<p>Now and again I see people talking about tier 1 schools or tier 2 or 3 schools. And I wonder...</p>
<p>What are these tiers? What schools are in them? What qualifies them? When does a school go from a tier 1 to a tier 2?</p>
<p>Example: Harvard a top school, Tulane a great school.. are these schools in different tiers?</p>
<p>What tier is a school like U of Arizona? or UCONN?</p>
<p>Thanks for the input.</p>
<p>The “tier system” is completely arbitrary. There is no accepted tier system, although everyone can agree that HYP are Tier 1 schools. </p>
<p>Sometimes people will call HYPSM the only tier 1 schools, and put schools like Penn, Brown, Cornell, etc. in Tier 2. Other times people will call roughly the top 25 schools Tier 1 schools, and everything following somewhat closely behind Tier 2. I’m just trying to make the point that there’s no true tier for any school.</p>
<p>There are between 2-3000 4 year schools in his county. Ton suggest that a fraction of</p>
<p>U.S. News and World Report makes a lot of money on an annual issue in which they rank colleges and universities. The used to rank the schools in each category of institution and call the top 25% in each category the “1st Tier,” the next 25% the “2nd Tier,” the next 25% the “3rd Tier,” and the bottom 25% the “4th Tier.” Then they made more money by charging the schools in the 1st Tier a licensing fee to display their logo on their website and celebrate that they were designated as being in the Top Tier by USN&WR.</p>
<p>A couple years ago, USN&WR realized that if they combined the top three "tiers into one giant bloc and called it the “1st Tier” they could charge three times as many schools the licensing fee. So now the former 1st, 2nd and 3rd Tier schools have all been collapsed into their “1st Tier,” and the bottom 25% of each of their ranking categories is what they call the “2nd Tier.”</p>
<p>If this sounds arbitrary and manipulative, it’s because it absolutely is. Don’t put too much faith in it. UA and UConn are good, solid public universities that are the flagship public schools of their states. They are both reputable without being either prestigious or deficient.</p>
<p>I want to say that if the second tier is Brown, Penn and Correll, then the vast majority of our students are attending tier 3 or lower schools. Des this seem realistic?</p>
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<p>I was just making a point to say that when people are using the word “tier” on this website, they do so completely arbitrarily. Brown, Penn, and Cornell are awesome, in fact I plan on EDing to Penn next year.</p>
<p>@gadad thanks for the info! I didn’t know that there was actually a tier system. Despite its existence I think most posters use the word tier without knowledge of the USNWR “true” tier system.</p>
<p>gadad, that post should be required reading for every star-struck HS student on this board. The “tiers” are presented by USNWR as if they’re hard facts which are simply being reported by a trusted news organization, as if they are something intrinsic to the colleges. In fact, tiers and rankings are completely artificial, created by that same news organization for the sole purpose of selling magazines.</p>