How do we know what factors the 1,650 people who responded to the survey based their answers on (34% participation rate, with no visibility to how many different institutions were represented in the survey takers)?
Many on CC have heard college administrators state that they pass the survey down to a low level staffer (if they even choose to have someone in their institution complete the survey), sometimes an academic advisor, sometimes even an AO, etc. I doubt many responding to this survey know about research output (or any other factor) of any school where they havenât worked.
For a very large portion, getting a college education is a check the box exercise. The actual level of academic rigor may be well down the list. For some, it may be a negative. The number looking for the high rigor (CalTech, MIT, UChicago, etc) is a small population but overweighted on this site.
This suggests that neither reaches nor safeties are likely to be as suitable in this sense as matches for most students.
If this is the main criterion, the studentâs application list should include safeties that are preferably large (so that a small percentage of academic outliers can form a peer group, and honors or other high rigor options are more likely to exist) and otherwise mostly matches (not reaches) in an academic peer sense.
IMO the vast majority of students can find academic peers at many schools. Take typical highly likely/safety schools that rack and stack like Iowa State, Iowa, ASUâŠthere are many high achievers at all 3 of those schools. I do think for the academic outliers, like those who may end up at schools like MIT and CalTech, that it is more difficult (but not impossible) to find peers at typical highly likely schoolsâŠbut that is a small minority of students.
Why do you assume a small class will have an inferior prof, and a large class will have a superior prof? Iâve had both large lectures with hundreds of students, and small lectures with a dozen students, and the quality of the professors averages out. At least with small classes, you actually get to talk to the professor, while with large classes, youâre often directed to talk to a TA first. Small classes worked a lot better for me.
Yes thatâs my point. The ranking list that sells their magazines in the US is not their âglobal universitiesâ list. USNWR know how to produce a list that ranks on research reputation. But they donât make their money from it and itâs not plausible for them to abandon their moneymaker.
Ok, so Iâm getting confused about where you are going with this?
Hereâs the conversation thread so far, as best as I can piece it together:
@prezbucky made their own short list based on their perception of âoverall academic strengthâ in which UCB was in the top 10, UCLA in the top 25.
You replied that UCLA had seen an increase in applications and decrease in admit rate, and this was reflected in its US News (presumably âNational Universitiesâ) ranking, in which it had caught up to UCB.
prezbucky and I replied that popularity among students (reflected in an increase in applications and decrease in admit rate) isnât the same thing as academic strength. I mentioned several ranking systems including US News âGlobal Universitiesâ which are more focused on academic reputation and research output, and in which UCB and UCLA have relative rankings similar to prezbuckyâs listing.
Several posters discussed whether purely academic factors should be the most heavily weighted criteria in a ranking system, with various posters (including me) arguing that it was good to have a variety of ranking systems, since not all students prioritize purely academic factors. Some students are looking for quality of undergraduate level teaching, some are looking for strength at the graduate research level, some students are looking for non-academic factors. Different rankings can reflect different priorities, and that is a good thing.
You argued that US News wouldnât seek to replicate global rankings focused on graduate research level academic strength.
This seemed like a bizarre claim to me, because they literally do have such a list and itâs even called âglobal universities,â so I pointed that out.
No one argued that US News would, or should, abandon their money making âNational Universitiesâ list. At least I didnât see that claim in this part of the thread?
Agree with this. Sometimes, large classes are a reflection of a critical mass for a major or track. And having sufficient motivated peers and seniors could result in greater opportunities for learning and extra-curriculurs such as robust club offerings.
True: they probably donât know about research output. It probably fair to say they know even less about undergraduate teaching quality and focus.
Academics in specific fields might know more about âreputationâ that is likely to be related to whose names they see in publications and who they see presenting at conferences. College admins (provosts and admissions officers and the like) might just be reliant on rankings themselvesâhence my comment about a recursive loop.
And that response rate is low! The fact that USNWR derives 20% of their ranking from it is⊠interesting.
