why the usnwr best college list is ridiculous

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:What's most ridiculous is the premise that there can be any objective ranking of colleges.

It's like ranking the best places to live in America. Online dorks may argue about median earnings, crime rates, etc. But, at the end of the day, it really doesn't make one city any better for any individual than another. BTW, USNWR does just this. Are you dorks packing your bags for Naples, FL or Boise, ID?
https://realestate.usnews.com/places/rankings/best-places-to-live

I am not a fan of midwest towns for retirement (too flat and cold), so Green Bay is not on my list...but actually three places thinking about moving are in the top 20. I didn't actually know that until you posted the link.

[Anonymous]

Also, what does it all mean? It is mostly ego and...what?

Aside from some of the few places where students have access to amazing undergrad faculty (and that varies withing schools by departments) school is ultimately what you put into it.

I think having a ranking of tiers of schools would make more sense, without ranking the schools within each band/tier.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:it's still the gold standard, whether you like it or not.

Rankings are not useful and the USNWR one is particularly useless.

“Art & Science Group, a higher education consultancy, found that some 40 percent of students do not use rankings at all when they are picking colleges and that only 3 percent turn to them through the whole of their college searches.”

It's still the gold standard. Colleges fight tooth and nail over it. All college counselors read USNWR. All schools brag about their position on USNWR unless they have something to hide. Wiki posts the rankings on individual
college pages. And, of great importance, the full-pay international students (which all schools want because international students inflate diversity figures and are usually full-pay) and their counselors treat it like the Bible

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:There is absolutely nothing merit-based (academics) in the rankings.

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

For schools that require scores there was a 5% weight factor--and for those w/out scores 0%.

That was it. 95% was just pure Bullsh*t

The most heavily weighted "peer assessment" 20% ha!

Student-faculty ratio (prob one of the most important factors for undergrads)...a mere 3%

nothing on gpa/selectivity, etc.

selectivity shouldn't be a factor, IMO. That's like saying Range Rovers are great cars because they are "exclusive" to people with money.

[Anonymous]

Aren't there already 5 postings about this topic already?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:it's still the gold standard, whether you like it or not.

For what. This list does not guarantee outcomes. I attended a shi----y big midwestern University with no prestige. But you would not know it unless I told you. And there are many like me.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:There is absolutely nothing merit-based (academics) in the rankings.

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

For schools that require scores there was a 5% weight factor--and for those w/out scores 0%.

That was it. 95% was just pure Bullsh*t

The most heavily weighted "peer assessment" 20% ha!

Student-faculty ratio (prob one of the most important factors for undergrads)...a mere 3%

nothing on gpa/selectivity, etc.

selectivity shouldn't be a factor, IMO. That's like saying Range Rovers are great cars because they are "exclusive" to people with money.

I agree 100000000%

My DD got into a top 15 school but in the end could not justify the cost. Could we do it? Yes, but it would have been very difficult and the expense of many other things.

[Anonymous]

Here is why they are dumb and especially why the fixation on the "top" schools is dumb:

If what you actually care about is the quality of education and how well a school prepares a student for a career in a specific field the rankings actually do a very poor job of showing this. The rankings mostly just represent how selective a school can be about it's student body as a whole (not specific programs) and this biases it very heavily towards smaller programs and those with very well known brands as those schools will have the largest applicant-to-spot ratio. While there is *some* correlation between a school's brand as a quality school and the actual educational experience it is not 1:1 -- there are students who will have bad experiences or even get poor educations at top rated schools (because of the program or a bad fit between student and school) and there are students who will get amazing educations at much lower ranked schools.

The issue of peer quality is dubious in part because this is so dependent on major and class selection and all schools have some deadweight (yes even the Ivy+ who absolutely have some dud students they just happen to be rich privileged duds) who can impact the experience of the academic and invested students. Sure there are more such students at less selective publics but these schools also tend to make it easier to avoid the duds via honors programs and major and course selection (dud students do not take difficult classes or write honors theses at large state universities -- they are actually pretty easy to avoid).

If what matters to you is education quality and student fit then you'd be better off largely ignoring these rankings which tend to obscure these metrics not illuminate them.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:it's still the gold standard, whether you like it or not.

For what. This list does not guarantee outcomes. I attended a shi----y big midwestern University with no prestige. But you would not know it unless I told you. And there are many like me.

+1 and while people who obsess over "T10" will never ever believe it you can get the same quality of education at a big midwestern state university with no prestige if you make some effort to apply to the right programs and pursue opportunities with the right professors and then apply yourself.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Also, what does it all mean? It is mostly ego and...what?

Aside from some of the few places where students have access to amazing undergrad faculty (and that varies withing schools by departments) school is ultimately what you put into it.

I think having a ranking of tiers of schools would make more sense, without ranking the schools within each band/tier.

I think rankings of individual programs would make the most sense with heavy weighting towards reputation given by people in the industry that hires out of those programs.

I also think regional rankings make way more sense than national rankings for about 99% of prospective students because national rankings really obscure the value that employers generally place on programs that are closer and with which they are more familiar. There are situations where a degree from Princeton is actually not worth any more than a degree from "state flagship" and the state flagship might actually be worth more if there are professors or opportunities that tend to funnel students into their desired jobs.

[Anonymous]

It's social engineering. They artificially boost rankings of public colleges to level the playing field. A ranking based on the quality of education and outcomes would place publics lower but that would advantage the 1% who overwhelmingly choose privates.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:it's still the gold standard, whether you like it or not.

For what. This list does not guarantee outcomes. I attended a shi----y big midwestern University with no prestige. But you would not know it unless I told you. And there are many like me.

The problem is that the people who have verifiably the best financial outcomes all went to top schools (or dropped out of them). Gates, Zuckerberg, Bezos, Altman, Schwarzman, Griffin, et al.

Nobody ever says what their own outcome actually is, nor names their friend/cousin/friend's cousin that supposedly also went to some no-name shitty university and is now super-successful.

So, if all anyone will offer on DCUM is anecdotes without being willing to provide any specifics...you won't persuade anyone.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

For schools that require scores there was a 5% weight factor--and for those w/out scores 0%.

Actually they used scores even for schools that were test optional. Perhaps what you meant was that for schools where scores were missing for most of the incoming students they replaced this metric with an extra 5% on the remaining statistic most correlated with test scores, namely graduation rates.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:it's still the gold standard, whether you like it or not.

Exactly. Same old discontents complaining, every single year. I couldn’t believe the tantrum Vanderbilt threw when they dropped last year. No matter how much DCUM moans and groans, families across the country use these rankings more than any others and don’t care about the analysis of the methodology. Deal with it.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:it's still the gold standard, whether you like it or not.

For what. This list does not guarantee outcomes. I attended a shi----y big midwestern University with no prestige. But you would not know it unless I told you. And there are many like me.

The problem is that the people who have verifiably the best financial outcomes all went to top schools (or dropped out of them). Gates, Zuckerberg, Bezos, Altman, Schwarzman, Griffin, et al.

Nobody ever says what their own outcome actually is, nor names their friend/cousin/friend's cousin that supposedly also went to some no-name shitty university and is now super-successful.

So, if all anyone will offer on DCUM is anecdotes without being willing to provide any specifics...you won't persuade anyone.

I went to Williams (#1 liberal arts) a few decades ago and have had a generally successful but entirely average career. I'm sure there are dozens if not hundreds of colleges that would have led me to the same path.