Washington Monthly's 2011 College Rankings Are Out

College Search & Selection
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<p>Tulane 6%
WUSTL 6%
Northwestern 7%
U Delaware 8%
American 8%
Notre Dame 8%
SMU 8%
UVA 8%
Vanderbilt 8%
William & Mary 8%
Auburn 9%
Brigham Young 9%
Caltech 9%
Carnegie Mellon 9%
Catholic U 9%
Duke 9%
Wake Forest 9%</p>

<p>[Is it just me, or do these seem to be concentrated in the South? Maybe there are no poor people in the South? Oh, I see, they’re all electing to go to HBCUs, which the people at the elite schools can ridicule. Gosh, doesn’t this smack of remnants of “separate but equal”?]</p>

<p>LACs:</p>

<p>Franklin & Marshall 5%
Muhlenberg 5%
Washington & Lee 5%
Colby 6%
Lafayette 6%
Colorado College 7%
Davidson 7%
Bucknell 8%
Colgate 8%
Scripps 8%
Dickinson 9%
Kenyon 8%
Bates 9%
Carleton 9%
Gettysburg 9%
Middlebury 9%
Oberlin 9%
U Richmond 9%
Whitman 9%</p>

<p>[Here the heaviest concentration seems to be in rural/small town Pennsylvania, the part James Carville once described as the “Alabama” part of Pennsylvania. Much of it is actually part of Appalachia. No poor people there, either, I suppose].</p>

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<p>I have to wonder, what does it say about these measurements when they cannot be repeated a year apart without wildly different results? </p>

<p>Consider Georgetown University, which dropped from #19 in 2010 to #30 in 2011. What happened? Well, for one thing, its “Social Mobility” score dropped from 62nd to 101st. Why? Its percentage of Pell Grant students remained exactly the same. Its actual graduation rate remained exactly the same, too. Only its predicted graduation rate changed, from 87% to 91%. Now, the predicted rate of graduation is based on incoming SAT scores and Pell Grant percentages. Since the Pell Grant percentage did not change, the predicted graduation rate could only have increased because the incoming SAT scores increased. In other words, Georgetown University’s Social Mobility score dropped 39 places only because it admitted higher-scoring students. In other words, it became more selective. Presumably it became more attractive to high-scoring students. For all we know, it did a better job of attracting high-scoring poor and at-risk students who received Pell Grants.</p>

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<p>These rankings no doubt measure what they say they do. Whatever that actually is, it appears to bear little resemblance to academic excellence.</p>

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<p>The problem with this ranking is that it has too muddled of a goal. Does it want to show the “best” universities in America or does it want to show the most socially mobile? Sure, it might show schools that are good for America as a whole. But it’s useless in helping individual people make choices about where they themselves should go.</p>

<p>What makes the ranking more questionable is how schools rapidly have changed rankings from year to year. I seriously doubt that a school can become that much better (or worse) in such a short timeframe. There has to be something up with the methodology or data gathering.</p>

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<p>bclintonk: I wonder if the low numbers at some schools might reflect a desire to seem more ‘selective’, in that standardized test scores typically correlate with household income. A college’s middle 50 percentile scores for the SAT/ACT will most likely be higher the more high income kids at your college.</p>

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<p>Ideally, if I were a Questbridge candidate, I’d want to cross-reference schools that ranked highly on both the USNews poll AND the Washington Monthy poll.</p>

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<p>*Tulane 6%
WUSTL 6%
Northwestern 7%
U Delaware 8%
American 8%
Notre Dame 8%
SMU 8%
UVA 8%
Vanderbilt 8%
William & Mary 8%
Auburn 9%
Brigham Young 9%
Caltech 9%
Carnegie Mellon 9%
Catholic U 9%
Duke 9%
Wake Forest 9%</p>

<p>[Is it just me, or do these seem to be concentrated in the South?*</p>

<p>Yes…it is “just you”…</p>

<p>Who considers the following schools as being “in the south”??? And, furthermore, it’s kind of ugly what you’re implying…</p>