âFaculty resourcesâ is another ranking criteria that is highly problematic. See this article from 2017):
That means that a college that pays its full-timers well, and is miserly with its part-timers, is judged the same as one that is generous to both groups. And at the many research universities where much undergraduate teaching is done by part-timers, the hefty salaries for faculty members who may be focused on research make the institution look commendable with regard to faculty resources, even if those doing the actual teaching are paid but a fraction (prorated) of their full-time colleaguesâ salaries.
âA university that mistreats its [non-full-time] employees this way is not giving its students a good education â no matter how much it may pay its few remaining tenure-track faculty members,â says the petition. âPlease consider switching the percentages for faculty salaries and part-timers to reflect the reality of todayâs campuses.â
I was responding to the subject of the thread about what USNWR would do to reshuffle its (headline aka âNational Universitiesâ) rankings. My point was simply that they wonât move to an ordering based on perceived research prowess, since they already have such a listing which they donât appear to promote (at least within the US).
Nonetheless, it seems that on CC students often are encouraged to "lock in their safetiesâ and then âshoot their shot,â or some such expression, on reaches. As an approach to college selection, this may box out appropriate (and desirable) matches entirely, as well as heightening the odds that a student will attend a safety school.
Obfuscating the âmatchâ situation is the yield protection that goes on at a lot of selective â but not tippy-top selective â schools.
A kid with a 1500 and 3.9 in the old days might have been able to view schools like Tulane, Case Western, and American U as matches. I donât think thatâs the case anymore â they are either safeties or near safeties for ED (but you have to use your EDâŠ), but reaches in the RD round. This is the case because their ED acceptance rates are so much higher than their RD rates â at Tulane a year or two ago, their ED acceptance rate was something crazy like 90%. Their RD rate was like 12%. So it was never really a match for anyone â it was either a safety/highly likely or a reach.
Itâs becoming harder to find true admissions matches, at least among private schools.
I take the opposite opinion to most posters on here in that I think reputation and career outcomes should be a significant component of any ranking system.
Harvard wins most cross-admits against Princeton but Iâd have thought Princeton would provide a more dedicated undergraduate experience if you were looking for pure academics alone. To my mind, that means a non-negligible component have to be choosing Harvard because Harvard has a certain reputation.
A big benefit of attending a university is the recognition that comes from that. There are a few university brands that have global recognition and I donât believe that the level of undergraduate education is so unparalleled at those universities that other less recognized universities cannot compare. That means a significant component of people are choosing those universities for reputation as well as career opportunities.
Harvard also has Boston/Cambridge on its side. Princeton is in a (nice) suburbanish setting, but it probably doesnât hold the same appeal as Boston for most kids.
When weâre talking Ivy vs. Ivy battles⊠I bet most kids have reasons other than negligible prestige differences for choosing the school they do.
I thought this was a fairly relevant article. 65% of cross-admits to Harvard/Yale chose Harvard.
But the article interviewed 31 students who were cross-admitted to Harvard/Yale - granted, a small sample size but very few cited location (3 people) as a reason for choosing Harvard. I canât imagine New Haven being particularly appealing but it wasnât a reason why people chose Harvard on the whole.
âI would conclude that Harvard does in fact have a very strong brand,â Brenzel said in an e-mail, âbut that for those looking past the branding strength, Yale has enormous appeal.â
Zubair added that many other students he met who were deciding between Yale and Harvard saw reputation as major tipping factor.
Even today, when family friends at her local church ask where Kan is headed to college, her mother will mention that she was accepted to Harvard but chose to attend Yale instead to which there would be gasps of âwhy Yale and not Harvard?â Kan said.
Dany Jradi, who was also admitted to Yale this year, said he also chose Harvard based on its international reputation and the future opportunities and connections the Harvard name would bring. Originally from Lebanon, Jradi said that most people in his home country have only heard of either Harvard or Oxford.
So I stand by my claim that even Ivy vs Ivy (Harvard and Yale are practically of the same quality from an academic stand point with variance in individual subjects sure), people are choosing based on reputation + name recognition.
The anecdote of a mother always telling others that their kid got into Harvard but chose Yale is comical but it has some truth to it.
Therefore, reputation (even Ivy vs Ivy) should play an important part in rankings considering thatâs why many kids (not all, let me be clear) are choosing their colleges.