USNWR Rankings - The Metrics

College Search & Selection
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<p>I always think it is really funny how Georgetown, with its small army of former heads of state, cabinet members and senior government officials-people like Albright, Tenet, Lake, Natsios, Lancaster, Crocker, Oren, Aznar etc. etc. etc. etc. gets dinged in US News because these same superstars lower, in many cases, its percent full time faculty, and faculty with highest degree rankings.
Georgetown gets treated like it is a communuty college using low qualified adjuncts when these very same people are the ones that help to give it its world class standing.</p>

<p>Yeah, George Tenet doesn’t hold a PhD, but you will learn more about intelligence from him than anyone from the pure academic world. Andrew Natsios doesn’t have a PhD but you will learn more about the situation in Sudan and Development Economics from him than anyone on planet earth.</p>

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<p>…or it could be it’s lack of highly ranked departments…</p>

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And one’s peers are experts in the field of education?</p>

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<p>And how many of those department ranking are driven by pure academics coming from a convenional tenure track approaching the rating that way. An interesting question. No doubt, Georgetown would be better served if it had several top PhD programs to go along with its Law School and number one ranked Masters programs in International relations.</p>

<p>Also, Georgetown would be really foolish to fire Tenet or Natsios to “improve” its rating in US News or standing with bow tied academics.</p>

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<p>Especially since it would fail to do either.</p>

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<p>“No doubt, Georgetown would be better served if it had several top PhD programs to go along with its Law School and number one ranked Masters programs in International relations.”</p>

<p>Ya think?</p>

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<p>Especially since a lot of people are apparently dissatisfied with the management they have been getting from Georgetown degreed people like Clinton when he was in the White House, Scalia at the Supreme Court, Gates at the Pentagon, Tarullo on the Federal Reserve Board (see NY Times piece today), Jones at NAtO and now the NSC, Durbin and the other five in the Senate etc.</p>

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<p>vienna man thanks for the info on Georgetown. I have been searching for Georgetown **Nobel laureates **and couldn’t find at least one.</p>

<p>Meanwhile here are a few from UC Berkeley:</p>

<p>**Name - Year - Prize - Affiliation with UC Berkeley **
Akerlof, GeorgeGeorge Akerlof (1940- ) 2001 Economics Professor of Economics (1966-1978, 1980- )
Alvarez, Luis WalterLuis Walter Alvarez (1911-1988) 1968 Physics Professor of Physics (1936-88)
Arber, WernerWerner Arber (1929- ) 1978 Medicine Researcher (1963), Visiting Professor of Molecular Biology (1970-1971)
Blackburn, ElizabethElizabeth Blackburn (1948- ) 2009 Medicine Professor of Molecular Biology (1978-1990)
Bloch, FelixFelix Bloch (1905-1983) 1952 Physics Cyclotron researcher (1939)
Brenner, SydneySydney Brenner (1927- ) 2002 Medicine Researcher (1953), Founder of the Molecular Sciences Institute in Berkeley (1996)
Calvin, MelvinMelvin Calvin (1911-1997) 1961 Chemistry Professor of Chemistry (1947-1997)
Cech, ThomasThomas Cech (1947- ) 1989 Chemistry PhD 1975
Chamberlain, OwenOwen Chamberlain (1920-2006) 1959 Physics Professor of Physics (1958-2006)
Chu, StevenSteven Chu (1948- ) 1997 Physics PhD 1976, Berkeley Lab Director (2004- )
Curl, RobertRobert Curl (1933- ) 1996 Chemistry PhD 1950
Cronin, JamesJames Cronin (1931-) 1980 Physics Researcher at Berkeley Bevatron (1958)
Debreu, G</p>

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<p>I’m not sure this is what is going on. Maybe. But the percent of ft faculty only counts for 1%. The Peer Assessments, which as noted are the single biggest factor at 25%, could override this if the participants believed that these people were making a huge quality contribution not captured in the other numbers.</p>

<p>You have to think about what is likely to matter to “Peers”. Presumably, most of them are professional scholars (or were, for some years.) Have Madeleine Albright or George Tenet made significant contributions to scholarship in their fields? Is there even any evidence,available to academic peers, that they are great teachers? </p>

<p>If you wanted to put together a great Computer Science department, would you go out and hire people like Steve Jobs to come in as part time faculty for a few years after they retire? Does the analogy apply at all to Government/IR?</p>

