US College Rankings, from the perspective of a college student

[Anonymous]

^^^LOL

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Everyone knows Williams, Amherst, Swarthmore, Pomona are qualitative on a different league, and higher, than UF.

And who the hell is UF?

UF is Florida.

While Williams, Amherst, Swarthmore and Pomona are good schools, they are assessed separately from full-fledged universities.

That shows there's something fundamentally wrong with the list. I'd seriously question why X college is is ranked Y and not Z. It's too random.

Garbage in, garbage out.

More garbage in, more garbage out.

You're not making any sense. It is perfectly normal for LACs to be assessed separately from universities.

Yes, but should they be? Ranking is not so difficult. And applicants routinely apply to both types of schools. The current classifications are, in any event, silly to begin with: do Dartmouth and Princeton really have more in common with 30k plus undergraduate student factories like Michigan and Berkeley than they do the Williams Colleges of the world?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:This is a ranking created by aggregating 10 domestic/UG rankings:

1. MIT
2. Harvard
3. Stanford
4. Princeton
5. Yale
6. Duke
7. Penn
8. Northwestern
9. Columbia
10. Dartmouth
11. Rice
12. Brown
13. UChicago
14. Caltech
15.Vanderbilt
16. Cornell
17. JHU
18. WashU
19. UMich
20. Notre Dame
21. UCLA
22. Georgetown
23. Berkeley
24. USC
25. UNC
26. UVA
27. Emory
28. CMU
29. Tufts
30. UF

Source: https://www.reddit.com/r/ApplyingToCollege/comments/w38g7z/the_supreme_t50_college_ranking_aggregating_the/

No one cares.

— MIT grad

Those who went to an ivy plus care. Obama said the main value of attending an ivy plus is that you'll never have to be impressed by another ivy plus grad.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Everyone knows Williams, Amherst, Swarthmore, Pomona are qualitative on a different league, and higher, than UF.

And who the hell is UF?

UF is Florida.

While Williams, Amherst, Swarthmore and Pomona are good schools, they are assessed separately from full-fledged universities.

That shows there's something fundamentally wrong with the list. I'd seriously question why X college is is ranked Y and not Z. It's too random.

Garbage in, garbage out.

More garbage in, more garbage out.

You're not making any sense. It is perfectly normal for LACs to be assessed separately from universities.

Yes, but should they be? Ranking is not so difficult. And applicants routinely apply to both types of schools. The current classifications are, in any event, silly to begin with: do Dartmouth and Princeton really have more in common with 30k plus undergraduate student factories like Michigan and Berkeley than they do the Williams Colleges of the world?

The top LACs are probably in the lower end of the T20 range. They really are excellent schools, just maybe a little overlooked.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Parents are so full of themselves. Especially, the parents who went to Ivys. From their mouth they spout out every Ivy (in fact every school) is different and fit is very important in choosing a college. If that is true, the college that best fits a particular student is the number one school for that student. All other colleges are in a single but different pile. Besides, different colleges specialize in different majors (subject areas). As an example, Harvard may live for another 1000 years, but it will never be MIT. Each has its own core competency. You can’t say one is better than the other. Also, every college has its own way of filling the class - legacies, kids of celebrities, kids of major donors, recruited Athletes, First-gen, affirmative action candidates, foreign students, pure merit students, full-pay versus financial aid students, etc. it’s absolute stupidity to rank schools. As an aside, how do you rank your spouses? If you think that question is idiotic, then ranking and fighting over rankings of colleges is even more idiotic.

This is how we put too much, absolutely unnecessary pressure on our children. We subject them to unhealthy stress and we stress ourselves out. When you get married, you choose a partner among the eligible people you come across during a certain time and the other person also happen to choose you. You didn’t date all or even a few thousand eligible people before selecting your spouse to be. As another example, would you rank all the athletes in all the sports into a single ranking? Every sport is different requiring different skill set. An individual with a certain type of skill set gravitates to a certain sport. It doesn’t mean the athlete is pursuing number one sport or number thirty-fifth sport.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:This is a ranking created by aggregating 10 domestic/UG rankings:

1. MIT
2. Harvard
3. Stanford
4. Princeton
5. Yale
6. Duke
7. Penn
8. Northwestern
9. Columbia
10. Dartmouth
11. Rice
12. Brown
13. UChicago
14. Caltech
15.Vanderbilt
16. Cornell
17. JHU
18. WashU
19. UMich
20. Notre Dame
21. UCLA
22. Georgetown
23. Berkeley
24. USC
25. UNC
26. UVA
27. Emory
28. CMU
29. Tufts
30. UF

Source: https://www.reddit.com/r/ApplyingToCollege/comments/w38g7z/the_supreme_t50_college_ranking_aggregating_the/

No one cares.

— MIT grad

What major

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:If you check out her early videos, she was rejected or waitlisted from many of these top schools and was pretty bitter about attending her UC for the first year or so (my kid watches her videos). It's a good lesson in getting over disappointment and making the most of the opportunities that are available to you, so I hope kids watching her have that takeaway. Coming from PA/Midwest, I was surprised to see how competitive and stressful her HS experience of applying to college and receiving decisions was and how bitter (and somewhat entitled) that environment of overachieving and competition can make 18 year olds. It was news to me that kids felt disappointed by UCLA and UCB and snarked about or harbored resentment for kids who did get in, whom they perceived to be less competitive.

