Is it not fair to say college rankings are basically just test score rankings?

[Anonymous]

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Anonymous wrote:Every school has its institutional priorities but once those are met they are trying to fill the class with the strongest students they can attract. Test score profile is the strongest indicator of selectivity which is customers’ own ranking mechanism for which schools are best.

Yep. Which is why the quality has absolutely gone down at places like Hopkins that were test optional and pushed so hard to askew actual merit for institutional priorities.

Duke and of course Stanford I get but I struggle to understand why JHU and Northwestern are perceived as Ivy Peers and a cut above schools like Vandy, ND, WashU, CMU, Rice, Chicago, Gtown. It’s not in the test scores really and it’s not necessarily in the other characteristics of the schools.

Duke and Northwestern both had, for fall 2023, more test score submitters than Harvard Penn UChicago Brown etc. Among schools still TO for that admission season, only Yale had more (and of course test-required schools had more).

With JHU and Stanford returning to test required for the 2025-26 admission season, it will be interesting to see what Northwestern and Duke decide to do for next fall. Neither has announced a policy yet, as far as I know.

I still don’t grasp why Northwester and JHU are perceived as better than these other schools.

As the other poster mentioned, these two are apples and oranges as far as reported scores. What is not clear to you about Northwestern not being on par with these other schools? Do you know anything about NU?

Where % submitting = ACT and SAT % added together:

Yale 82% submitting, 1500-1560, EBRW 740-780, math 760-800
Duke 81% submitting, EBRW 740-770, math 760-800
Northwestern 79% submitting, 1500-1560, EBRW 730-770, math 760-790
Princeton 77% submitting, 1510-1560, EBRW 740-780, math 760-800
Brown 76% submitting, 1510-1560, EBRW 740-770, math 760-800
Harvard 74% submitting, EBRW 740-780, math 760-800
UPenn 70% submitting, EBRW 730-770, math 770-800
Stanford 69% submitting, 1500-1560, EBRW 740-780, math 760-800
JHU 55% submitting, 1530-1560, EBRW 750-780, math 780-800
Vandy 51% submitting, 1500-1560, EBRW 740-770, math 770-790

Apologies in advance if there are typos.

Depends on what you mean by "being on par". If you look at SAT scores, Northwestern looks the same as Princeton. But Princeton's non-binding yield is probably double Northwestern's.

And Northwestern's yield is higher than Duke's. So what's your point

You can't compare RD yield at Northwestern and Duke because Duke no longer publishes a common data set. Last was 2021-2022. That year NU and Duke had the same RD yield (44.2% and 43.8%).

DP. Duke still reports data to IPEDS. Duke Fall 2023 yield 55%. NU is similar, 57%.

https://nces.ed.gov/collegenavigator/?q=duke&s=all&id=198419

Oh nevermind, I see you were talking about RD yield specifically. Sorry.

[Anonymous]

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Anonymous wrote:The most highly ranked schools have the highest score profiles and it gradually declines as you go down the list. It’s all just a sorting mechanism based on test scores (outside of hooks). It seems nearly impossible that an unhooked student can get into a T15 type school without super high scores. Ironically TO may have made the emphasis on scores more pronounced because unhooked students essentially need great scores. For all the yapping about curating a class, they are really just filling their classes when the highest scoring kids they can get. This shouldn’t be interpreted as meaning a high score automatically gets you in anywhere.

I think USNWR is now kind of a mashup of two lists. The first is highly selective (high stat), wealthy schools (high resources) that are predominantly private. The second is high mobility (Pell grant), high research schools that are predominantly public. To boost schools in the second group, they dropped ranking criteria like class size, student-to-faculty ratio, and alumni giving %.

Yes, and rankings are better as a result. There are excellent private and public colleges out there.

Most of the DCUMers complaining are for their privates they attended 30 years ago "dropping" in USNWR ranking.

I think the rankings should focus on educational quality and cost.

Absolutely not. Cost varies from family to family. Some are full pay, some get full rides. Anyway, we want to know the best schools- we don’t need a ranking system to tell us the cheapest schools, you can just look that up. It’s mixing apples and oranges. Many people (like me) don’t care how much it costs, we are not trying to save 10-40k, we just want the best product. I personally find roi calculations idiotic because it makes it seem like you are better off going to a lesser cheaper school because you invested less initially even though you are earning less in the future because the school is inferior.

