US News has its own social mobility ranking and will obviously use its own methodology when adding to the overall ranking. The top publics according to us news don’t do much better than top privates pertaining to social mobility.
My “college selection” days are over having recently sent our D to her school, but the criteria we use for both D and S were fairly easily analyzed by examining college web sites and CDS data. To be honest, a couple of the most talked about metrics were just not as important to us. Class size not as important as class quality of content. Social mobility not as important as overall graduation rate and class availability.
I’d take this comment somewhat further. Those who have purchased USN’s annual print publication might perceive that it tends to deemphasize its main rankings. The guide’s actually broad approach appears through features such as interesting descriptive profiles on students happily headed toward a wide range of colleges and perennial side rankings (e.g., “Best Value Colleges”). Those who solely seek the main rankings, however, may be revealing more about their own priorities than those of USN.
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The overall best of rankings along with the program, department, and more specific rankings are helpful for determining fit when taken in context with campus visits, word-of-mouth, etc.
It’s one metric only. Not exclusively or even primarily because some factors are not accounted for in the rankings or easily observable in a campus visit.
There will always be value judgments to be made in determining what is included in these rankings. It makes sense to shuffle them when students’ and families’ priorities change so that they are useful for the consumer.
The original post discussed this in the sentence after the one you quoted and clarified what I meant by the comment, which is repeated below:
“There is no validation or verification of whether the formula for “best college” is reasonably accurate besides the output being what USNWR readers expect to see, with familiar names at the top. If the weightings used in the formula don’t do this, then I expect USNWR will adjust weightings until they do.”
According to USNWR, the “best college” can be calculated as:
- 20% 1=marginal / 5=distinguished admin survey
- 17.5% 6-year grad rate
- 10% financial resources per student
- 8% class size index
- 7% faculty salary
- <= 5% …
There is no validation or verification that these percentages accurately compute the “best college”. It’s essentially just making up a formula with a bunch of numbers to look psuedo-scientific. Suppose USNWR choose to reverse the order above and make faculty salary 20%, class size 17.5%, financial resources per student 10%, … It really doesn’t matter, so long as it sells magazines/subscriptions; and may do so, if puts the names readers expect see on top.
This differs from any kind of legitimate research or even the level of many armchair experts. For example, suppose I made a formula for best colleges in football. We can validate how well the formula works be seeing how well it correlates with football game results. We can’t do this type of external validation with USNWR’s formula.
There may have been complaints for many years, but USNWR didn’t remove it following the complaints that began many years ago. Instead they removed it shortly after the Columbia debacle. And at the same time USNWR also removed other things Columbia was caught misreporting that are less commonly complained about, such as class size.
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US News doesn’t use the Chetty=style social mobility ranking that puts Princeton and many other top USNWR colleges in the bottom 2%? And instead has their own social mobility formula in which highly selective privates perform much better, such that it doesn’t change their position on the USNWR best college list significantly? I am shocked. 
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Because there IS no such thing as the best college – or the best restaurant in town.
Let’s assume for a moment, every single student could get into Harvard in Cambridge.
For 90% of high schools students I know personally, that still would NOT be their best option - because of location preference, “vibe”, rigor, social factors, etc. For them a completely different college in a different environment in a different part of the county would be (and indeed was) better.
So how can something unilaterally be “best” if for a majority, or substantial subset of people, there are even “better-than-best” options.
It’s just as silly an exercise, as naming a restaurant “the” best. What if many people don’t care for French cuisine, are lactose intolerant, are vegan, have an almond allergy, strongly prefer Mediterranean food, like family style portions, prefer to keep snails and frogs in wetlands… For them a different restaurant with fresh, high-quality ingredients, great presentation and service, etc. might be better than that supposedly “best”.
NO ranked listing at all - because every ranking is implicitly non-applicable to virtually everyone looking at that list. Their entry page should be a FORM, where visitors identify what’s important to them in a college, and then it produces a list most matching those criteria - not because any one is “better” than the other, but because some are a more perfect match for that person’s criteria.
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Are you willing to admit that some schools offer a better education, across the board, than other schools?
Do you think that MIT and Boise State offer the same quality of education for every major that they both offer?
Do I think that the SAME student graduating with a Bachelor of Science in Music at MIT, could possibly have gotten an equal or better music education at a college ranked lower by US News than MIT – I don’t know (does anyone? Does US News?), but I certainly would think it being entirely possible?
Do I think that individual classes, or the course catalogue at MIT, likely reflect the selectiveness of the enrolled students - yes. That doesn’t make MIT “better” in general, as in: for every student, but it certainly could make it a better fit for any student with similar stats.
Which is my point: It’s not that any one college is absolutely “better”/“best” - but that some or are better fit for a particular student’s combination of needs, likes, abilities…
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Actually, they mostly do. See post #55.
