<p>I just looked over the USNWR rankings and I am terribly confused. Aside from the actual ranking, or in my case, instead of considering it, what are the real numbers that a person should be looking at to decide if a school is "good" or not? Objectively, looking at the non-profit accredited, 4 year institutions of secondary education, what is the median and average graduation rate overall? What is the general consensus of what makes a school a drop out factory? At what point does the scores of enrolled students come into play? Let's say a school has a mean SAT score of 850 for it's enrolled students and 65% graduate in 5 years or less and compare that to a school where the mean score is 1850 with a graduation rate of 72%. Is it possible to say one yields better graduation results? Or say there is a tier 4 school that sends 60% of it's graduates to grad school (is that even likely?). How would that compare to a 1st or 2nd tier school that sends 80%? At what point are you really comparing apples to oranges to tangerines to tomatoes to cows? I guess I'm just looking for how to objectively compare schools to one another, without taking into consideration reputation and prestige. Where can a person find typical numbers so you can judge what is atypical? My son is going to have to fairly unique needs and I'm certainly willing to look at all 4 year non profit accredited schools.</p>
<p>I absolutely HATE rankings - see below for a short rant why. My advice is always the same - the “you” refers to the kid:</p>
<ol>
<li>A place that you like. Think city, country, region, size.</li>
<li>A place that has the program you want. Some programs aren’t at every school but even if you’re talking chemistry, are you interested in undergrad research - because that means a university more than a college - any specialty, etc. The more you know what you want, the more you can dig in to find out how much real attention the department gets at school and how it works.</li>
<li>If you don’t know what you want to study, then what environment are you looking for? Where will you succeed? </li>
<li>What can you afford? There’s no reason to take on huge debt for a marginally different, not necessarily better degree. (Again, see below.) Think about how debt changes your life and what you’d have to forego to pay it off when you graduate?</li>
</ol>
<p>Now about rankings. I hate USNWR because they don’t disclose much detail about their metrics. You can only find broad descriptions and thus you don’t know such basics as the dispersion in any single metric. I also hate them because there’s no indication whatsoever about sensitivity in their materials. If they did multiple runs - do they? - with a variety of error factors for each metric, then how much would individual rankings change? Is the final ranking list picked in part because it reflects how they think it should look - with the reliable name schools on top and then a few risers that everyone knows highlighted? (And we know they changed their methods at least once because the results displeased them.) My reading of the material is that the rankings are broad clumps in which #24 is in a big group that extends a long way and that everyone in that group is essentially ‘pick-em,’ meaning toss-up, depending on the run.</p>
<p>I also hate the lack of discussion about the validity of the data. Much of the information is provided by 3 people at a school and we have enough examples of lying and distortion to cause great concern. (As in Clemson ranking all programs except Harvard as worse.) Schools self-report salary information for graduates. How are we to trust that information? It’s so easy to distort the numbers without actually lying and who would know if they outright lie? </p>
<p>Finally, I look at the metrics they use and shake my head. What the heck do they mean? Why do they add up to a better school? Why are they assigned the weights they have? </p>
<p>The next level of my hate for this crap is that people buy it. They buy the idea that #34 is better than #42 though in another run they might be flipped and that statistically they’re the same in this weird ranking need. </p>
<p>My reading is that as part of the bubble mentality we’ve ascribed meaning to lists - which could be a count of argyle socks or school name t-shirts - as a way of “objectively” valuing what we assume must be something we need to and can value in a list. The sad part is that this then translates into real decisions that cost money, as in “I got into school x but it’s number #50 and school y is number #38 but school y is $20k a year more but I’m going to y because it’s better.” The idea not-so-implicitly purveyed and accepted is that school y will pay off because it’s higher on this list and so a kid takes on $80k in debt because that’s believed to be the right decision. All based on a dumb list that shows little sign of being statistically valid and which doesn’t even correlate to what people earn. </p>
<p>In that regard, I see over and over again a complete lack of understanding of what drives income. Adults know this but the learning somehow gets lost. The two basic factors other than your ability and drive are your profession and where you live. If you want to make more money on average, then go to school and live in a place where incomes are higher - and of course cost of living will be higher too. If you want to make more money generally, then find out what the profession pays. I see kids taking on big debts to go to marginally more prestigious schools as though a degree in z field is somehow worth $10-20k more a year.</p>
<p>Well one thing I’d want to find out is the reason for the lower graduation rate. Are there large numbers of older or poorer students who need to work and carry less than a full schedule? Do people take time off for co-ops or internships? Do kids flunk out of only certain majors? Are they not offering enough sections of required courses? </p>
