Why is selectivity so important in college rankings? Because it is so highly correlated with just about every other measure of quality. Better students => better faculty => better facilities and resources => and so on.
This is a good question. It’s quite possible that student selectivity is over-emphasized. However, these are a few reasons why we might care about it:
- Although it only counts for 12.5% in the US News ranking calculations, it correlates rather closely with several overall rankings. Test scores alone provide a simple, objective way to generate a plausible list of "top" schools (http://www.stateuniversity.com/rank/sat_75pctl_rank.html).
- Selectivity reflects the college choices of the best students (and to some extent of their families and advisers.)
If any random college were objectively as good as (for example) the 8 Ivy League schools, why wouldn't more Ivy League students have chosen those schools? In almost all cases, they could have. The converse usually isn't true. Most students at most other colleges never had the option to choose a highly selective alternative. So selectivity is like a market "pricing" mechanism, one that tends to reflect the decisions of people who have the greatest freedom of choice (and whose choices presumably reflect - to some degree - college quality). - Students learn from other students. They may learn better from better students. Teachers may tend to teach at a faster pace or in greater depth to highly capable students.
- The best, most motivated students presumably tend to have more successful careers. A highly selective college may be able to draw on a better network of influential alumni, which may translate to more/better resources for the college and better outcomes for some students.
Can anyone here name a few non-selective colleges that are clearly, in some important measurable respects, better than some of the top ~10 (most selective)? I’ve tried to measure one outcome (PhD production) after controlling for student selectivity. I found that the top colleges, by this measure, do include some very selective schools (like Caltech, Swarthmore, and Carleton) but also some less-selective colleges (like Allegheny College and NM Institute of Mining & Technology). Also … at least one team of researchers (Dale & Krueger) has found that choosing a more selective college does not lead to significantly higher incomes. To the extent higher average incomes are associated with highly selective colleges, this appears to reflect selection effects not treatment effects (according to their research findings - which have been challenged for not considering a broad enough range of college selectivity)…
I wouldn’t say the rankings are totally worthless, if only because of the quality of student that gets into top ranked ones. However, it is clear that rankings put apples, oranges, and bananas into a rigidly hierarchical framework, and in the process you lose too much information about what is the best fit for an individual.
At Harvard or Yale, for example, you will be guaranteed to be with some of the brightest kids in the US, with extraordinary facilities and networks. That being said, you will probably get far less individual contact with first-rate profs than you would do at Oxford or Cambridge. Then again, at Oxbridge, you already have your major picked, whereas you don’t in the US, which is better for exploration. Thus the rankings depend on what is best for the student at each.
@circuitrider @urbanslaughter
@circuitrider what are you talking about? When you look at LAC graduates as a percentage rather than a whole number they BLOW away graduates from National Universities. Go online look up the famous graduates from Williams, Amherst, and Middlebury and recognize how each of these schools has one tenth the number of graduates of the major research universities. It’s not even close.
Sorry, but, in this context I’m not talking about Wordsworth and Hawthorne. Everyone knows they graduated from Bowdoin nearly two hundred years ago. But, off the top of your head, can you name three little ivy graduates under the age of siixty?
Maybe that’s the case with Bowdoin (a school I didn’t mention) but to begin with there simply aren’t many famous graduates at any school under sixty (people need time to do something fame-worthy). But, yes, I can think of dozens of famous younger people who attended top LACs. Go to Wikipedia. You’ll find them well-represented by their grads. Most graduates of these schools find success. Keep in mind, as I said, these schools are typically one tenth the size of a research university.
some wesleyan graduates under 60
peter shumlin - governor of vermont
michael f. bennet - junior senator from colorado
bradley whitford - emmy winning actor, the west wing
robert allbritton - publisher of politico magazine
sebastian junger - writer/journalist, coined phrase, “a perfect storm”
daniel handler - creator of lemony snicket children’s book series
matthew wiener - creator, writer, producer of “mad men”
lin-manuel miranda - creator, star of current broadway hit, “hamilton”
jed hoyer - general manager, chicago cubs
“Dan Brown went to 'Herst? Heh awesome.” (#19)
By some accounts, Wordsworth went to Bowdoin, which is similarly awesome.
Of course, different schools emphasize test scores to different extents. A school looking to move up the perception rankings may choose to emphasize test scores in admission more than it did before.
While that may be true in many cases, it is not assured that any given course at a more selective school covers a greater depth or breadth of material than a similar course at a less selective school.
Some types of outcome measures, like PhD production and employment-based measures, can be affected by cultural aspects of the schools (e.g. very academic-oriented versus very pre-professional students who are attracted to enroll at the school) and the mix of majors present at the schools, making it even more difficult to find the actual treatment effect differences among the selection effects and other “noise”.
I don’t think Wordsworth went to Bowdoin, but Longfellow did.
Admissions rate accounts for less than 2% of the USNWR ranking, guys, so it’s hardly as though it’s a major factor.
