What constitutes as 'good'?

College Search & Selection
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<p>I know a 'good' college is up to you and not the same for everyone. But it always baffles me when someone says a school ranked in the Top 200 is 'okay' or 'average'. There are over 3,000 colleges in the United States when you stack up community, liberal arts, and regional. Being ranked in the Top 200 of 3,000 colleges (for sake of example), puts your school in the top 6% in the country. I don't know about you, but that sounds pretty dang good if you ask me. </p>

<p>I'm not complaining, just wondering why schools ranked 150-200 aren't considered elite when they're statistically better than 94% of the rest of the colleges in the country. </p>

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<p>Because 150-200 level colleges accept the majority if not all of their applicants. The primary barriers for students who aren’t in those schools are money and other responsibilities, not previous academic success.</p>

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<p>That’s simply not true. University of Arkansas is ranked #150 something and only accepts 60% of applicants. A majority yes, but good luck getting in with a sub 3.5 GPA. </p>

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<p>So admissions selectivity is the (or a) main factor in the quality of academics at a school?</p>

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<p>One school is not enough to make a very general conclusion. Each school is different. Acceptance rate is only a measure of a school’s popularity (how many students are applying vs. how many the school can actually accommodate). USD, ranked #91, only has an acceptance rate of 41%. Mizzou @ #97 has acceptance rate of 81%. A few ranks, but roughly double the acceptance rate.</p>

<p>Nonetheless, usnews rankings shouldn’t be taken as the overarching telltale sign of school quality, let alone acceptance rates. </p>

<p>“good” colleges should be based on where graduates go. This may differ from major to major at any given college. Some colleges may have great graduate school placement for their science majors, but not so much for their history/social sciences, or vice versa. Some may have higher average salaries than others after graduation in X major… I think in order to determine if a school is “good” or not, one needs to look at the alumni career surveys or whatever they call those things they do and see exactly what the graduates are doing. </p>

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<p>US News ranks about 200 national universities and about 180 national liberal arts colleges. It also ranks a number of “regional” schools (for example, about 140 in the “Regional Universities - North” category). According to US News,
“To be included in the rankings, a college or university must be regionally accredited and have a total enrollment of at least 200 students. Also, we do not rank certain schools for school-specific reasons, such as schools that do not use the SAT or ACT in admissions decisions. … 1,596 regionally accredited U.S. institutions … are part of the U.S. News data collection universe”. </p>

<p><a href=“http://www.usnews.com/education/best-colleges/articles/2013/09/09/frequently-asked-questions-2014-best-colleges-rankings#5”>http://www.usnews.com/education/best-colleges/articles/2013/09/09/frequently-asked-questions-2014-best-colleges-rankings#5&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

<p>Here are the US News ranking criteria and weights:
<a href=“http://www.usnews.com/education/best-colleges/articles/2013/09/09/best-colleges-ranking-criteria-and-weights”>http://www.usnews.com/education/best-colleges/articles/2013/09/09/best-colleges-ranking-criteria-and-weights&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

<p>The University of Arkansas ranks #128 in the USNWR “National Universities” list. Here are a few stats that affect its ranking:

  • 63.5% admitted (compare to < 20% for top 20 schools)
  • 1240 75th percentile SAT M+CR (compare to >= 1500 for most top 20 schools)
  • 17% of classes have 50 or more students (compare to < 10% for most top 20 schools)
  • 35.6% of classes have < 20 students ((compare to > 70% for some top 20 schools)
  • 35% of students graduate in 4 years (compare to > 85% for most top 20 schools)</p>

<p>stateuniversity.com ranks the University of Arkansas #1 for its state. </p>

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<p>School selectivity is not on a linear scale-- there’s a big jump in selectivity between a school in the top 6% vs a school in the top 1%.</p>

<p>Same thing for income. There’s a helluva big jump in dollars for someone earning in the top 6% vs top 1%. </p>

<p>Here are 2011 income bars:
Top 1% $383k
Top 5% $188k
Top 10% $140k
Top 25% $89k
Top 50% $51k</p>

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<p>I guess I just get really frustrated sometimes when people attack my schools for being uneducated. I go to South Carolina, but seriously considered Arkansas. Both schools have over 75% of their students with a 28 or higher on the ACT. That’s pretty good IMO, much better than people give us credit for.</p>

