WSJ College Rankings

Parents Forum
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I think we’ve finally found the right ranking; and the fact that it reveals 5 schools in which I have a lot of financial and emotional equity has nothing to do with my evaluation of the ranking. I worked through all the tedious math, which I’ve validated, and coupled it with my unfailing “spidey senses”, and have concluded that this is the right ranking. We needn’t debate this further. That’s the list.

Apologies in advance for those whose favorite schools didn’t make the list, or made it in a spot you deem to be too low. Facts are facts.

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For UF, one plausible explanation is the significant population growth in the state, leading to a notable increase in selectivity. Indeed, UF’s acceptance rate drops from 47% in 2013 to 39% in 2018, and to 23% last year. Similar improvements in selectivity are happening to FSU, UCF, and USF as well, contributing to their rise in ranking.

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That was one explanation that occurred to me, and it makes sense. On other other hand, Florida has been densely populated for some time. Has the population really increased that dramatically over the last, say, 5 years? Maybe it has.

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Which is exactly how I take them, along with the myriad opinions of others on this site and elsewhere. So, when someone says, “(Name of College) isn’t (Name of College),” and they say that a lot around here, it’s really no different to me than reading a ranking.

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I have an interest in this bc my kid just chose UF over other schools I might have preferred at some level so I’ve been spending some time on the old CDSs. Things I’ve noticed – biggest is that they’ve gotten a ton of money from the state and built a bunch of facilities and-- perhaps most importantly – hired a bunch of new faculty. Over the 5-10 years the number of classes over 100 has dropped by more than half. About the same drop for classes from 50-99. The changes aren’t as dramatic in the 40-49, 30-39, 20-29, 10-19, and 2-9 groups, there it looks like there’s movement in both directions among the groups.

Their research did also take off. I can’t remember the numbers exactly, but Summer 2022 they reported surpassing $1 billion in research funding. I don’t know how that ranks among big universities, but they made a big deal about it.

Then there is cost – in-state or OOS: Cost of Attendance | UF Office of Student Financial Aid and Scholarships. They started the OOS grandparent tuition waiver two years ago. Even just OOS state costs (estimated $45K) at UF are so much less than the other highly ranked publics OOS (generally 1/3 to almost 1/2 less), but if you get the OOS waiver, all-in full-pay including meal plan and dorm was estimated at $23K this year. In-state students will pay even less bc they all pretty much will qualify for Bright Futures scholarships if they get in. And if you are an OOS with reasonably high stats, you have a good chance of a small amount of a tuition waiver (my kid got that until he got off the WL for the grandparent tuition waiver).

There are online courses, but if you’re getting in, you probably have a bunch of AP/IB credits and that will likely let you skip some intro courses that you might have had to take online bc/o scheduling conflicts/availability. My kid has one this semester – but it’s not like watching a film of live lectures. There are a bunch of modules and reading materials you annotate online and you collaborate in required projects online. There are some recorded lectures, but it seems – from what I’m hearing – like those are more supplemental to the heart of the course, which is the online collaboration stuff (TAs and professors collaborate there, too, I think?). With earlier registration going forward, my kid will be less likely to be forced into an online class (tho apparently some kids like to choose them – bc they like the flexibility of doing the class when it works for their schedule).

Number of OOS and international students is increasing – this year’s entering 1st year class is 19% OOS/international. That has been increasing year over year. Overall, given that the size of the university undergrad is larger than 4X the freshman class, I think they bring in a fair number of transfer students as juniors maybe, and those will tend to up the in-state numbers.

We’ll see how the curricular stuff plays out. That does worry me. As of now, from the meetings I’ve seen and course lists I’ve seen, nothing has changed…

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280

Looking at how the two schools ranked on the factors that matter to USNWR,
UF did a lot better with graduation rates, faculty compensation, #classes with less than 20 students, SAT/ACT range, %students in the top 10% of their class, etc.

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I suspect UF is also helped by positive feedback. Improvement in selectivity improves ranking, which in turns attracts more applications, further enhancing selectivity. This is of course not the only reason for it’s rise.

