Pervasive Myths - set the record straight

[Anonymous]

Top 5 on DCUM

1. Northeastern is an elite school.

2. UVA is the only good school in VA.

3. Other than UCs TO is really TO.

4. 4.0+ 1500+ SAT/35+ ACT make your kid special

5. Southern schools are for losers.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Top 5 on DCUM

1. Northeastern is an elite school.

2. UVA is the only good school in VA.

3. Other than UCs TO is really TO.

4. 4.0+ 1500+ SAT/35+ ACT make your kid special

5. Southern schools are for losers.

34+

34 ACT is 1500 SAT equivalent.

[Anonymous]

DS goes to a top liberal arts college and the biggest myth is that there’s no support for jobs and everyone is trying to get a PhD. Maybe 5-10% of any graduating class ends up getting PhDs after college. Over 70% of students run into industry after college and the highest employers are in Tech and Consulting/IB/Finance. DS has been showered in opportunities to expand his network and the school is why he has his current summer internship in PE. Many students want PhDs, but it’s because they want to be researchers.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:that northeastern gamed the system for rankings

But that’s not a myth. It’s actually true. Took about 2 decades but they did it.

You can call it gaming, but Northeastern looked at the formula and sought to improve where they could. A myth would be that no other schools did the same thing. They might not have been as effective, but so many have. Schools took steps to lower admission rate when it was a factor (by inducing applications through push marketing), class size (through registration cutoffs), student faculty (by counting faculty that are peripheral to undergraduate education), same with resources (counting resources in IPEDS, the government database used by USNWR, that are peripheral to undergraduate education), improving alumni giving rate when it was a factor by dropping alumni from the database to lower the denominator (I think Berkeley was caught doing this), influencing other voters like it is Eurovision, admitting students that don't count against stats (foreign, Spring, etc.). There is literally no factor on USNWR that could not be "gamed" to some extent.

NEU calls it gaming: https://www.bostonmagazine.com/news/2014/08/26/how-northeastern-gamed-the-college-rankings/

quoting NEU: "We did play other kinds of games,” he says. “You get credit for the number of classes you have under 20 [students], so we lowered our caps on a lot of our classes to 19 just to make sure.” From 1996 to the 2003 edition (released in 2002), Northeastern rose 20 spots. (The title of each U.S. News “Best Colleges” edition actually refers to the upcoming year.)"

quoting NEU: "There was one thing, however, that U.S. News weighted heavily that could not be fixed with numbers or formulas: the peer assessment. This would require some old-fashioned glad-handing. Freeland guessed that if there were 100 or so universities ahead of NU and if three people at each school were filling out the assessments, he and his team would have to influence some 300 people. “We figured, ‘That’s a manageable number, so we’re just gonna try to get to every one of them,’” Freeland says. “Every trip I took, every city I went to, every conference I went to, I made a point of making contact with any president who was in that national ranking.” Meanwhile, he put less effort into assessing other schools."

Quoting the article: "but he had “gamed” the system as far as he could on his own. To break into the top 100, he’d need more intel on the news magazine’s methodology. He would also need U.S. News’s complicity. “We were trying to move the needle,” Freeland says, “and we felt there were a couple of ways in which the formula was not fair to Northeastern.” And so it was in 2004 when Freeland, a 63-year-old with bushy gray eyebrows and slightly unkempt hair, stepped out of a taxi near the waterfront in Washington, DC’s fashionable Georgetown neighborhood. With his head down, his lips tightly pursed, he marched into the red-brick offices of U.S. News, determined to make the rankings wizard, data guru Robert Morse, his accomplice.

These are not things other schools do.

They absolutely are things other schools do.

What other schools camped out to meet the US News reporter and wait and wait until they talk to them?

Northeastern was an early mover, more effective, and went to greater lengths. But other schools do it.

Name the schools and cite sources showing school admin waited at the offices to talk to usnwr

I can name a bunch of schools cheated and got caught including

UCBerkeley
https://poetsandquantsforundergrads.com/2019/07/26/uc-berkeley-booted-from-2019-us-news-ranking/

Emory
https://taxprof.typepad.com/taxprof_blog/2012/08/emory-intentionally.html

Columbia
https://www.chronicle.com/article/columbia-is-ranked-no-2-by-u-s-news-a-professor-says-its-spot-is-based-on-false-data

Northeastern was transparent, made honest efforts, actually made vast improvements, and wanted proper ranking.
Absolutely no big deal compared to cheating. I don't understand the obsession when there have been many schools actually cheated.

