<p>I’ll have to take your word for it. Is having an SMU degree a barrier to moving up in the business world in Dallas? Are there plenty of rich people with SMU degrees who send kids to SMU?</p>
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<p>How else was it supposed to gain recognition?<br>
Marketing 101 - if I’m not known, make myself known.</p>
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<p>To that end, what are most schools “known for” outside their local and regional realms? I guarantee you that, say, Brown and Dartmouth elicits “huh, what’s that?” in many areas of the country. I guess it comes down to - how much do you care about impressing the man on the street in your own neck of the woods.</p>
<p>xiggi, you keep on about the “spamming” but don’t seem to have an answer about what in your opinion is the appropriate and ethical level of marketing and outreach. My son got NO mail whatsoever from WashU–and we are in the midwest–but he was “spammed” by Yale with a ridiculous three-page letter in 9-point type and then a thick glossy book. Should we be outraged by that?</p>
<p>I also disagree that it is only because of its mailing practices that WashU has become a household name (but even if it is, so what?). It has attracted high-achieving kids for decades. I knew graduates of the school 30 years ago and they were just the kind of well-qualified individuals who would likely attend there today. And they weren’t all from the midwest (in fact, the four people I know who went there back then were all from the East Coast.) And nowadays, the ONLY kids from my kids’ high school who are admitted there are the kinds of kids who were competitive applicants for any top school.</p>
<p>Exactly, sally. BTW, my kids didn’t get any mail from WashU either. </p>
<p>The kids I knew who went to WashU could have absolutely been contenders for any top school. No question. Brightest of the bright, and it’s been like that for decades. It’s just that it’s in Missouri, not Massachusetts, that’s all.</p>
<p>Much2learn, do you feel you’ve learned anything of value from this long discussion? Has it addressed your concerns? Do you now feel more confident that Washington University’s #14 ranking is appropriate? Have you decided it is in fact over-rated and written it off completely? If so, in what other schools are you more confident?</p>
<p>US News ranks computer science and economics departments. Although these are graduate program rankings, they may be relevant to what you are trying to assess. BusinessWeek (as well as US News) ranks undergraduate business programs. Here are some schools that get relatively high rankings in CS plus economics or business:</p>
<p>Berkeley (USN CS #1; USN econ #5; Businesswk undergrad bschool #11)
MIT (USN CS #1; USN econ #1; Businesswk undergrad bschool #19)
Stanford (USN CS #1; USN econ #5)
Carnegie Mell (USN CS #1; USN econ #19; Bwk undergrad bschool #24)
UPenn (USN CS #17; USN econ #9; Bwk undergrad bschool #5)
Michigan (USN CS #13; USN econ #13;Bwk undergrad bschool #8 )
Illinois (USN CS #5; USN econ #32;Bwk undergrad bschool #21 )
Wisconsin (USN CS #11; USN econ #13;Bwk undergrad bschool #32 )
Columbia (USN CS #17; USN econ #10)
Maryland (USN CS #14; USN econ #22)</p>
<p>WUSTL (USN CS #39; USN econ #27; Bwk undergrad bschool #4)</p>
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<p>Sally, my point is not one about comparing the various schools in terms of spamming of marketing materials. Again, I am going by the collective recollection of posters on CC. Simply stated, do you think that there is a school that has been mentioned (and complained about) MORE OFTEN than WUSTL by … CC members? Except for the pre-filled applications sent out by Tulane, I’d have a hard time to come up with one. </p>
<p>For the record, just as your son was immune to that spamming, our family did not get too many emails from WUSTL. Of course, practicing what I have suggested about removing all possible links from the College Board and ACT helped keeping things in line! It was not bullet-proof as the PSAT and PLAN data was beyond any control. </p>
<p>In our case, the most annoying --and obnoxious, in our eyes-- spammer was none other than the beloved Chicago. To this date, which is a decade after admissions, there are still emails and packages being sent out. And, as the first ones, they always end up in the trash bin!</p>
<p>Lastly, unless I mistyped, I do not think that I have attempted to define what is ethical in terms of mass marketing. I thought I discussed what has seemingly worked for certain schools. Here’s some historical data to chew on:
<a href=“http://web.archive.org/web/20070908142457/http://chronicle.com/stats/usnews/[/url]”>http://web.archive.org/web/20070908142457/http://chronicle.com/stats/usnews/</a></p>
<p>Start looking at 2004. Are there schools that climbed in the rating? Were they known spammers? That is the correlation I made – not that were right or wrong!</p>
<p>Another ranking that you might find helpful, for comparison with the US News rankings, is the “research” portion of the Washington Monthly ranking:
[National</a> University Rankings 2013 | Washington Monthly](<a href=“http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/college_guide/rankings_2013/national_university_rank.php]National”>http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/college_guide/rankings_2013/national_university_rank.php)</p>
<p>You can click-sort on the middle section to see how WUSTL compares with other national universities for research expenditures, PhD productivity, and faculty distinctions. For research expenditures and PhD productivity, it is ranked #18 and #21 respectively (roughly in line with its #14 USN rank). For faculty awards and national academy memberships, it is ranked #55 and #36 respectively (a little low compared to its US News undergraduate standing).</p>
<p>It’s hard to do a school by school comparison of post-graduate alumni outcomes for specific majors such as CS, economics and finance. The National Science Foundation does have abundant data on earned PhDs in many fields including economics and CS. The web site (webcaspar.nsf.gov) is not currently available due to the federal government shutdown. </p>
<p>John Siegfreid and Wendy Stock produced a paper in 2006 on the baccalaureate origins of PhD economists, which you can Google. The top 25 schools adjusted for institution size included a number of small LACs (Swarthmore, Grinnell, Williams, etc.), several Ivies (HYP, Columbia), and several other T20 national universities (MIT, Stanford, Chicago, Rice). No state universities made the top 25. Neither did WUSTL.</p>
<p>The following 2005 CC thread covered PhD production in Math and CS:
<a href=“http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/swarthmore/60986-phd-production-math-computer-science.html[/url]”>http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/swarthmore/60986-phd-production-math-computer-science.html</a>
WUSTL ranked 52nd at the time. Keep in mind that the list includes many LACs as well as national universities.</p>
<p>Payscale.com shows average starting and mid-career salaries of college alumni who earn only a bachelors degree. WUSTL ranks 113th based on self-reported data that is not equally abundant for every school. ([Full</a> List of Schools - PayScale College Salary Report 2012-13](<a href=“http://www.payscale.com/college-salary-report-2013/full-list-of-schools]Full”>http://www.payscale.com/college-salary-report-2013/full-list-of-schools)).
Keep in mind that some research shows little correlation between the choice of college and salary outcomes (i.e. a student admitted to both Harvard and Podunk U. will not, on average, earn significantly less over a lifetime if he chooses Podunk U.)</p>
<p>The Forbes ranking is more outcome-oriented than the US News ranking is.
It ranks WUSTL 57th overall and 33rd among research universities.</p>
<p>FYI</p>
<p><a href=“http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/9590833-post6.html[/url]”>http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/9590833-post6.html</a></p>
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<p>Kinda of a dog-bites-man story. Of course liberal arts colleges do well when adjusted for size. And that is because many Unis have a whole lot of other departments/Colleges (Engineering, Hotel School, Enviro, Ag, Nursing, Education, etc.) where no one would ever had a thought of earning a PhD in Econ. It is the rare LAC that has anything approaching such ‘vocational’ majors. </p>
<p>IMO, a better “adjustment” would be to compare use the student population in the Liberal Arts College at the Uni as the denominator. I’m sure LACs will still do extremely well, but the difference may not be as stark.</p>
<p>Siegfried and Stock also ran their numbers after adjusting for program size (the number of graduating econ majors). Swarthmore, Grinnell, Carleton, and Oberlin still show up in the top 20. The Ivies and Chicago fall out. Creeping in are a number of schools like Frostburg State and Hood College, which generate PhDs in the low single digits over the covered 5-year period, but which also award only small numbers of bachelors degrees in econ. If you ran the numbers over different 5-year windows, I suspect you’d still see LACs like S/G/C/O in the T25, but a different set of less selective schools like Frostburg and Hood.</p>
<p>Of course, doctorates in economics may be earned not only by former econ majors but also by former math majors and such. So yes, total arts & science graduates (but excluding engineering etc) might make a better denominator.</p>
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<p>Well, someone has to be at the top of the list, right? Trust me, I don’t love the over-communication–part of the reason I got rid of my land line was because of the bazillions of college-related phone calls my son got senior year–but as we all know college admissions is a business and the rankings are a necessary evil many colleges feel they have to address strategically.</p>