<p>WUSTL 6%
Northwestern 7%
U Delaware 8%
American 8%
Notre Dame 8%
SMU 8%
UVA 8%
William & Mary 8%
Brigham Young 9%
Caltech 9%
Carnegie Mellon 9%
Catholic U 9%</p>

<p>BTW…I don’t think it’s a “Hall of Shame” to have those percentage of students be Pell recipients. Some/many of these schools can’t meet need. </p>

<p>Since when is it necessary or even affordable for many/most schools to have a lot of Pell recipients. there could still be many lowish income students whose EFC’s just miss the Pell threshold. </p>

<p>Someone in a family of 4 with 1 in college and an income of $65,000, can have an EFC of about $6k and get nothing from Pell…yet they’re not “affluent people” at all. They would be barely middle class in some areas of the country. And, yet, they don’t get counted in those stats. </p>

<p>Another thing that can affect these numbers is if the “commutable area” has many Pell income families…these are kids who can attend because they can commute. Schools that aren’t close enough for low income kids to commute to are going to have less Pell kids. </p>

<p>Another issue can be that schools that use NCP info may be unaffordable to many Pell kids. They qualify for Pell because of their mom’s income, but their dad’s income is higher but won’t contribute.</p>

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<p>Well, my definition of the South would include Texas and Virginia, so that puts Tulane, SMU, UVA, Vanderbilt, William & Mary, Auburn, Duke, and Wake Forest in the South. That makes 8 of the 17 schools listed by Washington Monthly as having the lowest percentages of Pell grant recipients located in the South. And WUSTL is in Missouri, a border state that in some ways has more ties to the South than to the North; throw that in, and it makes a clean majority. So yeah, I’d say that’s a definite regional tilt.</p>

<p>Is it “kind of ugly”? Well, I’d say it’s kind of disturbing, but if you want to characterize it as “ugly,” be my guest. </p>

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<p>Fair point. It wouldn’t excuse Tulane (New Orleans), WUSTL (St. Louis) , Northwestern (Chicago), American (DC), SMU (Dallas), Vanderbilt (Nashville), William & Mary (Norfolk/Newport News about 20 min away), Caltech (LA), Carnegie Mellon (Pittsburgh), or Catholic (DC), though. </p>

<p>Might be a handy excuse for U Del, Notre Dame, UVA, Auburn, and Brigham Young. Except U Del is about 20 minutes from Wilmington, the state’s largest city, which has plenty of poor people in commuting distance. No shortage of poverty in South Bend and the other declining rust belt towns within a short drive of Notre Dame, either. Auburn is in the heart of the Columbus-Auburn-Opelika GA-AL MSA with a population of 500,000, many of them poor. UVA is admittedly rural/small town, and both Charlottesville and the surrounding area seem to be pretty prosperous. On the other hand, UVA boasts about meeting 100% of need, so a low-income student who attended shouldn’t need to commute. Besides, the statewide pattern is clear: the top 3 publics in Virginia, UVA, William & Mary, and Va Tech, have 8%, 8%, and 10% Pell grant recipients respectively. I don’t think they’d have a hard time finding poor people in Virginia if they cared to look, which it seems they don’t. </p>

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<p>Sure. But why would that affect these schools in particular, when the many other schools that use the same NCP formula have no trouble enrolling twice the percentage of Pell grant recipients? I suspect, but obviously can’t prove, that these schools don’t see creating opportunities for upward social mobility as part of their mission; or if they do, they don’t take it seriously, or are just inept at it.</p>

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<p>A good comparison here would be between Wash U and St. Louis U. Both private, expensive schools in St. Louis with roughly similar numbers of students. Yet St. Louis U enrolls more than double the number of students with Pell grants (13%) than Wash U (6%), despite having a significantly smaller endowment (only 708 million vs 4.5 billion for Wash U).</p>

<p>While it is true that St. Louis only requires the FAFSA, and Wash U requires the FAFSA and Profile, St. Louis also only meets 71% of demonstrated need on average. So while it’s possible that some applicants at Wash U aren’t having their total need meet because the non-custodial parent is not willing to contribute, it is also the case that some applicants at St. Louis are also not having all their need met, because the school can’t meet all their need. </p>

