<p>While Tulane is not getting the love from USNWR, it does fair better in other rankings.</p>
<p>Top 10 party school according to Playboy. In some pretty good company – Vandy, USC, UVA also top 10.</p>
<p>LOL, yeah I saw that. I was also surprised at some of the other schools that were in there. Any idea how they come up with this? Is it purely based on some sort of self-selective survey?</p>
<p>Now THERE’s an internship that student would love! Go around to schools and check out the party life! :D</p>
<p>not to mention that rankings don’t mean ***** once you get into the real world. seriously, people who are hiring aren’t thinking about the ranking of your college. they probably have no idea who is in the top 50 of the US News World Report, and frankly, don’t care. all they care about is your relevant experience and what YOU’VE done. same with grad school. ANY grad school.</p>
<p>it’s amazing how meaningless the rankings are. but no one realizes it until they leave college.</p>
<p>TU drops from 51 to 52 in the new rankings.</p>
<p>Time to take away FC’s belt and scissors!!</p>
<p>LOL. That would only be true if I thought they had any validity. But I don’t. I noticed in the article the USNWR people talked about how they changed the weighting factors for various data points. I mean come on, how arbitrary is that? They also mentioned that Holy Cross and Pitzer in particular gained from these changes. So were the 2013 rankings wrong then? Or will they change them again next year, making these rankings wrong? It makes no sense.</p>
<p>I did notice that one data point for Tulane in particular seemed a lot lower than its peers, and that is the 6 year graduation rate. Schools like WUSTL and Emory have 90-95% rates, while Tulane is at 75%. Obviously some of that has to do with higher freshman retention, which was reported at 90% for Tulane but is typically at 96+% for these other schools. What I cannot tell at this point is how much of it is still Katrina residue, since USNWR doesn’t just take last year’s rate but instead uses the last few years, so Katrina is still in there I suppose.</p>
<p>Still, if Tulane were to get those numbers much closer to peer level, the ranking would go up significantly. Upper 30’s I imagine. But to get back to the point, is that really a reflection of how “good” a school Tulane is? Or is it more of a reflection of other factors, even putting Katrina aside? Hard to know, but I continue to reject the entire premise that this is a measurable quality, and uses arbitrary facets of colleges in their equation. Why not measure service hours provided? That would sure help Tulane and a strong argument could be made that in today’s world, this is a critical component of a higher education.</p>
<p>I was surprised to see Northeastern’s ranking to up to higher than Tulane. Northeastern was my son’s safety school. It’s much easier to get into than Tulane.</p>
<p>It’s magic. LOL. See my rant about UC Davis in post #8. Talk about the rankings making no sense! Something like 505 is the average score nationally on the critical reading portion of the SAT, yet 25% of their students are somewhere between 200 and barely over that average. How does that make for a school ranked that highly? Doesn’t meet my thought of what makes a “best” university, although it is a good school.</p>
<p>I often ask students that want to build college lists to pay attention to academic strengths of the schools considered, even if it meant going down the USNWR list; I even suggest Tulane if one’s intended major(s) is in an area of strength (public health, neuroscience, French, Latin American studies, BiomedE, ChemE) as either a match or a reach school. </p>
<p>Anyhow, party school rankings are equally flawed, although academics seem to have been taken into consideration. How else would Tulane find itself at #8 in Playboy, ahead of WVU, UVT, Iowa, which are top party schools?</p>
<p>One thing that I’ve wondered is if USNEWS takes into account 5 year programs like architecture at Tulane when calculating 4 year and 6 year graduation rates. Aside from USNEWS ranking not being a good indication of how good a university is, it seems that many send in bogus data anyway.</p>
<p>I think the whole reason for the 6 year stat, and the reason it takes precedence over the 4 year stat, is because of issues exactly like 5 year programs, people that take leaves of absence for any number of reasons, etc. My D is a perfect example. She could have actually graduated in 3 years, but spent her 3rd year in China which was technically a leave of absence because the Chinese paid for the whole thing. So with 2 years still remaining on her scholarship when she returned, she decided to enjoy the opportunity to take courses she might not have the opportunity to take in the near future, as well as continue to participate in activities she really enjoys.</p>
