Serious Question: Before USNWR Rankinga

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Everyone knew the Ivys were the top tier, but how did people know about the rest? Serious question. I didn’t think about anything except applying to my state flagship. Not sure what I would have done if I hadn’t gotten in. But I’m sure lots of people cared about going to schools that were in some way distinguished, etc. What the heck did regular every day people use as criteria?

FWIW I am not in favor of the rankings. I think people should apply to schools that might be a good fit. But for sure there were status conscious kids in my school — so what were they looking at since rankings weren’t there?

The Peterson’s Guides to colleges have been around since 1966.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I agree with OP in that I’m opposed to the USNWR rankings. I don’t think tweaking the weightings etc would even help. They are a fool’s errand that should never have begun and should be given 0 weight by anyone. Colleges think this too, but because they know their customers do put stock in it, they are bound to play the game or face marginalization. And so they hypocritically play the game, further rigging and skewing the rankings. This won’t stop unless we collectively decide that the rankings are worthless.

The ratings are fine. The problem is people like us misusing them by exaggerating the importance of small differences.

[Anonymous]

Back in the day there were these big college guides and they ranked them according to Most Competitive, Highly Competitive, Competitive and less competitive. It was pretty much as the rankings lump them today.

[Anonymous]

I graduated in '87. The "rankings" were not a big deal-- few knew about them-- but people definitely knew acceptance rates.

Really was no different from anything else. How do you know what restaurants or vacation destinations or brands of luggage or books are good? You talk to people. But you don't usually think of these things in terms of, "This is a top ten brand of luggage," you just think, "This brand is considered high quality and expensive and well-regarded and is thought of as preppy," or whatever.

Snobbery just as pernicious then, just without the faux-precision of the rankings.

[Anonymous]

This is OP and I graduated in 1982. Many of my friends went to non-regional schools. It was an affluent public HS. I was first gen and so I didn’t really think much aside from the state school, and my HS counselor wasn’t interested in giving himself extra work I guess so he said good choice.

I remember kids talking about where they going, but it was more about where their parents went, or if they wanted a small school instead of the big state school, or that kind of decision-making. I don’t remember anyone talking about competitiveness or selectivity aside form with Ivys.

My own kids were laser-focused on rankings, it made me kind of sad. Just got me thinking about how things were vs how they are and how that affects things.

[Anonymous]

Barons was the go to book before usnwr. USNWR came out in the 80’s. They were very inaccurate.

[Anonymous]

FCPS HS class of 79 here. There were college fairs in the malls were you could talk to reps and pick up literature. I went and drooled over all the cool places I could go, however my parents said "in state public only." I scattershot applications, got in everywhere and went to UVA bc my cousin told me Playboy ranked it as a top party school. (Anyone remember Easters? ) Plus my parents (and grandparents for that matter) were all college grads to there was a general awareness in our family about colleges.

[Anonymous]

My parents attended college in the 60s. They ended up at the state flagship, but one was also active in their church and knew about the strong colleges from that denomination that were in other states. Similarly, my MIL attended a small college affiliated with her denomination and ethnic heritage.

[Anonymous]

Over the last 40 years when rankings have been more formal and publicized, the top schools have gotten better. I attended a Top 25 school in the late 1980’s and my school’s endowment, grounds/buildings, and student and teacher quality have only improved. It’s like many things over the past decades: the rich get richer. There is a virtuous circle/momentum to rankings that benefit a school.

[Anonymous]

Agree before USNWR arrived in 1983, colleges hadn't been as aggressively marketed and commoditized as they are today, but there were a few reference guides that ambitious families (esp on the East Coast) who were looking beyond their local schools tended to use.

One principal resource was the voluminous Barron's Guide to College Admissions, which contained objective factual data on every US college's programs and resources and admissions process, and a short (highly scrutinized) chart at the front that listed/compared the competitiveness of admissions of each -- Most Competitive (maybe 30 schools?), Highly Competitive (another 40?), Very Competitive (100 schools?) and Competitive (and I believe Less Competitive too), and an added "+" was also available for schools in all but the "Most Competitive" categories. Some people monitored these rankings avidly (much like USNWR), and some self-important applicants/parents refused (in an environment of easier college admissions generally) to consider a fallback that would be in a lower category that they felt appropriate to their stature. But that said, it was only a list of admissions difficulty, not of overall quality (as USNWR pretends to assess) -- Barrons was explicit/honest that it was only ranking the admissions process and not the quality of the educational experience. The other difference was that since the only metric Barrons measured was difficulty of admissions, Barrons had no problem combining small colleges and large universities into a single list. USNWR decided to split those up (no doubt for good reasons, since once it started comparing resources, comparing small colleges and large universities was apples and oranges, ) but by doing so set in motion a process that has discriminated against smaller schools and favored larger universities (witness many of the "T20" discussions on this site). As well as against what USNWR arbitrarily decides are "regional" institutions.