This is very, very common among UC Berkeley students.

I find this to be very true also. There main comparison is Stanford which does not help with self image. Also, most of the other UCs have closed the gap or even past them. UCLA definitely has better undergraduate experience with housing and food, etc.
A common rivalry joke is what do Stanford and Berkeley students have in common? They both applied to Stanford.

I guess it helps her ego to rank Berkeley in the Top 10.

Berkeley is in the top 10.

In what way does Berkeley come close to providing top 10 undergraduate educational quality?

America’s Top Colleges 2021: For The First Time A Public School Is Number One

RANK. NAME. STATE TYPE. AV. GRANT AID. AV. DEBT. MEDIAN 10-YEAR SALARY

1. University of California, Berkeley CA Public. $19,126 $6,000. $138,800
2. Yale
3. Princeton University
4. Stanford University
5. Columbia University
6. Massachusetts Institute of Technology
7. Harvard University
8. University of California, Los Angeles
9. University of Pennsylvania
10. Northwestern University
11. Dartmouth College
12. Duke University
13. Cornell University
14. Vanderbilt University
15. University of California, San Diego
16. Amherst
17. USC
18. Williams
19. Pomona
20. UC Davis
21. Georgetown
22. Michigan
23. Chicago
24. Rice

https://www.forbes.com/top-colleges/

This ranking is heavily impacted by salary, which is a terrible measure if done poorly. Schools that rank well tend to have a lot of STEM graduates or students who get jobs in big and expensive (think coastal) cities. To do salaries right, compare an English major from Harvard and one from the University of Cincinnati both living in Cincinnati and working as teachers. Will there be much of a difference? HR will ensure not. Alternatively, it would be interesting to have a “coveted job” index, like the proportion of undergrads that get jobs in investment banking, VC, PE, hedge funds, and strategy consulting. Or, the percent of CS majors who gets jobs at FANG.

The ranking also heavily favors colleges with lots of Pell/poor students. 27% of Berkeley students are poor. At Harvard, it’s 12%. Berkeley gets the award for more handouts. I’m not sure how that’s related to the quality of academics.

My guess is that Harvard would have higher average amount of handouts than Berkeley. Also, I thought DCUM concluded it is far more impressive to educate poor students than wealthier students.

Certainly higher average $ but not higher number of students. The ranking looks at the number of students. I’m not sure it’s more impressive to educate poor students, assuming admission standards are met. It’s more that a public school’s mission is to educate its public. The mission for privates are a combination of academics and social pedigree. Harvard definitely beats Berkeley for pedigree.

Also, the salary data is limited to those who received financial aid. Some of Harvard’s best outcomes won’t have taken financial aid.

In sum, thus if this ranking as a poor student’s ranking. If you’re poor and get into Berkeley, you’ll have a good outcome.

That would be true of many schools, particularly those with the most generous financial aid.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:This is a ranking created by aggregating 10 domestic/UG rankings:

1. MIT
2. Harvard
3. Stanford
4. Princeton
5. Yale
6. Duke
7. Penn
8. Northwestern
9. Columbia
10. Dartmouth
11. Rice
12. Brown
13. UChicago
14. Caltech
15.Vanderbilt
16. Cornell
17. JHU
18. WashU
19. UMich
20. Notre Dame
21. UCLA
22. Georgetown
23. Berkeley
24. USC
25. UNC
26. UVA
27. Emory
28. CMU
29. Tufts
30. UF

Source: https://www.reddit.com/r/ApplyingToCollege/comments/w38g7z/the_supreme_t50_college_ranking_aggregating_the/

No one cares.

— MIT grad

What major

Probably Comparative Media studies or Women and Gender studies or some such useless MIT degree

[Anonymous]

Why are so many on this forum willing to ascribe their success to the college they attended instead of to their own hard work and lifelong efforts to create a good life for themselves? Do they really think they'd have been less happy and successful if they'd attended a college that was a bit less selective?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Everyone knows Williams, Amherst, Swarthmore, Pomona are qualitative on a different league, and higher, than UF.

And who the hell is UF?

UF is Florida.

While Williams, Amherst, Swarthmore and Pomona are good schools, they are assessed separately from full-fledged universities.

That shows there's something fundamentally wrong with the list. I'd seriously question why X college is is ranked Y and not Z. It's too random.

Garbage in, garbage out.

More garbage in, more garbage out.

You're not making any sense. It is perfectly normal for LACs to be assessed separately from universities.

Yes, but should they be? Ranking is not so difficult. And applicants routinely apply to both types of schools. The current classifications are, in any event, silly to begin with: do Dartmouth and Princeton really have more in common with 30k plus undergraduate student factories like Michigan and Berkeley than they do the Williams Colleges of the world?

