<p>There are a lot of schools that say "look, our SAT's are up and percentage of applicants admitted are down", but they have actually slipped vis-a-vis other schools as admissions have become tougher across the board. It's a zero-sum game: if some schools are rising, an equal amount must be falling.</p>
<p>Except for Wellesley, the sisters have all slipped (it's odd that co-education reduced Vassar while it helped the likes of non-sisters like Conn. College and Skidmore). Alternative schools, like Bennington, Hampshire and Antioch, have slipped. </p>
<p>I think Weslyen was closer to Williams and Amherst years ago but has slipped a bit. It used to be clearly ahead of Middlebury but is now behind it. Oberlin is off somewhat. Bowdoin is still way high, but may have slipped a notch or two among the top LACs. If you really want to get catty, you might note that Swarthmore was probably undisputed as the #1 LAC in the country 30 years ago and that isn't the case anymore. Finally among LACs, tiny St. John's College is probably better known know than before, as its curriculum is more distinctive, but it isn't as high in the admissions pecking order as it once was.</p>
<p>I think that U Wis (Madison) was more respected academically and thought to have great graduate programs years ago. That hasn't changed dramatically, but the reputation of Madison as a great college town has led to more of a perception of it as a party school.</p>
<p>There used to be more talk of Miami of Ohio as this great "public ivy" than there is today.</p>
<p>Some late-comers to co-education like Haverford and W&L were down for a while but have regained their status.</p>
<p>I sense the midwestern LACs a grade below Carleton and Grinnell, like Lawrence, Kalamazoo and Knox, have had a bit of a hard time keeping up with astronomical tuition without the names of the NESCAC LACs to make people want to pay it.</p>
<p>Three of the SUNY university centers -- Binghamton, Albany and Stony Brook -- apprea to have slipped over the last 15-20 years. SUNY Buffalo actually has a better reputation in our part of NYS than it once did. I doubt this increase in "prestige" has anything to do with Buffalo's move to Division I athletics!</p>
<p>I think Wesleyan is a special case.</p>
<p>As a consequence of co-education, when it added women, it kept the same number of men, effectively doubling its size while halving its endowment per student and expenditures per student (not all of which were academically related) so, that had a compounding effect on its USNWR rankings over the years.</p>
<p>Otherwise, it's peer assessment is the same as its always been; its SATS are higher than ever and its admittance rate is the same (if not better) than it was twenty years ago. </p>
<p>Moreover, I don't think there's any question but that its brand is far better known today than it was twenty years ago; when people think "LAC for quirky kids" -- they think Wesleyan automatically. Californians, Texans, Floridians and North Carolinians form a much larger portion of the student body than they did twenty years ago.</p>
<p>Willow - Agree with Miami of Ohio. At the same level, Pennsylvania's Allegheny and Dickinson colleges have both slipped. Drexel too.</p>
<p>I think in 15 years there aren't HUGE changes. Now go to 25-30 years, or roughly a generation, and you'll see more.</p>
<p>I recall Brandeis was very prestigious and selective back then...it still is but not as much. Rochester too. New England and midAtlantic LACs and small U's were well known and fairly selective like Hamilton, Dickinson, Franklin & Marshall, Bryn Mawr, Haverford, Colgate, Holy Cross, Gettysburg, Union, Middlebury, Lehigh, Oberlin...UPenn and Cornell and Duke weren't much more selective than some of these 30 yrs ago. I realize some of those LACs are still superselective.</p>
<p>Agree with Willow55---Wesleyan was part of the "Little Three" I think it was referred to, with Amherst and Williams. And Wisconsin was very prestigious, Michigan too, and Berkeley. Not UCLA, as it is today. I think the 60's upheaval actually made these schools MORE attractive (they did to me).</p>
<p>I'd add Barnard to Wellesley as women's schools that have retained top reputations and selectivity, though I know Columbia across the street is a fair amount more selective.</p>
<p>Here's a link to a fascinating chart: annual US News rankings back to the early years. </p>
<p><a href="http://chronicle.com/stats/usnews/index.php?category=Liberal+Arts+Colleges%5B/url%5D">http://chronicle.com/stats/usnews/index.php?category=Liberal+Arts+Colleges</a></p>
<p>By that measure some of the big losers seem to be publics like Berkeley, Mich, Chapel Hill; among LACs, Oberlin, Bryn Mawr, Conn, and special cases like Reed and St. John's MD.</p>
<p>The early USN rankings were meaningless and did not remotely reflect reality (I mean, Gettysburg as a top 10 LAC, please). I came across a 1976 Barrons Guide to Colleges in my parents basement. That book is pretty instructive as to the relative pecking order of schools 30 years ago and how it has changed. In many regards, it has changed remarkably little.</p>
<p>? according to the chart, Gettysburg has never been ranked higher than 44 and only broke the top 50 recently.</p>
<p>Willow--what makes you say the alternative schools have slipped over the last 15 years? I don't know anything about Antioch, but that sure doesn't fit my understanding of either Hampshire or Bennington. Bennington, I know, is on a real upswing since 1992, and Hampshire seems to me to have been making a steady climb. Admittedly, most of my experience is anecdotal, but it is pretty broad, and I am wondering where you are getting your information.</p>
<p>Also, Reed, an alternative school, seems to have become very difficult to get in to, and Bard, so much more well known in recent years. I can't imagine you think those schools have slipped.</p>
<p>Bennington and Hampshire have slipped in comparison to the 70s more than 1992. </p>
<p>Sorry, I misread the chart on Gettsyburg. USN has, however, really bolstered its methodology since it started. It' rankings are clearly overemphasized, disputable and and some sense arbitrary, but they are less arbitrary now than when USN got started.</p>
<p>You'll notice that barron's has practically doubled the number of schools in its "Most Competitive" category.</p>
