Wesleyan is at 21, below schools such as Washington & Lee, Colby, Hamilton, Colgate and Vassar. Yikes!
http://colleges.usnews.rankingsandreviews.com/best-colleges/rankings/national-liberal-arts-colleges
Why do so many posters like to use other schools as trading cards . . . Wesleyan is at 21 because 20 other colleges placed ahead of it and over 200 colleges placed behind it. Note that Wesleyan’s actual score change from last year, 86 to 84, was insignificant.
I’ll be the devil’s advocate here.
Everything that has gone on at Wes but for a few minor distractions has been very positive, and you’d think it would have pushed the school in the other direction.
Hugely success campaign drive. Record setting application numbers. Lots of good pub from various sources.
I have to say … I thought they’d move into the top 10 again, not drop 7 spots. I’m rather shocked myself.
Just sayin’
If it makes you feel better, my kids would have chosen Wes over any of the schools you’ve mentioned.
If it makes you feel somewhat neutral, I recently recommended Wesleyan and a few of the schools you mentioned to a close relative. In her case, she preferred one of the others in particular. This would indicate two things: 1) I personally respect Wesleyan and 2) schools other than Wesleyan have their considerable attributes as well.
Where do you see actual score? Compass subscription or am I missing it?
@OHMomof2 : Select the school, select “more,” then select “indicators.”
Nothing against Wesleyan, but what about it leads you to believe it should be ranked higher than schools “such as” those others? Here is a quick comparison with a lot of numbers to compare: http://colleges.startclass.com/compare/782-1776-2738-2794-3002-4445/ (all schools are included, and there is a Prev/Next to scroll).
FWIW (which isn’t much), that startclass comparison also provides an overall rank (based on all schools, not just LACs), and Wesleyan’s is the lowest.
Wesleyan: #64
W & L: #14
Colby: #45
Hamilton: #34
Colgate: #43
Vassar: #42
As that goes, Vassar, Hamilton and W&L recently reported higher standardized scoring profiles than Wesleyan, so the comparison of Wes to “such as” schools seems inappropriate.
One could equally say that W&L, for example, is “below schools such as Bowdoin, Pomona, Carleton, CMC and Davidson. Yikes!”
Here’s the thing. Colgate, Wes, Hamilton, Colby and W&L are fairly close on paper on a variety of measures, including scores, class size, etc. But, Wesleyan invariably has the more diverse student body economically and racially. Depends on what you regard as a bragging right.
A couple thoughts…
First, I can see why someone would raise the question about the Wes ranking. It jumped 10 spots to #7 in the Forbes ranking recently and in general there’s a ton of buzz about it. I saw another list (too lazy to search right now) that ranked colleges based on buzz factor by trolling social media references etc. and Wes was near the top of that and noted as a fast riser. Obviously all the Hamilton musical buzz has helped that.
Second, I’ve read speculation before that what was holding Wesleyan back was, among other things, it’s endowment relative to Williams, Amherst, Swarth, Bowdoin Middlebury, Pomona, etc. They just wrapped up a big and supposedly successful campaign to improve that, but the US News figures are based on the 2015 endowment level so any major endowment improvement would not be full reflected in its results yet.
Finally, and most obviously, US News prioritizes a very different set of criteria that Forbes and some of the other lists. People someone make assumptions that the US News rank reflects some overall perception without accounting for the fact that this list has a very specific methodology.
Thanks @merc81 - fun to see.
US News does not assign a weight to endowment, but your point, @citiivas, could easily be that endowment has a large impact on other, measured, factors.
@circuitrider : It’s refreshing to see those substantive factors brought into the thread. Personally, I wouldn’t relate them to bragging rights, however.
@citivas, Regarding your second point in post #11, as best I can tell it is speculation, the USNWR scoring isn’t based on any endowment information. I’m including a copy of a post I made in another thread that responded to similar conjecture.
[I just found this thread so I apologize for taking the discussion back to this morning, but you got me wondering how a schools endowment would factor into the USNWR rankings with a couple of your posts.
241; "The LAC rankings are more polluted by money than the NU rankings. ... There is a point where endowment is of little relevance to an LAC."
255; "It is pretty obvious with LACs endowment is too heavily considered in the overall ranking. There is a point where it is not relevant. For LACs this is a critical consideration."
