New US news rankings: liberal arts colleges

[Anonymous]

The scores are so tightly clustered, it gets pretty silly. All this Pell Grant nonsense is meaningless.

The methodology should be based on standardized tests as a measure of student quality and third party academic reputation

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Carleton is way too woke. My DW hated it

I didn't get that feeling at all. Smart, Midwestern nice, definitely leaning left but didn't seem like kids spent all their time protesting or anything.

I wouldn’t say woke, but maybe a bit weird. Definitely not for everyone.

+1. She said “crazy liberal”

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:The military academies were all in the top 10 last year.

I wonder why they are considered LACs. All of the service academies offer amazing stem education.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:The military academies were all in the top 10 last year.

I wonder why they are considered LACs. All of the service academies offer amazing stem education.

So do most top lacs...

It's because they are undergrad only schools

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:The military academies were all in the top 10 last year.

I wonder why they are considered LACs. All of the service academies offer amazing stem education.

There is general confusion that “liberal arts colleges” only offer arts/humanities. That’s not true. They offer the math/science majors. Many offer amazing stem education.
LAC means no graduate school programs.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:The military academies were all in the top 10 last year.

I wonder why they are considered LACs. All of the service academies offer amazing stem education.

There is general confusion that “liberal arts colleges” only offer arts/humanities. That’s not true. They offer the math/science majors. Many offer amazing stem education.
LAC means no graduate school programs.

Many LACs also have graduate programs. US News provides this definition:

National Liberal Arts Colleges: The 211 National Liberal Arts Colleges (18 public, 193 private and zero for-profit) emphasize undergraduate education and award at least 50% of their degrees in the liberal arts. The Carnegie classification defines them as Baccalaureate Colleges—Arts and Sciences Focus.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:The scores are so tightly clustered, it gets pretty silly. All this Pell Grant nonsense is meaningless.

The methodology should be based on standardized tests as a measure of student quality and third party academic reputation

I would add graduation rate, but your overall point is valid. The percentage of Pell Grant students has no bearing on the quality of education a school provides. It's woke nonsense.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:The scores are so tightly clustered, it gets pretty silly. All this Pell Grant nonsense is meaningless.

The methodology should be based on standardized tests as a measure of student quality and third party academic reputation

I would add graduation rate, but your overall point is valid. The percentage of Pell Grant students has no bearing on the quality of education a school provides. It's woke nonsense.

I actually disagree with this. The number of Pell Grant students says a lot about the values of the institution and about the diversity of community of students who attend, both of which are very important to my kids.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:The scores are so tightly clustered, it gets pretty silly. All this Pell Grant nonsense is meaningless.

The methodology should be based on standardized tests as a measure of student quality and third party academic reputation

I would add graduation rate, but your overall point is valid. The percentage of Pell Grant students has no bearing on the quality of education a school provides. It's woke nonsense.

I actually disagree with this. The number of Pell Grant students says a lot about the values of the institution and about the diversity of community of students who attend, both of which are very important to my kids.

I should add, both of these things also impact the quality of education at the institution.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:US News is kind of a joke these days. It’s no longer a respected publication and just makes money off compiling various lists. I take their rankings with a grain of salt.

+1 The problem is that kids and their parents in competitive high schools (W schools in Montgomery County) follow these rankings as the gospel when choosing schools. It's very damaging. Get rid of these rankings, US News specifically.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:The scores are so tightly clustered, it gets pretty silly. All this Pell Grant nonsense is meaningless.

The methodology should be based on standardized tests as a measure of student quality and third party academic reputation

I would add graduation rate, but your overall point is valid. The percentage of Pell Grant students has no bearing on the quality of education a school provides. It's woke nonsense.

I actually disagree with this. The number of Pell Grant students says a lot about the values of the institution and about the diversity of community of students who attend, both of which are very important to my kids.

I should add, both of these things also impact the quality of education at the institution.

But it really doesn't and you know it. Basically it's saying the best schools are the ones with the most very poor students. This is only true to the extent the number of very poor students a school can afford to educate is proportional to its endowment per student. So Princeton and Williams crush it with Pell Grants. And in general, the more money a school has, the more resources, etc. But it's a very indirect way of making this about how big the endowment is and if we want to just rank schools by endowment per capita, we don't need US News.

There is really no information value to me as a parent in terms of what the 6 year graduation rate for Pell students is. And I think at this point, all the schools are just trying to game that measurement somehow given how highly it is weighted.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Carleton is way too woke. My DW hated it

Woke as in dropping legacy? Yes. (I personally agree with their doing so.)

Woke as in trigger warnings and such? Not as much. Here’s an interesting video by two of their most popular profs (based on Rate My Professors anyway), one of whom is also an alum:

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=qZFyl8wmKqg

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:The three major service academies (Navy, Air Force, West Point) all moved into the top 10. Grinnell rose to 11, just behind Carleton at 9, further erasing any doubt that they’re true peers. The Ohio school that so many on DCUM drool over - Kenyon - dropped to 39, showing that it is not.

Washington & Lee dropped into the 20s, well below Richmond, while Oberlin sank into the 50s.

U.S. News & World Report changed the criteria for the rankings quite a bit from last year to this year. Click on this link here (https://www.usnews.com/education/best-colleges/articles/us-news-ranks-best-colleges) and scroll down for a list of what has changed.

[Anonymous]

You do realize it is not a horse race, right?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:The military academies were all in the top 10 last year.

Interestingly - they got the special carve out from the recent Supreme Court Decision to consider race in admissions