USNWR Slanted in favor of the Northeast

College Search & Selection
121

<p>Let me take one more crack at my brilliant point in post #100 which everybody ignored...CAUSE AND EFFECT!!! </p>

<p>The acceptance rate, yield, and applications per spot DON'T cause a college to be good or bad. The perceived academic excellence may be the first CAUSE in applicants/yield/applications per spot; then the non-academic factors (size, price, financial aid, name recognition, sports, campus beauty, weather, location, etc.) further refine the application/yield/applications per spot stats, up or down...up if the school has what are perceived to be net attractive aspects, and down if it has what are perceived to be net unattractive aspects. (Of course most of these factors will be a plus for some students and a minus for others--like some students would see cold weather as a plus, and some as a minus).</p>

<p>So:
perceived academic quality +/- net non-academic factors = what determines applications, yield, applications per spot</p>

<p>The reason there will be variations in rank for the same school among applications, yield, and applications per spot rankings is that the non-academic factors applicable for each of these are not the same (although the academic quality would seem to be a constant). For example, a school with EA, minimal essay questions, and a low application fee would seem to have things that would increase its # of applications relative to a comparable school that has ED, wacky essay questions, and a high application fee. But those factors wouldn't seem to be applicable to yield...whereas something like financial aid WOULD affect yield.</p>

<p>So even if Princeton and NW were exactly equal in academics, that doesn't mean they are equal academics as perceived by 17-year-olds, and it sure as hell doesn't mean they are equal in non-academic factors that have a big impact on applications/yield/applications per spot.</p>

<p>By the way, this approach is handy with explaining away anomolies like BYU-Hawaii and WashU (great non-academic factors: weather for the former, public relations blitzes by the latter).</p>

122

<p>Brown has a 95% 6-year graduation rate which ranks fourth in the USNWR rankings after Harvard (98%), Princeton (97%) and Yale (96%). Interestingly, this factor alone carries a 16% weighting in the calculation of a school’s USNWR score. By contrast, the Student Selectivity score (made up of average SAT/ACT score, # of students in top 10% and top 25%, and total admittance rate) is worth only 15%. In measuring the quality of the education product that one can find at a college, I would expect that Student Selectivity would carry significantly more weight than how many students graduated within a six-year time period. As a result of this arbitrary, high weighting by USNWR of a school’s 6-year graduation rate, this perpetuates the high ranks of the Ivy League schools as 8 of the top 10 ranked schools under this measure were Ivy schools (the lowest was Dartmouth with 93%).</p>

123

<p>hawkette, do you have the rankings by Student Selectivity Score? I can't imagine that this list is going to be radically different.</p>

<p>KK, your latest list looks pretty good to me:
- As TG very well notes, popularity (or demand) isn't always driven by the factors that you and I (or other CC members) would place as the most important
- WashU (as TG notes) has benefited from a massive marketing campaign
- Tufts is one of the most notorious safeties - they even have a phenomenon named after them as a result of this: "Tufts Syndrome" (yield protection)</p>

<p>In the end, all of this doesn't change the fact that Princeton is not only more selective than NW, it is in higher demand by HS students - which is evident by the applications it receives both overall and per spot available and further validated by its nearly unbeatable yield (vs. non-HYPSM schools) - i.e. vs. a school such as NW.</p>

<p>Nothing you have written changes these facts nor have you made any compelling arguments disputing any of the above.</p>

<p>At the end of the day, I'm not sure what you are trying to argue: that NW is better than Princeton despite the fact that virtually every statistical measurement dictates otherwise?</p>

124

<p>“At the end of the day, I'm not sure what you are trying to argue: that NW is better than Princeton despite the fact that virtually every statistical measurement dictates otherwise?”</p>

<p>I never once said Northwestern is better than Princeton, and in fact, I have said the contrary in this very thread, so you can quit that assertion. My argument is, and has always been, that admissions rates not only do not dictate how good a school, there is no correlation between admissions rates and the academic strength of a school. Further, my hypothetical was just to show that, if it wanted one year, Northwestern (or many other schools for that matter) could have the SAME admissions rate as Princeton. I only make the comparison because I believe it’s commonly held that Princeton is overall a better undergraduate institution. And thus, I find it impossible that the strength of a school could be tied to its admissions rate, especially when the rate can be modified so easily. </p>

