Very good article about USNWR rankings

<p>This is written by Reed College's president and is quite insightful about the shortcomings of the rankings. </p>

<p><a href="http://www.theatlantic.com/doc/200511/shunning-college-rankings%5B/url%5D"&gt;http://www.theatlantic.com/doc/200511/shunning-college-rankings&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p>

<p>It is an interesting article. When I was in HS in Northern CA in the 60s, all the thinkers, the brains applied to Reed or to Berkeley.</p>

<p>Frankly, I wasn't very impressed with the article and the logic. I think we all know that any ranking system is an approximate guide and does not reflect all of the all of the unique characteristics of a school. It is interesting to see that SAT scores and number of applicants are cited to show that Reed does not need to cooperate with the USNWR. These are indeed very important factors used by the USNWR rankings, but I don't understand why Reed does not cooperate in providing the remainder of the 656 pieces of data. </p>

<p>I did not understand the argument that the rankings lead to homogenization and a lack of diversity. The argument seems to be that by not cooperating Reed has more freedom in selecting applicants. This allows more weight to things like class rank and essays. It appears that Reed has some sophisticated techniques to analyze class rank. I guess they can even tell if a student had a couple of burnout teachers and had trouble getting good grades in a few classes. Personally, I also don't have much faith in the essay evaluation system. Reed does have a very high SAT average. If they also do such a great job of selection based on soft criteria, I want to know why less than half of the admitted students graduate.</p>

<p>They go off to change the world.</p>

<p>I hope they are ready and prepared.</p>

<p>Excellent article . . . I always had trouble with US News using peer-ratings because they are so open to manipulation and account for 25% of the overall ranking. What I would like is for US News to make the rankings configurable, i.e. a student would define the weight provided each of the metrics, though the total still needs to be 100%. That would change the ranking according to what was most important to that particular student . . . and most certainly decrease the importance of the peer ratings.</p>

<p>edad,</p>

<p>I suspect that Reed would argue that the school can be more rigorous and that their grading policy may encourage students to move on to schools where they feel more validated, i.e. grade inflation.</p>

<p>Reading the article it seems to me that they feel that they have enough oversight from the accreditation bodies so they do not need US News. However, these accreditation bodies could also be viewed as educational echo chambers that may not provide enough oversight.</p>

<p>Personally, I just use US News as one data source. They provide a tremendous service in the information that they can gather . . . though I still find the peer rankings a bit suspicious.</p>

<p>I think the rankings are helpful, but I agree only as a very general measure. Even as some sort of overall measure of quality, there is clearly a lot of error in the system. Maybe at the top the rankings are accurate within plus or minus 5 schools. For the middle of the rankings it is probably more like plus or minus 10 or 20 schools. </p>

<p>I don't believe the rankings are highly important. I just was not impressed with the arguments for not participating. Actually my D did not use the USNWR ranking in making her initial selection. She reviewed every school in the Princeton Review 351 book. I looked up Reed and her one comment was "Too small." Based on what she was looking for that ended any further consideration.</p>

<p>Jay Mathews didn't like the article much
<a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/10/04/AR2005100400388.html%5B/url%5D"&gt;http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/10/04/AR2005100400388.html&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p>

<p>my observations why Reed has a lower graduation rate
It is very small- much smaller than many present day high schools
Some students decide that they need a school with larger depts so that they have a wider range of course selection ( or potential boyfriend/girlfriends?)
Aid is not always great
While my daughter has gotten good grants, some students find that attending a school that is more expensive than Harvard and that admittedly many people have never heard of, is something that they feel differently about than when they entered, especially when you throw in the grade deflation, the rigor and intensity of the studies and being halfway across the country from their family and friends.
Living in the Northwest, I have met many people who have attended Reed for a year or two, then transfered someplace, cheaper, larger, less demanding. They still have very fond memories of Reed, and many have lifelong friends that they met at Reed, but it does seem like a weed out program for grad school sometimes.
On the other hand, the people I know that have graduated from Reed, have gone on to tackle the world as someone said above.
A neurologist that we know said "compared to Reed- medical school was a snap" * of course that was OLDE REED * ;)</p>

<p>Quick correction: 70% of incoming freshlings graduate within 6 years. That number has been steadily increasing for several years. Reed makes it VERY easy for students to take time off, so the four-year rate is slightly irrelevant.</p>

<p>To add to EK4's reasons why it's "only" 70%, I would point out that Reed has VERY high standards, requiring that students pass a qualifying exam at the end of their junior year and requiring an extensive senior thesis of ALL students. There are no "soft" majors for students who don't want to work hard. </p>

<p>The committment of their faculty is enormous. In my D's playwriting class, she is 6 weeks in and has written three or four short plays alread, each of which has been extensively commented and discussed with her instructor. Comments run as long as a page or more.</p>

<p>IMHO, Diver most objects to the "peer evaluation" part of the rankings. If you notice in the rankings, the peer scores are influential, and--as Diver points out--completely subjective. They don't ask college presidents to rank only the six schools they know most about (and how much can they really know?)--they ask them to rank huge numbers of schools.</p>

