USNWR Rankings 1990 - 2007 AVE, vs. 2010

College Search & Selection
1

<p>I found this link a couple of years ago, and copied it into excel. <a href="http://web.archive.org/web/20070908142457/http://chronicle.com/stats/usnews/%5B/url%5D"&gt;http://web.archive.org/web/20070908142457/http://chronicle.com/stats/usnews/&lt;/a> I then added a column for AVE RANK in the 1990-2007 USNWR publications, for an 18 year average of rank placement.</p>

<p>Just today, I had a look at the 1990-2007 ave ranking, vs. the 2010 publication that came out earlier this week.</p>

<p>What I'm looking for is the large movements up or down v. the 18 yr. average.</p>

<p>A couple of privates have come up substantially, and a couple of privates have moved down substantially.</p>

<p>Most of the publics have slipped, with a couple holding more or less steady, while some publics have moved up marginally.</p>

<p>Is there a pattern? Certainly it looks like CA publics have held their own, while Publics outside CA have slipped. </p>

<p>Those that slipped the most in this week's publication vs. 1990-1997 18 yr. average: </p>

<ul>
<li><p>Wisconsin slipped 11 spots, don't know why</p></li>
<li><p>Tulane slipped 10 spots, which is probably attributable to Katrina and its financial drain on the school and the resultant closure of the school of Engineering.</p></li>
<li><p>Yeshiva University slipped 6 spots, don't know why.</p></li>
<li><p>Syracuse also slipped 6 spots, don't know why.</p></li>
</ul>

<p>Then there are these that have jumped considerably this year vs. their 18 yr. ave.:</p>

<ul>
<li><p>USC has jumped over 12 positions. Probably due to investment in NMFs and other large expenditures over the past 20 years.</p></li>
<li><p>UC Santa Barbara also jumped 7 positions</p></li>
<li><p>Boston College jumped 7 postions</p></li>
<li><p>Georgia Tech jumped 5 positions.</p></li>
<li><p>Columbia jumped 4 spots... Obama called the USNWR editors, my scoop.</p></li>
</ul>

<p>Here is the table:</p>

<p>Aug. 2010 rank // School // 18 yr. ave rank (non-zero) // Delta </p>

<p>23 // University of Southern California // 35.7 // (12.7)
39 // UC Santa Barbara // 46 // (7.0)
31 // Boston College // 37.9 // (6.9)
4 // Columbia University // 10.1 // (6.1)
35 // Georgia Institute of Technology // 40.3 // (5.3)
41 // Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute // 45.9 // (4.9)
5 // University of Pennsylvania // 9.3 // (4.3)
39 // UC Davis // 42.7 // (3.7)
13 // Washington University in St. Louis // 16.3 // (3.3)
45 // University of Texas at Austin // 48.3 // (3.3)
17 // Vanderbilt University // 20.2 // (3.2)
25 // Wake Forest University // 27.7 // (2.7)
9 // University of Chicago // 11.3 // (2.3)
41 // UC Irvine // 42.5 // (1.5)
33 // New York University // 34.3 // (1.3)
13 // Johns Hopkins University // 14.2 // (1.2)
12 // Northwestern University // 13 // (1.0)
21 // Georgetown University // 21.8 // (0.8)
1 // Harvard University // 1.5 // (0.5)
31 // College of William and Mary // 31.3 // (0.3)
41 // University of Washington // 41 // 0.0
23 // Carnegie Mellon University // 22.9 // 0.1
2 // Princeton University // 1.8 // 0.2
51 // George Washington University // 50.7 // 0.3
5 // Stanford University // 4.7 // 0.3
25 // UCLA // 24.5 // 0.5
9 // Dartmouth College // 8.4 // 0.6
3 // Yale University // 2.4 // 0.6
35 // UC San Diego // 33.7 // 1.3
19 // University of Notre Dame // 17.7 // 1.3
7 // CalTech // 5.6 // 1.4
15 // Brown University // 13.5 // 1.5
28 // Tufts University // 26.5 // 1.5
37 // Lehigh University // 35.3 // 1.7
47 // Pennsylvania State University // 45.3 // 1.7
20 // Emory University // 18.1 // 1.9
22 // University of California at Berkeley // 20.1 // 1.9
7 // MIT // 4.9 // 2.1
53 // Pepperdine University // 50.9 // 2.1
17 // Rice University // 14.8 // 2.2
34 // Brandeis University // 31.2 // 2.8
15 // Cornell University // 12.1 // 2.9
9 // Duke University // 6 // 3.0
25 // University of Virginia // 21.2 // 3.8
30 // University of North Carolina // 25.7 // 4.3
41 // Case Western Reserve University // 36.5 // 4.5
53 // University of Florida // 48.5 // 4.5
37 // University of Rochester // 32.4 // 4.6
29 // University of Michigan at Ann Arbor // 23.3 // 5.7
47 // University of Illinois // 40.9 // 6.1
50 // Yeshiva University // 43.6 // 6.4
55 // Syracuse University // 48.6 // 6.4
51 // Tulane University // 41.3 // 9.7
45 // University of Wisconsin // 34.3 // 10.7</p>