<p>With the kind of reputation Wash U has and the size of its endowment, it should be doing much better.</p>

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<p>I certainly like this ranking method, but i don’t feel like it is the best for deciding where to attend. It’s how awesome is a university, ie. how much they reduce world suck.</p>

<p>Congrats to WM for having a surprisingly great BA to PhD ranking.
And I think the big prize goes to Jackson State.</p>

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But Wash U is way, way more selective than St. Louis University. Do we think that there are the same number of potential Pell recipients at every point on the SAT score distribution? It could be that some schools are taking about as many Pell recipients as they can get without significantly lowering their admissions standards.</p>

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<p>^^Conversely, that means, that some other schools are taking comparatively more risks and still keeping up academically. The Washington Monthly ranking definitely adds a feature that has been missing from the USNews rankings from the very beginning.</p>

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Well, maybe. It might also mean that some schools either have better aid, or are more desirable to high-scoring Pell grant recipients.</p>

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<p>^^ "The Washington Monthly ranking definitely adds a feature that has been missing from the USNews rankings from the very beginning. "</p>

<p>I disagree. The Washington Monthly provides information that may or may not be meaningful to potential applicants. For some, it is very important. For others, it is not. It would not be a criteria I would like to see incorporated into any other assessment.</p>

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<p>I think it’s xiggi who always points out that the problem with these listings is combining a bunch of data points, rather than simply providing the data. It might be relevant to some people how many Pell grant recipients a school has–to another student, the average ambient outdoor temperature might be important. Can you imagine a list that was based on these criteria? The best school in the country would be the warmest school with the most Pell recipients. But that’s essentially what all these lists are.</p>

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<p>^^I Completely agree with you Hunt!</p>

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<p>*Well, my definition of the South would include Texas and Virginia, so that puts Tulane, SMU, UVA, Vanderbilt, William & Mary, Auburn, Duke, and Wake Forest in the South. That makes 8 of the 17 schools listed by Washington Monthly as having the lowest percentages of Pell grant recipients located in the South. And WUSTL is in Missouri, a border state that in some ways has more ties to the South than to the North; *</p>

<p>Texas is not a southern state…it’s a southwest state. And, while Virgina is south of the Mason Dixon line, no one would say that UVa is a southern school…nor would they say WUSTL is either. But, if you want to blur the lines to fit your agenda…</p>

<p>Some would also argue that Tulane is not a “southern school.” The NO area is not “southern”…it’s Cajun Country…an entirely different culture.</p>

<p>Auburn is in the heart of the Columbus-Auburn-Opelika GA-AL MSA with a population of 500,000, many of them poor</p>

<p>You’re expanding the metropolitan area waaay toooo far…far beyond the commutable area…and you’re including OOS areas. </p>

<p>Many schools don’t allow frosh to commute if they live beyond a 10-20 mile distance.</p>

<p>As for “upward mobility”…many schools cannot afford to have the “mission of upward mobility”…they don’t have the endowments to fund such charitable works.</p>

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<p>Well, you’ll have to forgive me if I don’t understand the comparative importance between a school’s socio-economic make-up and how many days of sunshine it receives. Obviously, for some people, knowing how many beach days they can squeeze into a semester trumps how many people of low to middle-income attend the same school. But, I don’t think that represents even a miniscule number of Americans.</p>

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<p>It’s certainly a minority, but I’d say it’s more than “miniscule.” I’ve run into a surprising number of kids over the years here in California who will look only at colleges located where they can go surfing. For other kids it is the proximity to mountains/skiing that is paramount. It’s not what would matter to me in choosing a college, but for some students things like this trump many other factors.</p>

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<p>My point is that it’s silly to create a “ranking” based on a composite of a few different criteria that might be important to some people, but not to a lot of other people.</p>

<p>But you could, I suppose, create a “livabilaty” ranking that would include things like temperature, proximity to entertainment and recreation facilities, quality of food, dorm space and quality, etc. Don’t you think that would be just as useful, if not more useful, than the ranking we’re talking about?</p>