<p>“it is in higher demand by HS students - which is evident by the applications it receives both overall and per spot available”</p>

<p>I believe Northwestern gets more overall applicants than Princeton, but this changes from year to year, so who knows. Also, Princeton may get more per spot, but that’s because it’s SMALLER, like I have already shown. Also like I’ve shown, WashU gets mot apps per spot than Harvard and Tufts more than Stanford, so, I don’t know where you’re going with that bogus argument.</p>

<p>"In the end, all of this doesn't change the fact that Princeton is not only more selective than NW"</p>

<p>-Tell me, what makes a school more selective? How do you know Princeton is more selective? I'm not saying that it's not, but I'd like to know how you know it is so, other than your beliefs.</p>

125

<p>"As TG very well notes, popularity (or demand) isn't always driven by the factors that you and I (or other CC members) would place as the most important"</p>

<p>"So even if Princeton and NW were exactly equal in academics, that doesn't mean they are equal academics as perceived by 17-year-olds, and it sure as hell doesn't mean they are equal in non-academic factors that have a big impact on applications/yield/applications per spot."</p>

<p>-Also....I agree with these things.</p>

126

<p>Prestige, My point was not that schools should be ranked by Selectivity alone, although I agree with your point that this has some bearing on judging the relative quality of a school’s student body. I was just surprised that 6-year graduation rates are given more weight than selectivity. In response to your question and in follow-up to my prior posts about the factors that, IMO, most affect the quality of the undergraduate experience while one is a student (Faculty Resources-USNWR weighting of 20%, Selectivity-15%, and Financial Resources-10%), here is an adjusted ranking:</p>

<p>Numbers shown as follows: Faculty Resources rank (20% of recalculated score), Selectivity rank (15%), Financial Resources rank (10%), Score, New Rank, Change from current USNWR rank</p>

<p>1 Princeton 2 4 13 2.3 5 -4
2 Harvard 3 1 8 1.55 2 0
3 Yale 6 2 2 1.7 3 0
4 CalTech 4 4 1 1.5 1 3
4 Stanford 13 8 8 4.6 9 -5
4 MIT 15 2 5 3.8 8 -4
7 Upenn 1 8 7 2.1 4 3
8 Duke 4 11 12 3.65 7 1
9 Uchicago 6 22 10 5.5 11 -2
9 D’mouth 17 11 10 6.05 13 -4
9 Columbia 13 6 16 5.1 10 -1
12 WashU 6 6 4 2.5 6 6
12 Cornell 11 22 18 7.3 16 -4
14 N'west 9 17 14 5.75 12 2
15 Brown 18 10 27 7.8 18 -3
16 JHU 40 22 3 11.6 20 -4
17 Rice 15 11 24 7.05 15 2
18 Emory 12 15 16 6.25 14 4
18 Vandy 10 26 15 7.4 17 1
20 N Dame 23 17 39 11.05 19 1</p>

<pre><code>Result

Ranks 1-5: Caltech, Harvard, Yale, Penn, Princeton

Ranks 6-10: WashU, Duke, MIT, Stanford, Columbia

Ranks 11-15: Uchicago, N'western, Dartmouth, Emory, Rice

Ranks 16-20: Cornell, Vanderbilt, Brown, Notre Dame. Johns Hopkins

</code></pre>

<p>Thus, among the Ivies, only Penn improves its ranking which tells me that the other Ivy schools make less of a commitment to current undergraduates than most of their non-Ivy competitor schools. This actually makes good business sense as the Ivy schools have great prestige (and those high PAs that will boost their USNWR ranking) and don’t have to spend as much to impress students and thus are not penalized for their lower effort to serve the needs of current students. In fact, I suspect that many students are just so happy to call themselves students/graduates of an Ivy school that they would accept even less.</p>

<p>As for the non-Northeastern schools, all of those currently ranked in the 10-20 range see their ranking improve and sometimes dramatically. My interpretation is that, according to factors that directly affect what the student will encounter on campus, the Midwestern and Southern schools are more concerned with delivering a quality undergraduate experience and are putting their pocketbooks to work to deliver this.</p>

127

<p>
[quote]
other Ivy schools make less of a commitment to current undergraduates...

