US College Rankings, from the perspective of a college student

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

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Anonymous wrote:

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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?

NP. Many colleges on this list are poorly ranked, so I won’t comment on it. But, starting with a blank slate, any competent undergrad ranking list (which necessarily would unify all colleges, large and small, which kids actually apply to) should probably have Williams 10-15; Amherst, Swarthmore, and Pomona 15-20; and Bowdoin 20-25.

The problem with this argument is that there are already rankings which combine the two, and none of these LACs are ranked that highly.

The rankings you refer to, without analysis, are gimmicky and based on things like ROI or tied in with international ranking schemes, which are really about research/graduate school (although one had Williams at #1 of all colleges in the country a few years ago, if I can recall). This is not difficult: remove the US News criteria that don’t mean anything (amongst others, Pell grants and the self-perpetuating reputation score), include pivotal criteria that US News does not use, like selectivity and endowment per student — and a few other variables — and you have a list. Selectivity would need to be adjusted and properly weighted by penalizing schools with multiple ED rounds (here’s looking at you, Chicago and Johns Hopkins), and the data would need to be smoothed out over four years and weighted to account for huge transfer cohorts with high admissions rates (hello Emory and Columbia). But this can easily be done. Meanwhile, those who say that no LACs belong in the top 20, well, go ahead and believe that; as long as your DC doesn’t apply to them, you’ll be none the wiser. Continue to believe Vanderbilt and WUSTL are better than Williams, or that Bowdoin pales in comparison to the mighty University of Michigan. I wonder if some of you folks are the same people who believed that Columbia should have been tied at #2 with Harvard — because US News said so — or who still believe that Stanford is the #6 school in the country, tied, of course, with Chicago. Hmmnn...

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:For those who couldn't make it to the end, this was the ranking:

1: Harvard
2: Yale, Princeton
3: Stanford
4: Columbia
5: U of Chicago, MIT
6: U Penn, Northwestern
7: Cal Tech
8: Johns Hopkins
9: Duke
10: UC Berkeley
11: Brown
12: Cornell
13: Dartmouth
14: Rice
15: UCLA
16: Carnegie Mellon
17: Vanderbilt
18: USC
19: Emory
20: NYU
21: WashU
22: UMich
23: U of Notre Dame
24: Georgetown

Honestly, it's a decent approximation for what most would think.

Why did you cut the list at 24 when it went to 30? Could it be that UVA was 25? You’re that poster.

The list of 24 actually has 27.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:1:34 is as far as I made it.

You beat me. By 1:02, I had a choice of turning her off or poking my ears with a sharp needle. I chose the former.

[Anonymous]

Prattle on all you want, but the top 10 will always be some combination of Harvard, Yale, Princeton, Stanford, Columbia, U Chicago, MIT, U Penn, Northwestern, and Duke. Vast majority of people in this country simply don’t even know of Williams and Amherst, though they are great schools. This is also not helped by the fact that in most parts of the world, a “college” is a lesser institution to a “university” (for example in the UK, where the designation of “university” is closely guarded by a government body).

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I wasn't saying San Joe State is the best school in the country. Just that the outcomes for their students overall are very good. They serve a lot of lower income, first gen and/or minority students. The ones that do graduate so quite well for themselves.

Of course, salaries in places like CA are going to be larger than other places. And tech fields have larger salaries than say where I work (small nonprofit).

I still say that a lot more should go into rankings than what is done by USNWR and WSJ.

I like the rankings of student happiness and teaching quality. Those mean a lot more to me, honestly.

Student happiness is on the subjective side but can be somewhat objectively measured by the retention rate.
Happier the students, more of them coming back.

https://www.usnews.com/best-colleges/rankings/national-universities/freshmen-least-most-likely-return

So you would consider various references

It can be even more objectively measured by ASKING the STUDENTS. This is what Princeton Review does every year, with over 100k students participating. Very useful!

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Prattle on all you want, but the top 10 will always be some combination of Harvard, Yale, Princeton, Stanford, Columbia, U Chicago, MIT, U Penn, Northwestern, and Duke. Vast majority of people in this country simply don’t even know of Williams and Amherst, though they are great schools. This is also not helped by the fact that in most parts of the world, a “college” is a lesser institution to a “university” (for example in the UK, where the designation of “university” is closely guarded by a government body).

