WSJ College Rankings

Parents Forum
81

The article does state:

"As with any college ranking, what the WSJ/College Pulse methodology rewards may not be what’s most important for any individual applicant. As students and families consider where to invest their tuition dollars, there are many elements of the decision that can’t be boiled down to analyzable data on a grand scale: a school’s values, the sense of belonging one may get while walking on campus, and the distance from family and friends are chief among them.

This ranking views colleges as a springboard for the career and life that come afterward, and it analyzes them through that lens. But as with any big decision, the best college in this list may not be the best for everyone."

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82

Yes, although Amherst and Claremont McKenna are both well known for business placements, which is the other obvious route to doing well in this methodology. Without access I can’t see why Williams is at #31, but that is still pretty high.

I do wonder what happened to Middlebury. I think of that as another top LAC for business placements, and they are down at #131 as I understand it. Maybe that comparative demographic model tripped them up . . . .

83

the great part of this ranking (and I think others are trending this way) is that they are starting to ignore how many students a school rejects! That is really irrelevant to educational quality and benefit. Also, reputation I believe is ignored too. These were two corrosive/corruptive things that USNWR used. It encouraged schools to encourage people to apply who had NO CHANCE of getting in. There’s also an interview with the former Northeastern U. President (?) explaining how he gamed the system to spread Northeastern’s reputation among other presidents specifically for USNWR. Also, don’t remember the Columbia scandal but that was done for USNWR too. Malcolm Gladwell has part of a book and podcast about colleges that serve as Talent Agencies for the already beautiful vs boot camp colleges that can take anyone and make them a success. the WSJ (and other rankings) seem to be moving in that direction.

The quirks are not adjusting for major - schools without engineering or CS obviously havre to make up for it in other ways. Also, I never heard of Babson but it makes sense - a small school with only business majors, small classes, that may have high graduation rates/retention and low grad debt will rank high. (However that is obviously a niche school that most kids won’t want to commit to.).

anyway, getting away from how many kids a school rejects AND enhancing graduation rate/retention and net price/debt are GOOD IMHO. As far as some schools like CMU, U Chicago, UC Berkeley etc. ranking lower - those are “tough” schools. No doubt if you can get great grades and graduate UC Berkeley in 4 years that kid will have better job opportunities than someone who went to UC Merced. But those other factors are why the WSJ ranking came out the way it did.

84

schools that don’t retain their students as well or graduate them in 4 years are definitely dinged in the rankings. Also, how students rank their own school is counted as well.

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85

The following LACs were among the top 50 colleges (shown in the order that they appeared on the list - I didn’t capture the exact # for each - for frame of reference, Colby was #50).
Amherst

Claremont McKenna

Swarthmore

Davidson

Williams

Colgate

Haverford

Washington & Lee

Pomona

Colby

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86

USNWR doesn’t use acceptance rate in their methodology. They used to, not sure when they stopped that, maybe 4 or so years ago? https://www.usnews.com/education/best-colleges/articles/how-us-news-calculated-the-rankings

Agree that USNWR’s peer rating, which is 20% of the ranking, is ridiculous.

Gifting the WSJ ranking article here: The 2024 Best Colleges in the U.S.: Princeton, MIT and Yale Take Top Spots - WSJ

I can’t gift the rankings table, but maybe the gift link will allow access to that by clicking on the link to the table from that article? Let us know!

Here is the full WSJ methodology, in case the gift link above doesn’t allow access to that page:

The WSJ/College Pulse 2024 Best Colleges in the U.S. ranking was developed and executed in collaboration with our research partners College Pulse and Statista. The ranking scores colleges based on the following components. The weight each component is given in the ranking is indicated as a percentage. Throughout, we use the latest data available for analysis.

Student outcomes (70%):

