<p>The new US News rankings have come out. I am happy to say that despite some of the adversity (Katrina, Oil Spill, etc.) we are still in a strong position. Miami passed us by a couple spots unfortunately. Still number 51 in our category is pretty darn good.</p>
<p>Sorry, I forgot the link: [National</a> Universities Rankings - Best College - Education - US News](<a href=“http://colleges.usnews.rankingsandreviews.com/best-colleges/national-universities-rankings/page+3]National”>http://colleges.usnews.rankingsandreviews.com/best-colleges/national-universities-rankings/page+3)</p>
<p>On the contrary, this is nothing to celebrate. Many on this board were expecting a much better showing due to improvements in statistics of admitted students and the university’s robust recovery following Katrina (5 years ago). For whatever reason, Tulane was not able to move up based on the very debatable criteria used by U.S. News.</p>
<p>The ratings lag the numbers. Their should be upward movement in the future, but remember it is relative to other schools also showing improvement. The biggest deficit for Tulane is student retention year-to-year. For a private (read expensive) school where nearly 80% of the students come from over 500 miles away, this is a difficult problem. Tulane’s student body is on par with schools ranked in the 30s, has excellent programs, and a real commitment to service, little else really matters.</p>
<p>lichenlover: I truly don’t see this as a negative. Even if you listed all colleges on the same list (liberal arts and regional) we would still probably be in the TOP 100 SHOOLS IN THE COUNTRY! That is pretty good considering the number of accredited colleges.</p>
<p>I agree with RisingChemist, except to add that the USNWR ratings are garbage anyway. They are just less obvious garbage than, say, Forbes rankings. But let me rant on a couple of points that I have made in other threads, just because I can I guess.</p>
<p>1) The peer assessment ratings were always quite suspect (Google the letter from the President of Reed and the 1996 letter from the President of Stanford), but now to add high school guidance counselor ratings makes a terrible metric far more pathetic. I cannot even begin to go into how horrible this decision was.</p>
<p>2) As an example of the above, UC Davis is ranked #39 compared to Tulane’s #51. UC Davis has average SAT scores about 200(!!) points below Tulane’s. The 25-75% CR scores for UC Davis are 520-630, while Tulane is 630-720. Just to be clear, 75% of the UC Davis students have lower scores than 75% of the Tulane students. In addition, about 15% of the UC Davis students have scores below the national average! This is a top 40 school? Not in my universe. I have nothing against UC Davis, they have some wonderful programs. But come on. There are at least two reason for this which I will outline in #'s 3 and 4.</p>
<p>3) The peer assessment and HSGC ratings are skewed towards high population areas, once you get past the most famous schools. UC Davis got a 4.2 HSGC rating, Tulane 4.0. Absurd, end of story for this one.</p>
<p>4) USNWR weights the top 10% of high school class statistic at 6% of the total, from what I read on other threads. If true, this is classic BS, since schools fudge this on a regular basis. UC Davis (I know, it seems I am picking on them) says that 100% of their students graduated in the top 10% of their high school class!! Not only is this absurd on its face, but is makes no sense with what immediately follows on the common data set, which is that 2.55% of the class has between a 3.0-3.24, and something like 12% had between a 3.0-3.49. I rather doubt a student at 3.24 was in the top 10% of their high school class.</p>
<p>There are other absurdities I could get into, but that is enough to show that it is a false measure that no one should pay attention to. I know that a huge number will, but they shouldn’t.</p>
<p>“As an example of the above, UC Davis is ranked #39 compared to Tulane’s #51.”</p>
<p>I agree completely that the ratings are garbage, but what is the connection between entering freshman SAT scores and what a school does for students? I see zero connection. If you can show that exiting GRE/LSAT/MCAT scores are higher at Tulane for the same entering SAT scores, that might be significant.</p>
<p>vossron - Well, this gets pretty complicated, but let me try to stay on track. The most important thing, IMO, is that there is no ranking and there is no “best”, so I am complaining about something that should never have been published in the first place. So perhaps I should have left it at that. There is ZERO doubt in my mind that if UC Davis is a better fit for a student than Tulane, Harvard, or any other school, then it is best (notice no quotation marks) in that case. And that is all that should really matter.</p>
<p>Having said that, I will make the mistake of trudging ahead anyway. When I hear people talk about the quality of schools, I immediately think they mean academic quality. OK, that is still not measurable, but to the extent that the quality of your peers is a large factor in the academic quality of a school, that is somewhat measurable. I would argue, and people can and will disagree with this of course, that the professors, taken as a whole at any of the highly accredited U’s, are equally capable of teaching and preparing undergrads, whether it be Harvard, Tulane, or the University of Missouri (#94). So while there are numerous other factors such as research facilities and the like, these tend to be major specific and can best be determined by a visit or some on-line research and communication with the school.</p>
<p>One of the first things students look at when deciding where to apply is which schools can they get into, and that is largely based on test scores and GPA’s. If GPA reporting were more uniform, that would be good too, but it isn’t. Certainly not all students, but a very large number, want to get into the most academically competitive school that will accept them. So I think my premise has traction, and it also is my own personal experience. I don’t care how good the profs are, if your classmates are not challenging, the experience suffers. The same would be true if the students were good and the prof bad, I suppose, but as I said I don’t think that is the case on the whole at most universities that fall into, say, what is currently the USNWR top 150. Probably one could go even deeper. Maybe the Princeton Review list of 367 or whatever it was.</p>