[/quote]
</p>

<p>Assuming that Dartmouth is an outlier to the above comment, since it has few grad programs, and none in humanities and social sciences?</p>

128

<p>kk,</p>

<p>im happy that you have your own wonderful hypothesis, but its not right.</p>

<p>the facts are the top schools in general have the lowest admittence rates. you can't hypothesize something like "having NW reduce its class size by 40% and not tell anyone" and use it as evidence when you can't even test the hypothesis.</p>

<p>of course there are other factors that determine how many applications a school gets. If you were to stick princeton in manhattan, i bet it would get more applications. Ship harvard into south dakota, and I bet the number of applications drop. but regardless, the admissions percentages COUPLED with the strength of the incoming class (which coincide because there are more top students then there are spots in top schools) can be obvious indicators of how good a school is.</p>

<p>now, before anyone goes crazy, i still think making an argument over "school A with 15% admittence rate is obviously better than school B because its admittance rate is 25%" is ridiculous - other things come into consideration at that point, but the top top schools, with the lowest admittence rates, are better than mediocre schools with higher admittence rates. Why? because as i said above, there are more top students than spots in top colleges, and most if not all top students apply to top colleges - yet there is an abundance of middle of the road schools and middle of the road colleges.</p>

129

<p>"most if not all top students apply to top colleges - yet there is an abundance of middle of the road schools and middle of the road colleges."</p>

<p>Jags, if I recall correctly, you're from NJ. Your quote ^ is probably right for NJ, NY, and Eastern PA, but it certainly is a stretch to say even "most" top students across the country apply to "top colleges," much less "all." I'd say most top students apply to several state colleges in their state--not necessarily even the best state colleges in their state. Similarly, in Canada, the majority of students seem to go to whatever college is nearby, and going outside of one's province is often seen as quite an extravagance.</p>

130

<p>“im happy that you have your own wonderful hypothesis, but its not right.”</p>

<p>-Same to you.</p>

<p>“you can't hypothesize something like "having NW reduce its class size by 40% and not tell anyone" and use it as evidence when you can't even test the hypothesis.”</p>

<p>-Make me president of the university and I could test it…. :rolleyes: </p>

<p>Also, like I said, if the school reduced its class by that percentage its admission rate would drop. It’s not just my belief, it’s plain fact. If, after it received all its applications, the university decided it only wanted a class of 12 or 1300 in stead of 2000, it would have a lower admissions rate. I see nothing fallacious about this statement. I really don’t care what people’s personal views of different schools are, Northwestern included, but the facts are the facts. If, for whatever reason, one year Northwestern wanted to stretch and get a 10% admissions rate, it could. Plain and simple. </p>

<p>“because there are more top students then there are spots in top schools”</p>

<p>Uh, exactly…. So, if you REDUCE spaces in a top college, then what will happen???? It’s admissions rate will lower!</p>

131

<p>Bluebayou,</p>

<p>The measurement that I utilized is taken directly from the USNWR data which is supposed to be for undergraduate programs. I make no allowance for how dedicated a school might be toward undergraduate vs graduate programs. The score that I created removes the Peer Assessment (which many believe is a lousy indicator, if not total bs) which is 25% of the ranking, the Retention and Graduation ranks (combined 25% of the ranking), and the Alumni Giving rank (5%). Dartmouth ranks well in Retention with rank of 8th, and Alumni Giving with rank of 2nd and these are the main drivers of its 2007 USNWR overall rank of 9th. On the scores of Faculty Resouces (20% of ranking), Selectivity (15%), and Financial Resources (10%), Dartmouth is less strong as it ranks only 17th, 11th, and 10th. The statistics that I chose show just how much money and effort a school is putting into delivering a strong undergraduate program. So, yes, I agree that Dartmouth has few graduate programs, but relative to the other top 20 schools, Dartmouth appears to dedicate comparatively fewer resources to faculty and students. As I said before, this makes sense to me (as it does for all of the Ivy schools) as they have this prestige advantage which translates operationally into being able to get away with spending less money while not damaging their overall USNWR rank.</p>