ROI by definition depends on up front investment.

Yes which is why it’s dumb. Would you rather spend $20k and earn $80k five years later or spend $80k and earn $200k five years later? The less the upfront investment, the higher the ROI will be. Going to community college for free will produce an infinite ROI if someone then has a minimum wage career the rest of their life.

The only people who are concerned about cost are price sensitive donut holers. What they should do is figure out how much they can afford and then go with the school that produces the best outcomes at that price point. But folks getting full rides and rich people don’t care about ROI.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:The most highly ranked schools have the highest score profiles and it gradually declines as you go down the list. It’s all just a sorting mechanism based on test scores (outside of hooks). It seems nearly impossible that an unhooked student can get into a T15 type school without super high scores. Ironically TO may have made the emphasis on scores more pronounced because unhooked students essentially need great scores. For all the yapping about curating a class, they are really just filling their classes when the highest scoring kids they can get. This shouldn’t be interpreted as meaning a high score automatically gets you in anywhere.

I think USNWR is now kind of a mashup of two lists. The first is highly selective (high stat), wealthy schools (high resources) that are predominantly private. The second is high mobility (Pell grant), high research schools that are predominantly public. To boost schools in the second group, they dropped ranking criteria like class size, student-to-faculty ratio, and alumni giving %.

Yes, and rankings are better as a result. There are excellent private and public colleges out there.

Most of the DCUMers complaining are for their privates they attended 30 years ago "dropping" in USNWR ranking.

I think the rankings should focus on educational quality and cost.

You mean value. Value is different from people to people
Cohort quality effects educational quality a lot.
Every year student rank the schools with all those information.

The actual outcome of the yearly ranking is a combination of acceptance rate + yield rate + cohort quality (i.e. SAT which is objectively measurable) then retention rate and graduation rate as secondary data.
We get actual the real ranking by the choices and actions by the actual students, the consumers.

Forgive me, I'm a bit behind in this discussion, what "actual ranking" is the bolded referring to? One you have made yourself, or an idealized one? (US News dropped acceptance rate from their formula years ago.)

[Anonymous]

For example, USN&WR says Ruttgers is #41

However real people actually ranked it significantly lower than that, hence not many students especially high stat kids ranked it high and chose it. Thus it has high acceptance rate, low yield, and full of 1250 SAT kids.

Which reference do you take more seriously the magazine ranking or the real-life ranking by the actions of the real students?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Every school has its institutional priorities but once those are met they are trying to fill the class with the strongest students they can attract. Test score profile is the strongest indicator of selectivity which is customers’ own ranking mechanism for which schools are best.

Yep. Which is why the quality has absolutely gone down at places like Hopkins that were test optional and pushed so hard to askew actual merit for institutional priorities.

Duke and of course Stanford I get but I struggle to understand why JHU and Northwestern are perceived as Ivy Peers and a cut above schools like Vandy, ND, WashU, CMU, Rice, Chicago, Gtown. It’s not in the test scores really and it’s not necessarily in the other characteristics of the schools.

Duke and Northwestern both had, for fall 2023, more test score submitters than Harvard Penn UChicago Brown etc. Among schools still TO for that admission season, only Yale had more (and of course test-required schools had more).

With JHU and Stanford returning to test required for the 2025-26 admission season, it will be interesting to see what Northwestern and Duke decide to do for next fall. Neither has announced a policy yet, as far as I know.

I still don’t grasp why Northwester and JHU are perceived as better than these other schools.

If you look at the list, nearly 80% at Northwestern students submit scores; it is under-ranked. John’s Hopkins is in 50s for percent submitting; it is over-ranked. Don’t lump them together.

Dumb way to look at it. JHU pre-test optional had higher test scores than NU and several ivies plus and higher percent in top 10%:

JHU class of 2023 (in 2019)

https://hub.jhu.edu/2019/08/22/class-of-2023-by-the-numbers/

Test scores: 1480 - 1550

Class rank - 98% in top 10% of class

NU Class of 2023:

https://www.enrollment.northwestern.edu/pdf/common-data/2019-20.pdf

Test scores: 1450 to 1540

Class rank - 92% in top 10% of class

Several ivies had lower test scores and class rank percentages then too. I would not be surprised if JHU had the same test scores post TO.

