Wall Street Journal Feeder Ranking

College Search & Selection
61

<p>For those who asked, here's the "bell curve" which was posted on a thread about the 2006 USN&WR rankings due out in a couple of weeks; hope it helps:</p>

<p>In deference to IvyGrad, I'll post again a bell curve of colleges and universities based on a grading system. Of course the various factors to determine the grade remains comparable; the best in everything gets the A+, etc. Here goes (in alphabetical order):</p>

<p>A+
Harvard
MIT
Princeton
Stanford
Yale</p>

<p>A
Amherst
Brown
Cal Tech
Columbia
Dartmouth
Duke
Georgetown
Penn
Pomona
Swarthmore
U Virginia
Williams</p>

<p>A-
Boston College
Bowdoin
Cal Berkeley
Carleton
Carnegie Mellon
Chicago
Claremont/McKenna
Colgate
Cornell
Davidson
Emory
Grinnell
Harvey Mudd
Haverford
Johns Hopkins
Michigan
Middlebury
Northwestern
Notre Dame
Rice
Tufts
Vassar
WUSTL
Washington & Lee
Wellesley
Wesleyan</p>

<p>B+
Barnard
Bates
Brandeis
Bryn Mawr
Bucknell
Case Western
Colby
Colorado College
Connecticut College
Dickinson
Franklin & Marshall
Furman
George Washington U
Georgia Tech
Gettysburg
Hamilton
Holy Cross
Illinois U-C
Kenyon
Lafayette
Lehigh
Macalester
Mt. Holyoke
New York U
Oberlin
Reed
Rochester
St. Lawrence
Scripps
Skidmore
Smith
Texas
Trinity
UCLA
UCSD
UNC
USC
Vanderbilt
Villanova
Wake Forest
Whitman
William & Mary
Wisconsin</p>

<p>The B schools are then separated out regionally by Northeast, Midwest, South and West.</p>

<p>If anyone's interested in those, would be glad to post; in the meantime, think that the above "bell curve" is more reasonable and fair an assessment due to the minute variables which separate schools in a numerical ranking as well as institutional one (uni vs. LAC, e.g.).</p>

62

<p>Some of my specific disagreements with the list:
Bump UVA down
Bump Caltech & harvey Mudd each one up
Bump Boston College down one.</p>

<p>Exactly what is it a rating of, academics? Selectivity (most certainly not)?</p>

63

<p>Here's my list: I got rid of some of the questionable things on the previous list, like UVA and BC being overranked.</p>

<p>A+
Harvard
Cal Tech
MIT
Princeton
Stanford
Yale</p>

<p>A
Amherst
Brown
Columbia
Dartmouth
Duke
Penn
Swarthmore
Williams</p>

<p>A-
Northwestern
Cornell
Chicago
Johns Hopkins
Pomona</p>

<p>B+
Bowdoin
Cal Berkeley
Carleton
Carnegie Mellon
Claremont/McKenna
Colgate
Davidson
Emory
Georgetown
Grinnell
Harvey Mudd
Haverford
Michigan
Middlebury
Notre Dame
Rice
Tufts
Vassar
WUSTL
Washington & Lee
Wellesley
Wesleyan
U Virginia</p>

<p>B
Barnard
Bates
Boston College
Brandeis
Bryn Mawr
Bucknell
Case Western
Colby
Colorado College
Connecticut College
Franklin & Marshall
George Washington U
Georgia Tech
Hamilton
Holy Cross
Illinois U-C
Kenyon
Lafayette
Lehigh
Macalester
Mt. Holyoke
New York U
Oberlin
Reed
Rochester
Smith
Texas
Trinity
UCLA
UCSD
UNC
USC
Vanderbilt
Villanova
Wake Forest
William & Mary
Wisconsin</p>

64

<p>i don't see how Penn is two levels above Rice</p>

65

<p>I said time and time again that Rice needs to move up one. Do that, and that ranking will be perfect.</p>

66

<p>I agree, move Rice up one notch, my bad. It was hidden and I didnt notice it when revising collegeparent's list.</p>

67

<p>haha alright you are back in my good graces. :)</p>

<p>Cornell needs to move down one. <em>puts on flame retardant suit and runs</em></p>

<p>I kid I kid</p>

68

<p>haha DMC you are just looking for an argument. also i think duke should be dropped a level. we all know why. just look at the school</p>

69

<p>Stan, you are walking on dangerious ground, son. :mad:</p>

<p>I'm not in the mood. :)</p>

70

<p>Rice should be at the very top;)</p>

<p>Edit: Uh, yeah, where is my school pride? Umm...
Hoya! Georgetown should be at the top, too.</p>

71

<p>i dont understand how georgetown is in that category at all, especially when its above Rice.</p>

72

<p>It's not in order inside the tier.</p>

73

<p>I think its best to avoid overall rankings and rank schools with regard to your intended major, like econ, engineering, business, etc. Though still not perfect, it is more accurate, and less misleading in specific circumstances. These rankings are about useless if you wanted to say pursue engineering.
No love for HMC? I think its got the highest SAT scores of the LACs, or at least close to it.</p>

