The Absurdity of U.S. News College Rankings - Per Malcolm Gladwell

[Anonymous]

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Anonymous wrote:Wasn't there an old magazine clipping or something that was shared on DCUM a while ago from like, the '60s that showed the rankings being almost virtually the same as today's US News rankings, except with the notable "decline" of some of the LAC's? That pretty much refutes the PP's point that the schools were never prestigious and have only US News to thank.

American Council on Education University Rankings, included in “Our Wonderful World (1962),” a guide for ambitious college applicants:
Harvard
Chicago
Columbia
California (Berkeley)
Wisconsin
Yale
Cornell
Michigan
Princeton
Johns Hopkins

You can certainly argue Berkeley, Wisconsin, Cornell, and Michigan aren't in the same group as the others anymore.

Ranking methodologies back then were mostly based on research output and departmental peer-assessments by professors. Unlike today’s absurd criteria that makes no sense, rankings in the past actually tried to measure academic prowess.

With the exception of Wisconsin, the schools you listed are still premier research institutions. Even though such rankings are not good reflections of the undergrad experience at those colleges, neither is USNWR, so I’d rather take these rankings over it.

Berkeley grad couldn't be more obvious.

Parents at Washington U., Vanderbilt, et. al are so cute when they try to justify $70k+/year when publics like Berkeley and Michigan outshine these privates in the vast majority of field by an embarrassing degree and are more prestigious globally.

Yeah, and UVA too! WaHOOwa!

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Wasn't there an old magazine clipping or something that was shared on DCUM a while ago from like, the '60s that showed the rankings being almost virtually the same as today's US News rankings, except with the notable "decline" of some of the LAC's? That pretty much refutes the PP's point that the schools were never prestigious and have only US News to thank.

American Council on Education University Rankings, included in “Our Wonderful World (1962),” a guide for ambitious college applicants:
Harvard
Chicago
Columbia
California (Berkeley)
Wisconsin
Yale
Cornell
Michigan
Princeton
Johns Hopkins

You can certainly argue Berkeley, Wisconsin, Cornell, and Michigan aren't in the same group as the others anymore.

Ranking methodologies back then were mostly based on research output and departmental peer-assessments by professors. Unlike today’s absurd criteria that makes no sense, rankings in the past actually tried to measure academic prowess.

With the exception of Wisconsin, the schools you listed are still premier research institutions. Even though such rankings are not good reflections of the undergrad experience at those colleges, neither is USNWR, so I’d rather take these rankings over it.

Berkeley grad couldn't be more obvious.

Parents at Washington U., Vanderbilt, et. al are so cute when they try to justify $70k+/year when publics like Berkeley and Michigan outshine these privates in the vast majority of field by an embarrassing degree and are more prestigious globally.

So true!

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I wonder if the higher ranked USNWR schools have physically uglier and weaker students. Someone should do a survey. It would be easy to take random samples at a statistically relevant number then have the public rate unidentified photos. Looks are equal or more important in life than almost anything and it would be good to be associated with an institution with higher ranked attractiveness.

Unlikely, considering individuals who come from wealth tend to be more attractive and healthier (for obvious selection and socioeconomic reasons).

Sure, wealthy private universities known for party culture may have more attractive students than the Ivies, but certainly not true when comparing the Ivies to the average university.

Places like JMU and U of South Carolina have better looking people with healthier and more fertile bodies than the elite schools. Look at people like Hillary and Bill Gates or the tech billionaires. They are really unattractive and are pretty typical for the ivys. Personally I’d rather be decent looking with a healthy fertile body and go to JMU.

Yes, poor and lower-middle-class/middle-class people white people are better looking than the sons and daughters of American wealthy and socially connected.... you do realize stupidity in this line of reasoning? Besides first Gen kids, the top schools are filled with kids that had the best food, played on top travel sports teams (they have tons of athletes), top medical care. They come from households that have the best, freshest food and have an unusually high percentage of students coming from families in the top income brackets around the globe. Do you really think all rich people are ugly and marry ugly people? Do you think that the rich do not fix unpleasant features or there is rampant obesity of the physically active wealthy class?

I think this is just your personal fantasy and justification.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I wonder if the higher ranked USNWR schools have physically uglier and weaker students. Someone should do a survey. It would be easy to take random samples at a statistically relevant number then have the public rate unidentified photos. Looks are equal or more important in life than almost anything and it would be good to be associated with an institution with higher ranked attractiveness.

Unlikely, considering individuals who come from wealth tend to be more attractive and healthier (for obvious selection and socioeconomic reasons).

Sure, wealthy private universities known for party culture may have more attractive students than the Ivies, but certainly not true when comparing the Ivies to the average university.