<p>2331clk - while we're on the subject of barron's; I think one aspect of the past thirty years that we tend to downplay, has been the rather protectionist attitude of the USNWR toward midwestern and southern research universities at the expense of the small, New England-style liberal arts college. Thirty years ago, The Little Three were considered every bit as prestigious as Brown, Penn, Cornell, Dartmouth and even gave the The Big Three (HYP) a run for their money. I'm not sure when we become so careful about not confusing their different missions, but, whenever it was, the result was to put a thumb on the scale in favor of bigger Sunbelt universities that were on no one's radar thirty years ago.</p>
<p>It's possible that the pendulum is swinging in the other direction, however. I notice that on the Wesleyan CC forum that when kids compare which schools they turned down in favor of Wes, they tend to consist of -- Sunbelt universities.</p>
<p>University of Pittsburgh
University of Rochester</p>
<p><a href="http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,950844,00.html%5B/url%5D">http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,950844,00.html</a></p>
<p>Without a doubt, Berkeley. For example, refer to this article from Time Magazine. Berkeley started receiving rankings from national magazines like this in the late 60s and early 70s.</p>
<p>But these kinds of rankings seemed to talked about universities as composites, grad and undergrad under a research banner, without specific regard for undergrad education. Berkeley would still be considered a top 3 university by any measure, if the focus were solely graduate school. But with undergrad in the mix as it is, Berkeley has gotten demoted in general rankings of national universities from the likes of UNWR which have really come to the fore in the last 15 years.</p>
<p>When one looks at particular departments in grad school according to the UNWR graduate school rankings -- and I haven't added these up so I am sure someone will prove me wrong -- Berkeley and Stanford seem to go head to head as the top graduate schools across the board from engineering to hard sciences to social sciences to humanities.</p>
<p>So, it's more a question of what looking glass one looks through than changes in the school itself. Certainly there is an argument that for undergrad experience the newer rankings are a lot closer to accurate. But by the same token, Berkeley's premier excellence on another level is overlooked because of greater reliance on those broad rankings alone.</p>
<p><a href="http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/showthread.php?t=311636%5B/url%5D">http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/showthread.php?t=311636</a></p>
<p>I don't agree that the reputation of Wisconsin has slipped. Outside of the hyper attentive folks here, not that many people are overly worried about the party school rankings as UW has always had a very high (and well earned) social reputation. This may scare off a few sensitive parents but it brings in lots more interest than it scares away. The quality of students and applicants has improved markedly. UW was virtually open admissions through the 70's and only started to control enrollment as funding declined in the 80's. Back in my day parents were afraid to send kids to UW because it was so radical and full of commies. I think that actually had some impact--more than the party thing.
The quality of the faculty and facilities have certainly been improved and are much better in many areas than when I was there in the early 70's. Virtually every major department has new or renovated and expanded buildings. The business school left its old building and has two major new buildings with a third under construction. All of the sciences have been improved. The medical sciences have an entire new campus area and hospitals. The only major depts still in "old" buildings are history, music and art and they are next up for new buildings. Their building was built in the 60's and made some unfortunate design errors--otherwise it would just be getting renovations instead of demolition. Two new dorms have been completed and more are coming shortly. The athletic facilities are light years better as are the teams.<br>
Fundraising has been hugely successful with UW being at the top of state schools almost every year. Our world famous patent and licensing arm has done very well with high national rankings in both income and new patents. The UW Research Park has been a huge success and a second park is now being built to accommodate the growth. UW faculty and alums have created so many spin-off companies using UW technology that Madison has become the only area in the state to have strong quality job growth. All this is new since 1980. UW's research funding has been in the top 3 for the last 10 years or so.
Declining--I think UW is booming and on the verge of taking another step ahead. The strengths are not as much in the old liberal arts like history, poli sci and sociology though those these remain strong, but in the new expanding areas of biosciences, medical science, computers, engineering, business and the like.</p>
<p>Also back in 1990 the average class rank was top 18%, the average ACT was 24.6 and the average SAT was 1174. The accept rate was 82%. Last year the average rank was top 11%, the average ACT was 27.5 and the average SAT was 1268. The accept rate was 58%.</p>
<p>Reed "slipped" when they stopped responding to the questionaire USNWR sent out. Reed's acceptance rate went from 71% in 2001 to 33% in 2007 in spite of the USNWR drop; some say because of it.</p>
<p>There was an interesting sidebar in last week's Chronicle of Higher Ed explaining why Smith has fallen from the top 10 LACs, by "thumbing its nose at USNews." For example, they de-emphasized SAT scores; decided for pedagogical reasons that a good class size cap was 25 (USNews rewards class size <20); and tried to contact many alumnae for whom they had no current addresses (result: a lower alumnae giving rate on paper). I don't think many people think Smith has a "worse reputation" or is doing any worse at educating young women than it was 2 years ago. Let's hope that they can be in Reed mold and be widely recognized for quality no matter what a certain ranking says.</p>
<p>Similar sidebars explained the rise of WUStL and Whitman and the fall of Colorado State at Fort Collins.</p>