  • Salary impact versus similar colleges (33%): This measures the extent to which a college boosts its graduates’ salaries beyond what they would be expected to earn regardless of which college they attended. We used statistical modeling to estimate what we would expect the median earnings of a college’s graduates to be on the basis of their demographic profile, taking into account the factors that best predict salary performance. We then scored the college on its performance against that estimate. These scores were then combined with scores for raw graduate salaries to factor in absolute performance alongside performance relative to our estimates. Our analysis for this metric used research on this topic by the Brookings Institution policy-research think tank as a guide.
  • Years to pay off net price (17%): This measure combines two figures—the average net price of attending the college, and the value added to graduates’ median salary attributable to attending the college. The value added to graduates’ median salary by a college was estimated on the basis of the difference between the median earnings of the school’s graduates and the median earnings of high-school graduates in the state where the college is located. We then took the average annual net price of attending the college—including costs like tuition and fees, room and board, and books and supplies, taking into account any grants and scholarships, for students who received federal financial aid—and multiplied it by four to reflect an estimated cost of a four-year program. We then divided this overall net-price figure by the value added to a graduate’s salary, to provide an estimate of how quickly an education at the college pays for itself through the salary boost it provides. Our analysis for this metric used research on this topic by the Third Way policy-research think tank as a guide.
  • Graduation rate versus similar colleges (20%): This is a measure of a college’s performance in ensuring that its students graduate, beyond what would have been expected of the students regardless of which college they attended. We used statistical modeling to estimate what we would expect a college’s graduation rate to be on the basis of the demographic profile of its students, taking into account the factors that best predict graduation rates. We then scored the college on its performance against that estimate. These scores were then combined with scores for raw graduation rates to factor in absolute performance alongside performance relative to our estimates.

Learning environment (20%):

  • Learning opportunities (5%): The quality and frequency of learning opportunities at the college, based on our student survey. This includes questions about interactions with faculty, feedback and the overall quality of teaching.
  • Preparation for career (5%): The quality and frequency of opportunities for students to prepare for their future careers, based on our student survey. This includes questions about networking opportunities, career advice and support, and applied learning.
  • Learning facilities (5%): Student satisfaction with the college’s learning-related facilities, based on our student survey. This includes questions about library facilities, internet reliability, and classrooms and teaching facilities.
  • Recommendation score (5%): The extent to which students would recommend their college, based on our student survey. This includes questions about whether students would recommend the college to a friend, whether students would choose the same college again if they could start over, and satisfaction with the value for money their college provides.

Diversity (10%):

  • Opportunities to interact with students from different backgrounds (5%): Student satisfaction with, and frequency of, opportunities to interact with people from different backgrounds, based on our student survey.
  • Ethnic diversity (1.5%): The probability that, were you to choose two students or two members of faculty at random, they would be of a different ethnicity from one another.
  • Inclusion of students with lower family earnings (1.5%): The proportion of students receiving Pell Grants; the higher the percentage, the higher the score.
  • Inclusion of students with disabilities (1%): The proportion of students who are disabled; the higher the percentage, the higher the score.
  • International diversity (1%): The proportion of students who come from outside the U.S. This is an indicator of the college’s ability to attract talent from across the world and offer a multicultural campus where students from different backgrounds can learn from one another. The higher the percentage, the higher the score.

We also display the following figures to provide context. These are the components of “Years to pay off net price” as explained above:

  • Average net price: The average annual overall cost of attending the college, including tuition and fees, room and board, and books and supplies, taking into account any grants and scholarships, for students who received federal financial aid.
  • Value added to graduate salary: The value added to graduates’ median salary attributable to attending the college. Estimated on the basis of the difference between the median earnings of the school’s graduates and the median earnings of high-school graduates in the state where the college is located.

Sources and definitions

  • To inform this ranking, we commissioned one of the largest-ever independent surveys of verified college students and recent alumni in the U.S. College Pulse conducted a survey of 60,953 students and alumni online, between January and May 2023. Further information on how College Pulse collects data is available on its methodology page.

  • Graduate salaries from 2019 and 2020 are taken from the U.S. Education Department’s College Scorecard. We looked at median salaries 10 years after enrollment for those who received federal financial aid.

  • Graduation rates from 2021 are taken from the U.S. Education Department’s Integrated Postsecondary Education Data System (Ipeds), measuring the proportion of first-time, full-time students studying for four-year bachelor’s degrees who graduate within six years.

  • High-school graduates’ salaries by state are taken from the 2021 U.S. Census Bureau’s American Community Survey, which uses data from 2017 to 2021. We looked at the median salary among people whose highest educational qualification is graduating high school or the equivalent and who are age 25 to 34.

  • Average net price for the 2020-21 academic year is taken from the College Scorecard.

  • Demographics from 2021 relating to diversity are taken from Ipeds and the College Scorecard.

  • Ethnic diversity is measured using the Gini-Simpson Index.

  • “Private” in the above table means “Private, not for profit.” We don’t include for-profit colleges in our ranking.

  • All scores that aren’t formatted in years and months or in dollars are on a scale of 0 to 100.

  • In the event of an exact tie for overall score, the average of the colleges’ scores across the Student Experience, Salary Impact and Social Mobility rankings is used as a tiebreaker to decide rank order.

Eligibility

All U.S. colleges are eligible to be part of our ranking if they meet the following criteria:

  • Title IV eligible, i.e., is an accredited university that’s eligible for federal financial aid.
  • Awards four-year bachelor’s degrees.
  • Located in the 50 states or Washington, D.C.
  • Has more than 900 students.
  • Isn’t insolvent.
  • Isn’t for profit.
  • We receive at least 50 valid responses from verified students or recent alumni to the student survey.
  • The government data for the factors used to compile our ranking is collected and publicly reported.

U.S. service academies aren’t included in the ranking, as government data used in compiling our scores isn’t collected and publicly reported for them.

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87

These are lists along those lines. My two cents is both the total lists and per capita lists are useful. The former arguably do a better job with publics, the latter with LACs (if you are cross-shopping publics and LACs, you are making it very difficult to do a generic ranking!).

T14 law schools:

Like, I completely believe Cal, Michigan, UCLA, UVa, Northwestern, Illinois, UNC, Texas, Florida, Wisconsin, and UC-SD are great choices if you want to go to a top law school.

I also believe Amherst, Williams, Swarthmore, Haverford, Pomona, St. John’s, CMC, Wesleyan, Wellesley, Brandeis, Carleton, Vassar, Colgate, and Washington and Lee are great choices.

And then a bunch of the “usual suspect” private research universities are on the lists too.

So which of these three paths is the best? Whichever, for you, would be comfortably affordable, and where you think you would get great grades.

Med school version (top 25 med schools):

Bonus PhD version (with specific field lists):

I’d keep saying the same thing about both the total and per capita lists being useful.

Like, on the Bio PhD list, top in total is Cal, top in per capita is Caltech. Those are, of course, both perfectly viable choices, and the best really depends on the individual.

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88

USNWR should be burned to the ground for this. University Presidents spending their kids tuition to wine and dine other officials and other universities and hosting conferences and giving out swag seems corrupt.

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89

I note also that in cases like Chicago, a lot of their graduates go on to things like PhD programs. That will drag down their median earnings.

90

I would describe that as a rather unsurprising list given the WSJ’s focus, although again I do wonder what happened to Middlebury.

91

Holy Cross #60
Hamilton #88
Bowdoin #89

Did not see Bates. Wonder why?

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92

are any of those lists adjusted for student population?

one of the years for Yale Law School had the same number of grads from Duke as Amherst , yet Duke is 4X the student number.
Feeders need to be adjusted for class size to be useful IMHO. UCLA produces 1,000 premeds each year but I’d guess would be really hard starting at year 0 to get into an MD program compared to someone starting at a respected LAC…

94

I believe that you are the first person this cycle to post a link to that old article!

95

Thanks for the gift link but it doesn’t work for the ranking table/college list. Thanks for trying!

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96

thank you @NiceUnparticularMan
adjusted for size is important and yes those sets of rankings seem as useful as anything.

Screenshot 2023-09-07 at 9.15.06 AM
Screenshot 2023-09-07 at 9.15.06 AM993×627 64.6 KB

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97

Yes. On the law school and med school lists, it is the second table (labeled with “adjusted for undergraduate enrollment”). On the PhD lists, it is the one on the right (labeled “adjusted” in the column headings).

I would again argue either path can make the most sense for an individual kid.

Just to begin with, if you get in-state tuition at a good public, that can be very, very helpful if you are looking at an expensive professional school path. On top of that, what is really critical is getting great grades, and I think different kids thrive best in different environments.

So, it is true if you go to a big public, you’ll typically have to “rank” higher than if you go to a well-regarded LAC. But as an individual, you might well find it no more challenging to get the ranking you need at the public.

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98

Well, to compare Middlebury to Colby (the lowest ranked LAC in the top 50), they didn’t do as well in terms of student recommendation (81% C vs. 70% M) and they also scored slightly lower in terms of learning opportunities (73% C v 69%M). The bigger differences were in salary impact which was probably driven by a big difference in avg. net price. Colby has among the most generous financial aid packages at SLACs so that could account for part of it (also, aid doesn’t include loans). Most of the other scores were pretty comparable. And just to put it on context, Colby’s overall score was a 78.7 and Middlebury was a 72.3.

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99

They might have fallen outside of the top 400 or they couldn’t gather the requisite data.

100

Yeah, this sort of ranking system can really exaggerate what are not necessarily huge differences.

Anyway, thanks for breaking it down!

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101

never mind. just keep scrolling down the lists you provided…