<p><a href=“http://www.wsjclassroomedition.com/...ederschools.htm[/url]”>http://www.wsjclassroomedition.com/...ederschools.htm</a></p>
<p>Sorry. Don't know why that one didn't work. tTry this:
<a href="http://www.wsjclassroomedition.com/college/feederschools.htm%5B/url%5D">http://www.wsjclassroomedition.com/college/feederschools.htm</a></p>
<p>Wonderfully flawed methodology</p>
<p>It gives a rough idea, at least...</p>
<p>From the Dartmouth Forum:</p>
<p>"03-20-2005, 02:43 PM #19<br>
lawyerdad
New Member
Join Date: Jan 2005
Posts: 20 </p>
<p>I recommend you join this same conversation over at the CC graduate school board. The WSJ rankings are not considered reliable."</p>
<p>lawyerdad, on the Dartmouth Forum, under the discussion "Pros and Cons of a Dartmouth Education" you make the above statement. I'm curious, why are the WSJ rankings that you've posted not considered reliable?</p>
<p>As recommended, go over to the grad school board and look for yourself. That's where the discussion was. Whether or not you draw the same conclusion is all that is important. Don't ignore or avoid information simply because you may disagree with it. Confront it, then move forward.</p>
<p>Why is the methodology flawed? Is it because Brown got beat out by several of its peers? They talked to renowned professors, used the best grad schools as a control, and surveyed all of the ivies. IT gives a very good idea. Numbers speak for themselves.</p>
<p>In order for your theory to be true, you would have to find evidence of my stating that Brown was the best feeder school which you will not find. </p>
<p>The study ignores people who want to pursue academia and seek Ph.D's and focuses strictly on law, med and biz. The study does not account for year to year variations which occur in admissions. Nor, does it seek to put the data in any historical context. The study also does not account for students who may have gotten admitted to a top-12 law/med/biz school but could not afford it and so took a significant merit award elsewhere. It is unclear why they chose the top-12 as opposed to top-13 or top-15. The study has a bit of an arbitrary cutoff.</p>
<p>So, yeah, I can see how my Brown bias really comes into play when I say I don't trust the study...Right...</p>
<p>I pity anyone who would choose a school on something like this. But, hey, more power to you. It's your life.</p>
<p>LOL, now YOU are putting words into my mouth. Im going to Duke, but I did not pick it just because it outclasses Brown in WSJ and consistently in USNEWS. However, that WSJ survey is taken yearly and allows for one to see where most of the top students at Harvard, Yale, etc. had their undergrad education. Can we safely ignore these readings just because there are minor mitigating factors that could influence the ranking? The number of people into these top schools that come from Harvard, Princeton, Stanford, Dartmouth, etc justify these rankings well enough. Also, I am doing law, so yes....these rankings are significant. Did you not read the prologue before you spewed this uninformed tirade at me?</p>
<p>You call them minor, I strongly disagree. My beef is with the WSJ, not Duke, Penn or any other school on the list. I have no idea where Brown should rank in relation to the other schools. Nor do I care. However, if a paper like the WSJ is going to represent their ranking as being accurate to the public, they have an obligation to be better journalists. </p>
<p>I hope you enjoy your time at Duke. However, you would do well to review fallacy concepts <a href="http://www.fallacyfiles.org/bandwagn.html%5B/url%5D">http://www.fallacyfiles.org/bandwagn.html</a>. As you are an aspiring lawyer, you should know a good number of these types of logic games are on the LSAT. </p>
<p>For the record, I didn't say that your personal decision was based on the rankings. I said anyone (the general you) who would make a decision on very easily manipulated data is probably not doing themselves a service.</p>
<p>There are liars, dammed liars and stats as someone once said</p>
<p>Who cares? Brown still did quite well.</p>
<p>I think that the study is very flawed (disregards Phd programs and other schools that are very good but not "top 5," especially since many consider the top 5 schools to be slightly different from the ones the WSJ listed) but still gives a good relative indication of where schools lie.</p>
<p>Does anyone know Brown's specific med school placement stats?</p>
<p>Rankings would be a lot better if they did the calculus for ANY US medical school, top 14 law schools, and top 10 MBA programs. Way too arbitrary as it stands.</p>
<p>Furthermure, it should calculate the % based on students who might want to go to these elite schools. Schools that have programs that aren't on the elite grad school track (from my experience, UMich has Kines, Nursing, or Engineering) shouldn't have those students counted. It brings down places like Cornell (hotel management et al), CalTech (mostly engin), Mich (like I mentioned) etc unfairly.</p>
<p>Why not let people decide for themselves whether or not the rankings are flawed?</p>
<p>Methodology of WSJ Rankings:
"Traditionally, college rankings have focused on test scores and grade averages of kids coming in the door. But we wanted to find out what happens after they leave -- and try to get into prestigious grad schools.
We focused on 15 elite schools, five each from medicine, law and business, to serve as our benchmark for profiling where the students came from. Opinions vary, of course, but our list reflects a consensus of grad-school deans we interviewed, top recruiters and published grad-school rankings (including the Journal's own MBA rankings). So for medicine, our schools were Columbia; Harvard; Johns Hopkins; the University of California, San Francisco; and Yale, while our MBA programs were Chicago; Dartmouth's Tuck School; Harvard; MIT's Sloan School; and Penn's Wharton School. In law, we looked at Chicago; Columbia; Harvard; Michigan; and Yale.
Our team of reporters fanned out to these schools to find the alma maters for every student starting this fall, more than 5,100 in all. Nine of the schools gave us their own lists, but for the rest we relied mainly on "face book" directories schools give incoming students. Of course, when it comes to "feeding" grad schools, a college's rate is more important than the raw numbers. (Michigan, for example, sent about twice the number as Georgetown, but it's also more than three times the size.) So our feeder score factors in class size.
