<p>Any comments guys? I mean, Amherst, Swarthmore, Wellesley and Pomona are all brilliant as well, but why is Williams the best of the best?</p>
<p>Williams has been ranked no. 1 for I think three years, but before that, Amherst and Swarthmore both had long runs of 3-4 years each at the top, and before that, Williams again ... U.S. News jimmies the criteria every so often to keep things interesting, but the differences among the top three are basically statistically insignificant. Actually, I think Pomona is the only one consistently underranked as it is equal in quality of students and profs to Amherst, Williams, and Swat, yet has never cracked the top three and is often below a few other schools. It's only a matter of time before Amherst or Swat are number one once again, and when it happens, it won't reflect a relative change in quality or desirability, just like Williams is currently no better or no more desirable than the other two. All accept right around the same percentage of applicants, and applicants of equal quality, although with slightly different emphasis, for instance with no football team, Swat has slightly higher SAT's than either. I'd say that in reality, A,W,S and P are tied at the top of the liberal arts hierarchy, with another group, Wellesley, Midd, Bowdoin, Wesleyan, Carleton, Haverford, essentially tied with one another in second.</p>
<p>It is rumored (and, there's some substance to it) that when Mel Elfin and other editors at USNews got together to design the first system, they initially rejected some models that purported to show "some college I've never heard of" -- in Elfin's words -- at the top of the poll. Elfin was unhappy until the designers came up with a ranking system that basically confirmed his idea of "the conventional wisdom" at the time, i.e., that HYP should finish somewhere near the top of a university poll. Once they broke it into separate tiers for LACs and research unis, it would be natural to assume that the same folk would have been unhappy with any design that did not place Amherst or Williams near the top.</p>
<p>When you think about it, if someone twenty years ago, had wanted to design a ranking system that would have placed Oberlin and Wesleyan at the top (not as far-fetched in 1987 as it might sound now) they might have included bells and whistles like %age of URMs, %age of graduates who go on to earn Ph.Ds. in the sciences, per capita research funding from external sources, or the number of accomplished artists and musicians on faculty. The results would not have been surprising to anyone familiar with the top fifty or so colleges or universities. But, they didn't and they don't.</p>
<p>williams is #1 because it happens to score the highest on those things that us news happens to weigh and rank heavily for that particular year. i agree that there are 2 tiers as described with no differences academically/ resources in tiers and only minimal differences between tiers. the rankings, as pointed out to me in another post, does not take into account many important things like location, location and location and also the power of consortiums to really enhance a college's offerings beyond what us news ranks (pomona/cmc, haverford/bryn mawr, amherst/smith/mhc) which blurs tiers even more.</p>
<p>besides, the differences between the #1 ranked school and #10 ranked school are really quite insignificant.</p>
<p>I totally agree with what Ephman wrote. USNEWS juggles the details of the ranking formula every few years to mix it up. Amherst, Swarthmore, and Williams have each held down the #1 spot (and ties) roughly equal numbers of times over the last 25 years.</p>
<p>The most recent change was double-counting graduation rates. Not only does your graduation rate count in the ratings, but USNEWS has a "projected graduation rate" -- the higher your SATs, the higher your projected grad rate. Meeting or missing this projected grad rate also counts in the ratings. So for example, Amherst and Willliams have the same grad rate, but Amherst's higher SATs give it a higher "predicted grad rate". Thus, it gets docked compared to Williams.</p>
<p>This absolutely kills schools that have very high SATs, but are unusually challenging academically. CalTech, MIT, Swarthmore, etc. Schools like this could improve their USNEWS score by adding more gut courses. Or by making it possible to graduate with less than a C average like some of the other schools. Caltech got killed so badly on this that USNEWS made an exception in the rankings.</p>
<p>This particularly killed Swarthmore. When they dropped football in 2000, they helped a number of their players transfer to other schools. This knocked their grad rate down a couple of points. Since USNEWS uses a six-year grad rate for their ratings, this is still hurting in both grad rate and projected grad rate performance. But, Swat will never have a 96% grad rate as "predicted" by USNEWS.</p>
<p>If you subscribe to the full USNEWS reports, you can see which schools are ranked where.</p>
<p>In peer ranking, Williams and Amherst are 97, Swat is 96.</p>
<p>In grad rates, Williams and Amherst are at 97%, Swat at 91%.</p>
<p>In selectivity, Amherst and Swat are #2, Williams is #5.</p>
<p>In financial resources, Swat is #1, Williams is #3, Amherst is #8. </p>
<p>In alumni giving rank, Amherst is #2, Williams is #4, Swat is #11.</p>