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Selectivity (acceptance rate) is not a factor in USNWR rankings.

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283

I’m going to mostly go with “be in Florida”.

Just to give some numbers, latest CDS, Florida got 64473 applicants for what turned out to be an enrollment of 6612. To get there, it admitted 15054, so that is a yield rate of 43.9%, and admit rate of 23.3%.

For comparison, Washington had 52488 applicants, admitted 24942 (47.5%), enrolled 7415 (29.7% yield).

Wisconsin had 60260 applicants, admitted 29546 (49.0%), enrolled 8628 (29.2%).

So Florida is getting a high enough volume of applications relative to class size, and a high enough yield, to have a way lower admit rate.

And personally, I don’t think that has anything much to do with Florida’s relative merits as a global research university, or indeed the intrinsic value of its college. It is because it is in a big population state and is a great deal for Florida residents.

In fact, Florida has something like three times the population of Washington, four times the population of Wisconsin.

I think the better question is therefore–why has it not always been this way? I think there are answers to that question, of course, but I do think Florida being an extremely important public college is a natural state of being.

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The state of Florida has a fantastic program for instate kids, that will basically pay for your tuition if you meet the standards ( 100% for 3.5 GPA and 1330 and 75% for 3.0 and 1210)
This has impacted their ranking since ROI in now a factor. Are they a better school than they were 10 years ago? No. In fact, I would say opposite, as their enrollment has exploded. This has caused very large class sizes and many courses taught online. (WSJ should take courses taken online into consideration)

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I don’t think enrollment has exploded. CDS from 2002 say s 34000 undergrads. CDS from last year (2022-23) says 34000 undergrads…

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And, like I pointed out above, according to the CDS, the number of large classes (100+ and 50-99) has decreased dramatically because UF hired so many new faculty. Out of 3100+ class sections, 87 had 100+ students and 209 has 50-99 students in 2022-23. In 2002-03, out of 2900+ classes, 299 had 100+ students and 319 has 50-99 students.

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287

Sorry out of 2890 total classes in 2002-03

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Not directly, but things like the other study I linked have found all these sorts of rankings are highly correlated. So the US News ranking is highly correlated with relative student numbers, and selectivity is a factor in relative student numbers.

So increased selectivity very likely will increase your US News ranking, even though it is not a direct factor.

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289

Yes, to an extent. But the biggest driver of rank, by far, is a school’s wealth*. This affects almost every factor in USNWR rankings, particularly the ones with most weight.
The rankings also inherently favor private schools because several factors are related to size.

(* - whether based on endowment and/or state funding)

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290

Not surprised about class size. That’s been a problem at UW for a long time. I am somewhat surprised by graduation rate and selectivity numbers. UW has become a tough place to get into for a large flagship. I am shocked about faculty compensation, given the relative cost of living in Seattle compared to Gainesville and surrounding areas. I had assumed the state supported UF much more than the state of Washington supports UW. That’s not shocking and perhaps explains the faculty compensation issue.

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It will be interesting to see whether Florida’s new educational policies about what can and can’t be taught will have an effect on UF over the next few years.

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WSJ doesn’t define what they mean by “student demographics”, but I very much doubt that portion top 1% has any influence since that is not a stat available in the databases they are using. Potential factors they could for “student demographics” could instead include things like percent URM, percent Pell, and/or their “diversity” score.

Unfortunately WSJ doesn’t specify what they are doing, so it is a matter of speculation. I can see that the usual highly selective colleges tend do well in whatever metric they are using (JHU graduation rate is an exception), including ones that have few lower income students. However, the numbers don’t mesh well with any of the 3 factors listed above, so they are probably doing something else.

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The enrollment stats I saw:
41,052 undergrads
19,743 graduates
60,795 total

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I’m not sure which include selectivity in the ranking or if they do how much it impacts.

I think Florida has sunshine and low cost tuition - even without merit. UW can’t claim that.

Edit - I see others afterward already touched on acceptance rates (not impacting US News).

Interesting faculty salaries do - but I wonder if that’s adjusted for COL. I have to think they’d have to pay more in Seattle than Gainesville- but don’t know.

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