The top LACs are probably in the lower end of the T20 range. They really are excellent schools, just maybe a little overlooked.

There likely just outside the top 20. Seen here with Amherst at 22.
https://www.timeshighereducation.com/rankings/united-states/2022

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Everyone knows Williams, Amherst, Swarthmore, Pomona are qualitative on a different league, and higher, than UF.

And who the hell is UF?

UF is Florida.

While Williams, Amherst, Swarthmore and Pomona are good schools, they are assessed separately from full-fledged universities.

That shows there's something fundamentally wrong with the list. I'd seriously question why X college is is ranked Y and not Z. It's too random.

Garbage in, garbage out.

More garbage in, more garbage out.

You're not making any sense. It is perfectly normal for LACs to be assessed separately from universities.

Yes, but should they be? Ranking is not so difficult. And applicants routinely apply to both types of schools. The current classifications are, in any event, silly to begin with: do Dartmouth and Princeton really have more in common with 30k plus undergraduate student factories like Michigan and Berkeley than they do the Williams Colleges of the world?

The top LACs are probably in the lower end of the T20 range. They really are excellent schools, just maybe a little overlooked.

There likely just outside the top 20. Seen here with Amherst at 22.
https://www.timeshighereducation.com/rankings/united-states/2022

Fair. That seems accurate.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Everyone knows Williams, Amherst, Swarthmore, Pomona are qualitative on a different league, and higher, than UF.

And who the hell is UF?

UF is Florida.

While Williams, Amherst, Swarthmore and Pomona are good schools, they are assessed separately from full-fledged universities.

That shows there's something fundamentally wrong with the list. I'd seriously question why X college is is ranked Y and not Z. It's too random.

Garbage in, garbage out.

More garbage in, more garbage out.

You're not making any sense. It is perfectly normal for LACs to be assessed separately from universities.

Yes, but should they be? Ranking is not so difficult. And applicants routinely apply to both types of schools. The current classifications are, in any event, silly to begin with: do Dartmouth and Princeton really have more in common with 30k plus undergraduate student factories like Michigan and Berkeley than they do the Williams Colleges of the world?

The top LACs are probably in the lower end of the T20 range. They really are excellent schools, just maybe a little overlooked.

There likely just outside the top 20. Seen here with Amherst at 22.
https://www.timeshighereducation.com/rankings/united-states/2022

Fair. That seems accurate.

Not fair at all. I cannot believe that Williams and Amherst are lower ranked than Emory in this index. No way. Problem with all these rankings is the methodology is always set up to favor larger universities. Also, Emory is a school that has been caught cheating on rankings in the past.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Everyone knows Williams, Amherst, Swarthmore, Pomona are qualitative on a different league, and higher, than UF.

And who the hell is UF?

UF is Florida.

While Williams, Amherst, Swarthmore and Pomona are good schools, they are assessed separately from full-fledged universities.

That shows there's something fundamentally wrong with the list. I'd seriously question why X college is is ranked Y and not Z. It's too random.

Garbage in, garbage out.

More garbage in, more garbage out.

You're not making any sense. It is perfectly normal for LACs to be assessed separately from universities.

Yes, but should they be? Ranking is not so difficult. And applicants routinely apply to both types of schools. The current classifications are, in any event, silly to begin with: do Dartmouth and Princeton really have more in common with 30k plus undergraduate student factories like Michigan and Berkeley than they do the Williams Colleges of the world?

The top LACs are probably in the lower end of the T20 range. They really are excellent schools, just maybe a little overlooked.

There likely just outside the top 20. Seen here with Amherst at 22.
https://www.timeshighereducation.com/rankings/united-states/2022

Fair. That seems accurate.

Not fair at all. I cannot believe that Williams and Amherst are lower ranked than Emory in this index. No way. Problem with all these rankings is the methodology is always set up to favor larger universities. Also, Emory is a school that has been caught cheating on rankings in the past.

Where would you rank Williams and Amherst then?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Why are so many on this forum willing to ascribe their success to the college they attended instead of to their own hard work and lifelong efforts to create a good life for themselves? Do they really think they'd have been less happy and successful if they'd attended a college that was a bit less selective?

I was investigating college programs in CA for my daughter, and San Jose State ranked #1 on Money's list as "Most Transformative", which is what you are talking about here.

There are so many things the go into making a school "best" for any student. I think people put WAAAAY too much into the USNWR rankings, especially knowing top colleges lie/cheat to increase their rankings.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Why are so many on this forum willing to ascribe their success to the college they attended instead of to their own hard work and lifelong efforts to create a good life for themselves? Do they really think they'd have been less happy and successful if they'd attended a college that was a bit less selective?

I was investigating college programs in CA for my daughter, and San Jose State ranked #1 on Money's list as "Most Transformative", which is what you are talking about here.

There are so many things the go into making a school "best" for any student. I think people put WAAAAY too much into the USNWR rankings, especially knowing top colleges lie/cheat to increase their rankings.

https://collegescorecard.ed.gov/school/?122755-San-Jose-State-University

Go with the data from the Department of Education

San Jose State seems ok but not too impressive