USNWR 2016 Predictions

College Search & Selection
41

Penn state will be in the top 30s again :slight_smile:

42

@nickflynn paste in your university rankings, over time yours will look like US News.

43

@BatesParents2019 I did, back in post #24

44
  1. Harvard
  2. Stanford
  3. Princeton
  4. Yale
  5. Penn
  6. Columbia
  7. MIT
  8. Cal tech
  9. Chicago
  10. Duke
  11. Johns Hopkins
  12. Brown
  13. Cornell
  14. Northwestern
  15. Dartmouth
  16. Berkeley
  17. Washington University STL
  18. Notre Dame
  19. Vanderbilt
  20. University of Virginia
  21. University of Michigan

I will admit that I have not visited 5 of these schools.

45

Official release: Sept 9th

http://www.usnews.com/education/blogs/college-rankings-blog/2015/08/19/2016-best-colleges-rankings-coming-sept-9?int=a42709

46

US News tells me the deans from the top 10 schools have their own secret society. When they meet, they put clothespins in a coffee can and choose next yearā€™s rankings at random.

47

HYPSM. The rest in top 25 are not really distinguishable.

48

The notion that thereā€™s a giant gulf between those five and some of the other elite universities is one of the silliest yet most pervasive misconceptions on CC.

49

I didnā€™t say there is a giant gulf, but they do stand out from the rest in peopleā€™s conceptions.

50

I hope PSU ranks higher! #WeAre

51

Post #59, they stand out more in your mind but not to others.

52

ā€œThe notion that thereā€™s a giant gulf between those five and some of the other elite universities is one of the silliest yet most pervasive misconceptions on CC.ā€

There are about 15-20 schools that can claim to be almost as good as HYPSM.

53

I never thought this thread could be entertaining but it is this morning, so far.

54

"
I didnā€™t say there is a giant gulf, but they do stand out from the rest in peopleā€™s conceptions."

No, not really. Thatā€™s a common misperception among people who are newer to this country. Iā€™m not surprised that you fell for it, as your posts have always been very weighted towards prestige and some mistaken belief that it only occurs with a small handful of schools.

55

@Pizzagirl As a trained economist, I have to go with prestige over actual ā€œeducationā€. Based on the signaling theory in economics, to which I give a lot of credence, the real value of college education is from which school you get your diploma, not the actual knowledge (ā€œcoursesā€) you learned. And there is abundance evidence to support this theory. A friend of mine who used to work at a small biotech company in Bay area told me they never received any applicants from Berkeley. And if you run a garden variety IT service, I bet you wonā€™t be able to attract any graduates from MIT or Stanford.

With that said, I am not claiming that HYPSM is significantly superior to other top 25 or even top 50 schools in education quality. It is just that their signaling strength is a bit stronger than other schools. To say this is a misconception, sadly, is a misconception itself. The fact that HYPSM are harder than other schools to get into shows that vast majority of high school seniors get it.

56

@hzhao2004 Pizzagirl knows this. Sheā€™s just anti-prestige, which is fine since in real life, I donā€™t think where one went to school should sum up his or her future for the rest of their life. Iā€™m sure Zuckerberg or Gates would have been just as successful had they not enrolled at Harvard at all.

57

ā€œToo bad for you that prestige takes into account much more than pure academics. Job placement, prestigious awards & scholarship, research opportunities, strength of alumni network, quality of incoming students, and alumni donation are taken into account when forming a list of the most prestigious Universitiesā€

Even when you take all those factors into account (I would also factor in endowment and annual state funding), reputationally speaking, HYPSM are a tiny but measurable notch above the rest. It is not a significant gap, but as hzhao2004 said, their signaling strength is a bit stronger than other schools.

Duke is comparable to other elites, like Brown, Cal, Caltech, Columbia, Cornell, Dartmouth, JHU, Michigan, Northwestern, Penn, UVa and a number of LACs to name a few.

58

But thatā€™s it. Only signaling. But I donā€™t think hzhao2004ā€™s original post mentioned that.

59

I agree DrGoogle, it is very subtle.

60

I think that Duke offers a strong undergrad experience. Among private schools, I think it is a close academic peer of Brown, Cornell, Dartmouth, JHU, Northwestern.

I imagine the USN&WR ranking will be similar. Hereā€™s my Top-25 for undergrad (universities):

  1. Princeton
  2. Yale
  3. Harvard (not 1 or 2 due to grad focus)
  4. Stanford (ditto)
  5. MIT (Caltech + solid humanities)
  6. Columbia
  7. Chicago
  8. Cal-Berkeley (top-10 due to all of its amazing departments)
  9. Penn
  10. Dartmouth (top-10 due to its undergrad focus)
  11. Duke
  12. Northwestern
  13. Caltech (not quite top-10 due to the narrow focus, though awesome at what they do...)
  14. Brown
  15. Cornell
  16. Johns Hopkins
  17. Michigan
  18. Rice
  19. Washington U
  20. Vanderbilt
  21. Notre Dame
  22. Virginia
  23. Georgetown
  24. Emory
  25. Carnegie-Mellon, Wisconsin, UNC, Tufts, Georgia Tech, UIUC, UCLA, U Rochester, NYU, USC, Boston College, Washington...

LACs:

  1. Williams
  2. Pomona
  3. Amherst
  4. Swarthmore
  5. Middlebury
  6. Wellesley
  7. Bowdoin
  8. Haverford
  9. Carleton
  10. CMC
  11. Wesleyan
  12. Harvey Mudd
  13. Hamilton
  14. Vassar
  15. Colby
  16. Grinnell
  17. Washington & Lee
  18. Reed
  19. Davidson
  20. Bates
  21. Smith
  22. Oberlin
  23. Bryn Mawr
  24. Barnard
  25. Colgate, Macalester, Richmond, Holy Cross, Whitman, Occidentalā€¦