Comparing a marketing blurb to an actual CDS is a "dumb way to look at it." Find the CDS for JHU or get better data: we can't replace good data (above list) with bad. Not to mention that the combined ACT/SAT at NU in the data set you cite is an inflated 117%, so even that datum looks bad...

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:The most highly ranked schools have the highest score profiles and it gradually declines as you go down the list. It’s all just a sorting mechanism based on test scores (outside of hooks). It seems nearly impossible that an unhooked student can get into a T15 type school without super high scores. Ironically TO may have made the emphasis on scores more pronounced because unhooked students essentially need great scores. For all the yapping about curating a class, they are really just filling their classes when the highest scoring kids they can get. This shouldn’t be interpreted as meaning a high score automatically gets you in anywhere.

I think USNWR is now kind of a mashup of two lists. The first is highly selective (high stat), wealthy schools (high resources) that are predominantly private. The second is high mobility (Pell grant), high research schools that are predominantly public. To boost schools in the second group, they dropped ranking criteria like class size, student-to-faculty ratio, and alumni giving %.

Yes, and rankings are better as a result. There are excellent private and public colleges out there.

Most of the DCUMers complaining are for their privates they attended 30 years ago "dropping" in USNWR ranking.

I think the rankings should focus on educational quality and cost.

You mean value. Value is different from people to people
Cohort quality effects educational quality a lot.
Every year student rank the schools with all those information.

The actual outcome of the yearly ranking is a combination of acceptance rate + yield rate + cohort quality (i.e. SAT which is objectively measurable) then retention rate and graduation rate as secondary data.
We get actual the real ranking by the choices and actions by the actual students, the consumers.

Forgive me, I'm a bit behind in this discussion, what "actual ranking" is the bolded referring to? One you have made yourself, or an idealized one? (US News dropped acceptance rate from their formula years ago.)

DP. The schools people (the crowd) really want to go to the most. Of course your personal ranking may be different.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:The most highly ranked schools have the highest score profiles and it gradually declines as you go down the list. It’s all just a sorting mechanism based on test scores (outside of hooks). It seems nearly impossible that an unhooked student can get into a T15 type school without super high scores. Ironically TO may have made the emphasis on scores more pronounced because unhooked students essentially need great scores. For all the yapping about curating a class, they are really just filling their classes when the highest scoring kids they can get. This shouldn’t be interpreted as meaning a high score automatically gets you in anywhere.

I think USNWR is now kind of a mashup of two lists. The first is highly selective (high stat), wealthy schools (high resources) that are predominantly private. The second is high mobility (Pell grant), high research schools that are predominantly public. To boost schools in the second group, they dropped ranking criteria like class size, student-to-faculty ratio, and alumni giving %.

Yes, and rankings are better as a result. There are excellent private and public colleges out there.

Most of the DCUMers complaining are for their privates they attended 30 years ago "dropping" in USNWR ranking.

I think the rankings should focus on educational quality and cost.

You mean value. Value is different from people to people
Cohort quality effects educational quality a lot.
Every year student rank the schools with all those information.

The actual outcome of the yearly ranking is a combination of acceptance rate + yield rate + cohort quality (i.e. SAT which is objectively measurable) then retention rate and graduation rate as secondary data.
We get actual the real ranking by the choices and actions by the actual students, the consumers.

Forgive me, I'm a bit behind in this discussion, what "actual ranking" is the bolded referring to? One you have made yourself, or an idealized one? (US News dropped acceptance rate from their formula years ago.)

The actual ranking is the outcome by the comprehensive actions of the students.
It's showing in the combination of acceptance rate + yield rate + cohort quality (i.e. SAT which is objectively measurable) then retention rate and graduation rate as secondary data.

For example, schools like Harvard MIT Stanford has very low acceptance rate + high yield + very high cohort and also high retention + high graduation rate.

It's not an exact science, but the best representation of the real ranking.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:The most highly ranked schools have the highest score profiles and it gradually declines as you go down the list. It’s all just a sorting mechanism based on test scores (outside of hooks). It seems nearly impossible that an unhooked student can get into a T15 type school without super high scores. Ironically TO may have made the emphasis on scores more pronounced because unhooked students essentially need great scores. For all the yapping about curating a class, they are really just filling their classes when the highest scoring kids they can get. This shouldn’t be interpreted as meaning a high score automatically gets you in anywhere.