<p>So she will show up in the stats as having a 5 year graduation rate, but it had zero to do with her or Tulane’s ability to get her to graduation in a shorter time period, and just as obviously had nothing to do the the quality of Tulane as a school. In fact, I could argue that it was the opposite of that. Tulane has so much to offer she extended her time there beyond what is simply needed to graduate. Now obviously hers is not a typical case, but there are thousands of exceptions to the “rule” every year. Just another demonstration of the fallacious reasoning used by USNWR.</p>
<p>Also, while you are correct that there have been various examples of schools sending in false data (Tulane among them, unfortunately, but apparently only for the MBA program so nothing that affected this USNWR ranking), I think it is probably rare. More common is to manipulate the system to make the numbers look better. So the numbers are true, but various actions were taken to make sure the numbers come in skewed.</p>
<p>“So the numbers are true, but various actions were taken to make sure the numbers come in skewed” </p>
<p>As the saying goes, what gets measured gets managed.</p>
<p>I’m a little surprised that TU’s administration (which seems very savvy to this stuff) hasn’t had more of a rankings pay-off than it has gotten in the past few years. They’ve done great at getting strong students to enroll at TU (i.e. admissions selectivity), but not as good keeping those kids until graduation (even accounting for Katrina effects).</p>
<p>The six year grad rate says as much about the kids as is does the school. If you take a bunch of very talented and driven kids and put them at a school with major degree prestige (i.e. HYP), you’ll get close to a 100% graduation rate regardless of what the shool does with or to them. In TU’s case the kids are talented, but for some reason they don’t hang around at the rate that the kids do at the peer colleges.</p>
<p>Totally agree, northwesty. I can say that Tulane has in fact taken steps to get better retention. It has paid off somewhat at the freshman level, and that will translate to better 6 year numbers soon. They are kind of stuck at 90-91% right now, which is definitely better than the 85% or so of the “old days”, but not at the 95+% level of many peer schools. I think I remember reading that their short term goal is to get to about 93%. That is why they are hiring more personnel in the areas of life coaching and success outcomes, and generally amping up that entire area. It (freshman retention) should continue to improve.</p>
<p>I know they survey the students that transfer, so I feel confident they are trying to respond to the reasons students give for leaving, assuming the kids are honest in their explanations. I would love to know how much of it is New Orleans (i.e. some kids inability to discipline themselves enough to succeed in the classroom), how much is financial pressures, how much is distance from home, how much is simply not being satisfied with the school, etc. Does one of these dominate, or is it a little of each? Another small factor can be kids that get into their “dream school” after not getting in the first time. I know transfers to the very top schools are rare, but it does happen sometimes and is more possible as you get past the top 10 or so on the USNWR list.</p>
<p>So I presume Tulane has insight into this, but obviously they keep it internal. The only clues that kids getting off track and in general adjusting to the new environment might have been a bit heavier factors, are the actions we see Tulane taking the last 3 years or so.</p>
<p>To those tirelessly trying to figure out the USNWR rankings…here is the best explanation I’ve seen yet :)</p>
<p>[How</a> ?U.S. News? Ranks Colleges | The Onion - America’s Finest News Source](<a href=“How ‘U.S. News’ Ranks Colleges”>How ‘U.S. News’ Ranks Colleges)</p>
<p>I love it! Couldn’t have said it any better. Thanks for posting that, I needed the laugh.</p>
<p>Anyone recognize the school/building in the pic?</p>
<p>Update - Never mind, I found it using a Google image search (learn something new every day!) It is he downtown campus of West Virginia University in Morgantown, W. Va.</p>