<p>In truth, accrediting bodies for colleges and universities are a crock. I've been involved in preparing our own university for its decennial accreditation review, and really all they can do is assure that there is some accountability in what colleges do and say but otherwise do nothing to assure quality. That said, USNEWS does even less to assure either accountability or quality than do accrediting bodies.</p>

<p>Frankly, Reed seems to enjoy the rewards of its "rebellion" against USN. Inasmuch as a I am a relentless vocal critic of USN, Reed is NOT a school that is discriminated by USN. Quite to the contrary, they got MORE attention than they deserve and their ranking is very much in line with their statistics. </p>

<p>In fact, it is a shame that Reed gets a LOT more publicity than schools such as Carleton, Colby, or Washington and Lee. Without its iconoclastic position, when discussing the rankings, Reed would not get more ink than Grinnell or the University of Richmond, and deservedly so. </p>

<p>Further, this is the second mention of a great article in Atlantic Monthly. With regard to the 2006 College edition, I found the issue EXTREMELY disappointing. While they started with a noteworthy irreverence in 2003-2004, this year is much ado about nothing. Was I impressed with the "revelation" of college enrollment? Absolutely not, this subject is old news for anyone who spends time reading the strategic report published by schools. Their article was also immensely one-sided as most of the voices were the consultants'. </p>

<p>I would be more interested in reading the position of James Fallows on the the currents state of the USN rankings than reading how it is viewed by the Reed officials. In the case of the Reed article, it was nothing more than giving a platform to Reed's Prez to EXPLAIN how different his school is. Yet, finding the causes of the stated differences in the presence of USNews is a rather farfetched proposal. Reed is what it is because that is what it wants to do. If Reed really turned their back to the USN rankings, I'd expect the school to simply SHUT UP about them. Don't wanna play? Fine, but leave the other kids alone and do not invent an illusory superiority. And this superiority is ENTIRELY illusory as Reed would not fare BETTER in the rankings were it to cooperate. </p>

<p>When it comes to image and marketing, it all comes to games and smoke and mirrors. Reed is as much a player as the most notorious ones such as Penn or Brown. So, please Mr. Reed prez spare us the image of the poor Western ingenue!</p>

<p>"U.S. News' top 20 liberal arts colleges have an even larger contingent of little-known schools. Pomona is my favorite example since I have a child there, and when I say the college's name, most people ask me where it is. On that list, I am willing to accept Amherst, Wellesley and Vassar as household names, but not Carleton or Davidson or Claremont McKenna. Those latter schools have excellent student faculty ratios and freshman retention rates, and deserve close attention, which is what the U.S. News rankings give them."</p>

<p>Even when he pens an article I SHOULD agree with, he forces me to shake my head negatively. How can someone spend time RESEARCHING subjects, have access to the upper-ups at US News, be paid handsomely for his efforts, and still know LESS about it than the average CC parent. </p>

<p>So, according to Mr. Know-it-all, Carleton, Davidson, and CMC deserve closer attention because of their "excellent student faculty ratios and freshman retention rates." Had Mr. Matthews READ the USNews tables, he MIGHT have noticed that about EVERY school listed in the first ONE HUNDRED liberal arts colleges has student-facutly ratios bello 14-1, with the majority in a nrrow band of 9-1 to 11-1. Some schools, despite havin overall average scores, have a ratio below 7-1. Do they deserve to be considered on par with Amherst and Pomona and deserve close attention? But, he did not even pick a "good" second criterion to let his batting average be 50% ... he had to pick the freshman retention rate to explain his example. Inasmuch as Carleton, Davidson, and CMC have very good percentages, schools such as Wheaton or Beloit have BETTER scores. </p>

<p>Way to pick the criteria that offer the least difference among all schools! Reading the tables of USNews critically is really not that hard, but it seems to be an exercise well beyond the analytical capabilities of the Washington Post guru. </p>

<p>/sigh</p>

<p>If truth be told, I think Reed would get a lot more applications if it were ranked in the first tier by USNews than where it is now, and on net it has not benefited from standing outside the system -- at least in terms of applications. The figures that Diver cites about Reed's increasing application percentages over the last ten years are (I think) surpassed by many schools. What Reed gains is indeed what you mention, that standing outside USNews reinforces Reed's claim to distinctiveness and allows them to call attention to their curriculum and other distinctions. But again, on balance, there are many many high school students and their parents who do look at rankings and many of those hardly look beyond them.</p>

<p>About 40 years ago when I was looking for colleges to apply to, I got a list of excellent liberal arts colleges from my uncle, a college professor (at Caltech), and this included Pomona, Reed, Carleton, Grinnell, Amherst, Swarthmore, Oberlin, and Antioch, among others. Except for Antioch, these are all still among the best LAC's in the country. School quality doesn't change a lot from year to year. School reputations -- both among those in the business and the average consumer-- also don't change all that much, and I don't think the USNews has markedly affected them. A lot of the apparent "popularity" of colleges, as reflected in application rates, has more to do with population growth and location than with changes in quality of the schools. To some extent popular perceptions may be indirectly shaped by the way such popularity is translated into acceptance rates and yields, and hence into rankings, by USNews. But by and large if you focus on what happens to graduates of the schools you can pretty well figure out which are academically the strongest. But you have to look beyond the USNews for this kind of information because USNews has never focused on such "output" or "outcomes."</p>