It's easy to sound authoritative when you offer no evidence.

Top 10 based on what? High school achievement of their students? You're probably close to correct.

Ability to provide a quality education? Pure speculation (unless you think having the most accomplished high school students is all you need).

Oh, and do you really think that people's having heard of a college makes it better? Now that's some good prattling.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I wasn't saying San Joe State is the best school in the country. Just that the outcomes for their students overall are very good. They serve a lot of lower income, first gen and/or minority students. The ones that do graduate so quite well for themselves.

Of course, salaries in places like CA are going to be larger than other places. And tech fields have larger salaries than say where I work (small nonprofit).

I still say that a lot more should go into rankings than what is done by USNWR and WSJ.

I like the rankings of student happiness and teaching quality. Those mean a lot more to me, honestly.

Student happiness is on the subjective side but can be somewhat objectively measured by the retention rate.
Happier the students, more of them coming back.

https://www.usnews.com/best-colleges/rankings/national-universities/freshmen-least-most-likely-return

So you would consider various references

It can be even more objectively measured by ASKING the STUDENTS. This is what Princeton Review does every year, with over 100k students participating. Very useful!

Do they ask every students? My kid has not bein asked.
The retention rate accounts for every single student.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

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?

NP. Many colleges on this list are poorly ranked, so I won’t comment on it. But, starting with a blank slate, any competent undergrad ranking list (which necessarily would unify all colleges, large and small, which kids actually apply to) should probably have Williams 10-15; Amherst, Swarthmore, and Pomona 15-20; and Bowdoin 20-25.

The problem with this argument is that there are already rankings which combine the two, and none of these LACs are ranked that highly.

The rankings you refer to, without analysis, are gimmicky and based on things like ROI or tied in with international ranking schemes, which are really about research/graduate school (although one had Williams at #1 of all colleges in the country a few years ago, if I can recall). This is not difficult: remove the US News criteria that don’t mean anything (amongst others, Pell grants and the self-perpetuating reputation score), include pivotal criteria that US News does not use, like selectivity and endowment per student — and a few other variables — and you have a list. Selectivity would need to be adjusted and properly weighted by penalizing schools with multiple ED rounds (here’s looking at you, Chicago and Johns Hopkins), and the data would need to be smoothed out over four years and weighted to account for huge transfer cohorts with high admissions rates (hello Emory and Columbia). But this can easily be done. Meanwhile, those who say that no LACs belong in the top 20, well, go ahead and believe that; as long as your DC doesn’t apply to them, you’ll be none the wiser. Continue to believe Vanderbilt and WUSTL are better than Williams, or that Bowdoin pales in comparison to the mighty University of Michigan. I wonder if some of you folks are the same people who believed that Columbia should have been tied at #2 with Harvard — because US News said so — or who still believe that Stanford is the #6 school in the country, tied, of course, with Chicago. Hmmnn...

Emory transfers are from Oxford. This is dumb of you to suggest it's close to Columbia GS asinine. Oxford is much more selective than Columbia GS than UVA and other public schools.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I wasn't saying San Joe State is the best school in the country. Just that the outcomes for their students overall are very good. They serve a lot of lower income, first gen and/or minority students. The ones that do graduate so quite well for themselves.

Of course, salaries in places like CA are going to be larger than other places. And tech fields have larger salaries than say where I work (small nonprofit).

I still say that a lot more should go into rankings than what is done by USNWR and WSJ.

I like the rankings of student happiness and teaching quality. Those mean a lot more to me, honestly.

Student happiness is on the subjective side but can be somewhat objectively measured by the retention rate.
Happier the students, more of them coming back.

https://www.usnews.com/best-colleges/rankings/national-universities/freshmen-least-most-likely-return

So you would consider various references

It can be even more objectively measured by ASKING the STUDENTS. This is what Princeton Review does every year, with over 100k students participating. Very useful!

Do they ask every students? My kid has not bein asked.
The retention rate accounts for every single student.

But the retention rate is not a pure measure of student happiness. It's not bad, but it doesn't account for students who are unhappy but stay where they are because they believe it's the strongest school they could be admitted to. Some of the top universities have a lot of unhappy students who stay where they are despite their unhappiness.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I wasn't saying San Joe State is the best school in the country. Just that the outcomes for their students overall are very good. They serve a lot of lower income, first gen and/or minority students. The ones that do graduate so quite well for themselves.

Of course, salaries in places like CA are going to be larger than other places. And tech fields have larger salaries than say where I work (small nonprofit).

I still say that a lot more should go into rankings than what is done by USNWR and WSJ.

I like the rankings of student happiness and teaching quality. Those mean a lot more to me, honestly.

Student happiness is on the subjective side but can be somewhat objectively measured by the retention rate.
Happier the students, more of them coming back.

https://www.usnews.com/best-colleges/rankings/national-universities/freshmen-least-most-likely-return

So you would consider various references

It can be even more objectively measured by ASKING the STUDENTS. This is what Princeton Review does every year, with over 100k students participating. Very useful!

Do they ask every students? My kid has not bein asked.
The retention rate accounts for every single student.

But the retention rate is not a pure measure of student happiness. It's not bad, but it doesn't account for students who are unhappy but stay where they are because they believe it's the strongest school they could be admitted to. Some of the top universities have a lot of unhappy students who stay where they are despite their unhappiness.

Happiness is a very subjective thing.
They might be unhappy about something, but on the other hand happy that they are in a relatively strong school.
They stay with the school because they are overall happy.

I'm married with kids.
I'm unhappy about some things, but I'm overall happy so I would like to stay with my family.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Thought this video was a really interesting insight into what college students themselves think of the whole college rankings hullabaloo. The poster is a UC Berkeley student. To be honest their list feels pretty on point.

Its her individual perspective and her limited knowledge on this topic, use of anecdotes and bias towards her alma mater take away little scholarly value it could've had if done with more research and less bias.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:This is why 18-22 year olds are not taken seriously.

If they use research and neutrality to support valid points, they are taken seriously. She is just doing a non-serious piece here not submitting it as a thesis.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:This is why 18-22 year olds are not taken seriously.

If they use research and neutrality to support valid points, they are taken seriously. She is just doing a non-serious piece here not submitting it as a thesis.

NP-Agree, but again, the majority of the younger crowd watching this "influencer" don't harbor your experience and perspective and in turn do take it seriously which is exactly why PP's statement is germane.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Prattle on all you want, but the top 10 will always be some combination of Harvard, Yale, Princeton, Stanford, Columbia, U Chicago, MIT, U Penn, Northwestern, and Duke. Vast majority of people in this country simply don’t even know of Williams and Amherst, though they are great schools. This is also not helped by the fact that in most parts of the world, a “college” is a lesser institution to a “university” (for example in the UK, where the designation of “university” is closely guarded by a government body).

Although specialized, Caltech is better than most of your top 10 in its areas. Not sure about some of the others as well.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I wasn't saying San Joe State is the best school in the country. Just that the outcomes for their students overall are very good. They serve a lot of lower income, first gen and/or minority students. The ones that do graduate so quite well for themselves.

Of course, salaries in places like CA are going to be larger than other places. And tech fields have larger salaries than say where I work (small nonprofit).

I still say that a lot more should go into rankings than what is done by USNWR and WSJ.

I like the rankings of student happiness and teaching quality. Those mean a lot more to me, honestly.

Student happiness is on the subjective side but can be somewhat objectively measured by the retention rate.
Happier the students, more of them coming back.

https://www.usnews.com/best-colleges/rankings/national-universities/freshmen-least-most-likely-return

So you would consider various references

It can be even more objectively measured by ASKING the STUDENTS. This is what Princeton Review does every year, with over 100k students participating. Very useful!

Do they ask every students? My kid has not bein asked.
The retention rate accounts for every single student.

But the retention rate is not a pure measure of student happiness. It's not bad, but it doesn't account for students who are unhappy but stay where they are because they believe it's the strongest school they could be admitted to. Some of the top universities have a lot of unhappy students who stay where they are despite their unhappiness.

There are many factors behind retention beyond student satisfaction, including income and financial aid, academic preparedness, and program rigor.