Like trump: answer the question asked.

Me: What other schools camped out to meet the US News reporter and wait and wait until they talk to them?

You: Northeastern was an early mover, more effective, and went to greater lengths. But other schools do it.

Me: Name the schools and cite sources showing school admin waited at the offices to talk to usnwr

You: I can name a bunch of schools cheated and got caught.

Still: Name the schools and cite sources showing school admin waited at the offices to talk to usnwr

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:that northeastern gamed the system for rankings

But that’s not a myth. It’s actually true. Took about 2 decades but they did it.

You can call it gaming, but Northeastern looked at the formula and sought to improve where they could. A myth would be that no other schools did the same thing. They might not have been as effective, but so many have. Schools took steps to lower admission rate when it was a factor (by inducing applications through push marketing), class size (through registration cutoffs), student faculty (by counting faculty that are peripheral to undergraduate education), same with resources (counting resources in IPEDS, the government database used by USNWR, that are peripheral to undergraduate education), improving alumni giving rate when it was a factor by dropping alumni from the database to lower the denominator (I think Berkeley was caught doing this), influencing other voters like it is Eurovision, admitting students that don't count against stats (foreign, Spring, etc.). There is literally no factor on USNWR that could not be "gamed" to some extent.

NEU calls it gaming: https://www.bostonmagazine.com/news/2014/08/26/how-northeastern-gamed-the-college-rankings/

quoting NEU: "We did play other kinds of games,” he says. “You get credit for the number of classes you have under 20 [students], so we lowered our caps on a lot of our classes to 19 just to make sure.” From 1996 to the 2003 edition (released in 2002), Northeastern rose 20 spots. (The title of each U.S. News “Best Colleges” edition actually refers to the upcoming year.)"

quoting NEU: "There was one thing, however, that U.S. News weighted heavily that could not be fixed with numbers or formulas: the peer assessment. This would require some old-fashioned glad-handing. Freeland guessed that if there were 100 or so universities ahead of NU and if three people at each school were filling out the assessments, he and his team would have to influence some 300 people. “We figured, ‘That’s a manageable number, so we’re just gonna try to get to every one of them,’” Freeland says. “Every trip I took, every city I went to, every conference I went to, I made a point of making contact with any president who was in that national ranking.” Meanwhile, he put less effort into assessing other schools."

Quoting the article: "but he had “gamed” the system as far as he could on his own. To break into the top 100, he’d need more intel on the news magazine’s methodology. He would also need U.S. News’s complicity. “We were trying to move the needle,” Freeland says, “and we felt there were a couple of ways in which the formula was not fair to Northeastern.” And so it was in 2004 when Freeland, a 63-year-old with bushy gray eyebrows and slightly unkempt hair, stepped out of a taxi near the waterfront in Washington, DC’s fashionable Georgetown neighborhood. With his head down, his lips tightly pursed, he marched into the red-brick offices of U.S. News, determined to make the rankings wizard, data guru Robert Morse, his accomplice.

These are not things other schools do.

They absolutely are things other schools do.

What other schools camped out to meet the US News reporter and wait and wait until they talk to them?

Northeastern was an early mover, more effective, and went to greater lengths. But other schools do it.

Name the schools and cite sources showing school admin waited at the offices to talk to usnwr

I can name a bunch of schools cheated and got caught including

UCBerkeley
https://poetsandquantsforundergrads.com/2019/07/26/uc-berkeley-booted-from-2019-us-news-ranking/

Emory
https://taxprof.typepad.com/taxprof_blog/2012/08/emory-intentionally.html

Columbia
https://www.chronicle.com/article/columbia-is-ranked-no-2-by-u-s-news-a-professor-says-its-spot-is-based-on-false-data

Northeastern was transparent, made honest efforts, actually made vast improvements, and wanted proper ranking.
Absolutely no big deal compared to cheating. I don't understand the obsession when there have been many schools actually cheated.

Like trump: answer the question asked.

Me: What other schools camped out to meet the US News reporter and wait and wait until they talk to them?

You: Northeastern was an early mover, more effective, and went to greater lengths. But other schools do it.

