You know what would be more fun @Scipio ? More ties.
A combined LAC/U USNews ranking based on their scores (out of 100 and available if you look at each school’s page).
The top 10:
**
1-2. Williams, Princeton (tied at 100/100)
3-4. Amherst, Harvard (tied at 96/100)
5-6-7-8. Columbia, MIT, Chicago, Yale (tied at 94/100)
9-10-11 Swarthmore, Wellesley, Stanford (tied at 93/100)
**
There’s an opportunity here for an ambitious school to jump into the top 10 with a 97-99, or even a 95
Now we can see a very obvious reason that USNews keeps the lists separated by Carnegie classification even though USNews says it is comparing undergrad to undergrad. I do not think the methodology is different but if it is some CC sleuth will certainly tell me so, I’m sure.
I think that a combined university and college ranking (like something by THE/WSJ) makes more sense for kids who are just applying for bachelor degree programs. Otherwise, people tend to feel LACs are second class schools.
@ccdad99 how so? They’re both on a scale relative to 100 and as far as I can tell they use the same methodology. If you go to public Us and LACs, for instance, they are also scored relative to 100 but the #1 in each case is in the mid-80s. However, regional Us and colleges are also scored on the 100 scale their top entries do have 100/100 so something is different there, true. I
wish USNews would say WHAT is different because an undergrad education is an undergrad education whether that happens at Swarthmore or Yale,and they claim to be using the same criteria.
IDK about your kids but my kids had both LACs and universities on their app lists. Naturally there are differences between them but often great differences between schools in one classification or the other.
The overall scores logically can’t be transferred across categories. The top school within a category is assigned a score of 100, the bottom school a zero. The scores, then, are only as strong as their respective categories, @OHMomof2. However, comparing scores within a category is essential for a proper understanding of the statistical relationships among the ranked schools.
@OHMomof2 My understanding is that USNews assigns scores in each category within the school’s overall group. They do not compare for example LAC A’s standard test score to National University A’s standard test score as post #165 describes. That does not mean of course, that there is anything inferior/superior about either.
^^^The LAC/U categories aren’t combined because the die-hard university parents and alum would have heart attacks if their fav research u were displaced by someplace they’d never heard of - that’s almost a direct quote from Mel Elfin, the poll’s first editor.
With all the compression in the rankings, at least a few people out there with multiple degrees can now say “I went to four out of the top three schools in the United States”
Not across those particular meta categories (LAC, U, and regionals of each), it seems you’re right.
Though that doesn’t get to WHY they are separate since the criteria are presumably the same for any undergrad school.
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.
I made my first post as a bit of a joke about ties, but IMO the breakdown of the lists by categories make it less useful, if one wishes to argue it is useful at all. I’m with @jzducol on this.
Right, though the “sub lists” of public U, public LAC, HBCu etc are scored on the LAC//U scale - West Point for instance is the #1 public LAC but the #19 national LAC.
I know most people don’t look outside of the top 100 national university and LAC List. But the schools below the top 100 are making some moves up due to this new metric as well. When my daughter 1st started Georgia State University. I don’t think they were ranked at all. They are now 187 from 226 last year. They are also #2 for best undergraduate teaching and most innovative school.
I don’t put much weight into these rankings but I know alot of kids do. I hope this change will start to change their minds about going to their state schools. To many kids are going into debt going to expensive privates and out of state schools chasing prestige.
@ccdad99 : Please read the following two methodologies carefully:
(1) THE World University Rankings 2018 methodology – https://www.timeshighereducation.com/world-university-rankings/methodology-world-university-rankings-2018
As you can see, 30% is “Citations”. Another 30% is “Research”. As you pointed out, this is quite similar to USNWR rankings. This gets to the biggest flaw of USNWR undergrad rankings – it does not consider undergraduate experience. Yeah!! someone got a Nobel Prize winner in Chemistry as chemistry professor in MIT in the spring … it turns out, as the person reported back: he is the worst among the worst teachers it has ever seen. USNWR separates out LAC is another big flaw which is closely tied to this mixing of graduate school and undergraduate college problem.
@OHMomof2 : The undergraduate ranking methodology above points out
Sorry, I don’t know which providers they use.
USNWR needs to be careful: if Ivy league schools suddenly decide they no longer want to submit their data out of “good causes”. You are totally screwed. No other rankings ask schools to submit anything. In your rankings, Ivy league schools are un-ranked.
The oft-cited, “Table 4” of the NIH study, “Baccalaureate Origins of Doctoral Degree Recipients” gets a lot of eyeballing here on CC. My only gripe is that it is only normalized by size of student body, not number of majors. Otherwise, my lowly LAC would be at the top of the column!
"A combined LAC/U USNews ranking based on their scores (out of 100 and available if you look at each school’s page).
1-2. Williams, Princeton (tied at 100/100)
3-4. Amherst, Harvard (tied at 96/100)
5-6-7-8. Columbia, MIT, Chicago, Yale (tied at 94/100)
9-10-11 Swarthmore, Wellesley, Stanford (tied at 93/100)"
As others have said, you can’t combine them like that, you’d have to go back redo all the inputs and then rank, as an example, you now have to ask HS counselors to rank all universities together. Given that Amherst was in a five way tie for 4th in the LAC high school ratings and GCs gave five national unis the top score, it would be reasonable to think Amherst would come in from 6-13, say 9 or 10, which would make it difficult for it to be tied for 3rd in the overall rankings. In fact Forbes which combines the universities has Amherst at 16. My guess is that USNWR may have tried to combine in their first ranking and discovered that the LACs were not getting their due, so they made separate rankings.
Well, maybe, assuming a student can get through their exam without a protest materializing. :))
I’m a Californian, but one thing to watch out for is that UMich has an endowment larger than the entire UC system, which has led to better facilities and smaller class sizes. Also, in terms of student’s admissions statistics, they’re very similar. While UCLA moved up to two spots to 19 in the USNWR, Cal slipped a spot to 22 and UMich gained a spot to 27. And don’t forget UVA at #25. All 4 are excellent schools.
