The vast majority of kids in my older daughters’ high school went to state schools or private colleges around New England. The only time there isn’t enough information available to compare without rankings is with the top kids looking to go to other regions, but even in those cases, they’re likely to have other access to information through friends and family. I think the rankings help even the middle ranked schools in that regard, because those who want to “go away” can feel comfortable that the schools they’re considering are at least average. And if they consider schools lower in rankings, they do so knowing not to have the highest expectations, based only on a sleek mailing. The smart ones know rankings don’t tell you everything, and the college ranked a bit lower than the others still might be their best fit - they just need to get more information.
I recall a big fat book (Barrons perhaps?) when I applied in 1979. It had a page per school, and a “category” of selectivity/rigor. I fancied myself an excellent student, so I limited myself to the “most competitive” category, and successfully applied ED to Swarthmore based on location, majors, setting, etc. It’s not like this information wasn’t available. Of course it wasn’t down to #4 vs #8 vs #12 at that time.
@gallentjill I agree. Rankings can be a helpful piece of information. The problem comes when people take them too seriously. Is there a qualitative difference between a school ranked #30 and one ranked #40? Probably not. Does it really matter if a school moves up (or down) the ranks by five or 10 places? Probably not. But does finding out that there are several top-50 LACs we could visit if we drove from Chicago to Minneapolis justify a road trip over spring break? Yes, it does.
I contend that the rankings are most important for the lesser-known, smaller schools that are recognized regionally or within some circles but that are not necessarily household names. The colleges jockeying for the top 10 or 20 places on the “national universities” list get all the press. But everyone knows Harvard and Stanford are great schools, while many people are not aware the Williams and Bowdoin may be just as good (or better) for some highly-accomplished students.
If you have all the data but the ranking, you have to come up with your own ranking somehow. To find the best fit is to rank the schools based on your on particular criteria. Back in the 70s when the information was sparse, there must have been mis-matches, or the idea of “fit” is over-hyped now.
My biggest issue with the rankings are that students overlook perfectly wonderful schools because they aren’t in the top 100. My S’s state university is great. People will say it isn’t because they are not selective in admissions (so their graduation rate is down. They let everyone try but not everyone succeeds but many do. They don’t teach down!). For his major it is excellent! People tend to discount schools by their overall ranking and not look at the individual programs. A parent will say “I won’t pay if you don’t go to a top 100 university” and not see that school ranks way up there in the student’s major. We didn’t look at rankings at all other than to see it wasn’t at the bottom. He got into higher ranked schools but where he is going is perfect. I hate that more people don’t see what a great school academically it actually is!
When I applied to colleges there were no rankings.
However the college guide books- Barron’s and Cass & Birnbaum- provided detailed statistical information.
The data was less comprehensive than the categories that are reported today, but there was still plenty of data. The available data was not sparse, really.
Some of the reported data was more detailed and informative back then than it is now. For example, statistics for multi-college universities were reported separately by individual college, rather than as aggregates across all of a university’s disparate colleges. Some admissions data eg SAT breakdowns, were reported separately by gender.
Barron’s- had a breakdown in the front showing colleges by “buckets” of selectivity. To wit:
http://talk.qa.collegeconfidential.com/college-search-selection/687742-1980-barrons-selectivity-index-p1.html
I used the available data, and the criteria that was important to me, to create my own personal ranking.
Without the noise of having someone else’s rankings (other than the “buckets”) imposed on me.
I felt, and feel, I had sufficient resources to make an informed decision at the time.
My D doesn’t care about rankings and didn’t consider them in her search. What we looked for were the strongest programs in her areas, with particular attention to her foreign language goals, and schools that offered great merit.
I think getting rid of rankings would help students and families focus more on fit. Many already do.
I went to HS in the Midwest in the 70s before rankings. Like some of the above posters, we got mailings and looked at course catalogs in the library. Our GCs helped us to decide on size of school and type of school. No one talked about “Ivys.” Most of us went to state schools or local LACs, a few went to out of state LACs; no one went to OOS state schools, one kid went to an East Coast school for his sport. We took the SAT once, unprepped. We took one or 2 APs at most. Everyone turned out just fine and there was almost none of the stress and freaking common to HS students today. High school was really fun and we had a lot of free time and freedom.
Yes, back in the 70’s there were lots of mismatches. I know a bunch of my HS classmates who dropped out of college entirely back then. Some finally finished up a degree a few years later, some never did. I had a few classmates in college who dropped out (virtually all for “fit” reasons, none for academic).
But transferring was more exotic back then, and no HS kid had a list of 18 schools to visit, much less to apply to. Poor fit is not something invented since USNWR started the rankings.
I can see how the rankings might be useful to identify otherwise unknown schools. I do think its too bad when students or their families pick arbitrary cuttoffs – No school under rank 50 or 100 for example. Is the 99th school really acceptable but the 101st school suddenly unworthy?
I think my real problem is that it reduces too many criteria into a single number. The USNRW ranking combines such things as selectivity (How many kids are rejected), Peer assessment( How other institutions view this school) Retention rate ( How many first years continue) Endowment, etc. I have no objection to these factors being considered, but many of them may not be important to any individual student. But how many will dig into the numbers to figure out why an otherwise good fit school is ranked lower? its possible to get some of the data on the USNWR site, but much of it is behind a paywall.