I think USNWR is now kind of a mashup of two lists. The first is highly selective (high stat), wealthy schools (high resources) that are predominantly private. The second is high mobility (Pell grant), high research schools that are predominantly public. To boost schools in the second group, they dropped ranking criteria like class size, student-to-faculty ratio, and alumni giving %.

Yes, and rankings are better as a result. There are excellent private and public colleges out there.

Most of the DCUMers complaining are for their privates they attended 30 years ago "dropping" in USNWR ranking.

I think the rankings should focus on educational quality and cost.

Absolutely not. Cost varies from family to family. Some are full pay, some get full rides. Anyway, we want to know the best schools- we don’t need a ranking system to tell us the cheapest schools, you can just look that up. It’s mixing apples and oranges. Many people (like me) don’t care how much it costs, we are not trying to save 10-40k, we just want the best product. I personally find roi calculations idiotic because it makes it seem like you are better off going to a lesser cheaper school because you invested less initially even though you are earning less in the future because the school is inferior.

Cost matters but how do you rank UCLA? ROI ranking could use average cost but that doesn't make sense, depends too much on in-state or not. You need CA resident ROI and non CA resident ROI rankings.

ROI in practice is ridiculously difficult. It would vary more (at least early in the career) based on major than on institution. It also can be heavily influenced by having graduates settle in high cost of living areas. And of course, as someone indicated, everyone actual cost varies.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:The most highly ranked schools have the highest score profiles and it gradually declines as you go down the list. It’s all just a sorting mechanism based on test scores (outside of hooks). It seems nearly impossible that an unhooked student can get into a T15 type school without super high scores. Ironically TO may have made the emphasis on scores more pronounced because unhooked students essentially need great scores. For all the yapping about curating a class, they are really just filling their classes when the highest scoring kids they can get. This shouldn’t be interpreted as meaning a high score automatically gets you in anywhere.

I think USNWR is now kind of a mashup of two lists. The first is highly selective (high stat), wealthy schools (high resources) that are predominantly private. The second is high mobility (Pell grant), high research schools that are predominantly public. To boost schools in the second group, they dropped ranking criteria like class size, student-to-faculty ratio, and alumni giving %.

Yes, and rankings are better as a result. There are excellent private and public colleges out there.

Most of the DCUMers complaining are for their privates they attended 30 years ago "dropping" in USNWR ranking.

I think the rankings should focus on educational quality and cost.

You mean value. Value is different from people to people
Cohort quality effects educational quality a lot.
Every year student rank the schools with all those information.

The actual outcome of the yearly ranking is a combination of acceptance rate + yield rate + cohort quality (i.e. SAT which is objectively measurable) then retention rate and graduation rate as secondary data.
We get actual the real ranking by the choices and actions by the actual students, the consumers.

Not really. I am saying a ranking that measures how much a school spends (setting aside how much of that is actually spent on undergraduates) encourages prestige-seeking schools to jack up tuition and fees, which in turn inflates the entire system. We have ended up with a higher education system that is the most expensive and way out of line with the rest of the world.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Every school has its institutional priorities but once those are met they are trying to fill the class with the strongest students they can attract. Test score profile is the strongest indicator of selectivity which is customers’ own ranking mechanism for which schools are best.

Yep. Which is why the quality has absolutely gone down at places like Hopkins that were test optional and pushed so hard to askew actual merit for institutional priorities.

Duke and of course Stanford I get but I struggle to understand why JHU and Northwestern are perceived as Ivy Peers and a cut above schools like Vandy, ND, WashU, CMU, Rice, Chicago, Gtown. It’s not in the test scores really and it’s not necessarily in the other characteristics of the schools.

Duke and Northwestern both had, for fall 2023, more test score submitters than Harvard Penn UChicago Brown etc. Among schools still TO for that admission season, only Yale had more (and of course test-required schools had more).

With JHU and Stanford returning to test required for the 2025-26 admission season, it will be interesting to see what Northwestern and Duke decide to do for next fall. Neither has announced a policy yet, as far as I know.

I still don’t grasp why Northwester and JHU are perceived as better than these other schools.

If you look at the list, nearly 80% at Northwestern students submit scores; it is under-ranked. John’s Hopkins is in 50s for percent submitting; it is over-ranked. Don’t lump them together.