How did colleges react to our list? Some were quick to point out that it was only one year of data, and many said they didn't track their feeder rates closely. "I have no way of verifying this," a spokesman for Cornell said. Others said they didn't think this was an important way to judge schools because so many factors play into grad schools' decisions. Still, the colleges in our list did not dispute our findings and neither did the grad schools.
Not that they necessarily want it out there. "We keep a lid on this data," says Mohan Boodram, director of admissions and financial aid at Harvard Medical School. Otherwise, "high-school students will think they have to go to certain schools."</p>
<p>Now, point out the flaws.</p>
<p>1) Harvard
2) Yale
3) Princeton
4) Stanford
5) Williams
6) Duke
7) Dartmouth
8) MIT
9) Amherst
10) Swarthmore
11) Columbia
12) Brown
13) Pomona
14) Chicago
15) Wellesley
16) Penn
17) Georgetown
18) Haverford
19) Bowdoin
20) Rice
21) Northwestern
22) Claremont McKenna
23) Middlebury
24) Johns Hopins
25) Cornell</p>
<p>Stupid.</p>
<p>Why the **** are kids deciding where to go to college because they have to go to "THE BEST" of something? Go somewhere where you will have the opportunity to grow intellectually and socially.</p>
<p>It doesn't matter where you go to school, if you work hard, you'll succeed. By the same token, just going to a school that is ranked #1 doesn't mean you'll do well.</p>
<p>"It doesn't matter where you go to school, if you work hard, you'll succeed."</p>
<p>And if this is true, why go to Brown (or any other pricey school) at all; go to a community college and save yourself and your loving family a bucket'a-cash on your highway to sucess and enlightenment!</p>
<p>On the other hand, if you see Johns Hopkins Med, or Chicago Business, or Michigan Law in your future you might want to give some passing thought to the possibility that some schools may give you a better edge thanothers at doing it. If you are thinking of UVA Graduate school you may or may not want to consider the WSJ survey.</p>
<p>"you might want to give some passing thought to the possibility that some schools may give you a better edge than others at doing it."</p>
<p>That is the worst of the many misinterpretations one could draw from this study. The implication is that the students at the top ranked colleges went to these professional schools BECAUSE they went to the top colleges. That is- take any student, of whatever motivation and talent, send them to Harvard, and they will end up at Harvard Law. Does this even sound remotely reasonable?</p>
<p>It is vastly more likely that the students who ultimately will get into the top professional schools are top students in high school. They work hard, get straight A's in demanding courses, and score very high on standardized tests. When they get to college, they repeat this behavior. This is why they get into top professional schools, and it is why they got into undergrad at Harvard, Yale, Princeton...</p>
<p>If you look at the average SAT scores of the entering students at these colleges, you can predict where they ended up on this "ranking". Then remember that students who attend colleges with top profesional schools that did not end up on the "top" list used by WSJ are likely to go to professional school at their own university, and a bit more of the relationship is predicted. Then notice that 11 of the 15 "top" professional schools, and 15 of the 20 "top" colleges are in the northeast. What about Pomona students who go to professional school at Stanford? Obviously a bunch of losers. What about Rice students who go to medical school at Duke? Failures?</p>
<p>If you got into Harvard and one of the other top 20 schools, there may be lots of reasons to prefer Harvard, but don't let this study make you think you will be a better prospect for HLS just because you went to Harvard. You had better get top grades and ace the LSAT, wherever you go to college. </p>
<p>BTW they do not do this annually, they did it once. The results are particularly unreliable for the small colleges, since one student deciding to go professional school near where her husband works could move a college up or down a long way on the list.</p>
<p>This "study" was meant for entertainment. Not to be taken seriously.</p>
<p>Afan,
Seriously, you need to calm down. </p>
<p>You say, </p>
<p>"This "study was meant for entertainment. Not to be taken seriously." ....by anyone other than, perhaps, you-- I guess (or that laugh out loud, comedic rag the Wall Street Journal). </p>
<p>It sure got you motivated into histrionic mode that in no way testifies to WSJs supposed virtue of comedic diversion [or perhaps Im simply missing its more tragic capacity to produce squealing sounds from drama-queens].</p>
<p>You quote Kalidescope saying: "you might want to give some passing thought to the possibility that some schools may give you a better edge than others at doing it [get into Johns Hopkins Med, or Chicago Business, or Michigan Law]."
Im sure you believe that there is no possibility of this happening and therefore such talk must be stamped-down.</p>
<p>Kalidescope, modestly, qualifies his statement with might-passing-thought-possibility and you leap up onto the ramparts to light a sophistic bonfire with the following flame That is the worst of the many misinterpretations one could draw from this study. </p>
<p>The worst huh?! Holy shet! Call in the thought police!: Someone says there might be a passing thought or possibility of something I disagree with actually being [possibly] true, AAAAhhhhhhh!!!</p>
<p>Chill!</p>
<p>And make sure there are no innocents bystanders around the next time you come across the Wall Street Journal unmedicated.</p>
<p>Yes and no. While the quality of the student body is clearly a very important factor, and to a certain extent it doesn't measure the school as much as the students, there are still interesting disparities between top schools. For example, Penn and WashU (ranked 16 and 47) are two schools that have shot up very recently in the US News rankings. However, they don't have as much long-lasting prestige. WashU and Penn are incredibly selective and more pre-professional than most (which should help), but the fact that Penn is the second-lowest ivy and WashU is way lower than schools that are far less selective may suggest that their reputation at grad schools has not caught up with their rankings/selectivity.</p>