Places like JMU and U of South Carolina have better looking people with healthier and more fertile bodies than the elite schools. Look at people like Hillary and Bill Gates or the tech billionaires. They are really unattractive and are pretty typical for the ivys. Personally I’d rather be decent looking with a healthy fertile body and go to JMU.

Yes, poor and lower-middle-class/middle-class people white people are better looking than the sons and daughters of American wealthy and socially connected.... you do realize stupidity in this line of reasoning? Besides first Gen kids, the top schools are filled with kids that had the best food, played on top travel sports teams (they have tons of athletes), top medical care. They come from households that have the best, freshest food and have an unusually high percentage of students coming from families in the top income brackets around the globe. Do you really think all rich people are ugly and marry ugly people? Do you think that the rich do not fix unpleasant features or there is rampant obesity of the physically active wealthy class?

I think this is just your personal fantasy and justification.

Nope. From my anecdotal experience the higher rated schools have uglier, less healthy looking alumni. Plus a higher degree of mental illness and special needs children. But definitely more research needs to be done and tabulated in rankings so the public can pick among attractiveness and health qualities of different schools.

If you check the cheerleader pictures at say.. the university of South Carolina then line them up next to the cheerleaders at say Brown, you’ll see what I mean. Most young people if they could choose would look like and be a South Carolina cheerleader than look like a Brown cheerleader in that you will probably have a more charmed life overall. You would have to think about it for a few minutes, but most would choose the good looks and vitality option.

[Anonymous]

How long before the moron leaves the room?

[Anonymous]

This is one of the most entertaining threads on here in a while. *Grabs popcorn.* Thank you all!!

I'll also add my two cents. For context, I am not American. I have some ties with the DC area and used to live here, but have long ties with international school networks in the Middle East (namely Turkey, but also Gulf region) and East Asia (namely Hong Kong).

Without a doubt, Harvard, Yale, Stanford, and MIT are the most prestigious schools. Other coveted names include Columbia, UChicago, Duke, Northwestern, Georgetown, Johns Hopkins, and Duke. Rest of the Ivy League is also choice (Cornell gets high marks relative to its stance on the US News list). And I am sorry to say but the unfortunate reality is that "private" trumps "public". It's a brand name, after all, that people are wanting to pay for. But of the publics, the only ones that people care about are Berkeley, Michigan, and UCLA.

I think there is merit to both arguments being thrown around, though I can't say authoritatively if US News is solely responsible for the prestige of some of these names. The aforementioned schools have been prestigious for a long while, but they have also received a hefty bump in the last two decades, that is true (but this also extends to the Ivies).

The schools that are curious to me (rated highly by US News but not really seen as coveted as the aforementioned school) are the ones like Vanderbilt, Emory, Notre Dame, Washington StL, and Dartmouth.

Also worth noting that the global jet set strongly prefers unis located in or near major cities with international airports.

And a fun addendum for British unis: the most obvious names are Oxford, Cambridge, and LSE, though in my circles American universities are preferred. I am aware, however, that in India and Pakistan (and presumably other Commonwealth/Commonwealth-adjacent countries), Oxbridge/LSE may be preferred with the exception of HYSM.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Yeah what the ill-informed and nasty PP doesn't realize is that the schools that have benefited from rankings the most are the non-Harvard/Yale Ivies. The Ivy League went from being an old-school athletic conference to having the level of prestige they enjoy today. But sure, take it out on these other schools. The confident stupidity and lack of self-awareness truly knows no bounds.

What a ridiculous post. The Ivies have been the Ivies and ergo have been synonymous with prestige and top academics for a long time, whether deserved or undeserved. This is true in the US and it is true internationally.

The smaller Ivies - Brown and Dartmouth - are less recognized by name alone internationally but rather their affiliation to the Ivies. However in the US they have always been prestigious nationally and particularly in the Northeast - the economic and political center of the US.

Cornell in particularly is very popular internationally despite Americans desperately trying to compare it to a state school.

The Ivy League is an athletic conference. USNWR entrenched their status as prestigious schools; they weren't all considered prestigious beforehand.

+1. The prestige of the Ivy League used to be more about social class and wealth, but USNWR changed that to something more “meritocratic.” In quotations because it’s really not, anyone who thinks USNWR is about merit must be kidding themselves.

Had the more academics-based ranking of the ‘50s and ‘60s stayed, the only ivies that deserved meritocratic prestige would have been Harvard, Columbia, Yale, and Princeton. Cornell would also have been in the same grouping and no one would ridicule it as a state school. Penn, Brown, and Dartmouth would have been in the shadows of schools like Chicago and Johns Hopkins.

But USNWR’s dubious metrics made it seem that not only are ivies the best schools, but also that undergrad is the only part of a university that matters.

+1. The schools that have benefited most greatly from US News are Penn, Brown, and Dartmouth. This whole erasure and re-writing of history is very, very weird, especially since it's well within living memory.

I think Dartmouth has been hurt somewhat by USNWR. It was thought of as closer to HYP at one time. It suffers by being the closest to an LAC of the Ivy League schools but in the ranking category that is national universities.

Penn in my memory wasn't terribly selective, and it had SAT scores not too far from UVA and W&M when I was applying back in the dark ages. It was common to see students in Virginia accepted to Penn but attend UVA or W&M due to cost. Same was true of Cornell.

Brown has really benefitted from being in the Ivy League. It was always thought of as perhaps the poorest of the Ivy League schools. The halo effect of the Ivy League has helped them with admissions and they have made up some ground on building up their endowment.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:This is one of the most entertaining threads on here in a while. *Grabs popcorn.* Thank you all!!

I'll also add my two cents. For context, I am not American. I have some ties with the DC area and used to live here, but have long ties with international school networks in the Middle East (namely Turkey, but also Gulf region) and East Asia (namely Hong Kong).

Without a doubt, Harvard, Yale, Stanford, and MIT are the most prestigious schools. Other coveted names include Columbia, UChicago, Duke, Northwestern, Georgetown, Johns Hopkins, and Duke. Rest of the Ivy League is also choice (Cornell gets high marks relative to its stance on the US News list). And I am sorry to say but the unfortunate reality is that "private" trumps "public". It's a brand name, after all, that people are wanting to pay for. But of the publics, the only ones that people care about are Berkeley, Michigan, and UCLA.

I think there is merit to both arguments being thrown around, though I can't say authoritatively if US News is solely responsible for the prestige of some of these names. The aforementioned schools have been prestigious for a long while, but they have also received a hefty bump in the last two decades, that is true (but this also extends to the Ivies).

The schools that are curious to me (rated highly by US News but not really seen as coveted as the aforementioned school) are the ones like Vanderbilt, Emory, Notre Dame, Washington StL, and Dartmouth.

Also worth noting that the global jet set strongly prefers unis located in or near major cities with international airports.

And a fun addendum for British unis: the most obvious names are Oxford, Cambridge, and LSE, though in my circles American universities are preferred. I am aware, however, that in India and Pakistan (and presumably other Commonwealth/Commonwealth-adjacent countries), Oxbridge/LSE may be preferred with the exception of HYSM.[/quote


You do realize that Dartmouth is in the Ivy League correct? I would also add Rice to the above list that has a limited international reputation. I agree with your assessment that Cal, Michigan, and UCLA as being the only three public schools with a strong international reputation. Considering also that there are close to 95,000 undergraduates between those three universities, far more than all the Ivy League schools, Stanford, and MIT combined.

You mentioned Duke twice btw.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:How long before the moron leaves the room?

LOL just ignore anyone who equates wealth or lack thereof to be an indicator of anyones looks--it's so idiotic, it doesn't bear comment.

Whoops, now they'll come back and say some other BS that they heard on Fox News or at the barber shop or whatever.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Brown has really benefitted from being in the Ivy League. It was always thought of as perhaps the poorest of the Ivy League schools. The halo effect of the Ivy League has helped them with admissions and they have made up some ground on building up their endowment.

You are misinformed, and you did not read even this thread, let alone do research, before you saw fit to comment. The post at 06/29/2021 12:13 has an article from the NY Times completely disproving your from-the-backside theory.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:The other problem with Gladwell is that he's often wrong.

Forty percent of a school's rank comes from its success at retaining and graduating students within 150% of normal time (six years), graduate indebtedness, and social mobility factors. Graduation rates themselves have the highest weight in outcomes and in our rankings because degree completion is necessary to receive the full benefits of undergraduate study from employers and graduate schools. We approach outcomes from angles of graduation and retention (22%), graduation rate performance (8%), social mobility (5%) and, new this year, graduate indebtedness (5%).

https://www.usnews.com/education/best-colleges/articles/how-us-news-calculated-the-rankings

What Gladwell is probably saying is that the objective factors you cite above are correlated with the factors that Gladwell cited.

I think USNWR has probably done some good, but it has probably been easily outweighed by the bad. By not taking into account cost and providing a rigid ordinal ranking, it has supported the massive runup in tuition and fees and student debt since the 1980s. The other factor is it encourages gaming of the numbers which doesn't really add value. Almost all of them can be gamed, and sometimes it is difficult to separate what is gaming vs progress. UVA was the #1 ranked public for a while and one of its advantages was graduation rate. Schools like UCLA used to be some distance behind. Now UCLA, Michigan, etc. have 6 year graduation rates (but not necessarily 4 year) that are pretty similar to UVA. Was that because UCLA is now a better school, or did it just make it easier to graduate? GPA inflation, which had started in the Vietnam War era, accelerated during the USNWR era, to the extent that schools like Brown don't have too much room to go higher.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:This is one of the most entertaining threads on here in a while. *Grabs popcorn.* Thank you all!!

I'll also add my two cents. For context, I am not American. I have some ties with the DC area and used to live here, but have long ties with international school networks in the Middle East (namely Turkey, but also Gulf region) and East Asia (namely Hong Kong).

Without a doubt, Harvard, Yale, Stanford, and MIT are the most prestigious schools. Other coveted names include Columbia, UChicago, Duke, Northwestern, Georgetown, Johns Hopkins, and Duke. Rest of the Ivy League is also choice (Cornell gets high marks relative to its stance on the US News list). And I am sorry to say but the unfortunate reality is that "private" trumps "public". It's a brand name, after all, that people are wanting to pay for. But of the publics, the only ones that people care about are Berkeley, Michigan, and UCLA.

I think there is merit to both arguments being thrown around, though I can't say authoritatively if US News is solely responsible for the prestige of some of these names. The aforementioned schools have been prestigious for a long while, but they have also received a hefty bump in the last two decades, that is true (but this also extends to the Ivies).

The schools that are curious to me (rated highly by US News but not really seen as coveted as the aforementioned school) are the ones like Vanderbilt, Emory, Notre Dame, Washington StL, and Dartmouth.

Also worth noting that the global jet set strongly prefers unis located in or near major cities with international airports.

And a fun addendum for British unis: the most obvious names are Oxford, Cambridge, and LSE, though in my circles American universities are preferred. I am aware, however, that in India and Pakistan (and presumably other Commonwealth/Commonwealth-adjacent countries), Oxbridge/LSE may be preferred with the exception of HYSM.

+1

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:How long before the moron leaves the room?

LOL just ignore anyone who equates wealth or lack thereof to be an indicator of anyones looks--it's so idiotic, it doesn't bear comment.

Whoops, now they'll come back and say some other BS that they heard on Fox News or at the barber shop or whatever.

NP. But...but...but...the "good looks and fertility" poster will come back yet again to insist (with faux gravitas) that "someone should do a scientific study" on why good looks and fertility are so much greater for students and alumni of certain schools!

It's hilarious, the repeated insistence that somehow there is material for a "scientific study" on this, as if that PP is trying to legitimize the idea by crying, "But, science!"

Between that repeat PP, and the one who is so highly invested in insisting that "global prestige" is somehow meaningful, it's a weirdly entertaining thread. Unless a student wants to go on to do some form of internationally based work where employment and advancement might be linked to a university's international standing, there's no reason to be that obsessed with "global" rankings or so-called prestige.

And if a college doesn't have the major you want or an academic program that's right for you, what does its name-brand prestige matter? I could have gone to Super Prestigious University X but since it lacked any major (or even minor) in the field I wanted, why would I go there, however big its name recognition? I hire people. I'm not going to hire the Harvard (or Duke, Yale, whatever) grad who has a degree in something else over hiring a grad from a less "prestigious" college who has a great degree in the field in which we actually work.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Brown has really benefitted from being in the Ivy League. It was always thought of as perhaps the poorest of the Ivy League schools. The halo effect of the Ivy League has helped them with admissions and they have made up some ground on building up their endowment.

You are misinformed, and you did not read even this thread, let alone do research, before you saw fit to comment. The post at 06/29/2021 12:13 has an article from the NY Times completely disproving your from-the-backside theory.

That boost in admissions was the product of John F. Kennedy, Jr. It was pre-USNWR. I don't know how he ended up at Brown, but I don't think he was the best student and other schools like Harvard (where his father and sister matriculated) may not have been an option.

https://pagesix.com/2017/10/09/jackie-worked-hard-to-keep-jfk-jr-from-flunking-college-classes/

My comment was not specifically on the number of applicants to Brown in 1983. I was about the schools financial situation and how it was viewed vs. the other Ivy League schools.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Berkeley grads hold onto the global rankings as if their lives depended on it. Can you imagine the inner turmoil and angst if Berkeley were to fall down the global rankings, too? Never seen a group of more insecure alums in my life. And that insecurity often reveals itself in nasty ways.

You must be UVA grad. It’s called “projecting”.