<p>Although I do not give complete credibility to the US News and World Report rankings of colleges and universities, you may be interested to know that in the latest National Liberal Arts Colleges rankings, Wesleyan retains the #12 spot, this year tied with its polar opposite in terms of campus atmosphere and degree of traditionalism, Washington & Lee. Make whatever you like of this, but it is what it is. I had suspected that Wes might go down a ranking or two because its acceptance rate edged up a point over the past year. Instead, Vassar slipped down a slot, and Hamilton has now moved to #17 up from #18 the year before. Smith has sunk down to #19. From what I can make of the stats they list, it seems to me that some of their data is a year old (i.e., pertaining to the class that entered in Fall 2010), so this data point makes me even more skeptical of the utility (not to even say, the validity) of USNWR rankings.</p>
<p>So I continue to advise fellow parents to help your son or daughter apply to the schools where they have the closest overall fit and push aside these rankings for the most part. Because of parental peer pressure and even the advice of some college counselors, that is much easier said than done!</p>
<p>And, Brown is ranked #15 on the National University section. Actually, it makes sense that the three college/university hybrids (Brown, Dartmouth and Wesleyan) should occupy the same relative position in their respective cohort groups since they are all being measured against rather specific tintypes (HYP in the case of the National Universities and Amherst and Williams in the case of the National LACs) that they abandoned generations ago.</p>
<p>I was under the impression that Wesleyan’s acceptance rate had risen to 24% for the class matriculating in 2011, a rather large slide from 21% for the 2010 stats. You mentioned that Wes’s rate had “edged up a point,” but I count it at three points. Can you clarify for me?</p>
<p>With a slide to 24%, given the fact that nearly all other top schools saw acceptance rates drop (sometimes dramatically) during the same year, I’m pretty sure Wes will get hit pretty hard in the 2012 USNWR rankings.</p>
<p>Other thoughts? Reasons this might not happen?</p>
<p>@johnwesley? Do you expect a significant drop, as I do … and if this happens, will this hurt Wes significantly (donors, prestige)?</p>
<p>If it does, it will be only temporary because the year after next (because USNews uses lagging indicators of a year or more in its rankings), Wesleyan’s admissions rate will be based on a much smaller class size, perhaps by as much as 10% smaller due to the over-acceptance resulting in a record-sized Class of 2015. Wesleyan donors will, by that time, be on the leading edge of a full-blown capital campaign.</p>
<p>Class of 2015: 2,339/10,033 (23.3%)
Class of 2014: 2,190/10,657 (20.5%)</p>
<p>First of all, Wesleyan over-enrolled by 70 students, so admissions obviously underestimated yield. So they easily could have admitted 2,190 again and still hit their target. Is three whole points (2.8 exactly) REALLY a big leap? Not exactly. Secondly, selectivity counts as 15% of a college’s US News score. Acceptance rate comprises 10% of that score, so that means acceptance rate counts for just 1.5% (check my math?) of a school’s overall score. Wesleyan’s newest class is just as strong in terms of SAT scores, etc. so I doubt that will have much of an impact. What really hurts Wesleyan is its larger size and smaller endowment because of spending/student and other things that economies of scale will impact.</p>
<p>Another way to look at our selectivity in relation to our peer institutions is that we are getting several of the same applicants as to Amherst, Williams, Bowdoin, etc. but our school is still bigger than theirs, and thus we need to admit more people to take up those extra spots. Therefore, it isnt exactly fair to say that those schools are more selective, when we are receiving similar numbers of applications with more availability to accept more of those students.</p>
<p>Perusing Wes rankings and statistics, I noticed that the outlier seems to be faculty resources, for which Wes is ranked 44th! This category is 20 percent of the total score, so this really hurts. But, what is really going on in that category? A look at the USNWR methodology page: [Methodology:</a> Undergraduate Ranking Criteria and Weights - US News and World Report](<a href=“http://www.usnews.com/education/best-colleges/articles/2011/09/12/methodology-undergraduate-ranking-criteria-and-weights-2012]Methodology:”>http://www.usnews.com/education/best-colleges/articles/2011/09/12/methodology-undergraduate-ranking-criteria-and-weights-2012) reveals that the faculty resources category ranking is based on a weighted average of several stats: (faculty compensation 35%, percent of faculty with top terminal degree 15%, full-time faculty percentage 5%, student/faculty ratio 5%, class size 1-19 students 5%, and class size 50+ students 10%). On the class size categories, Wes is rated medium, so that doesnt seem to be driving the 44 ranking. Student/faculty ratio is in line with Top 15 peers, so that isnt it either. A check of the AAUP faculty salary survey: [The</a> Chronicle: AAUP Faculty Salary Survey](<a