Deep down inside, there is a part of me which says “Forget brand name colleges like HYPSMCC etc, I will send my kid to an OOS Honors College for free.” But if it was my life, I probably would forego attending brand name college as a full pay (knowing what I know and having experienced an Ivy college on financial aid for not much money), but when it’s your kid’s life, it’s definitely harder to do (when your kid wants to attend the brand name college because he feels it’s a better fit etc.) because my own parents sacrificed things for my education. Therefore, I realize a lot of decisions I make is based on emotions even if I would make a different choice for myself.
I would probably have done it had my kid been a STEM/engineer or pre-med major/interest in which it is easier to demonstrate your own ability regardless of the college you attended, but he is interested in non-STEM area.
Remember that employment and other career outcomes are often related to the student’s major, so a university with lots of engineering majors may have significantly different aggregate outcomes from a university with mostly biology and humanities majors, even if outcomes are similar for engineering majors at each school, or biology majors at each school, or humanities majors at each school.
Of course, the actual signal from the college name of the person’s ability and achievement is clouded by factors of the college choice usually being heavily dependent on parental factors, such as their ability and willingness to pay for a particular college (as well as paying for any additional academic and extracurricular programs while in K-12). To the extent that it does reflect the person’s ability and achievement, it is the person’s ability and achievement in high school (except for those who transferred colleges based on their prior college records).
“It’s not that subjective since it actually measures employment rates and alumni outcomes (i.e. where the grads work)”.
Ok but the ratings are done based on numbers and not percentages, so biased towards the larger schools. Cal Tech comes in at 33% on alumni outcomes, is ranked 71st in this employability ranking yet 4th in their overall ranking. NYU comes in at 99.9 in alumni outcomes.
@jym626 that one is kind of bizarre. Who graduates from anywhere with a degree in Home Economics? Apparently 23 students from the #1 ranked university?
I have no dog in this fight, but was just relating another (yawn) ranking. I don’t believe its raw # of graduates, @theloniusmonk , but is in fact percentages, per their site:
If it were raw # of graduates, College of William & Mary, with an enrollment of only around 6,000, would not have come in at #4.
As for Home Ec, @OHMomof2 , no clue what majors are being lumped into that category!
This is no more or less “garbage in/garbage out” than many of the other rankings.
“Here, QS have identified the alma maters of those individuals featuring in over 150 high-achievers lists, each measuring desirable outcomes in a particular walk of life. In total, QS have analyzed more than 30,000 of the world’s most innovative, creative, wealthy, entrepreneurial, and/or philanthropic individuals to establish which universities are producing world-changing individuals.”
They’re just looking at these lists in raw numbers, not adjusting for the number of alumni produced by the university. Here’s another stat:
number of living alumni - Cal Tech - 22,000, NYU - 500,000
look all rankings are garbage in garbage, no doubt, well except mine
It is fascinating to read “Class of 2021 applicant profile” (http://www.browndailyherald.com/2017/03/21/class-2021-applicant-profile/) from Brown University. I guess a large number of Brown’s applicants also apply to other top elite schools. If you read it carefully (notice that you can mouse over to see how many applicants are from each state), you should be able to see where those parents/students who actually read those rankings are living. Most students who go to their local schools with 50+% acceptance rate don’t care about school rankings.
@theloniusmonk - that’s a different survey. The QS is one, ETC is a different one. We should make a survey on the opinions of the surveys. I vote they are all pretty much a waste.
@jym626 The ETC looks interesting in that it is outcomes (employment, loan repayment) and value (net cost) based rather than inputs (e.g. admission stats) and resource based like USNWR and others have been. Given how much rankings influence school behavior, it would probably be good to see ratings shift to these types of metrics over time.
@OHMomof2 My guess would be that home economics would be an economics concentration for those that may want to become home economics teachers. It is an option in North Carolina public school curriculum.
Employment rate is a percentage (or proportion, as stated below), not raw absolute numbers. This is how QS explains their methodology:
“Graduate employment rate (10%)
This indicator is the simplest, but essential for any understanding of how successful universities are at nurturing employability. It involves measuring the proportion of graduates (excluding those opting to pursue further study or unavailable to work) in full or part time employment within 12 months of graduation. To calculate the scores, we consider the difference between each institution’s rate and the average in the country in which they are based. To preclude significant anomalies, the results are adjusted by the range between the maximum and minimum values recorded in each country or region. This accounts for the fact that a university’s ability to foster employability will be affected by the economic performance of the country in which they are situated.”
Well when I attended UNC many, many years ago we use to joke about the large number of students working on their MRS degree. I guess they just made a major for them so the Psychology department wouldn’t be so bloated
Some schools publish graduation survey results, but many don’t, and none follow the same methodology. At UF, for example, the Graduation survey is done before graduation. They don’t survey the students again, “within 12 months”.
OK the more i poke around the more I realize how truly odd this site is. For fun I put D’s stats into the Career Buddy advising system, which are typical high-end CC stats. It recommends a 2 year college because I put “undecided” for career, then specifically recommends a bunch of 4 year colleges but says they are 2 year colleges, and all within 50 miles of the zip code I entered. None relate to what I said were her strengths or weaknesses.
They have a CHANCE calculator which takes hardly any input then sends me to a checkout page where I am asked to spend $10 per college I’d like to get my admissions chances for!
“Remember that employment and other career outcomes are often related to the student’s major, so a university with lots of engineering majors may have significantly different aggregate outcomes from a university with mostly biology and humanities majors, even if outcomes are similar for engineering majors at each school, or biology majors at each school, or humanities majors at each school.”
@ucbalumnus you make a very good point. Now that we are starting to get more outcomes and ROI analysis, people may focus just on the differences between schools, but those differences may be better explained by the choice of and mix of majors rather than real differences between the quality of the schools. There are a couple of reports from a policy center at Georgetown that highlight this:
So when making any comparisons we need to always make sure they are apples to apples and people should be realistic about job prospects in given fields. That said, the majority of college students switch majors (and will switch careers), so all focus should not be limited to projected major.