I went through the ranking methodology on the USNWR website and could not find anything referencing endowment money. The following is the scoring percentage breakdown for both the National Universities and National Liberal Arts Colleges (they are the same).
Graduation and Retention Rates (22.5%)
Undergraduate Academic Reputation (22.5%)
Faculty Resources (20%)
Endowments are not in this section.
The subset consists of; Class Size (40%), Faculty Salary (35%), Highest Degree Earned (15%), Student-Faculty Ratio (5%) and Percentage of Full Time Faculty (5%).
Student Selectivity (12.5%)
Financial Resources (10%)
It would seem that this section would be where endowments would be included but they are not. Here is the exact portion from the methodology section of the USNWR website;
“Financial resources (10%) Generous per-student spending indicates that a college can offer a wide variety of programs and services. U.S. News measures financial resources by using the average spending per student on instruction, research, student services and related educational expenditures in the 2014 and 2015 fiscal years. Spending on sports, dorms and hospitals doesn’t count.”
It seems to me that in this category USNWR is measuring what the schools actually spend per student on academic expenditures. They are not including expenditures on sports, dorms or hospitals so at least IMHO it seems reasonable.
Graduation Rate Performance (7.5%)
Alumni Giving Percentage (5%)
Endowments are not in this section either.
This section is the average percentage of living alumni who received a degree and who gave to their school.
These college rankings that are put forward by any number of “authorities” including USNWR are all imperfect. In this case however, regarding the consideration of endowment money, it does appear to me IMHO that USNWR has not really factored it into the scoring in a way that disadvantages those schools with smaller endowments.
Thanks for making me wonder.]
LOL. My paragraph begins “I’ve read speculation.”
@citivas, then why give it credence and continue on to suggest that the USNWR is not reflecting a new successful endowment campaign and is using old numbers if it’s not going to matter in the rankings?
@farandsure I don’t know one way or the other that endowments don’t impact the ratings. That’s why I acknowledged I was reacting to existing speculation.
I’m not sure the listed methodology proves or disproves the influence of endowment. At least a couple of the categories – faculty resources and financial resources – may be impacted by the endowment size. Most endowments are used by schools to supplement their annual expenses, so the larger the endowment, the larger the interest income (if well managed) and the more they can spend on faculty salaries, faculty ratio, per-student spending, etc.
Let’s use Middlebury College as an example because I found their annual financial statement easy to find. Middlebury spent $268MM in the fiscal year ended June 30, 2015. Yet they collected only $144MM in income from students (net of the financial aid they provided them). The largest source for offsetting that shortfall was a $71MM endowment draw, taken from their interest income. If they didn’t have that $71MM that would be far less spending-per-student, less ability to sustain faculty levels and salaries, etc.
http://www.courant.com/education/hc-annual-college-ranking-0913-20160912-story.html
“Morse at U.S. News said Wesleyan’s drop resulted from factors including a lower score in alumni giving as well as in faculty resources, which reflects class size and student to faculty ratio.”
Class size has always been a problem for Wesleyan in the US New rankings - while it has plenty of small seminars, the intro classes are larger because Wes is on the large side for an LAC. Student:faculty ratio is a solid 8:1 in line with peers. Alumni giving, while great on an absolute basis, is worse than peers with regards to % who give.
For those who are questioning whether something is wrong at Wes, I’d offer you the flip side: with the Forbes ranking bump, did anything really change for the positive either? I’d strongly argue no - simply a lot of similar schools with tiny differences causing ranking changes (up or down depending on methodology).
Sure, Wes has fallen since the 80’s, but that is precisely when its endowment began to lag. Many items US News uses for its methodology are endowment proxies (over the long term, not year to year).
@GreenIndian , just wanted to share a couple of Wes anecdotes. First, when I was touring campuses with my daughter over the past two + years, there was a visceral excitement from some of the kids on the tour about the school. I guess it is not too cool to be overtly excited, but Wes was different. Presumably because of of Lin-Manuel and Joss, the literary/drama crowd was really seeking out the school. It was awesome to witness. Whatever the USNews score, there were some potential applicants traveling a very long distance to visit a school based upon reputation. I don’t remember the same excitement at any other school – except maybe Stanford.
Secondly, after reading The Gatekeepers, when I got to visit the campus, I felt like I was on a movie set. It was wonderful to imagine that this is where Ralph Figeroa had worked.
Wes is a special place–irregardless of the ranking, and very highly respected by many high school counselors for what it is worth.