But Michigan, Virginia, and Georgia Tech are the public universities with <= 30% admission rate that do not do well in the USNWR social mobility ranking.
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In terms of social science, USN rankings may have reached their peak of utility at the time when it sponsored the most original research. For example, the results from a survey of recent college graduates, which pertained to satisfaction of experience at their schools of choice, was once included in the ranking formula. Nonetheless, even if USN had maintained or strengthened this direction of inquiry, it seems it might still be viewed with a similar degree of scepticism as that expressed in this topic.
Boise State vs MIT is an odd comparison. The most common majors at Boise State are:
- Nursing
- Psychology
- Kinesiology
- Computer Science
- Health Studies
- Biology
- Communication
- Elementary Education
- Construction Management
- Business Administration
The most common majors at MIT are
- CS and Engineering (by far the most common major)
- Electrical Eng and CS
- Mechanical Engineering II-A
- Mathematics
- Physics
- Biological Engineering
- Mathematics and CS
- Aerospace Engineering
- Mechanical Engineering II
- Computation and Cognition
There is very little overlap. MIT is an engineering school. Boise State emphasizes non-engineering areas, particularly health-focused fields, like nursing. It’s going to be an almost complete different group of students at the 2 colleges. The closest to an overlap among the 10 most popular majors listed above is CS. While MIT doesn’t offer a CS major, they do have a CS and Engineering major. Suppose you put a randomly selected Boise State CS student in MIT’s CS and Engineering program. Do you think he/she would get a better education than at Boise State? Or might he/she struggle with MIT’s rigorous program, expectation of mastering calculus during HS, have a high risk of failing to graduate from MIT, etc.?
It’s much easier to have good outcomes if you admit students who are gifted high achievers that are expected to have good outcomes, like the typical MIT students. These types of students are likely to be successful in college where ever they attend, and have great outcomes after college. In my opinion, it can be more impressive to have good outcomes among students who face greater challenges – students who on average do not have great outcomes during college, often failing to graduate… You are more likely to find the latter type of student at Boise State. If a Boise State type college really surpasses expectations and has typical stellar outcomes among an incoming group of HS students who are not stellar, could it be a better college than MIT for those students?
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I always find it funny that people say that you can’t rank colleges. It is like saying that you can’t say that an NBA team is better than a HS basketball ball team because for most people the correct team is the HS team.
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It’s a different situation because “best basketball teams” implies a clearly defined metric on how to rank – ability to win basketball games. “Best college” does not have this type of clearly defined metric on how to rank. Instead “best college” means different things to different people.
A more apt comparison might be creating a formula to rank best state in the US. Does “best state” mean highest income, least unemployment/poverty, least major crime, good public education/college system, low taxes, best weather, …? It depends who you ask. The best state for one person is likely to be different than another, depending on what particular criteria that person values . The best state for a new grad looking for a tech job is not necessarily the same as the best state for newly retired person looking for an affordable place to live, with a mild climate. A similar statement could be made about “best college.”
USNWR actually does rank the “best state” in the US. as summarized at https://www.usnews.com/news/best-states/rankings . The USNWR formula for best state looks far more complex than their formula for best college, with 71 different metrics. The highest weighted category groupings are heath care, education, economy, infrastructure, and opportunity . The result of the formula is below:
USNWR Best State Ranking
1 . Utah
2. Washington
3. Idaho
4. Nebraska
5. Minnesota
…
50. Louisiana
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With colleges, what’s the game?
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Maybe we define top publics differently but to me only UCLA, UCB, Umich ,UVA and maybe UNC, Gatech, UT Austin as tier 2 publics are top schools.
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Fine do Bosie state vs Emory. They seem to have a lot of majors that overrlap.
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The game is prestige, employability, educational quality, student quality, and student outcomes.
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Based on overall academic strength, I could see UMich and Berkeley in the top ten…
UVA, UCLA, UCSD, UNC, Wisconsin, Texas, Washington, Illinois, Georgia Tech in the top 25…
And probably 5-10 more quality publics in the top 40.
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I don’t think they knew how popular the rankings were going to get and given the first rankings were in 1983, they were not in any sense used to save them from extinction. They didn’t release the next ranking till 1985. I actually remember reading articles from US News in one of my history classes, when I was in high school in the early 80s. Note that I was a senior when the first rankings came out in Sept of 1983, it did impact us even back then. Now though, it’s the only or main revenue source and stopped the print editions.
“UVA, UCLA, UCSD, UNC, Wisconsin, Texas, Washington, Illinois, Georgia Tech in the top 25…”
The first national rankings did have Berkeley, UM, Illinois, Wisconsin in the top-13, they only went to 13 then.
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