Me: Name the schools and cite sources showing school admin waited at the offices to talk to usnwr

You: I can name a bunch of schools cheated and got caught.

Still: Name the schools and cite sources showing school admin waited at the offices to talk to usnwr

First, you are responding to more than one person. Second, you are trying to reduce this to one thing - talking to USNWR. That may or may not have happened and I am not going to comment, but there is more to it than that. There is operating within the rules and there is cheating. Northeastern has not been shown to cheat while a number of schools already named have.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:What is an outdated stereotype or a false narrative that is prevalent online about a college your kid attends? I personally think this exists a lot, places like A2C are an echo chamber of bad info sometimes that then gets shared like it’s gospel.

A2C is a bunch of high school kids spreading misinformation among themselves. When people with experience try to help (there are some AOs and Counselors who periodically comment) they get argued with. I would place zero weight on what you se on A2C. DCUM is wildly toxic but you can gleen actaul nuggest of advice here. CC will provide the best information but a few consistent posters are annoying.

And It is almost like the first commenter to any thread is by same person whose only goal is to add snark. Very annoying.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:myth is that kids from < T20 do as well as kids in the T20s. Sure there will be exceptions that get trumpeted all over DCUM, but my 3 kids - all attending T20s - all started post grad careers from a higher launch point than their UMD or VTech or Salisbury or Gettysburg friends. And starting from a higher launch point conveys a built in advantage, that is hard for the other kids to make up
not trying to be provocative- is what it is

That's a myth.

For outcome and career, major and personal competency are more important .

+1000

It's mostly about the person's work ethic and what they do at college and on the job. Highly motivated people will excel even from a school ranked #200+ It's just their approach to getting things done

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Myth 1: Privledge is bad these days and colleges now prefer public school kids. Reality: private kids are doing really well with t10/t20 admissions, whereas really smart public kids we know are getting accepted to strong public flagships but not many private t20.

Myth 2: that admissions people can spot/dislike apps with contrived and currated EC and narratives. Reality: curated narratives are effective to gain admission.

Myth 3: that kids don't get into tulane, case, etc unless you apply ED. Reality: my kid accepted to both EA with merit. (And didn't even apply for FA)

Privilege not privledge

[Anonymous]

Biggest myth around here is that at large universities (especially public ones, never miss a chance at being pretentious, of course), all of the classes are hundreds of kids and taught by grad students, while you have no access to professors. It’s simply not true.

Reality is that you will have classes of all sizes, often taught by professors or teaching staff with advanced degrees, and plenty of opportunities to build relationships with faculty. Especially if it matters to you.

[Anonymous]

LACs and schools like Yale don't do STEM and are only good for French Lit and gender studies.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:that northeastern gamed the system for rankings

But that’s not a myth. It’s actually true. Took about 2 decades but they did it.

You can call it gaming, but Northeastern looked at the formula and sought to improve where they could. A myth would be that no other schools did the same thing. They might not have been as effective, but so many have. Schools took steps to lower admission rate when it was a factor (by inducing applications through push marketing), class size (through registration cutoffs), student faculty (by counting faculty that are peripheral to undergraduate education), same with resources (counting resources in IPEDS, the government database used by USNWR, that are peripheral to undergraduate education), improving alumni giving rate when it was a factor by dropping alumni from the database to lower the denominator (I think Berkeley was caught doing this), influencing other voters like it is Eurovision, admitting students that don't count against stats (foreign, Spring, etc.). There is literally no factor on USNWR that could not be "gamed" to some extent.

NEU calls it gaming: https://www.bostonmagazine.com/news/2014/08/26/how-northeastern-gamed-the-college-rankings/

quoting NEU: "We did play other kinds of games,” he says. “You get credit for the number of classes you have under 20 [students], so we lowered our caps on a lot of our classes to 19 just to make sure.” From 1996 to the 2003 edition (released in 2002), Northeastern rose 20 spots. (The title of each U.S. News “Best Colleges” edition actually refers to the upcoming year.)"

quoting NEU: "There was one thing, however, that U.S. News weighted heavily that could not be fixed with numbers or formulas: the peer assessment. This would require some old-fashioned glad-handing. Freeland guessed that if there were 100 or so universities ahead of NU and if three people at each school were filling out the assessments, he and his team would have to influence some 300 people. “We figured, ‘That’s a manageable number, so we’re just gonna try to get to every one of them,’” Freeland says. “Every trip I took, every city I went to, every conference I went to, I made a point of making contact with any president who was in that national ranking.” Meanwhile, he put less effort into assessing other schools."

