<p>xiggi, you are obviously flame-baiting. I wonder why the moderators have allowed you to post something as stupid as that one… Those pictures weren’t mine. if I used them in the past, I only borrowed them (and a few more) from other people’s accounts. </p>
<p>I’d now call the attention of the moderators to check on xiggi’s flame-baiting posts.</p>
<p>No flame baiting whatsoever. I only joked about the medical school and the pictures you linked on this site. Next time, I’ll add one of those smilies! </p>
<p>I am not sure why you felt the need to deny your past contributions.</p>
<p>Well, as they say, you resort to ad hominem attacks when you could no longer debate rationally… lol</p>
<p>in defense of my cyber-friend xiggi, I have never seen one of his/her posts even come close to an ad hominen. Further, unlike some on cc, xiggi does not tend to mistate someones opinions by making up words. </p>
<p>OTOH, xiggi does have a rapier wit; but s/he also takes as well as gives. :D</p>
<p>The first three are beautiful pictures! Thanks for sharing xiggi!</p>
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<p>Well, consider what they’re measuring. Jackson State is serving a predominantly low-income student body: 72% of its students receive Pell grants—versus 6% at WUSTL and Tulane; 7% at Northwestern; 8% at Notre Dame, UVA, William & Mary, and Vanderbilt; 9% at Duke and Auburn; and 10% at Georgia Tech and Va Tech. And although Jackson State’s graduation rate is low at 47%, that’s nearly double the graduation rate that would be expected given the socioeconomic profile of its student body (27%). So Washington Monthly is rewarding Jackson State for doing a pretty good job at the thankless niche task it’s undertaken, of taking in kids from economically challenged backgrounds and getting a reasonably high percentage of them to successfully complete college. I say, thank God for Jackson State.</p>
<p>In contrast, Ole Miss, the state’s flagship, has only 20% of its student body on Pell grants—though on that score it’s actually doing more than some publics, like UVA, William & Mary, Auburn, Georgia Tech, and Va Tech. But Ole Miss has a graduation rate of only 60%—only a little better than Jackson State, and just ever-so-slightly better than its predicted rate of 56%. So which school is doing a better job of creating avenues of upward social mobility for low-income Mississippians? Washington Monthly thinks it’s Jackson State, by a wide margin. They rank Jackson State #9 in the country, largely on the strength of the opportunities it creates for low-income students. They rank Ole Miss #136 because in a way, it does less with more—taking fewer economically challenged kids, probably spending significantly more per student, and still ending up with a pretty poor outcome, as measured by its graduation rate. </p>
<p>I’m not sure that’s such a crazy or un-credible judgment.</p>
<p>blue, I remember this person who made absurd claims such as Berkeley is not worth the OOS price, and when I asked him/her why s/he thinks so, s/he suddenly vanished from the thread. That person happens to have the same name as you. What a shock! </p>
<p>And, oh, yeah, xiggi insulted me many times. He even PMed me when he thought I was siding with sakky when they had this little “misunderstanding”. What a character! He threatens and insults members when they do not agree with him or his ideas. He did that to me, to UCBChemgrad and to a few members of this forum who happened to have high respect for Michigan and other elite State Us, at least. Maybe that’s how democracy works… lol </p>
<p>Anyways, back to the thread’s topic.</p>
<p>It’s delightful to see surveys that put value on “outputs” rather than “inputs”. This maybe is unique to some of you, but it presents the other side of the story. It presents the universities’ responsibilities and their obligations in order to remind themselves of why they existed in the first place. Academic institutions are not all about business. They also have an accountability and obligations to those that they educate and to society at large. </p>
<p>If this ranking/survey is debatable, so are the others.</p>
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<p>You can thank the person who did not post them in the first place! :)</p>
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<p>this made me chuckle as well. UCR can now officially say that it’s better than harvard haha.</p>
<p>i’ve seen discussions like this come up in the past. All that rankings like this seem to show me is that people think that a ranking is legitimate only if it has HYSPCM as the top schools. (i.e. it mirrors USNWR) There are obviously many different rankings for many different reasons. All test different criteria, and hence, have different methadology. Also, why isn’t UCM on here? i would imagine a majority of its students get pell grants.</p>
<p>^^ </p>
<p>Different rankings do serve a purpose, especially when the methology is clearly identified and when the rankings do not pretend to identify the “Best Colleges.”</p>
<p>One might disagree with the relevance of the methodology used by WM (I do for) but we should applaud the fact that their rankings are simple and allow for re-ranking on a column-by-column basis. </p>
