US NEWS Ranking, A few surprises

UCSD used to be a rising star peaking at 36 in 2015. Why is it dropping every year? Surprised to see davis above it. Santa Barbara has now hit 30. Quite impressive.

Actually, google says “Santa Barbara’s ranking in the 2018 edition of Best Colleges is National Universities, 37.” But the jump is surprising.

@10s4life I think UCSD’s 55% 4-year graduation rate is one factor hurting it. Compare that to 75% for UCLA and 70% for both UCSB and UCI.

The football rankings are still the ones that matter most to me.

@sushiritto I think you’re right. Looks like they were #37 for 3 years in a row and then went to 30.

https://www.usnews.com/education/best-colleges/articles/how-us-news-calculated-the-rankings describes the ranking criteria, including changes from the previous year.

And Politico seems to take partial credit for the adjustment to the formula:

https://www.politico.com/story/2018/09/10/us-news-college-rankings-formula-813559

Impressive that 7 of the 9 UC schools increased in rank. UC Riverside the most up 39 spots, with only Berkeley and UCSD slightly decreasing. University of California System is on fire!

Interesting to learn U.S. News changed its methodology this year to reflect “outcome” based indicators, making them more similar to other rankings like WSJ and Forbes. Personally, I’m for this. Not sure why factors like acceptance rates or test scores are all that relevant to a quality of a school

The change will also incentivize colleges to enroll and graduate more low income students. The change this year and going forward will probably be good for public schools and the wealthy universities with resources to support low income students.

Not all public schools get a ranking benefit from this change. For example, both Penn State and Pittsburgh fell in the new USNWR rankings. But that is not surprising, due to poor in-state financial aid at these schools (and other Pennsylvania public schools), resulting in low Pell grant student enrollment and a relatively large disparity between Pell grant student graduation rates and overall graduation rates.

The change in USNWR ranking criteria to include Pell grant student measures was probably more beneficial to UCs than other public and private schools, due to their relatively high numbers of Pell grant students and small disparities between Pell grant student graduation rates and overall graduation rates.

Not exactly surprised on the national LAC side, given the change in methodology, but, nice to see a big move up by Haverford from #18 to #11. Same for Grinnell, now that selectivity factor has been lessened.

Big tumbles for Harvey Mudd (from #12 to a four-day tie with Wesleyan, Colby and West Point at #18) and Colby from #12.

“U.S. News also dropped acceptance rate as a ranking indicator and reduced the weight of expert opinions, SAT/ACT scores and high school class standing.”

@IO123456 the counselor rankings are not tiered, there are just more ties. They should all be tiered, in my opinion. If you have a 4 way tie at #4, the next number is 8, when the next school could be .001 off from the 3 way tie school. Makes no sense.

Here is USNWR’s own explanation:

Other possible reasons:

  • highly qualified students may tend to elevate the quality of classroom discussions and extracurricular activities
  • high volumes of applications from top students, plus high admission yields, suggest that a college has enough appeal to compete well with other “top” schools (although many factors besides academic quality can influence college choice).

^ Agree with #34. The level of student influences lots of things in and out of the classroom. Think of it like a sports team. If everyone on the team is at a certain minimum standard (and that happens to be a high level) you’re likely going to have a stronger team. Of course it depends on what the coaches (the entire university set of resources and professors) do with that talent. It becomes a vicious cycle. Top kids go to a top school with top professors. Top school has to have the resources to motivate and engage the top kids. Results in top employment and grad school placements. Which attracts top kids. And the beat goes on.

http://www.sandiegouniontribune.com/news/education/sd-me-college-rankings-20180830-story.html

US News should add a disclaimer: For entertainment purposes only.

http://www.sandiegouniontribune.com/news/education/sd-me-college-rankings-20180830-story.html

The ranking frenzy sells magazines, and seems to add to the stress on many of the college applicants. Would love to see the focus shift to reducing the stress in the college application process.

^^ Check out http://talk.qa.collegeconfidential.com/discussion/comment/21698850/#Comment_21698850

WSJ/THE is much better in this regard.

Read the entire ranking methodology for each ranking to know whether or not they are garbage in/garbage out. If you don’t know what they are calculating, all those rankings are garbage.