<p>I don’t think we’re elite but it is a great school :slight_smile: </p>

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<p>@BadgerState‌ </p>

<p>The 25-75th percentile at USC is 24-29… 75th percent do not have a 28 or higher.</p>

<p><a href=“Institutional Research, Assessment, and Analytics - Institutional Research, Assessment, and Analytics | University of South Carolina”>Institutional Research, Assessment, and Analytics - Institutional Research, Assessment, and Analytics | University of South Carolina;

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<p>If you are happy with your school, why do you care whether others think it is good? It’s good for you. It’s good for all the employers who are recruiting from there. I know many people who only ever considered their state schools. My daughter’s friend was in the top 20/425. She applied to one school FSU. Her mother went to FSU, her father went to FSU, her brother went to FSU. Never so much as drove by another school, and her parents live near UF.</p>

<p>Don’t waste time defending your school or worrying what people think about its ranking.</p>

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<p>@Vlklngboy11 The average ACT at both Arkansas and South Carolina was a 25. There are plenty of students that come here in the high 20’s and low 30’s. Saying that most people can get into schools with a 60% acceptance rate isn’t logical. You’d have a hell of a time getting into either with less than a 3.3 and/or below a 23 on the ACT. The average student at South Carolina has over a 3.5. </p>

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<p>I keep saying the #1 variable is academic excellence… and that has very little to do with the quality of the students, selectivity, etc. It is a function of the quality of the faculty, the breadth and depth of major and class offerings, and (yes, I will concede) class size. </p>

<p>I would put as #2 in the equation the endowment spent per student and #3 the happiness/satisfaction of the students.</p>

<p>The intelligence of the students as they enter school has no correlation with the quality of education they will receive, the activities that will be provided for them, or how cool the overall experience is.</p>

<p>So if the University of Arkansas were to hire 15 Nobel laureates to head departments, teach classes and conduct research, that school would grow by leaps and bounds in my estimation. But it would not according to US News’s formula, which frankly has as many holes as your standard pound of Swiss.</p>

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<p>Essentially a 25 on the ACT puts the student at around the 79th percentile nationally. I don’t know about your high school but there were a lot of really poor students around the 20th percentile in rank at my high school. USC is a flagship state school, one that ranks pretty average amongst other flagship state schools. It will probably impress people in south carolina and maybe the state’s around it but it won’t nationally like Berkley does amongst state schools. I’m not just picking on your school, my school, Boston University, won’t impress most people on here. The world is competitive.</p>

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<p>According to the US News formula, the ranking would not immediately improve due to that one change. However, within a couple years a likely effect would be to increase the number of applications, decrease the admit rate, and increase the average entering stats. Following that, there may be effects on the pace of instruction and quality of classroom discussion (and possibly other effects on academic and extracurricular life).</p>

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<p><<<<
Both schools have over 75% of their students with a 28 or higher on the ACT. </p>

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<p>Logic and common sense should have told you that that wasn’t true.</p>

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<p>The average ACT score at Arkansas was a 26 or 25 depending on the source you deem the most valid and same with South Carolina for the class for the class of 2018. That puts them in the top 10% nationally among colleges. </p>

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<p>There is some correlation to the depth and rigor level of course work and admissions selectivity, because it can be hard to teach at a high level if the students are unprepared to handle that level.</p>

<p>However, this does not mean that every department in a selective school is a good department that teaches courses at a high level of depth and rigor. Also, some less selective schools teach at a higher level of depth and rigor than many admitted students can handle, due to external pressures (e.g. major-specific accreditation requiring some level of depth and rigor, or community colleges emulating state universities that community college students aspire to transfer to; this phenomenon is often called “weeding”).</p>

<p>But many students and parents use admission selectivity or closely related measures (e.g. USNWR rankings) as their primary measures of quality, presumably for bragging rights. In some cases, this may mean shunning an otherwise-respectable in-state public, because it is relatively easy for in-state students (i.e. one’s fellow high school students) to get admitted to, compared to out-of-state public and private schools.</p>

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<p>You are looking at acceptance rates in the wrong light. (directed at whoever was using this argument)</p>