2

<p>All I can say is that USNWR sure knows how to make money.</p>

<p>Some higher education experts, like Kevin Carey of Education Sector, have argued that U.S. News and World Report’s college rankings system is merely a list of criteria that mirrors the superficial characteristics of elite colleges and universities. According to Carey, “[The] U.S. News ranking system is deeply flawed. Instead of focusing on the fundamental issues of how well colleges and universities educate their students and how well they prepare them to be successful after college, the magazine’s rankings are almost entirely a function of three factors: fame, wealth, and exclusivity.” He suggests that there are more important characteristics parents and students should research to select colleges, such as how well students are learning and how likely students are to earn a degree</p>

3

<p>Seems a little silly considering 95% plus at elite colleges earn a degree. Pretty low benchmark.</p>

4

<p>ComaPrison,</p>

<p>I cannot disagree with Kevin Carey in principle.</p>

<p>Here are two intangibles that are difficult to quantify via the USNWR criteria, but seem critically important to me and many:</p>

<p>1) Are the current students content with their choice? Would they select the same college/University again knowing what they know now?</p>

<p>It is not possible to get this information from most of the metrics used by USNWR. You can partially infer this by graduation rate, but that has much more to do with the financial stability of a students household than it does the quality of education offered, so the correlation is far too weak.</p>

<p>the only place I can read current students reviewing their current college choice is a website called students review dot com . The reviews I’ve read there are enlightening.</p>

<p>2) To what extent do Professors proactively reach out to undergraduate students to guide, mentor, provide feedback on papers, direct into research/internships, etc.? This is different from student/faculty ratio, but weakly related to it. This is also different from the Class Size statistics, but also weakly related to them. There are certain schools that have become known for Professors knowing each of their students, reaching out to them when they don’t see them for a couple of class sessions in a row, inviting them over for dinner, etc.</p>

<p>Many of us have seen the quality of learning with students in a school with 17 students per class, vs. a high school with 34 students per class, private or public. Both can work, but the second model usually requires much more parental involvement, the hiring of private tutors to supplement the precious little time that packed-class teachers have to devote to individual student questions. </p>

<p>How does this translate to the University? The partial self-service model of the 34 student high school classroom is analogous to the 80 person freshman English course at a large Public vs. the 25 student freshman English course at a 4000 - 6000 student (private or public – e.g. William ana Mary or Geneseo) school.</p>

<p>How does this tranlate into the 60 person second level Linguistics course at Public U vs. the 15 person second level Linguistics course at a small college?</p>

<p>These two factors, to me, have an importance that far outweighs the # of faculty members who are members of NAS, the number of publications in a given field’s internal scholarship publications, or the reputation of Ph.D. programs at the same schools (which primarily drives the USNWR PA score).</p>

5

<p>slipper1234. What IS a pretty low benchmark is the fact that everything is curved and inflated these days, and the minimum required GPA to get your degree (assuming you’re stopping just at a BA/BS) is low as well. A high graduation rate does not necessarily mean that everyone learned the material thoroughly. Remember that George W. Bush was a C student at Yale. A school system that allows you to get your degree with a C average is a fail fail fail fail fail fail fail fail…</p>

<p>DunninLA. I agree with everything you’re saying. I’m an advocate for small class sizes and proactive/engaged professors.</p>

6

<p>Dunn–you would be FAR better off reading the NSSE surveys for schools rather than anything on SR which is the height of unscientific and dubious data. NSSE surveys actual students at colleges–not some internet goofs who decide to post on a review website just for fun who may or may not have ever set foot on the college they “review”. Many schools now post NSSE data. Compare that info to what’s on SR and you will quickly learnone of them is crap.</p>

7

<p>barrons, I jumped over to the NSSE website but I’m not sure what I can pull. I tried a custom report but that seems to aggregate data across all schools.</p>

<p>Can you tell me how to pull data for an individual school that would show me how satisfied the students are?</p>

<p>P.S. If your take the time to read the specific comments from each respondent in each school in the Students Review dot com site, you can get a very good read on the culture of a school. You get to the comments by clicking on the “CLICK TO FIND OUT WHY” line under the student satisfaction pie chart “Would Return to XXX” If these are not students, I’d be very surprised. The commments are very specific.</p>

8

<p>OP would you know about liberal art schools</p>

9

<p>boston college is just doing work kicking down doors and asserting itself amongst the elite. it’s so hot right now it can’t/won’t be stopped</p>

10

<p>So much easier for schools with smallish undergradate populations. or huge local populations, to ascend the USNWR rankings. Large public schools in lower population flyover states are taking the hits.</p>

11

<p>xylem888 – since I don’t have a link to a longitudinal graph for LAC rankings over the years, I didn’t look at that.</p>

12

<p>The NSSE for Wisconsin indicates around 88% would go there again. The people on SR are like 65%. I’m pretty sure 88% is more accurate. You have to go to each school to see if they post NSSE data. </p>

<p>[UW-Madison</a> Academic Planning & Analysis](<a href=“http://apa.wisc.edu/performance_students_surveys.html]UW-Madison”>http://apa.wisc.edu/performance_students_surveys.html)</p>

13

<p>bump…</p>

14

<p>bump…</p>

15

<p>does anyone now how to start a new thread??</p>