74

<p>Slipper, in the FYI and FWIW category of things: in putting your preferences forward as you've done, you've taken away the concept of a "bell curve" or pyramid and returned to a ranking system instead of a grouping or tiered concept. How people want to change my "bell curve" for their own purposes is up to them and remains an individual decision with individaul reasons for doing so. What I have proposed above is, of course, IMHO. However, I am glad that people seem to prefer this way of grouping to a more numerical list. Thank you for all of the positive comments on this approach.</p>

75

<p>One other thing, Slipper, you might consider. In the "bell curve" concept, the schools you delineate as A- would be closer to the A section and others in that same grouping closer to the B+ (per my original listing, without your change), which is the beauty of using a "bell curve." As you have done, how those schools are placed within those various sections is up to the individual who is wanting a certain size, major, spirit, etc. It is also why I placed them alphabetically within the sections so has to give people "free will" in their decisions. Again, what I have proposed is a boilerplate concept and is not inviolate to personal prejudices and needs. Again, respectfully submitted IMHO.</p>

76

<p>
[QUOTE]
"AA is more complex than simply letting in minorities. At the corporate/ grad school level they use feeder schools like Morehouse as AA. Its much easier than finding people individually. So no cookie for you either!"</p>

<p>So these professional schools get chummy with the predominantly black schools, advertise to those Morehouse kids, to fulfill their 'diversity' obligations?</p>

<p>It's still ultimately AA, but instead of marketing to URMs all over, they market to specific black schools I guess.</p>

<p>mmm, hungry.

[/QUOTE]
</p>

<p>How bolder could you get?!! Are you saying that if 14, only 14 students from Morehouse get into the top preprofessional schools that AA is the sole answer? If AA is the answer, why is there only one HBCU up there? That means school like Spelman & Xavier sent less than 6, I don't call that AA, I would say that means they're only accepting the qualified.</p>

<p>Could it be perhaps the quality of the education you recieve at one school versus the other? Have you actually seen the resumes of any these 14 grads? If you pick up CRISIS magazine you'll see five of them, and I bet you my house that they are on par are eve better than most that you will put up against me mainly because their initiative, the organizationsthat they have started, and pieces they have written.</p>

<p>I would just think over what you're saying...if only a dozen well qualified black students make it into a top grad school, oops RED FLAG!!! Then why don't you look at Stanford, Williams, and Georgetown and guess...out of 313 of those grads, how many were black?</p>

77

<p>back to the OP:</p>

<p>anyone think it more than a coincidence that numbers 1, 3, and 4 are known for grade inflation? Is it much easier to go to grad school from a Garrison Keiler-type school (all kids above average)?</p>

78

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<p>Grade inflation is virtually the same across almost all of the private schools at the top of the list, whether they are "known" for it or not. <a href="http://www.gradeinflation.com%5B/url%5D"&gt;www.gradeinflation.com&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p>

79

<p>Collegeparent, within groups there is no difference in my list either, I just didnt take the time to group alphabetically. I have always advocated this approach, I think that within a group choosing a school should be up to personal preference 100%. Also, I agree that in some fields individual program ranking matters more (USC film, Indiana Voice, Cornell Engineering, etc). For the great majority of people going into non "vocational" paths however, overall school ranking matters much much more than departmental ranking which is almost inimportant. An investment bank could care less whether Chicago has a higher ranked grad econ department than Brown for example, they will see these schools as relative equals with perhaps a slight edge to brown.</p>

80

<p>cre8tive1, the general student body of Morehouse is quite unimpressive, judging by its academics. I do not see any other schools with such credentials doing just as well on this feeder ranking. Thus, Morehouse is an anomaly of sorts. It's possible that among its regular students are a few outstanding ones, but then, shouldn't there be other seemingly nonelite universities/LACs otherwise comparable to Morehouse, in this ranking? All the other schools are comparatively stellar.</p>

<p>The red flag of the school is not its racial makeup, but its lack of academic superiority compared to others on the ranking.
And yet, Howard University, judging by its statistics has better academics, and is also predominantly black, yet does not score well on the ranking.</p>

<p>Also, the whole idea of "qualified" is a fallacy. If 80-90% of the people applying to a school, say Harvard, are qualified, you cannot really admit people on that criteria, now can you? Also, a "qualified" status presupposes a certain absolute minimum, that you must surpass to be considered qualified. I known of none such minimum. Even if there were a certain minimum, most people in college admissions, are not admitted on the basis of if they are qualified or not, but on how they compare to the others in the applicant pool.</p>

<p>Thus, being "qualified" is approximately meaningless, except in cases where that status may distinguish effectively a certain proportion of students from others. In elite undergraduate and graduate school admissions, that is hardly the case.
Isn't qualified an absolute adjective, in that you either are qualified or you are not? (I do not know.)</p>