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<p>I love a good —ing contest (not really but it is entertaining for a moment), Rhodes Scholars since 1964 Berkeley 4, Georgetown, 22.
And Georgetown has about one sixth the enrollment.</p>

<p>And I can’t wait to hear about what a great job Robert McNamara (Cal '37) did at the Pentagon in the 1960s.</p>

<p>But,on a serious and substantial note, Berekeley is challenged with the California Budget crisis and will have a very hard time staying where it is in the academic galaxy.</p>

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<p>Bc,
Re your example for SAT scores, you’ve made a classic academic argument. Accurate in theory, impractical in reality. </p>

<p>The number of students DOES matter as the example that you have drawn is highly, highly, highly unlikely to occur. A 50-point SAT score drop from one student to the next highest ranking student is a reality only in your academic exercise. And you did this twice! </p>

<p>Let’s consider a school that is oft-maligned on CC, eg, Wash U, which has an entering class of 1500 students. Do you really think that they are going to enroll 75th percentile student (375/1500) with an SAT of 1510 and then the next enrolling student (376/1500) will drop 50 points to an SAT of 1440? Or enroll the 25th percentile student (1125/1500) with an SAT of 1440 and then the 1126th student will have an SAT of 1390? Only in academia, kids, do you come up with these kinds of examples……:rolleyes: </p>

<p>I should add that there is very useful standardized test data that USNWR publishes but does not include in its rankings methodology—the % of scorers at or above a certain threshold, eg, 700+, 600+, 30+, etc. IMO, this info provides more insight into the breadth of student quality and real differences between the student bodies of various institutions can often be best seen through this data.</p>

<p>As all of this relates to your statement,</p>

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<p>this is a regular charge coming from partisans of a certain handful of schools, including yours. Is this indictment accurate or is this a response from someone who knows that his/her school can’t keep up? </p>

<p>Maybe you’re right, but the time has come to post something that supports your accusations Please provide real (not theoretical) and specific examples to prove your accusations and how much this boosts a specific college’s USNWR ranking. If you can’t, then please stop with the slander.</p>

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<p>The point about the part time faculty and percent PhDs is not that the people don’t recognize the value of the superstar faculty, it is the fact that poor Georgetown is actually having points deducted for it. Essentially, Georgetown forfeits four percent of the overall rating.</p>

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<p>Georgetown will never get the proper respect from academia and PA scoring. Hell freezes over before that happens. If that’s the imprimatur you are looking for, then move along. </p>

<p>But does anybody outside of academia not give the school enormous credit for its regular access to many of the most powerful people in the USA? For a prospective student, this has faaaaaaaaaaaar more consequence than the fact that UC Berkeley’s PA score of 4.7 is higher than Georgetown’s 4.0. The PA score does a major disservice to prospective students comparing Georgetown to UC Berkeley as neither score properly reflects the undergraduate’s classroom experience. </p>

<p>IMO, both are great schools and either would be an acceptable choice for students (especially for those coming from California). When ranked in tiers for undergrads, I suspect that most observers would place these colleges in the same tier.</p>

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<p>^^^^^ moreover, hawkette, the anti catholic prejudice among the super elite who essentially control the peer review scores goes back decades. Many Catholic schools were at the forefront of a supreme academic experience (and some of them also in sports before Catholic schools fell from athletic grace in the 1960’s, except Notre Dame). Some of those Catholic schools were outrageously discriminated against when some of these conferences were formed, from the Ivy League to the Big Ten and other conferences. Which thus underscores my position that USNWR rankings are about as meaningful and relevant in the grand scheme of things about the purpose of a college education and the kind of graduates which are produced from those esteemed instititutions, as whether squirrels count acorns as they collect them for winter munching. Absurdity upon absurdity.</p>

<p>We should all celebrate the grand choices we have in each school, whether that be a state flagship or a small LAC, each with a mission to provide a superior education to our nation’s young adults…and some older adults as well. </p>

<p>Nothing represents “unprofessionalism” more, to me, than bashing any institution of higher learning, even if that school is third tier or lower. For that school is fulfilling a unique mission to its student body and helping them attain a college degree and become productive citizens in our community and hopefully to resolve some of our nation’s worst problems. Government leaders, CEO’s, champions of social justice, even media moguls have come from schools large and small, top tier to fourth tier. </p>

<p>Its obnoxious to the point of being ODIOUS to do a snotty compare/contrast thread with a condescending tone, arrogant manner and all for the superficial goal of supporting the little club of elitism that USNWR seems to engender. It speaks volumes about character it seems to me. </p>