Dumb way to look at it. JHU pre-test optional had higher test scores than NU and several ivies plus and higher percent in top 10%:

JHU class of 2023 (in 2019)

https://hub.jhu.edu/2019/08/22/class-of-2023-by-the-numbers/

Test scores: 1480 - 1550

Class rank - 98% in top 10% of class

NU Class of 2023:

https://www.enrollment.northwestern.edu/pdf/common-data/2019-20.pdf

Test scores: 1450 to 1540

Class rank - 92% in top 10% of class

Several ivies had lower test scores and class rank percentages then too. I would not be surprised if JHU had the same test scores post TO.

Comparing a marketing blurb to an actual CDS is a "dumb way to look at it." Find the CDS for JHU or get better data: we can't replace good data (above list) with bad. Not to mention that the combined ACT/SAT at NU in the data set you cite is an inflated 117%, so even that datum looks bad...

you’re pretty dense. 117% is possible because there are dual test takers.

as for JHU - their freshman profile (regardless of infographic or not) has always matched their cds

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:For example, USN&WR says Ruttgers is #41

However real people actually ranked it significantly lower than that, hence not many students especially high stat kids ranked it high and chose it. Thus it has high acceptance rate, low yield, and full of 1250 SAT kids.

Which reference do you take more seriously the magazine ranking or the real-life ranking by the actions of the real students?

Rutgers USNWR ranking is appropriate. If you don't like it, sorry. You can ignore the ranking or send your kid to another college. Many to choose from. Private and public.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:For example, USN&WR says Ruttgers is #41

However real people actually ranked it significantly lower than that, hence not many students especially high stat kids ranked it high and chose it. Thus it has high acceptance rate, low yield, and full of 1250 SAT kids.

Which reference do you take more seriously the magazine ranking or the real-life ranking by the actions of the real students?

Rutgers USNWR ranking is appropriate. If you don't like it, sorry. You can ignore the ranking or send your kid to another college. Many to choose from. Private and public.

I don’t see why. The average Rutgers student is pretty poor at academics, the school has few if any standout programs, and it’s a massive public school that lacks the rigor to compensate for its middling students.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:For example, USN&WR says Ruttgers is #41

However real people actually ranked it significantly lower than that, hence not many students especially high stat kids ranked it high and chose it. Thus it has high acceptance rate, low yield, and full of 1250 SAT kids.

Which reference do you take more seriously the magazine ranking or the real-life ranking by the actions of the real students?

Rutgers USNWR ranking is appropriate. If you don't like it, sorry. You can ignore the ranking or send your kid to another college. Many to choose from. Private and public.

Appropriate is such a cop out. Make a real argument. Why do you think the percentage of pell grant students at a university should be weighted more than class standing?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:For example, USN&WR says Ruttgers is #41

However real people actually ranked it significantly lower than that, hence not many students especially high stat kids ranked it high and chose it. Thus it has high acceptance rate, low yield, and full of 1250 SAT kids.

Which reference do you take more seriously the magazine ranking or the real-life ranking by the actions of the real students?

Rutgers USNWR ranking is appropriate. If you don't like it, sorry. You can ignore the ranking or send your kid to another college. Many to choose from. Private and public.

I don’t see why. The average Rutgers student is pretty poor at academics, the school has few if any standout programs, and it’s a massive public school that lacks the rigor to compensate for its middling students.

+1
piss poor SAT scores, unselective admissions... i'll bet the PP graduated from a place just like Rutgers! cue the PP claiming ivy credentials while sitting next to their rutgers/uc riverside degree hung on the wall LOL

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:For example, USN&WR says Ruttgers is #41

However real people actually ranked it significantly lower than that, hence not many students especially high stat kids ranked it high and chose it. Thus it has high acceptance rate, low yield, and full of 1250 SAT kids.

Which reference do you take more seriously the magazine ranking or the real-life ranking by the actions of the real students?

Rutgers USNWR ranking is appropriate. If you don't like it, sorry. You can ignore the ranking or send your kid to another college. Many to choose from. Private and public.

I don’t see why. The average Rutgers student is pretty poor at academics, the school has few if any standout programs, and it’s a massive public school that lacks the rigor to compensate for its middling students.

Your opinion which doesn't mean much.