<p>A low acceptance rate means they cannot admit many of the people that apply to a university. A school with a low acceptance rate but that also has fairly average ACT range (think 25-29ish) is like that because it is popular. There may be other factors determining why it may have such a low acceptance rate - music schools, other special art schools, unique cases like College of the Ozarks. Places like Tulane or UCLA receive a ton of applicants. They can only afford to admit a certain number of these applicants. Naturally, they’ll start at the top of the pool, and move down. Since such a wide variety of scores apply to these schools, they need not adopt very strong holistic admissions standards - compared to Harvard, Yale, CalTech, Stanford, etc. If you have the scores, you can easily get into UCLA, Tulane, most state Unis. In the Ivy League & Co., you have very low acceptance rates, but a very large portion of the applicants have 3.8+ GPA and 32+ ACT. They simply have to adopt holistic admissions standards because they have no way to differentiate their applicants.</p>

<p>Acceptance rate is such a bad tool to use to determine the quality of the school because there are so many factors behind why an acceptance rate is what it is. I don’t remember exactly where I found it, but I think Harvard admits a very large portion of their applicants from their EA pool. Small amount get in through RD. That leads to a very skewed overall admit rate that can’t be used to determine anything meaningful. The fact that USNEWS is so hugely based on this further discredits them.</p>

<p>In my state, Missouri S&T has an admit rate of 90%. If you have the certain scores (which are not very high requirements), you’re in. Yet this university has 15 engineering programs and dozens of specializations. The average starting salaries of their engineers are on average 60k. (Info of this can be found on their website, navigate to the page for each of the majors from their majors list and they show you what the average starting salaries of their graduates are). People brag about their kids going to S&T and getting out, at least here in St. Louis. But when all is said and done, the kid that got into the 90% acceptance rate university is out of college with a comfy 60k salary, a job he likely may have had set up before he even graduated. I think that’s the true and only determinant of whether or not a school is “good”. It gets its graduates where they want to go. Of course, it wouldn’t be reasonable for a political science major to come in and say “I want to be President!”. It’s not the college’s job to do that, only provide him with the means to at least attempt it.</p>

<p>Of course, this conclusion sort of assumes the one side of the argument, when people argue if college should be “vocational” or “intellectual enlightenment”, but who’s to say it can’t be both? In this society intellectualism has been smashed by the desires of the industry and government. It’s still worthwhile to pursue these interests in your own time, but unless you bring something to the table of the world you won’t be taken seriously… College acceptance rates won’t be the determining factor. It’s all about the degree you get and what you end up doing with it. You can cut the cake in any way you want, but you need a knife to cut it with!</p>

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<p>Acceptance rate only counts for 1.25% of the overall US News rankings of national universities and national LACs. Student selectivity counts for 12.5%. Student selectivity is a composite of acceptance rate (10% of the 12.5%), HS class standing in the top 10% (25% of the 12.5%), and test scores (65% of the 12.5%). <a href=“http://www.usnews.com/education/best-colleges/articles/2013/09/09/best-colleges-ranking-criteria-and-weights”>http://www.usnews.com/education/best-colleges/articles/2013/09/09/best-colleges-ranking-criteria-and-weights&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

<p>Nevertheless, there does seem to be a strong correlation between admission selectivity (particularly test scores) and other measurements used in some college rankings. A ranking by test scores alone does not look too different, in the set of top schools, from the overall US News or Forbes rankings (even though Forbes does not use admission selectivity at all in its rankings.) <a href=“Top 500 Ranked Colleges - Highest SAT 75th Percentile Scores”>USA University College Directory - U.S. University Directory - State Universities and College Rankings;
Perceptions about admission selectivity may bias the peer assessments that weigh heavily in the US News ranking. Selectivity may also influence the outcome measurements used in the Forbes ranking.</p>

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<p>This is very flawed and naive logic. Think about it… you’re judging the quality of the school on something it can’t even control. What’s stopping a school from providing high quality academics to less competitive students? </p>

<p>Again, we’re looking at what the school itself can provide to the students. There will undoubtedly be high performing students at less competitive schools, who will have the drive and know-how to use the resources available to get a great education.</p>