The other widely used guide was the "Insiders Guide to the Colleges" published by I believe Yale Daily News, which was kind of like the Fiske guide only more informal -- 2-3 page narrative summaries on what student life was like at maybe the 125 or so best known colleges in the country, based on Yale Daily News interviews with students there. There was a brief summary of a few lines of factual data on the school size and admissions profile at the start of each, but no attempt to rank or compare the various schools.

The most notable difference back then was that the directories didn't attempt to number rank the various schools (the most Barron's did was indicate tiers of admissions difficulty). USNWR was the first to do that -- for which its editors should forever rot in hell -- and once it was generally realized one couldn't put that genie back in the bottle, other ranking systems like WSJ, Forbes and Washington Monthly were developed to correct the perceived shortcomings of the USNWR system.

Don't mean to sound as if things were perfect. Anxious/obnoxious DCUM-style parents would still disparage some schools for having merely "Very Competitive" or (horrors) "Competitive Plus" admissions in the Barrons book, or endlessly repeat some anecdotal quote in the Insiders Guide ("I hear everyone there is bitter about about not getting into the Ivy League"). But at least one was spared the current silliness of pretending that say a gap of 20 or 25 places in the USNWR number rankings -- generated by just a 5 or 6 point gap in underlying "scores" on USNWR's easily manipulated data -- was a meaningful measure of relative quality of the education available.

If I were to seek a theoretical plus to the current situation, it's that the greater availability of (well-documented) nationwide ranking systems - both USNWR and successors like WSJ and Forbes -- might provide greater encouragement for applicants to consider excellent schools outside their usual frame of reference -- eg, for DCUM, a school like Georgia, or Purdue, or Florida State. But alas I think at least here on DCUM, you'll find that eager as parents are to swear by the validity of the USNWR's rankings when they reaffirm their own inclinations, longstanding geographic/cultural biases die hard, and continue to limit consideration of superb educational opportunities outside their geographic/cultural comfort zone.

[Anonymous]

OMG OP, you're an idiot if you think U.S. News is the only thing people care about - how ridiculous!!

Before this shitty magazine put forth a random rating system, people relied on...wait for it...their OWN RESEARCH and colleges/universities have always sent out targeted mailers to students that they wanted to apply.

The College Board has been around forever (the people who administer the SATs) and they have been selling information to college and universities forever, which means kids have been getting targeted mailers for years and years and many have used those to identify schools that sounded good to start researching options.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:OMG OP, you're an idiot if you think U.S. News is the only thing people care about - how ridiculous!!

Before this shitty magazine put forth a random rating system, people relied on...wait for it...their OWN RESEARCH and colleges/universities have always sent out targeted mailers to students that they wanted to apply.

The College Board has been around forever (the people who administer the SATs) and they have been selling information to college and universities forever, which means kids have been getting targeted mailers for years and years and many have used those to identify schools that sounded good to start researching options.

DP. Calm down. USNWR rankings are not random. There is a method, which is published. Also, that method is not random, but researched. Maybe you should research it. FWIW, receiving mailings from schools is not systematic research.

[Anonymous]

I graduated in '88 and remember having a college guide (Barrons?) that described schools as "Most," "Highly," "Very," "Less" and "Not" competitive, with average GPA and SAT listed.

[Anonymous]

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Anonymous wrote:There were still guidebooks with info about schools and college fairs. But also even top students tended to stay in their region. I grew up in CA and applied to some UCs, Cal Poly SLO, and a few OOS schools. One of those was in an area that I liked where we had relatives. The others I'd read about and liked something about their program (now I can even remember what!). Got in everywhere and ultimately made the decision on fit and price (CPSLO).

Even without the USNWR rankings I got some crap from classmates for choosing a Cal State over a UC but the smaller size/undergrad focus was a better fit for me.

I also grew up in CA and I never understood why Cal states were considered "lesser than" UCs. I started out at a UC but it was not a good fit for me and I left and ultimately graduated from a Cal State. Because I was in good academic standing when I left the UC I was told I could re-enroll at any time--people thought I was crazy not to.

I work with coworkers who graduated from UC and Cal State. It's a blue-collar profession, FWIW. I have heard from UC graduates, if they knew what they knew then working alongside Cal State graduates, they would have gone to Cal State and saved the difference.

What is a blue-collar profession?

How a Russian spy trainee who’s trying to make trouble on a little message board tries to make us more class conscious.

What? I'm seriously curious. I've never heard that term used before.

So the question is, do you come from a blue-collar family or a white-collar family?

""
Blue-collar jobs are considered “working class” jobs, which are typically manual labor and paid hourly. The term originated in the 1920s when blue-collar workers—such as those in mining and construction—wore darker color clothes (e.g. jeans, overalls, etc.) to hide dirt"

"A white-collar worker belongs to a class of employees known for earning higher average salaries doing highly skilled work, but not by performing manual labor at their jobs. White-collar workers historically have been the "shirt and tie" set, defined by office jobs and management, and not "getting their hands dirty."


https://www.investopedia.com/terms/b/bluecollar.asp

[Anonymous]

By the class of ‘93 the rankings were a big deal. I think they’re a farce and plan to ignore them.