132

<p>"This lack of change is what fuels my bias charge. "</p>

<p>Hawkette, you don't seem to understand how universities maintain their reputations and standard of education.</p>

<p>First of all, endowment has an enormous impact on the quality of an established university. All the old Northeast schools have had hundreds of years to accumulate the wealth that enables them to hire the best faculty, build the best facilities, and acquire more holdings through the success of their alumni. Yes, the rich get richer, even at the institution level. These top-notch resources attract the best students - and that further improves (or maintains, if you will) the reputation. Schools like Dartmouth have incredible donations from alumni that allow the college to continue on the same path of excellence. </p>

<p>Next, state schools, no matter what part of the country, will generally fall below the privates because of their charter. Recessions severely limit their spending, and often the state assembly must approve any major expenditures. A few years ago, most state schools, including the those at the very top, had a freeze on hiring new faculty because of state budget concerns. How can they compete with the Ivies? To me, it's amazing that some of the best state universities have managed to hold onto their spots given their restrictions.</p>

<p>Peer assessments are indeed influenced by research, but also by distinguished faculty and alumni. The quality of the students from these institutions who go on to grad school play a large part as well. For example, if the pre-med undergraduates at Harvard are more likely to graduate in the top of their med school classes, then of course peer institutions are going to rank the school high. The bigger the spread in individual undergraduate ability, the lower the peer assessment. You can have some of the top students in the US at UNC, but you also have some less-than-excellent ones, thus lowering the assessment. Schools such as Stanford are ranked at the top because they are as selective as the top Northeast schools. UNC, and even Duke and Rice, are not nearly as selective, and their applicant pool, while impressive, is not the same as HYPSM. That affects peer assessment as well.</p>

<p>The USNWR rankings are flawed - and everyone here knows it. Still, we cannot help but be influenced by them, and the universities themselves acknowledge that they cannot afford to ignore them either. It's important to know that there isn't a heckuva lot of difference between #5 and #10, and between #15 and #20. Or (heresy!) between #5 and #15. The differences are subtle, and that shows up every time the rankings shift, even a little. Does anyone believe that these schools have changed the quality of their education to account for a two spot drop or rise? I hope not.</p>

133

<p>Momwaiting,</p>

<p>Thanks for your extensive and reasoned response. It may surprise you to know that I agree with a large part of what you have written, especially about state schools and their current/future funding challenges. I concur that the differences between # 5 and # 20 are subtle, negligible, perhaps even non-existent, but these non-Northeastern schools never seem to get the same respect or treatment as their Ivy peers. </p>

<p>Your post supports my point that the Ivies enjoy great institutional and media advantages that comparatively boosts and sustains their ranking. The Ivies are all excellent schools and deserve much of the acclaim that they receive, particularly HYP. My point, however, is that they don’t have a monopoly on great undergraduate educations and my consistent contention has been that, due to their Ivy association and Northeastern location, the remaining five Ivies (and particularly Cornell and Brown) are over ranked relative to the excellent Top 20 schools located in the Midwest and the South (eg, Rice, Northwestern, Emory, Vanderbilt, Notre Dame). In today’s devolved educational world, knowledge and excellence does not reside just in the Northeast and/or just in the Ivy League. According to the USNWR data, these Midwestern & Southern schools are objectively compensating for their relative lack of history and national prestige by offering an undergraduate educational experience that is the equal of (or even superior to) that offered by the lower tier of the Ivy League. Nonetheless, as a result of their lower PAs and the arbitrarily heavy USNWR weighting on Retention/Graduation rates, these Midwestern & Southern schools continuously receive short shrift from the final USNWR rankings (not to mention the Northeast-dominated MSM). Hence, my charge of bias.</p>

134

<p>I don't believe the Midwestern and Southern schools "receive short shrift." Their rankings reflect the institutional strengths and weaknesses - and if funding limits upgrading, say, the molecular biology department, then they do not compete with the better endowed schools. An anecdote (I can't say whether it's true or not across the board): someone - a graduate of one of those esteemed non-Northeast schools - told me that the idea of giving back to one's undergraduate college is a foreign one for his fellow alumni. So . . . if the alumni don't give back, the university cannot continue to meet the expectations/needs of its students and therefore its peers. </p>

