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<p>[Caltech’s</a> core curriculum](<a href=“http://www.admissions.caltech.edu/learning/core]Caltech’s”>http://www.admissions.caltech.edu/learning/core) may scare off many prospective humanities majors, although a (rare) humanities major graduate from Caltech probably has a more well rounded liberal arts education than a humanities major graduate at the vast majority of schools in the US.</p>
<p>The “competition” the ranking creates is based around the most perverse incentives ever.</p>
<p>You get ranked higher for turning down more applicants. Solution: convince lots of people to apply, even those who have no hope of getting in, then send out rejections by the truckload.</p>
<p>Cost is not factored in at all, resulting in an absurd race to see who can raise tuition the highest before people start figuring out how insane it is to borrow $200,000 for a university education. There is no value assigned in the rankings for being able to provide quality at a reasonable cost.</p>
<p>^I’m not sure its appropriate to hold a magazine published responsible for what choices colleges make. If the ranking is as “flawed” as many on this thread claim, why should colleges care? (Yeah, that was rhetorical.)</p>
<p>Yes, costs are increasing, but there is a ranking for quality at a reasonable cost: it’s the separate ranking of publics. USNews also sorts a list by value, i.e., net cost. Why should the magazine be held responsible for the fact that H offers classes with only ONE student, thus increasing its costs of education. Isn’t a class of 1 a good thing for that one student? Isn’t it a good thing that Yale has a whole department dedicated to assisting students to apply to prestigious scholarships like a Rhodes, Goldwater, & Fullbright? (Such advising costs money.) In contrast, the #1 public, at half the cost of Yale, essentially has zero advising.</p>
<p>OP, in regard to your question about employers using the rankings? </p>
<p>My spouse has been involved in hiring many engineers over the years.
Guess what? When it comes down to about 4 or 5 people sitting in a conference room trying to decide which applicant to hire, WHERE that applicant graduated from college never comes up in the conversation! Rather what is discussed is applicant’s work experience, skills, ability to fit in with fellow co-workers, references etc. Naturally my spouse laughs about prestige, rankings etc, because he knows from his own work experience that it doesn’t matter! </p>
<p>When it came to his own four children, he did have one requirement: “Is the school in this book?” “Princeton Review’s Best 373” (fortunately all 6 of our schools are in there). So that was his reference, not the USNWR’s rankings. Everybody has their favorite guides in this college search process, I rather like the Fiske Guide myself! :)</p>
<p>SLUMOM,</p>
<p>That might be your husband’s experience, but I’ve seen the opposite. It comes up all the time in the hiring process. I’ve been working in stuffy east/ west coast firms since college, so that might have something to do with it - but if you look at top consulting firms, finance firms, or even Silicon Valley VCs you’ll see that it looks like 90% come from top schools.</p>
<p>^It depends on the industry. SLUMOM was talking about engineering which typically doesn’t care as much, while finance/consulting/VC firms do care a lot more. I think most fields are somewhat a mix of the two approaches - that is, the school typically matters and is taken into consideration* to get the *interview, but once you are in the interview stage, everybody is basically even and they pick based on experience and how good of a fit you are for the firm. So, doing well at a good school can get you an interview that you might not otherwise get, but getting the job results from your personal qualities regardless of the school. (But obviously, you can’t get the job if you don’t get the interview first.) And, again, the importance of the prestige of the school varies depending on the industry.</p>
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<p>Actually, I’m not entirely sure that that’s bad. By increasing the number of applicants (and thereby the number of rejectees), a school maximizes its chances of admitting the best possible class that it can. The same is true of any - to use economics parlance - searching/matching market: ceteris paribus, I want to go to the store that offers the largest variety of goods as I then maximize my odds of finding the item I want the most. </p>
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<p>Sure, but I don’t think that’s what USNews is designed to do anyway. USNews ostensibly ranks the ‘best’ colleges based purely on quality as defined by USNews, not the most cost-effective university. Similarly, the AFI supposedly ranks the ‘best’ movies, not the best movie for the price. Citizen Kaine doesn’t get a boost just because somebody is offering its DVD for half-price. </p>
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<p>Even SLUMOM’s example seems to be incomplete. It is true that once you as an applicant have made it to the round where employees are sitting in a conference room deciding who to hire or even interview, your school matters little, whether for an engineering job or not. But the better question is how did you make it to that round in the first place, particularly for an entry-level job? Most engineering employers have a list of target schools from where they recruit, and barring a social connection, if you don’t belong on that list, then your application won’t make it to that final round. The higher-end engineering employers are more likely to target MIT or Stanford than Arkansas State.</p>