<p>Whether a student is at Harvard, Princeton, SUNY, CUNY, Hunter College, St. John’s, Fordham, Columbia, NYU, St. Francis College, Bard College, Vassar College, Syracuse, Seton Hall, Rutgers, St. Lawrence Univ, Sarah Lawrence College, Sweet Briar or Bryn Mawr, Connecticut College or Boston College, Wesleyan or Wabash College, Ohio State or Idaho State, (on and on…you see where I am going with this) really doesnt matter for the bigger picture of these fabulous schools-ALL- produce college graduates who go onto become wonderful parents, spouses, community volunteers, business and government executives, non profit executives, or even…dare I say …College Professors. Many graduates of the elite (non pejorative in this context) LAC’s and top 10 National Universities or top Regional Masters Universities go onto teach at some of those so called bottom feeding lower tiered schools. Some PhD’s from Princeton and Harvard are DELIGHTED to have job offers from a four year institution of higher learning as professional educators in a very tough job market, as they are committed to helping young people expand their horizons and open opportunities.</p>

<p>Nor am I naive or ignorant of some semblance of “evaluation” when students pick colleges and looking for “fit” can also include an academic fit for them…trying to determine that even if they got a full ride would they feel like they are in a community of like minded and challenging people or whether they are driving the wrong way down a one way street. We all make private judgements for ourselves, I agree. And in that judgement comes some level of discernment about the quality of education and type of people we want to be around on a daily basis for four years. </p>

<p>But its wrong headed and elitist to assume that all kids with scores above say…1300 on the SAT belong in only the very best schools and all the moderate and mediocre students should be relegated to the lower ranking schools…and then sneered at for being pushed down the ladder of life. This is my pet peave on CC. </p>

<p>I don’t recommend any student with an SAT above 1400 going to a fourth tier school unless its an abject necessity over money. Some students with a 1400 or higher can be very challenged and happy at third tier and up schools if they pick wisely and investigate thoroughly their own personalities/skillset and compare them favorably to those on the campus they are seeking. </p>

<p>My D1 could have been happy at any school academically, but not necessarily socially happy or challenged in a healthy manner. It would not have served her interests to be at a hyper competitive cut throat and frenzied campus. While we went through some bitter disappointments in the college admissions process, looking backwards, where she ended up was a wonderful choice and has been fruitful on every level, transformational. And it has little or nothing to do with USNWR ranking. It had to do with faculty credentials, depth of programs, opportunities for internships, being a true maverick and wanting to experience a different culture away from high school. She may or may not as a rising college senior elect to remain in New York…that is still up in the air and will be determined somewhat by graduate school decisions. But overall the experience has been extraordinary (though far from perfect), which gets us back to my original point.</p>

<p>Let us celebrate the diversity of choice in colleges and universities in our great nation, particularly in these times of peril and great angst. And let us all work together to put an end to the destructive forces of snobbery and elitism here on CC.</p>

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<p>Hawkette, the PA score does not measure classroom experience. Classroom experience for an ENTIRE university cannot be measured. The PA measures the GENERAL OPINION of senior university adminsitators (Presidents and Deans) of the overall quality of undergraduate institutions.</p>

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<p>Look, hawkette, obviously I don’t have detailed statistics on how various schools handle the manipulation of their SAT medians. That’s a closely guarded trade secret in a highly competitive industry. But it’s common knowledge in academia that this goes on. Law schools have been more candid about it than undergraduate institutions, but the process—and the incentives–are exactly the same. Here, for example is what Cornell Law School’s dean of admissions (a former member of the Law School Admissions Council) says about how the game is played:</p>

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<p>[Free: The Rankings, Deconstructed and Examined](<a href=“http://www.law.com/jsp/nylj/PubArticleNY.jsp?id=1202430830141&hbxlogin=1”>http://www.law.com/jsp/nylj/PubArticleNY.jsp?id=1202430830141&hbxlogin=1&lt;/a&gt;)</p>

<p>The implications of what Geiger is saying are clear: it’s the SAT medians that matter, and if a school’s administration wants to increase or even maintain its US News ranking, manipulation of those medians will end up driving its admissions process. It won’t matter so much who’s in the top quartile, or how high their scores are; indeed, the school will not waste a lot of time (or admissions offers) chasing top candidates who are likely to go elsewhere. The way the US News rankings are structured, all that matters is building a class with the highest possible 25th and 75th percentile figures. But if that’s your goal, there are lots of ways to get there, and two classes with identical 25th and 75th percentile medians may have very different profiles at the top, at the bottom, and even with respect to how scores are distributed in the middle 50%.</p>