The concept of “fell off the face of the earth” is very interesting, because it presupposes that success is measured in loud, splashy, everyone-knows-me achievement. What’s wrong with getting a great education, going and getting a good job, and living a nice, quiet, happy life with friends, family and outside interests? Why does “success” have to be correlated with public accolades?
Good point, Pizzagirl. I wish there were a valid measure of how much an individual contributes to society. I suspect the collective contribution of the anonymous masses would far exceed the contribution of the media darlings. Exceed by a huge amount.
You mean the masses who may have gone to community college, as opposed to the few who may have gone to elite college?
It doesn’t. But, we can’t have it both ways. Either there’s a strict hierarchy among colleges based on something that is important, or there isn’t. So far, all the hootin’ and hollering has been about imputs that skew heavily toward where you grew up how much money your parents make and how much money the college spends on"curb appeal". Even @tk21769 's baccalaureate origins of Ph.d data is a surrogate marker for how much post-graduation debt a young person is comfortable taking on.
It seems to me that if the proponents of of AWS or WASP or SWAP want to be taken seriously, they have to explain why some of the “splashiest” graduates of the last 30 years have come from an LAC with a fraction of their per-student endowment?
Actually, not really. PhD study should be funded to the point that the student should not be taking on additional debt.
However, what may be the case is that students who attend small LACs are more academically oriented rather than pre-professional, and the small LACs may attract less employer recruiting for new graduates (because they are small, often in more isolated areas). So there may be a greater tendency of students at small LACs to go on to PhD study that is not related to the treatment effect of the quality of education.
@circuitrider, if I’m to understand your argument correctly, (after you said that no famous people graduated from LACs, and I said that famous people make up a large percentage of LAC graduates, followed by your claim that all famous grads from LACs were over 60. I then sent you back to the Internet to look again. In response you posted a large number of young famous Wesleyan graduates. I became bemused by your assertions followed by a post that proved my point for me and then you say that because those graduates went to Wesleyan as opposed to Williams, Amherst, or Swarthmore, they’re not an example of famous young graduates of top LACs). THIS is why rankings are absurd. There is no difference in quality between Williams and Wesleyan (which is why I find it ridiculous when people try to fin a difference in quality between Middlebury and Pomona). A top LAC is a top LAC. It makes no difference whether it’s #1 or #10.
Months? The methodologies are pretty clear.
¯_(ツ)_/¯
CC always has numerous threads on this, like the puzzled “Why is Brown’s rank so low?” thread currently in the Brown forum. Is it that difficult to read the methodology, or are people simply dissatisfied with the outcome?
Placing colleges in tiers implies a sharp drop between two sets of colleges – perhaps a much greater distinction than actually exists. It is an alternative to the typical ranking scheme but not necessarily a better one.
However one feels about its rankings, USNWR’s data is useful. I’ve long proposed that it turn its one-size-fits-all undergraduate ranking into a personalized ranking online, where people could weight each of the factors as they see fit. (Want to make peer assessment 50% of the ranking, class sizes 80%, and/or test scores 0%? No problem!) They’d make a tidy profit if they charged people a nominal fee, and it’d be a great deal more user-oriented.
There’s a similar ranking for graduate programs (PhDs.org) where you can weight factors in the NRC rankings. I have no idea why nobody has done the same for colleges.
“However one feels about its rankings, USNWR’s data is useful.”
I question how seriously USNWR audits its data for accuracy, if they do at all. It’s all too easy for private schools to manipulate numbers to make themselves appear more “elite.”
urbanslaughter, would you then say there’s no difference between Middlebury and Connecticut College? Between Middlebury and Lewis and Clark? Between Connecticut College and Lewis and Clark? They are, after all, wonderful schools, filled with dedicated faculty and bright kids and provide rich experiences for their students. What does ‘best’ mean when a capable student is searching for a school?
“There is no difference in quality between Williams and Wesleyan (which is why I find it ridiculous when people try to fin a difference in quality between Middlebury and Pomona). A top LAC is a top LAC. It makes no difference whether it’s #1 or #10.”
Exactly. Your defensiveness of Wesleyan is amusing. Don’t be so insecure that a few other colleges have slightly higher rankings. It’s all the same at that level.
@Pizzagirl Funny that you accuse me of defending Wesleyan. I have no connection to Wesleyan whatsoever. I think it’s ludicrous to try and distinguish differences in academic quality between schools that are within the 10 spots of each other. Any differences in quality MAY be apparent for one semester, maybe even a year, but they’re virtually the same in quality. I think trying claim a difference between schools that are right next to each other is just a waste of time. Do you believe that Princeton is really better than Harvard . . . or is it just this year, perhaps next year the other will be better? I mean ask yourself how that supposed difference manifests itself. At this level the fit for the student will manifest itself much more readily than any claimed difference in quality. Choosing schools based on rankings when two schools are within 10 . . . 15 spots of each other is a fools errand.
There can be differences in quality, but individualized to the student. For example, a strong department in the intended major, versus a weak or nonexistent one.