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<p>High school kids grew up with brand names on their diapers! They have never known a day in their life when something wasn’t touted as being better or worse than something else even if for all purposes the two things are identical.</p>
<p>I don’t disagree that there are differences between colleges…there are many differences. But are there nuanced differences between 1 and 2 or 3 and 4? Probably not ansgt producing differences or quality of education differences or anything significant.</p>
<p>I’m not convinced that more than a relative handful of people really take the USNWR as gospel anyway. For the vast majority of people in this country, the core factors are cost, distance from home (shorter=better), and whether the kid will like it enough (as in, friends are there, the family likes the football team, etc.). Quality isn’t assessed on “is it the highest ranked X program in the country” but is based on do I know reasonably smart / reasonably successful people who went there - thus, it must be OK.</p>
<p>There is another thread where a mother was suing her child’s preschool for $19000 as she felt that her daughter (aged 4) was disadvantaged in going to an ivy league school. Higher education especially ivy league education as the ticket to success has been imprinted in our mind. If you cannot get into an ivy, you want something that is almost as good, and you need someone to tell you what the “almost as good” is. This is where rankings come in and where USNWR makes its money. As long as you are trying to reduce education to a number, there are going people will manipulate the inputs so that number is where you want it to be.</p>
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<p>Unfortunately, it seems that the changes in Bob Morse’s rankings do influence the number of applications at schools that boosted their “standings.” Setting aside the never-ending debate about correlation and causation, one can look at the large increase in applications in years following a jump in the USNews. This happened to Chicago a few years ago and to Columbia this year. Of course, changes in the application itself DOES play a role, but the impact of the USNews is felt deeply in admission offices at our most competitive schools.</p>
<p>Just to be clear, xiggi, I knew you were sarcastic. </p>
<p>That said, I still object the how CC has separated Ivy League Schools from all other schools. This is one of the small differences that make the ivies appear to be special or unique.</p>
<p>I completely agree with you, limabeans. Frankly, I get perplexed at the fuss over them. If I were looking at the top 25 schools, why would all of those 8 necessarily stand out from the crowd? And I’m a big fan of many of those schools.</p>
<p>My daughter didn’t look at USNWR at all. I looked at some lists of which schools give the best merit aid and I think one of them may have been USNWR. </p>
<p>Malcolm Gladwell wrote an interesting article about the uselessness of these rankings in the New Yorker ([What</a> College Rankings Really Tell Us : The New Yorker](<a href=“http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2011/02/14/110214fa_fact_gladwell]What”>The Trouble with College Rankings | The New Yorker) – you can read the abstract, but the full article requires a subscription). I wonder how many of the people who consult USNWR rankings even know what their criteria are. The funniest bit was when some group did a survey and asked administrators to rank law schools and a well-known u was consistently ranked toward the top – which would be fine except for the fact that this u didn’t have a law school at the time of the survey! (Or something like that – I can’t find my copy of the magazine.)</p>
<p>I think USNWR provides great information. I don’t have a problem with USNWR at all. It’s like Consumer Reports. Here’s the info, take it or leave it. Can’t help that stupid people act as though #3 and #6 are appreciably different from a quality standpoint. Not USNWR’s problem or fault.</p>
<p>The major difference between USNews and Consumer Reports is that Consumer Reports actually tests the products it reports on. By contrast, USNews pretty much has one rule-of-thumb by which to judge colleges: how much money do they raise and spend on a per capita basis? It would be the same as if Consumer Reports rated cars solely by how much gas they consumed – with brownie points going to the Mazeratis.</p>
<p>JohnWesley, the contrast in your analogy does not work. </p>
<p>Both Consumer Report and USNews establish a methodology to end up with a final number for their rankings. Is the a difference between Harvard 99/Notre Dame 83 and Honda CRV 83/Ford Escape 74? Some consumers will not read past those numbers. Others will look at the sub-scores. Isn’t that what PG was saying? </p>
<p>Although USNews deserves a heap for criticism (mostly for clinging to their “field leveling” crutches) we shold not forget that the magazine is the originator for much of the collection of data we take for granted now. Without the efforts of Morse to normalize the collection of data from the colleges, we’d still be looking at IPEDS or at the pretty pictures on the school websites. </p>
<p>All in all, if USNews had been or still were THAT bad, it would be immensely easy for another publisher to seize the opportunity to replace them. Yet, all you have from the competition is the pure garbage produced by Washington Monthly or by Forbes’s CRAP.</p>
<p>The USNews rankings is far from perfect, but I do not think we would be better served if they ceased to exist and would have to rely on WM’s Mother Teresa rankings or Forbes reliance on salary “reports” and “rate-my-profs” mixes.</p>
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<p>You could say that about anything, including the Washngton Monthly ratings. All of these rankings are measuring <em>something</em>. However, in the case of the USNews rankings we are getting to the point where we can actually see Heisenberg’s Uncertainty Theory in action: if you measure something long enough, the results begin to reflect the effect of being measured. In other words, if all you want at the end of a twenty year period are private (and, to some extent public) colleges that continually raise tuition and spend money hand over fist, commence observing and then rating them on that basis. You will eventually get what you ask for.</p>