<p>There is no bias here. The peer assessments are honest ones. All the schools in the top ten belong there. All the schools in the top twenty belong there. What is questionable is the relative ranking of them - and that has less to do with peer bias than the weighting of specific factors by USNWR. </p>

<p>As for being able to get a quality education beyond the top ten, you are absolutely correct. You could get one even from one lower than the USNWR top 50, depending on how you take advantage of the university's resources. Granted, it's more difficult when only twenty percent of your university's professors are great than when eighty percent are, but it can be done.</p>

<p>Many here on CC focus too much on quantitative measures. They have lost sight of what an education is about. How else you can explain CCers telling someone who wants to go to Boston College instead of Berkeley that he is crazy?</p>

135

<p>Privates have had money problems too. Not very long ago Yale and Stanford had to do some cutting. I am sure others did too when the market tanked in 2000. While they are late to the party some of the top fundraisers with fast growing endowments are publics.</p>

<p>Top institutions in fundraising total support 2004-2005</p>

<p>Stanford University $603,585,914
University of Wisconsin at Madison $595,215,891
Harvard University $589,861,000
University of Pennsylvania $394,249,685
Cornell University $353,931,403
Columbia University $341,140,986
University of Southern California $331,754,481
Johns Hopkins University $323,100,408
Indiana University $301,060,946
University of California at San Francisco $292,932,382
Yale University $285,706,955
University of California at Los Angeles $281,552,472
Duke University $275,815,542
University of Minnesota $265,498,507
University of Washington $259,118,639
University of Michigan $251,353,272
New York University $247,126,717
Massachusetts Institute of Technology $206,007,428
Ohio State University $204,598,172
University of California at Berkeley $198,863,654</p>

136

<p>Do you know how those numbers break down per student? All in all, though, that looks like good news. Because many of those schools are "late to the party," it might take a while to build up the endowment at the publics.</p>

137

<p>"Do you know how those numbers break down per student"</p>

<p>Who cares? Isn't it more important how the money is being spent and not that one school has more per student than another?</p>

138

<p>Michigan already has around $6 Billion total, UVa around $4 Billion, Wisconsin $3.5 Billion, the Texas System over $10 Billion so the money is coming in pretty fast.</p>

139

<p>momwaiting </p>

<p>Your post implies that the Ivy schools have a significant competitive advantage because of their endowment size and alumni giving participation. You may be surprised that the numbers of the Midwestern and Southern schools are, in many cases, superior to some of the lower Ivies (HYP are in a different stratosphere). However, I would concede that Northwestern and Vanderbilt, while wealthy schools, are significantly behind these Ivies. </p>

<p>According to the most recent data shown on the USNWR website, the endowments, alumni giving % and alumni giving rank are as follows:</p>

<p>Penn (4.37bn, 40%, 7th)
Columbia (5.19bn, 35%, 16th)
Dartmouth (3.08bn, 50%, 2nd)
Cornell (3.83bn, 35%, 16th)
Brown (na, 38%, 10th)</p>

<p>Northwestern (2.13bn, 29%, 29th)
Rice (3.75bn, 37%, 13th)
Emory (4.35bn, 36%, 15th)
Vanderbilt (2.60bn, 27%, 30th)
Notre Dame (3.69bn, 48%, 3rd)</p>

<p>Duke (3.89bn, 44%, 5th)
WashU (4.38bn, 38%, 10th)
UChicago (3.96bn, 33%, 20th)</p>

<p>As for the PA, no one is questioning whether the answers are honest, but I am questioning whether they are informed. Voting college presidents, provosts and admissions deans know their neighbors best and know less about the quality of the faculty or the students on more distant campuses such as Rice, Emory, Vanderbilt, Notre Dame, etc. Coupled with the lack of MSM coverage, the lack of familiarity creates an obstacle for the Midwestern & Southern schools which leads to lower PA ratings and lower USNWR rankings. Perhaps, as a previous poster wrote, it is just the way of the world as the Northeast dominates many aspects of American life. But, IMO, the current USNWR methodology misleads the high school student who is searching for a college and using the USNWR rankings as a guide.</p>

140

<p>I don't know where that endowment number for Northwestern came from, but the school has a 5.9 Billion endowment...</p>