE is winning. This article (https://dot.asahi.com/wa/2018032800059.html?page=1) on Japan’s #2 newspaper Asahi talks about THEの「世界大学ランキング日本版2018」(THE’s world university ranking Japan version 2018)
[quote]
THE（タイムズ・ハイヤー・エデュケーション）社は昨年、日本のベネッセグループと協力し、日本版を初めて作った。/quote Times Higher Education, last year, worked with Japan’s Benesse (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Benesse), published the first Japanese version of the ranking.
Benesse owns US’s Berlitz Language Schools.(BTW, the top universities in Japan are public National Universities)
WSJ is just working with THE and using THE’s global reputation to quickly establish its credibility on its US college rankings. The Duke news release I mentioned earlier also mentions its world ranking (#17).
@nrtlax33, the WSJ ranking provides a different but not necessarily “better” ranking system. In another thread here on CC called WSJ and Forbes Rankings, on page 3, @greymeer provided a fascinating analysis on three variables (measures of efficiency) used on the WSJ ranking,. Factoring in the WSJ rank with outcome and resources available for students, he/she came up with a top 100 of “best performing and most efficient” universities. Interestingly, many public universities made the top 25, including UT, UVA, UGA, GA TECH, MICHIGAN, UCSB, UCLA, UF and some others. As far as private universities, Duke, Boston College and Yale were in the top 25 of the “most efficient best performing” 100.
“Over time, the elites will lose their academic pedigree as they fight over the limited pool of ability in the small segment of the population who can afford to pay rack rate and those limited segments of the less well off classes that the elites target.”
Totally agree with this. Having two college aged kids, I know that there are smart kids at every school, and I am not impressed by where someone attends college. As an employer, I am impressed by what an applicant did in college to make the best of their opportunities, not a name on a piece of paper.
@Nomorelurker : I honestly don’t know what Greymeer was trying to calculate. It is up to the readers to read the ranking methodology to decide if a ranking is useful. Don’t blindly trust a ranking. I think USNWR is making a big mistake this time. UCSB and UNC-Chapel Hill are ranked at the same spot?? I would like to see the sub-component values of USNWR rankings. Anyone has USNWR Compass?
The QS Employability survey is different from the QS World University Ranking Survey. They each measure different things and poll different respondents.The employability survey is an employer-only survey. The QS World University survey is more similar to USNWR and THE surveys in that it measures academic reputation among peers, as well as other variables of perceived educational quality such as endowment size, facilities, staff to student ratios, test scores, etc. The QS employability survey is significant in that it is a market-based assessment of the supposed economic value that the colleges produce as objectified by the quality of students they graduate.
@nrtlax33, I believe @Greymeer was looking at outcomes and resources along with rank and coming up with an overall best performing or most efficient score. In any case, I agree that UNC and UCSB do not seem generally equivalent to me, except perhaps there are some specific departments or majors that are top notch at each school. Agree that blindly trusting a ranking is not a good idea.