href=“http://chronicle.com/stats/aaup/]The”>http://chronicle.com/stats/aaup/) shows that compared to peer institutions Wes pays comparable salaries (at least in terms of average salary for full, associate, and assistant professors), however USNWR says that they adjust salary based on cost of living. Not clear what effect Middletown, Connecticuts COL has on that adjustment. So, nothing is jumping out at me as driving this. While it is true that Wes endowment (regrettably) lags certain of its peers, this would have a direct effect on the financial resources category, where Wes ranks 25th. But, it shouldnt directly affect faculty resources, although it may mean that Wes has to spend a greater amount of operating revenue on salaries to make up the difference. If the deficiency is faculty compensation, what is driving that? I could hypothesize a benign explanation maybe Wes has fewer, highly-paid, senior professors, or maybe the COL adjustment makes the absolute salary numbers look deficient relative to peer institutions like Middlebury (VT) or Bowdoin (ME). But, that is speculation. What am I missing? Something is driving the poor faculty resource ranking and that seems to be a real drag on Wes overall ranking, so any light anyone can shed on this would be appreciated. Thanks.</p>
<p>^^You hit the nail on the head, here when you said:
</p>
<p>USNews bundles all faculty salaries together (full, associate, and assistant professors) thus, anytime a college experiences a large shift in seniority, as when a cohort of full-professors reaches retirement age and are replaced by new hires, it brings the entire faculty resources category down. LACs tend to hire junior faculty in order to promote them from within their own ranks. When this happens the colleges usually think they are doing a good thing by decreasing their student:faculty ratio when in fact, they are pulling their faculty resources rank down – at least according to the peculiar logic of USNews</p>
<p>It’s a combination of all of the factors mentioned, I think. Wes has a higher % of 50+ sized classes, again mainly due to having 2,800 students (into bio at Wes is going to be bigger than intro bio at Haverford, if nothing else than because twice as many people want to take it, and Wes isn’t breaking it down into two sections). As JW mentioned, Wes has a younger faculty than, say, Amherst (which is freaking out right now because they are going to lose close to a third of their faculty in the next 5-7 years or so - I’m pulling those numbers from memory and are probably inaccurate - but that’s the gist of it). Combine those with an endowment that should be 2-3 times bigger, and voila. One wonders where Wes would be at if it had the financial resources of its Little Three peers. It definitely holds its own in all of the other categories.</p>
<p>@cshnei: Do you have access to Wesleyan’s peer assessment score? And how it compares to the other top 15 LACs?</p>
<p>If you go on the USNWR college rankings site, you will see that Google is offering free access to all the stats (for a limited time). Sign up and browse away!</p>
<p>I stole this from the Brown CC forum, but, it sort of encapsulates a question I’ve been thinking about for a long time: suppose there’s a direct correlation between Wesleyan’s successful academic culture, morale and general popularity (>10,000 applicants a year) and its unpretentious rank in the poll:</p>
<p>Perhaps a meta-level factor is that, from all accounts, Wesleyan has tended and still tends to attract and accept what some posters have called a “non-mainstream” type of student. Since most definitions of “mainstream” would likely include a “mainstream” career path, is it possible that Wesleyan’s relative lack of endowment is simply a reflection of the values and career paths of its alums? Surely, if Wesleyan had the endowment of an Amherst or Williams, professors would be paid more, window trim would be freshly painted on an annual basis, and leaf clutter swiftly cleared from walkways. No?</p>
<p>Again, until quite recently, Wesleyan professors had lighter teaching loads than either Amherst or Williams, only four courses a year compared to five for the other two legs of the Little Three stool. They decreased their’s no doubt in response to demands from the profession for more time todo research as well as for the other things that go into being regarded as “collegial” when tenure time rolls around. That’s something that USNews makes no pretense at caring about and yet its a pretty basic part of any benefit package.</p>
<p>As regards to those peeling window sills, painting them every two years is fine.</p>
<p>Hate to burst the “alternative” bubble, but more Wesleyan students go into business than any other field (probably similar to other NESCAC schools). The smaller endowment is not due to alumni earnings, or lack thereof. Back in the 80’s, Wesleyan had an endowment equal to that of Williams and Amherst. A lack of a capital campaign prior to the stock market runup of the 90’s, combined with a spend-it-not-save-it policy on fundraising and ill-timed major capital projects has led to the current state of Wesleyan’s endowment. The policies have been rectified, but Wes finds itself far behind many of its peers in endowment funds.</p>