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Proposed CA budget restores higher education funding.</p>

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And all profs have teaching credentials and/or PhDs in education…and have excellent oratory skills?</p>

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<p>^^ hawkette, you might also take a look at a very interesting prize-winning paper done by a Yale Law student in 2007 (“A Question of Rank” by Shuky Ehrenberg) which provides some pretty convincing empirical evidence that:</p>

<p>1) Many law schools weight LSAT scores and undergrad GPAs more heavily in their admissions decisions than is justified by the predictive value of those metrics as to future law school performance, suggesting to the author (and to any reasonable reader, I think) that schools are using test scores and GPAs “strategically” to boost their US News rankings.</p>

<p>2) Many law schools give more weight to small differences in LSAT scores “at or slightly above” their historic 25th and 75th percentiles than to similar differences in other score ranges. “Since a school’s US News rank relies only on its twenty fifth and seventy fifth percentile LSAT and UGPA scores, students scoring at or slightly above those ranges are far more significant than students scoring outside those ranges.” But the study found high variation among schools with respect to indications of such strategic behavior, which the author attributes to the difficulty of implementing such a sophisticated admissions strategy, coupled perhaps with naive optimism on the part of some adcoms that simply admitting the applicants with the highest LSAT scores will boost their 25th and 75th percentiles (it won’t, as most of the high scorers will go elsewhere).</p>

<p>3) At many schools, the overall distribution of admitted students’ LSAT scores shows strong clustering around the 25th and 75th percentile scores, with a sharp drop-off above the 75th percentile and a trough in the middle, between the 25th and 75th percentiles, again clearly consistent with strategic behavior aimed at influencing the 25th and 75th percentile scores so as to maximize US News rankings. </p>

<p>4) Most schools do not make detailed breakdowns of admissions statistics (e.g., by LSAT or GPA decile) publicly available. The author attributes this to strategic withholding of information so as to maintain high numbers of applicants by keeping applicants who are unlikely to be admitted in the dark about their real chances, though one can imagine other explanations as well. For one, schools successfully engaged in strategic manipulation of LSAT scores might want to keep their competitors in the dark as to the details so as to maintain their competitive edge. For another, revelation of the actual distribution of LSAT scores might reveal that their seemingly impressive 25th/75th percentiles are artificially high, largely the artifact of successful manipulation of the admissions process, and not necessarily reflective of across-the-board strength in the entering class. </p>

<p>The paper is available at:
[url=<a href=“http://digitalcommons.law.yale.edu/ylsspps_papers/]Yale”>http://digitalcommons.law.yale.edu/ylsspps_papers/]Yale</a> Law School Legal Scholarship Repository<a href=“scroll%20down%20to%202007%20submissions”>/url</a></p>

<p>Again, the parallels with undergraduate admissions are obvious. The motivation to engage in this kind of strategic manipulation of admissions decisions is clear, and the pay-off potentially very large. The evidence from law schools is that many, but not all, schools engage in it, and no doubt some are more adept at it than others. All of this strongly suggests that 25th and 75th percentile SAT scores should not be relied upon naively as a neutral “objective” indicator of student body quality.</p>

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<p>sadly, an administrator doesnt even need to manipulate class size caps to skew the data in a significant way. just reclassify the way courses are coded, making former lab ‘subsections’ sections in own their own right and large lectures just combined sections. </p>

<p>for example, consider a huge public university that has 2400 students taking introductory chemistry every fall. the course could be coded as having six ‘sections’ of 400 students each, with 130 lab subsections. or the labs code be coded as separate from the lectures (which is allowed so long as the labs grants their own credit), yielding six sections of 400 students and 130 sections with 19. or the lectures could not be coded at all, yielding only 130 sections with 19 students (with perhaps six 400 student ‘subsections’). identical courses. wildly different reporting of class sizes. all perfectly within the rules.</p>

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<p>and while i agree with bceagles point on sat manipulation, its clearly not going to be as significant as the example portrayed. not a big deal, though, as class rank (given the number of non-reporting applicants) and acceptance rate (given the ease of online applications) are far easier selectivity metrics to manipulate.</p>

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<p>Only if a LARGE portion of their professors are government higher-ups. Having a couple people like Tenet isn’t going to make a big difference in the overall percentage. Does Georgetown not have any professors in other disciplines? Are their math professors ex-CIA as well?</p>