<p>Change the weighting for any of these in the USNEWS formulas and you'll probably get a different overall #1....and generate buzz in the media to sell this year's ranking magazine.</p>
<p>I-dad. Your assumption is that lower graduation rates are a result of the fact that students don't fare well academically/fail-out. At the very top schools, virtually no one flunks out - they transfer to schools that are better "fits."</p>
<p>Also, Williams and Amherst had grad rates of 96 percent, not 97 percent.</p>
<p>There is actually quite a bit of fluctuation in grad rates on a year-to-year basis, especially at Swat and and Williamd</p>
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Your assumption is that lower graduation rates are a result of the fact that students don't fare well academically/fail-out. At the very top schools, virtually no one flunks out - they transfer to schools that are better "fits."
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<p>Obviously, when six-year grad rates are above 90%, it is true that "virtually no one flunks out". Equally important, at schools with endowments the size of those we are talking about, virtually no one fails to graduate for financial reasons.</p>
<p>However, there are differences in average academic requirements. Certainly, some of the students who leave Swarthmore (or Caltech or MIT) do so because they reach a point where graduating becomes increasingly remote. At Swarthmore, you have to get a C or better to receive credit for a course and you have to complete your entire college career with a C average (2.0 or better) to graduate. Some schools consider a D or a D- a passing grade. At the end of sophmore year, there are some students who can read the tea leaves and transfer. It only takes a few students to turn a 96% grad rate into a 92% grad rate. An associated issue would be students who party themselves into a semester off and then decide to transfer rather than return.</p>
<p>Overall, I agree with you. I think the biggest reason that freshmen transfer is that they just plain picked the wrong school. That's why I advice high school applicants to pay attention to campus culture issues...and to visit to make sure they are comfortable with the campus culture.</p>
<p>I think the second biggest reason is that students fail to get into their "reach" school and go into college with an attitude of dissatisfaction with the school they "settled for" . In many cases, this is ridiculous....as in "settling for Williams" or Swarthmore or Smith or whatever. But, I see kids here who are just determined to be miserable and who are already thinking transfer even before they show up for freshman orientation. That vibe is so negative that it becomes a self fulfilling prophecy. Transitioning from high school to college is not easy; you really don't want to go into with with a negative attitude.</p>
<p>I-dad--</p>
<p>correct me if I'm wrong, but don't the majority of students transfer imbetween their frosh and their sophomore years? If this is the case, then Swarthmore--which has an ungraded frosh year (which I am highly envious of--my GPA would be about .3 higher if Williams also had an ungraded frosh year) wouldn't lose most of its students for grade reasons (either transferring or flunking out). Swarthmore is a smaller school than Williams or Amherst with a bit more strong of a predominant campus culture...so if I had to bet, I'd say that's why the Swat graduation rate is lower. Williams, Amherst, and Swat are perfect fits for most of their students. However, I think that there are many more students at Williams and Amherst for which it is a "pretty good" or "ok" fit, than at Swat...which I think tends either to be a "great" or "terrible" fit.</p>
<p>The difference between a 92 percent and a 96 percent grad rate is so minimal that it's not even worth mentioning as a significant difference between the two schools.</p>
<p>Again, you are speculating about why the grad rates of Swarthmore and Williams differ. </p>
<p>Think about the statement below. Your constant ripping on Williams (whether implicit or explicit) isn't very assuring for entering students.</p>
<p>"But, I see kids here who are just determined to be miserable and who are already thinking transfer even before they show up for freshman orientation. That vibe is so negative that it becomes a self fulfilling prophecy. Transitioning from high school to college is not easy; you really don't want to go into with with a negative attitude."</p>
<p>MIT's most recent 6 year graduation rate was 94%. Perhaps USNEWS would have expected a bit higher, but I don't think its tough academics hurt its grad rate. I agree that people tend to leave places like Caltech and Swarthmore because they find the options are narrow, great if that is what you want, but quite limited if you want something else. MIT is bigger than the other two combined, and in a much livelier area. So even if you discover you don't like tech as much as you thought, you can get a social science degree, and live in Cambridge for four years.</p>
<p>Oh, and I certainly agree that USnews rankings are nonsense. WASP are all great schools and trying to rank them is pointless.</p>
<p>Well, though Williams may be ranked the number 1 liberal arts school in US NEWS, Amherst, Swarthmore, and Pomona among a few are just as good as Williams.</p>
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correct me if I'm wrong, but don't the majority of students transfer imbetween their frosh and their sophomore years?