Here is an example of what I mean. If you have access to the full USNWR indicators (behind paywall) compare the indicators for Sarah Lawrence ranked 53 in LAC vs. Muhlenberg ranked 71 LAC. Thats a large difference. Sarah Lawrence nearly makes it into that coveted top 50 group, but Muhlenberg seems far behind. My D and I visited both schools and while I saw nothing wrong with Sarah Lawrence, I could not figure out why it was ranked so much higher. Looking into the statistics, I find that Muhlenberg ranks higher on many of the metrics that D actually cares about. But that would not come through if you were just screening for rank. I’m sure there are many other instances like this. I just pulled up two schools we happened to visit.
It is even more striking if you compare Bard to Muhlenberg. In metrics that are actually important to my D, Muhlenberg scores better or at least no worse. Bard is ranked 46.
I agree with others who have said the problem with rankings is when people take them too seriously and/or overlook schools just because they aren’t a top 20 or top 50 or whatever.
My D never looked at rankings but chose her school based on cost, location, academic offerings, and the general vibe of the school (the elusive “fit”). I did pay a bit more attention to rankings but it gets a bit meaningless when there are so many different lists out there. The things that mattered the most to me were the stats such as graduation rate, retention rate, and class size.
Ranking numbers also obscure varying strengths and weaknesses. For example, Sarah Lawrence is heavily focused on arts, psychology, and some humanities, but may be rather limiting for other subjects, based on the offerings listed in its catalog. So its desirability in terms of academic fit can vary greatly from one student to another, based on academic areas of interest.
I think there is always some method of ranking whether is US News or the opinions of your local community. Humans always find a way to decide what is better than another. Getting rid of college ranking is not only not possible but I’m not sure would make a ton of difference.
My kids applied to high ranking schools because those schools had the most financial aid to give. Simple as that. Do we care that they are high ranked? Well, certainly doesn’t bother us.
Most kids go to their state U regardless of its ranking. That’s the reality. So the lack of ratings wouldn’t affect the majority, just the relatively small percentage of families that have the luxury of choice. I don’t think most of those are guided by rankings, either. Usually, they’re guided by fit, money, word of mouth, desire to live far from home, regional preference, etc. In other words to answer your question – what if there were no rankings – not a whole lot would change.
It would be the same without rankings. Applicants would just use another marker for quality. When I applied to colleges back in the fall of 1986, I had never heard of any ranking orders. I just looked at the Barron’s guide at the time and read up on colleges in the “most selective” category. As it turns out, Williams is now always ranked #1 by US News.
To answer the original question, if there were no rankings, college admissions and by extension high school, at least for those applying to selective schools, would be less stressful. There are a few benefits to the rankings that have been posted here, esp bringing awareness of schools that people may never considered. That being said rankings tend to do more harm than good. The rush to ED would not be there, managing yield as the colleges do would probably not be there as well, meaning reasonable waitlists for sure. Colleges wouldn’t be able to use them in their marketing materials, lenders couldn’t use rankings to evaluate risk of the colleges as they do now.
As others have said, you’d have to use barrons, fiske, gourman and the good ole GC to figure out a list. You would still know acceptance rates, sat/act scores, starting salaries, things gallentjill mentions, so you would still make an informed choice.
I don’t think either of our college searches/decisions would have been any different if there were no rankings. We did a lot of reading (ex. Fiske, Princeton Review, Insiders Guide) to get a sense of different schools and to determine academic fit. We visited a bunch of schools, narrowed down what each kid wanted in his/her college experience and they then applied. Both picked their school based on the environment, fit, academics etc. We never once thought anything remotely like “College A is ranked higher so that is better”.
@happy1 “Both picked their school based on the environment, fit, academics etc.”
You need to remember the rankings include many factors that might help determine best “fit” and “academic quality” to make an informed decision about which colleges one should attend.
Per their website:
“The statistical indicators that U.S. News uses to measure academic quality fall into seven broad areas: first-year student retention and graduation of students; peer assessment; faculty resources; admissions selectivity; financial resources; alumni giving; and graduation rate performance, which is the difference between the proportion of students expected to graduate and the proportion who do.”
I would think some, if not all, of the above factors would be important to know when choosing a college for fit and/or academics.
I have no problem with the rankings as long as you use them as only one of many important factors in the college search.
“I honestly wonder how student’s choices would differ if there were no rankings.”
Imo, they’d look at the factors, other than some company’s composite “ranking,” that matter to your student. I don’t see how knowing one is 70 -something while another is in the 50s tells you what you need to know to choose well. It only means USNews came up with something. Their ingredients, their mash up. Not yours. It’s a lot of blind faith to assume it’s customized to your kid.
What says their metrics match you? I wasn’t the least concerned with retention, alum giving, etc. We wanted ours to be empowered, which is very individual. We were looking for where ours would find their interests met, faculty was strong in those areas, the right competitiveness in the student body, the right activities/opportunities, etc. In other words, where * our* specific kids would have their fire lit. That’s how we researched. (On another thread, I said it behooves us to try to know our own kids.)
Think about it.
The fact kids didn’t check any better in the 70s or 80s doesn’t impress me that, with the web today, we need some media outfit to lay their criteria in front of me. It seems a half effort.
So, happily add us to the list here that didn’t look at rankings. I knew, from some guide, which were selective, highly selective and most selective. Later, I learned D1 chose a top 20 and her second choice was below 50. It didn’t matter. Her experience at the latter would have been fine. We did that vetting.