<p>Also, the annoyance over WashU’s practices seems to come from people who think their kids DESERVED to get in and are affronted that this upstart in flyover country would reject their kids even when some of the vaunted Ivies didn’t. That comes through pretty clearly in some of the older threads on WashU.</p>
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<p>I will agree that SMU doesn’t have the same rep as UT and A&M. However, I think many Texans feel Rice is as good as any Ivy. I also think that many Texans think UT is better than Rice especially the Business and Engineering Schools. In engineering I think many feel A&M is also better than Rice, especially among people who are involved in the oil industry- that dominate every aspect of life in TX. Okay, almost every aspect of life in TX. lol.</p>
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<p>Yes. That’s EXACTLY it. Who do those Missourians think they are, anyway? </p>
<p>When the Missourian doesn’t know about, say, Brown, that’s because they’re unsophisticated hicks, not knowing a nationally renowned school like Brown. But when the Massachusetts kid doesn’t know WashU, well, that’s just because they’re sophisticated questioners about “regional” schools. Sorry, you can’t have it both ways.</p>
<p>tk: Forbes uses ratemyprofessors.com. I can rate myself on ratemyprofessors. Id say Im awesome. Enough said. And Payscale? Is Peace Corps a noble thing to do or not? </p>
<p>OK. Back to the OP:
I think one thing to keep in mind is that your daughter may not get into Penn or MIT. Remember that some of the kids who get in are athletes who are essentially admitted before they apply, Questbridge students, legacies
In other words, those really low admit rates are probably even lower for your daughter. If you are from the East, she’ll have a (slight) advantage if you head west. Similarly, if you are from the West, she’ll have a (slight) advantage if she heads east. BUT once she leaves your region, folks will say things like “Carnegie Mellon? I never heard of it.” Nevertheless, applying to another geographic region (if your child is willing to attend school there) is a smart thing to do.</p>
<p>Any top 20 (or 30) national university will provide her with the opportunities she needs. A school like Wash U, Vanderbilt, Emory, or Northwestern has unbelievable resources. All of these are as good as schools you’ve heard of, but the feel of the school is different. That’s the part you need to let her choose.</p>
<p>Forbes uses quite a few other measurements besides ratemyprofessors (which counts for 15% of its ranking). Several of those measurements (including ratemyprofessors) have been heavily criticized on CC. Nevertheless, both US News and Forbes arrive at similar rankings for many very selective schools (such as Harvard, Yale, Princeton, Columbia, Stanford, MIT, Northwestern, Rice, Tufts … Amherst, Swarthmore, Williams, etc.) WUSTL, however, gets a much higher ranking from US News than from Forbes. </p>
<p>Would I be concerned about that? No. The OP’s kid is interested in business/finance. That appears to be one of WashU’s strengths. CS? The US News CS ranking, the course offerings, and the caliber of students all suggest to me that the CS program would be quite good (although there may not be as much moving and shaking going on in computing and entrepreneurship as there is at Stanford or MIT).</p>
<p>If he/she wants to study BOTH computer science AND business/finance (double major, major & minor) then program requirements and restrictions may be an important basis for differentiating some of these schools.</p>
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<p>Try as they might. :)</p>
<p>“Any top 20 (or 30) national university will provide her with the opportunities she needs. A school like Wash U, Vanderbilt, Emory, or Northwestern has unbelievable resources. All of these are as good as schools you’ve heard of, but the feel of the school is different. That’s the part you need to let her choose.”</p>
<p>It’s kind of crazy that this even needs to be said, it’s so self evident.</p>
<p>FAR more students go to LACs with a notion of getting a PhD than do so at much larger schools. Not to mention it’s much easier to find spots for 10 graduating econ majors in PHD programs from a school than 300 or so from larger schools. In this case size does matter along with self-selection into certain career paths and likely other less obvious factors. grad schools do like a diverse group of students from a variety of colleges. Nobody is going to take 75 Berkeley grads but they might like 2 from Grinnell or Carleton.</p>
<p>Economic PhD is one of the most useless degrees. Economists can’t predict anything of value and they are totally influenced by their political views. They cannot even agree on what happened in history looking backwards for the causes of certain economic trends. Who cares which schools produce economics PhDs? Most ironic is the fact that the “free market” theorists are all tenured professors, and thus not subject to the brutality of the market forces they love to defend. These folks would not last six months in the private sector…</p>