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<p>That's what I thought. But, it doesn't necessarily seem like it. The top-10 LACs all have freshmen retention rates between 95% and 98%, but the six-year grad rates vary from 90% to 96%. I think that the summer between sophmore and junior year also sees some departures. That's typically when you declare a major and may be a point when the reality of perhaps not graduating sets in. I had three friends in my class who all left after sophmore year, each for different reasons.</p>
<p>Of course, the numbers of students who leave are so small at all of these schools that it's really hard to pin down trends. We really are talking about the sum of individual, and probably quite varied, circumstances. A few are just miserable at college. A few went to the wrong college -- maybe they thought they'd like the East Coast, but can't stand being 3000 miles away from home...whatever. A few party a little too hard. A few struggle academically. A few get the boot for disciplinary reasons -- I suspect the guy who threw the table at Swat and the guy who beat up the kid at Williams will be grad rate casualties. A few quit to go found multi-million dollar dot coms. Add 'em up over the course of four years and you get the 20 to 30 kids who leave from each entering class at these schools.</p>
<p>My guess is that, if there is any valid correlation, it's probably family income levels. That's certainly the case if you look at grad rates over a broader range of schools. It's pretty rarified atmosphere to have a financial aid office that can keep just about everybody going for four years.</p>
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MIT's most recent 6 year graduation rate was 94%. Perhaps USNEWS would have expected a bit higher, but I don't think its tough academics hurt its grad rate.
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<p>The latest USNEWS reported MIT's six-year rate as 92% and then dinged 'em again for signficantly underperforming their "predicted" 96% grad rate. Totally bogus. Realistically, a 92% grad rate for a first-rate tech school is amazing. This is a big reason that USNEWS has UPenn ranked ahead of MIT.</p>
<p>With the highest SATs in the country, CalTech just got massacred for a few years on this "predicted" rate. The Pres. of Stanford wrote an open letter to USNEWS asking if they really thought CalTech would be a "better" school if they made the curriculum easier so more students could graduate. This year, USNEWS manually adjusted the "predicted" rate down to 90%.</p>
<p>'The latest USNEWS reported MIT's six-year rate as 92% and then dinged 'em again for signficantly underperforming their "predicted" 96% grad rate."</p>
<p>Directly correlated with income. 66% of MIT students receive need-based aid, and percentage of Pell Grant recipients is much higher than at Williams.</p>
<p>The vast majority of departures are for economic/family/health reasons and have nothing to do with academics.</p>
<p>umm..ID..you don't like Williams that much do you?:S That's pretty weird considering the fact that you ar a Williams alum. Most, in fact almost all Williams alums i met were in love with the place.</p>
<p>do any of you ll know anything abt denison?are the students there as bright as in A,W,Swat?</p>
<p>I enjoyed my four years at Williams. And, worked hard to get my daughter to give it a second look (after a mid-January visit early in high school) and eventually apply. I think it deserves its USNEWS ranking.</p>
<p>good to know:)</p>
<p>Mini, please provide us with some evidence to back-up your claim. To my knowledge, none of the top-colleges provide a percentage distribution of the reasons why students leave</p>