<p>There are colleges for every kid, but mine won’t be looking at any where the mean SAT score is below average or the 4 year graduation rate less than 75%. I also think the freshman retention rate is important. A good place to find this information is [College</a> Navigator - National Center for Education Statistics](<a href=“http://nces.ed.gov/collegenavigator/]College”>College Navigator - National Center for Education Statistics)</p>
<p>Thanks for that site mathmom. I think between that and College Board’s site, I will find enough info to keep me occupied with the college application process so that I will leave my son alone about it.</p>
<p>I once asked a college about their less than stellar 4 year graduation rate and the response I got is that the data includes an adult weekend college program. I wish they would separate this out. I have zero interest in paying for 6 years of college and would like to make an informed decision. </p>
<p>The other stat that I find interesting is the top 5 or so degrees that were granted. If my son is interested in business management and only 3% of the kids graduate with that degree then chances are the program is not a top priority to the school. I think they show this stat on the collegeboard website.</p>
<p>At a college with a broad spectrum of majors offered, 3% would probably make the top-10, and might very well be a high priority. Especially if there were also related, overlapping majors (marketing, finance, human resources).</p>
<p>I don’t think averages mean much. Like lots of other things, educational institutions are really sorted in tiers, and have different market niches. You have to compare colleges to their peer institutions.</p>
<p>A private college that is residential and has students with high SATs isn’t going to have a good excuse fof a 6-year graduation rate much below 100%. But the four-year graduation rates often fall below 90%, because kids may take time off to do all sorts of things. When I was in college, one of the people from the class above me dropped into my class because he spent a full year working on a political campaign and then the transition team. He went on to become a top-shelf political consultant. No one should have been tut-tutting about the college’s failure to move him through in four years. And then, of course, there are the Bill Gateses and Steven Jobses of the world, who are permanently and misleadingly marring their colleges’ graduation statistics. For the most part, though, these anomalies are spread evenly over the range of elite colleges, so that they don’t affect comparative statistics. (If you could find a school with a greater percentage of Gateses, and Jobses . . . you would probably think that a plus! Steve Ballmer does!)</p>
<p>If you are looking at two urban publics in similar cities, and one of them has a 10% higher graduation rate, that’s very meaningful, even if (especially if) the difference is 50% vs. 60%.</p>
<p>add’l info can be had at collegedata.com</p>
<p>I also can rant on how I believe USNews and similar publications rate schools. This time I’ll keep it short.
The real world doesn’t separate colleges by tiers. The guy in HR doesn’t look up the tier of a college as soon as a prospective employee leaves the interview. Those magazines are in the business of selling you rankings. They want to make you believe in the importance and accuracy of the item they sell. It is necessary to make you believe that to achieve high sales of their product.</p>
<p>I think such ratings are a valuable tool for finding lesser known schools, and regionally known schools.</p>
<p>“…mine won’t be looking at any where the mean SAT score is below average or the 4 year graduation rate less than 75%.”</p>
<p>Lots of very good public universities have 4 year graduation rates well below 75%. Often this is due to state mandates on who must be admitted. Just because you can get in, doesn’t mean you will make it through the first semester! Students who survive the first year are much more likely to finish in a reasonable amount of time. Perhaps what should be published is the 3 year graduation rate for Sophomores?</p>
<p>I’m not sure what 4 year graduation rates mean in terms of quality. It seems to have less meaning than the number of books in the library and that doesn’t matter much in the internet area when college students can access vast resources of journals and other materials.</p>
<p>Remember that graduation rates are looked at for 4 and then longer periods. Some state schools lose kids instate to local state schools - affordability - and some of the worse students may also move to local state schools. What does that mean? I’m serious. Is that bad or good?</p>
<p>Then consider the student profile. Some schools have very few minority kids and yet minority kids have higher dropout rates so is it bad for a school to have admitted them or bad for a school to have turned them away? The school’s self-interest is to select kids who will stay in school - and that is true for them financially - but what about the school’s educational mission? Are they punished for that?</p>
<p>At what point does a lower graduation rate become meaningful? If we’re talking a private college - not a specialty school but a liberal arts college - does it mean a admits wealthier kids than b or does it mean that a is easier or that a picks more traditional kids who don’t revisit their decisions or what? If a school is public, then how much does the graduation rate reflect both the demographics of the state and the pressures on the school to admit (or not) a variety of students?</p>