<p>An astute reader of the various rankings might decide to apply his or her own criteria to develop a list of “interesting” colleges and universities. </p>
<p>In all cases, the poorest use of any of the rankings (including the USNews) is to focus on the ranked outcome. The only value of the ranks stems from the underlying data. Anyone who looks at how well this or that school is ranked is missing the point by a mile. Abyone who crows about the results … well, fill your own blank about the delusion.</p>
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Assessing input and output is interesting, certainly. Does this ranking do that? If your goal is simply to acquire a college degree - any college degree - without concern for quality, then the current measurement is perfectly fine. If you’re interested in measuring how much a college actually changes and improves its students, however, the measurement is decidedly lacking. </p>
<p>As the ranking stands right now, a college has to do only three things to do well in social mobility:
[ul][<em>]Be extremely easy to get into
[</em>]Have extremely easy classes
[li]Be extremely cheap[/ul][/li]That’s all. No need for mentoring. No need for research support. No need for career advising so that graduates actually get (decent) jobs. </p>
<p>I’m familiar with one of the schools that does fairly well in the social mobility column. It has a high rate of Pell Grant recipients (>40%) and has a decent graduation rate. Unfortunately, many recruiters and people in the surrounding area treat the school as a joke because many classes are taught at a remedial high school level, and a degree from there says little about a student. The school isn’t doing anything amazing to turn coal into diamonds – it’s simply dumbing down the material enough that students can pass their classes and get their degrees.</p>
<p>A better measurement would have some way of assessing actual improvement by a college. A college with a track record of admitting poor science students but having a disproportionately high student publication rate in prestigious journals, for example, or a college that admits subpar students but has extremely high LSAT and MCAT scores.</p>
<p>Seriously, how many people would pass up Columbia to go to Syracuse or Jackson State???</p>
<p>Notice some of the big year over year swings in these rankings:</p>
<p>School … 2010 to 2011 ranking change
UT Austin …19 to 5
UC Riverside …40 to 5<br>
Jackson State …45 to 9
Case Western …17 to 7
William & Mary …10 to 24
Chicago …12 to 25
Georgetown …19 to 30
Dartmouth …21 to 74 </p>
<p>Hmm. </p>
<p>[National</a> University Rankings 2010 | Washington Monthly](<a href=“http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/college_guide/rankings_2010/national_university_rank.php]National”>http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/college_guide/rankings_2010/national_university_rank.php)
[National</a> University Rankings 2011 | Washington Monthly](<a href=“http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/college_guide/rankings_2011/national_university_rank.php]National”>http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/college_guide/rankings_2011/national_university_rank.php)</p>
<p>^^Is the methodology the same as last year? Big swings in a ranking usually indicate a change in ranking methodology much more than they reflect change in the school. Schools change significantly over decades or half-centuries, not year to year.</p>
<p>^^</p>
<p>Just as an example, the reasons why Dartmouth “tumbled” down from a rank in the twenties (21) to one in the seventies are:</p>
<p>Community service participation and hours served
Rank
63 in 2010 versus 155 in 2011 </p>
<p>Service staff, courses and financial aid support
Rank
70 in 2010 versus 155 in 2011 </p>
<p>Note that 155 simply means DEAD LAST! </p>
<p>Unless Pell grants from 14 percent to 12 percent, graduation rates of 95 to 94 percent, research from 193MM to 187MM, and one less Peace Corps student accounted for the “plunge.”</p>
<p>Wholesale changes indeed! Service staff, courses and financial aid support must have been rationed in the last year!
;)</p>
<p>Warblers, you shouldn’t talk that way about UCLA. Even I know its a little better than the picture you’re painting. :)</p>
<p>Forbes discusses the ranking:</p>
<p>[UC-San</a> Diego Voted Best College in America. Yale, Princeton Not Even in Top 30. - Forbes](<a href=“http://www.forbes.com/sites/jamesmarshallcrotty/2011/08/30/uc-san-diego-voted-best-college-in-america-yale-princeton-not-even-in-top-30/]UC-San”>http://www.forbes.com/sites/jamesmarshallcrotty/2011/08/30/uc-san-diego-voted-best-college-in-america-yale-princeton-not-even-in-top-30/)</p>
<p>It would be interesting to read a full analysis of the work of Richard Vedder by whoever developed the WM methodology.</p>
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<p>all i see is another ranking, this month, where UCLA > Cal. Will USNWR makes 3 for 3? i think that it shall ;)</p>
<p>They’re all coming out. The 2012 edition of the Fiske Guide to Colleges is out also.</p>