Quoting the article: "but he had “gamed” the system as far as he could on his own. To break into the top 100, he’d need more intel on the news magazine’s methodology. He would also need U.S. News’s complicity. “We were trying to move the needle,” Freeland says, “and we felt there were a couple of ways in which the formula was not fair to Northeastern.” And so it was in 2004 when Freeland, a 63-year-old with bushy gray eyebrows and slightly unkempt hair, stepped out of a taxi near the waterfront in Washington, DC’s fashionable Georgetown neighborhood. With his head down, his lips tightly pursed, he marched into the red-brick offices of U.S. News, determined to make the rankings wizard, data guru Robert Morse, his accomplice.

These are not things other schools do.

They absolutely are things other schools do.

What other schools camped out to meet the US News reporter and wait and wait until they talk to them?

Northeastern was an early mover, more effective, and went to greater lengths. But other schools do it.

Name the schools and cite sources showing school admin waited at the offices to talk to usnwr

I can name a bunch of schools cheated and got caught including

UCBerkeley
https://poetsandquantsforundergrads.com/2019/07/26/uc-berkeley-booted-from-2019-us-news-ranking/

Emory
https://taxprof.typepad.com/taxprof_blog/2012/08/emory-intentionally.html

Columbia
https://www.chronicle.com/article/columbia-is-ranked-no-2-by-u-s-news-a-professor-says-its-spot-is-based-on-false-data

Northeastern was transparent, made honest efforts, actually made vast improvements, and wanted proper ranking.
Absolutely no big deal compared to cheating. I don't understand the obsession when there have been many schools actually cheated.

Like trump: answer the question asked.

Me: What other schools camped out to meet the US News reporter and wait and wait until they talk to them?

You: Northeastern was an early mover, more effective, and went to greater lengths. But other schools do it.

Me: Name the schools and cite sources showing school admin waited at the offices to talk to usnwr

You: I can name a bunch of schools cheated and got caught.

Still: Name the schools and cite sources showing school admin waited at the offices to talk to usnwr

First, you are responding to more than one person. Second, you are trying to reduce this to one thing - talking to USNWR. That may or may not have happened and I am not going to comment, but there is more to it than that. There is operating within the rules and there is cheating. Northeastern has not been shown to cheat while a number of schools already named have.

Neu said in the article it happened.

[Anonymous]

That liberal arts just means humanities. That humanities degrees can’t get jobs.

[Anonymous]

Myth- your kid will be shut out of the T-50 without a “compelling narrative” that dates back to 6th grade. My kid took on two brand new extracurriculars as a junior, took a step back from an extracurricular junior year, started working part-time junior year, and their academic interests were all over the place. (Except STEM). Stats were solid 3.8 UW and SAT in the low 1500’s but not tops. In at several T-50’s.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:DS goes to a top liberal arts college and the biggest myth is that there’s no support for jobs and everyone is trying to get a PhD. Maybe 5-10% of any graduating class ends up getting PhDs after college. Over 70% of students run into industry after college and the highest employers are in Tech and Consulting/IB/Finance. DS has been showered in opportunities to expand his network and the school is why he has his current summer internship in PE. Many students want PhDs, but it’s because they want to be researchers.

unless it’s Williams, I don’t believe you! top LACs have terrible career services and mostly leave it on the kid. One T10 SLAC kid recently told his parents that the career center advised tapping into family and friends - yech!!

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:DS goes to a top liberal arts college and the biggest myth is that there’s no support for jobs and everyone is trying to get a PhD. Maybe 5-10% of any graduating class ends up getting PhDs after college. Over 70% of students run into industry after college and the highest employers are in Tech and Consulting/IB/Finance. DS has been showered in opportunities to expand his network and the school is why he has his current summer internship in PE. Many students want PhDs, but it’s because they want to be researchers.

unless it’s Williams, I don’t believe you! top LACs have terrible career services and mostly leave it on the kid. One T10 SLAC kid recently told his parents that the career center advised tapping into family and friends - yech!!

PP’s anecdote about their son is just as valid as your anecdote about “one T10 SLAC kid.”