<p>So I think there is not zero connection at all. The quality of your peers is an important, possibly the most important factor in one’s college experience, and SAT scores are still the best proxy we have for this, despite its flaws. The fact that the SAT score range for a school and the schools we typically think of as extremely high level academically match up pretty well is no coincidence. Again, let me be clear. Of course there are individual exceptions where a lower scoring student is very bright and goes to Harvard, or even doesn’t go to Harvard but is nonetheless Harvard material. But in the aggregate, it works quite well. If it did not, schools would have abandoned it long ago, and especially when they had the chance to as it became controversial for being discriminatory. School after school went on record as saying that in conjunction with the high school academic record, it was the best predictor of success in college.</p>
<p>As far as your last point, I only have the data I have seen for the average scores on the LSAT/MCAT by school, and it seemed to correlate pretty well with the average SAT scores of the entering freshmen. In other words, Harvard, Yale, Columbia were on top, Duke, Georgetown, NYU and WUSTL, for example, were higher than Michigan State and Arizona State, so on and so forth.</p>
<p>Anyway, to the extent that the decision to attend or not attend a school is based on the perceived quality of your fellow students, it is a much more important factor than USNWR weights it. PA is really judging graduate reputations, in the case of research universities, and HSGCA is just plain ignorant garbage. Not a slam on the HSGC, there is just no way they know about all these schools and won’t favor the more local schools once they get past the famous ones. Before anyone screams again, I am not saying that the quality of your peers is the be all and end all of your college experience and picking a college. I am saying that there is no way a school that has stats for their students that much lower than another and has a pretty fair percentage at or below the national average, for it to rank #39 says to me that the rankings are highly, highly flawed on any level of credibility, including academic competitiveness. Otherwise, why even bother with the tests and the grades when selecting which students get in?</p>
<p>fc, very thoughtful, and perhaps applicable for schools that are otherwise quite similar. I would still want reasons beyond SAT scores before concluding that a school is better for a given student. :)</p>
<p>I was also wondering why Tulane or USNWR chose to report their ACT scores this year instead of SAT scores. When reporting on SAT’s, the ranking for Tulane almost looked like a publishing error.</p>
<p>I’ll mention one more item over the past few years. Every student in our area who got into Tulane also got into another college ranked in the 40’s. But many students who got into this mid 40’s school, did not get into Tulane.</p>
<p>Although it is frustrating that the rankings are so important to many students and parents, I am continually impressed when talking to S2 as to the number of his new friends that were accepted at top 25 schools, yet chose Tulane. Perhaps this is what makes Tulane’s admission strategy so interesting. By admitting many students who have been accepted at much higher ranked schools, a subset of those students will still choose Tulane. That means there was some special going on, a connection between those students and the school. The yield may be relatively low, but it results in a high achieving student body that really wants to be at the school, and who, for the most part, don’t feel like they had to settle for the school.</p>
<p>@idad, Tulane tends to give out really great scholarships to kids with 2000+ SATs and good GPAs. I know someone who got about a 50% scholarship so she chose to go to Tulane over a top 25 school for financial reasons.</p>
<p>True, but it is a part of the same strategy, it is an affirmative choice to attend.</p>
<p>Agreed, idad. Despite the scholarship allure that was quite powerful, my s genuinely felt a strong bond with Tulane, from the day he first attended an info session, met with the college rep at the HS college fair, and when she greeted him by name when we went to an on-campus prospective students event. My cousin’s dau was a freshman there at the time, and it was barely 2 mos into the school year. She came with us to Pres. Cowen’s presentation, and he greeted her by name too. That is all very impressive.</p>
<p>
Oh goodness yes! I hope I said that clearly enough. As you know from my other posts (and I appreciate the smiley face for tone), I am all about fit academically, financially, socially, geographically, demographically, meteorologically, athletically,…hmmm, I am running out of "ly"s. LOL. Just to be clear, since USNWR, nor anyone else, can create a ranking for these highly individual things, I am operating under the assumption that by “best” they really mean best academically, and that all the metrics they use were intended to show academic excellence. I think it is pretty clear that is what they mean, and that it is equally clear many of those metrics fail to measure anything of the sort.</p>
<p>BTW jym, saw your S in the LBC yesterday. He recognized me after a year and remembered my name. He will go far in life with that talent in addition to the many he already possesses.</p>
<p>Yes, I heard, FC. Thanks for the nice comments. Remember them when he is looking for a job!!! Did you chat at all or just say hi?</p>
<p>Short chat, heard about his great summer. But we were at a table with a friend of my D’s and her father, so I know he didn’t want to interrupt long. He is also unfailingly polite (I can see your pride swelling, it should).</p>
<p>Aww, shucks. Thanks. </p>
<p>But wait-- unfailingly polite? You sure it was my kid?? LOL</p>
<p>That never applies to one’s own parents, naturally.</p>
<p>They are always more polite when there are other people around.</p>