WSJ/THE US College Rankings 2018: Harvard tops

College Search & Selection
1

Stanford falls to 3, Penn drops. Columbia, Duke, Caltech move-up

  1. Harvard
  2. Columbia
  3. MIT/Stanford
  4. Duke
  5. Yale
  6. Caltech
  7. Penn
  8. Princeton
  9. Cornell

https://www.timeshighereducation.com/news/wsjthe-us-college-rankings-2018-harvard-comes-top

2

With the exception of Cornell and Chicago, the same schools are in the top 10 here and in USNews, just a different ordering. The order doesnt really matter though since the perception of the pecking order within the top 10 is pretty established (i.e. HYPSM vs the rest).

3

Where’s the full ranking?

4

You need to have a WSJ subscription to see it.

Here is some more info.

Top 20

  1. Harvard
  2. Columbia
  3. MIT
  4. Stanford
  5. Duke
  6. Yale
  7. Caltech
  8. Penn
  9. Princeton
  10. Cornell
  1. Brown
  2. UChicago
  3. WashU
  4. Rice
  5. Northwestern
  6. USC
  7. Dartmouth
  8. Johns Hopkins
  9. Emory
  10. Carnegie Mellon

top 5 LACs:
22. Williams
23. Amherst
26. Pomona
28. Wellesley
30. Swarthmore

top 5 public universities:
25. UCLA
27. UM Ann Arbor
33. UNC Chapel Hill
40. UC Berkeley
43. Purdue

5

This ranking just hurts LACs. Also, I would replace Duke and Cornell with Brown/UChicago/Dartmouth.

6

@BoringLL Look at the methodology. Research output is the primary factor. So LAC’s by definition do not do well.

7

“Research output is the primary factor.”

If research output were indeed the “primary factor” then school like Michigan would easilly be in the top ten.

8

Setting aside the detailed sequence within each pecking order, doesn’t the WSJ/THE ranking give support to the U.S. News ranking? The universities in the WSJ/THE top 20 are essentially the same as those listed in the U.S. News top 25.

9

No. Not necessarily. It could just mean that they are guilty of the same confirmation bias as US News.

10

A third new ranking, putting UCLA on top of public universities.

11

^ Yeah, way on top, relative to Berkeley. I wonder what in the methodology produced that outcome.

12

@TomSrOfBoston , why do you think is the Resources score so low for highly regarded private univs like BC and NEU?

13

The difference between UCLA’s raw score and UCB’s raw score is 5%, arguably within the margin of error of the methodology. Lists without raw scores and uncertainty bands can be very misleading as well as imply a sense of certainty that is not supported by the methodology

Rank…Total…Outcomes…Resources…Engagement…Environment
25…UCLA …82.2…36.7…19.8…16.9…8.8
40…Berkeley…78.2…34.6…18.6…16.6…8.4

Absolute Difference …4…2.1…1.2…0.3…0.2
%Difference…5%…6%…6%…6%…2%

14

@i012575 Low endowments compared to the Ivies and Ivy level colleges. $30 billion in endowment gives a school a lot of resources.

15

Outcome ( Graduation rate, graduate salary,loan default ,academic reputation) at 40% is the highest contributor. The only research metric (papers per faculty) accounts for only 8%

16

academic reputation is via a survey that asks for a teaching rank and a research rank and a study has shown that the teaching rank has a 99% correlation to the research rank - that is another 10%

finance per student includes research spending - that is another 11%

Student faculty ratio tends to be highest at universities where the teaching load is lowered to allow more time for research. The premier private research unis tend to have the lowest student faculty ratio, but the highest percentage of class sizes over 50 and over 100. - that is another 11%

that is 50% total. US News has a similar bias.

17

^@Mastadon-thanks for your posts & perspective. In your view, which published ranking system/list is better than U.S. News and WSJ/THE lists ?

18

Bump

19

“This ranking just hurts LACs. Also, I would replace Duke and Cornell with Brown/UChicago/Dartmouth.”

Too bad the ranking actually looks at data instead of making decisions based on the opinions of CC contributors :wink: