Cogent point by @dfbdfb. For example, when you look at alumni outcomes, no matter how you dice it, Vandy and Rochester are virtually identical. Yet one is ranked 15th by USNews and the other is ranked 33rd.
Also by @ucbalumnus. For example, in the overall rankings, WashU has UIUC, IU, Purdue, and NYU all beat by a decent amount. Yet I’d argue that when it comes to opportunities, for a b-school student, Kelley is just as good as and Stern is better than Olin, for engineering, UIUC and PU are at least as good as if not better, and for CS, UIUC is better.
@Hunt “Are there really people who are making decisions on where to apply based on small differences in list placement?”
I think that most use it as a start point. So many students and parents really know almost nothing about the world of colleges and universities. I think that you can’t underestimate how little the average high school student and their parent knows about colleges. All information about colleges is news to them.
Having said that, I have seen a few people who seem to think that the higher ranked school is the right one to choose. I mean it would be easy for someone to think that is what the ranking means. However, I am pretty sure the US News survey does not ask participants to put the schools in the order that they think a student should prefer if given an opportunity to attend. That would probably get better results though, in my mind. I would at least love to see it.
Looking at that mid-career CS list, what I see is that the list seems to roughly be the intersection of:
Standard notions of undergrad prestige
Proximity to Bay Area or Wall Street
A bit of randomness - likely some combination of random noise and data gathering limitations
Now, keep in mind that for #2, lots of folks would choose to work in Atlanta or Dallas or Chicago, at a lower salary than in San Fran, San Jose, or Manhattan, for various reasons, including cost of living, and because those areas are where they grew up and/or are closer to family. My guess is that a higher % of UC-SB (#1 on the list) folks end up in the Silicon Valley than, say, Carnegie-Mellon grads (tied for #23 on the list). And yet, despite the big rank order difference, the salary difference $147K vs. $121K - not that huge if you think about likely cost of living issues…
Now, if you want to use that list to say that, hey, you can go to a non top 20 school (UC-SB), and still make big bucks and/or do well in the Silicon Valley - yes, that’s true. I guess I just don’t view it as that revealing.
It does show that if you want to work on Wall Street maybe you should just go to Columbia. I don’t know how many CMU grads stay in the midwest. Mine went to CA every summer after the first and ended up working out there. He likes the weather and not having any interest in taking care of a house, doesn’t care about the ridiculous cost of real estate in the Silcon Valley.
Yes this data is funky! For starters, Harvard is at number #41, 11 places below Texas A&M. I know that the Aggies and Yalies think that is accurate, but I am going to say it isn’t even in the ball park in my humble opinion. Yikes.
I know parchment does have cross admit data, which can be helpful in many cases, but also seems way out of line in others.
The Harvard issue most likely relates to the data being self reported, and Harvard being the school students are most likely to lie about being admitted to. For example, the Parchment member at http://www.parchment.com/c/college/view/?id=650719 had a 2.27 GPA and 14 ACT, but was admitted to Harvard and all other colleges she applied to. She chose to attend Oakton Community College instead, so using the ranking system above, her choices suggest Oakton Community College should be ranked above Harvard. It seems so many unqualified applicants lie about getting in to Harvard that Parchment predicted she had a 32% chance of acceptance to Harvard. Princeton and Yale also had a high enough predicted chance of acceptance to suggest they have a good number of fake admits as well, but not as much as Harvard. Columbia and Northwestern appeared to have much fewer fakes.
The USNews rankings come with a lot of useful and informative data, but that’s not what makes them so popular. The rankings are popular for the same reason that college football and basketball rankings are popular - humans love to construct hierarchies. As highly-social animals we are hard-wired to understand and embrace rankings. It’s crucial to every member of the baboon troop to know who is currently on top, who is rising, and who is fading away.
Fast forward a few million years and you have another primate that is extending the social dominance hierarchy in every conceivable direction, ranking everything in sight - sports teams ranking polls, ten best places to live, ten best small towns, the Forbes 500 richest people, etc., etc, etc.,…the list of rankings is endless. What USNews did was establish the idea of ranking colleges based on academics. T
hey own that franchise because they created it. And they keep tinkering with it to try to improve it and make/keep it better than its competitors. In fact, ranking the USNews’s only real business these days. Their news magazine folded up years ago.
So for those who hate USNews or rakings in general, you might as well get used to them. They are not going away. They feed our natural desire and need to rank stuff.
Harvard has the highest yield at 81%. Parchment’s numbers are skewed by false self reported data. Kids get accepted to Harvard and almost always attend.
Yeah but Parchment has some methodology that weights less popular schools that are chosen (presumably the kid who got into all the Ivies and chose Bama gave Bama a big bump and the Ivies a kick in the butt, metaphorically speaking).
But as we all know, input/data issues there. Still, an effort to address that “which did you choose” question that was asked upthread.
Great thread. Not only is salary a huge factor, but the other money related thing involved skew toward higher priced areas. Hoarding money or having a small school is an advantage.
Who really cares what HS counselors think about a college? They are not exactly a basis by which I would judge excellence at the college level. If I were to even consider it, the % would be tiny.
Also not a big fan of ranking a college by selectivity or yield. Basically, that is just a popularity contest. Easily skewed by marketing (getting more applicants). Budweiser is the most popular beer in the US, but ask people who actually like beer and it is considered…not so good. If you want to have a separate ranking for schools that do the best marketing of themselves, then use these metrics.
Huge weight should be placed upon success levels of graduates (not just in financial terms). How many get jobs in their field. How many are still in their field 5/10/20 years later. (the point here being that schools should be good at preparing and/or helping students determine the best fit.
If you are going to take financials into account at all, do a yield based upon initial salaries as compared to the Net Price for the average student. Basically, what is the bang for the buck. Sure, there may be esoteric things that one would use to choose a school, but you cannot measure that.
