How well does the US News rankings correlate with actual prestige?

[Anonymous]

I'd say that once you get below the Top 20 or so, there's little correlation with US News ranking and what the general public believes. My university is very low on US News and is fairly high in terms of prestige among the public because many professors have high media profiles.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:U.S. News and the Common App have ruined college admissions.

+1. total agreement here.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:U.S. News and the Common App have ruined college admissions.

Care to elaborate?

they turned continuing education into a game.

[Anonymous]

Common App and USNWR certainly didn’t help, but the problems US higher education faces seem pretty structural to me. Once you have first a national, then a global marketplace for higher education alongside attempts to dismantle the race/class/gender-based forms of discrimination that limited access to it, demand for elite schools increases dramatically. Throw in disinvestment in (and increasing tuition costs at) public universities both here and abroad, along with the fact that much of the higher education system in the US is private (so it’s a competitive market and each institution has to find ways to finance its operations) and you’ve got a mess. Add to the mix a society whose self-understanding is that the system is meritocratic and upward mobility is and should be a reasonable expectation, facing a moment in its history where many of the previously most-entitled/secure groups find themselves feeling increasingly desperate about the life-chances their kids face and you’ve got a whole lot of drama on top of an effed-up market place. And, of course, that’s before we factor in outrageous tuition costs and student loan debt.

Something’s gotta give and even eliminating USNWR and the Common App wouldn’t change that. Meanwhile, technology will make a lot of jobs obsolete and also has the potential to supply education in a way that doesn’t rely on physically assembling students in one place. And that threat make schools sell (and invest heavily in) “the college experience” rather than education.

[Anonymous]

There is some correlation because 25% of the survey draws from peer assessment, of which 2/3 comes from college administrators and 1/3 comes from high school counselors.

But the actual ranking of prestige is different from the US News list: https://www.usnews.com/education/blogs/college-rankings-blog/2013/02/28/which-universities-are-ranked-highest-by-college-officials

As you can see, there are a lot of public schools in here which do poorly on the overall rank. US New's methodology inherently favors schools with a ton of money. Princeton ranks #1 because it has the highest endowment per student of any college in the country and therefore can make its class sizes small/faculty ratios low/etc. Public schools don't anywhere near the same financial resources for undergraduates.

[Anonymous]

USNWR knows nobody would buy the 2018 list if it looked exactly like the 2017, 2016, 2015, and so on lists, which all looked like:
1. Harvard
2. Yale
3. Princeton

So I get the impression USNWR plays with the rankings a bit each year to keep everybody interested and remain relevant. Why?
1. To sell more advertising space, magazines and online subscriptions, and
2. To make themselves relevant to the U Chicagos and Browns of this world, who think they have a chance of moving up if they play things right.

So yep, USNWR is going to bump up Princeton one year, make Stanford #1 the next year, and so on.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:USNWR knows nobody would buy the 2018 list if it looked exactly like the 2017, 2016, 2015, and so on lists, which all looked like:
1. Harvard
2. Yale
3. Princeton

So I get the impression USNWR plays with the rankings a bit each year to keep everybody interested and remain relevant. Why?
1. To sell more advertising space, magazines and online subscriptions, and
2. To make themselves relevant to the U Chicagos and Browns of this world, who think they have a chance of moving up if they play things right.

So yep, USNWR is going to bump up Princeton one year, make Stanford #1 the next year, and so on.

PS. I’m waiting for USNWR to put DC’s school, Columbia, at #1, because that would totally show all those other uppity schools... oh, wait....

[Anonymous]

It correlates with prestige to some extent, i.e. in general the top 10 regulars are more prestigious than top top 10-30 schools.

However within the top 10 there is no correlation with prestige. If there was HYPSM would be the top 5 every year, with Harvard/Stanford the top 2. Of course that would not sell magazines so they stir it up every year. Still that doesn't change the popular perception. People still think that HYPSM is much more prestigious than places like Penn, Columbia, Chicago etc.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:USNWR knows nobody would buy the 2018 list if it looked exactly like the 2017, 2016, 2015, and so on lists, which all looked like:
1. Harvard
2. Yale
3. Princeton

So I get the impression USNWR plays with the rankings a bit each year to keep everybody interested and remain relevant. Why?
1. To sell more advertising space, magazines and online subscriptions, and
2. To make themselves relevant to the U Chicagos and Browns of this world, who think they have a chance of moving up if they play things right.

So yep, USNWR is going to bump up Princeton one year, make Stanford #1 the next year, and so on.

Sounds reasonable but Princeton has been #1 for seven straight years.


PS. I’m waiting for USNWR to put DC’s school, Columbia, at #1, because that would totally show all those other uppity schools... oh, wait....

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:USNWR knows nobody would buy the 2018 list if it looked exactly like the 2017, 2016, 2015, and so on lists, which all looked like:
1. Harvard
2. Yale
3. Princeton

So I get the impression USNWR plays with the rankings a bit each year to keep everybody interested and remain relevant. Why?
1. To sell more advertising space, magazines and online subscriptions, and
2. To make themselves relevant to the U Chicagos and Browns of this world, who think they have a chance of moving up if they play things right.

So yep, USNWR is going to bump up Princeton one year, make Stanford #1 the next year, and so on.

Sounds reasonable but Princeton has been #1 for seven straight years.


PS. I’m waiting for USNWR to put DC’s school, Columbia, at #1, because that would totally show all those other uppity schools... oh, wait....

And yet USNWR’s “Best Global Universities” ranking, obviously a different beast, goes
Harvard
MIT
Stanford

Go figure. It’s obviously an artifact of different measures and weights, but I don’t have the time to figure out how they’re different (and I wouldn’t expect any if you to do it, either).

[Anonymous]

USnews top 10 order is a complete joke. Not having Stanford in the top 3 and having Columbia and Chicago i the top 5 is absurd. Especially Chicago at #3 is beyond absurd. So laughable.

[Anonymous]

1a. Harvard, Stanford, MIT

1b. Yale, Princeton

2. Columbia, Penn, Dartmouth

3a. Chicago, Duke, Brown, Cornell

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:USnews top 10 order is a complete joke. Not having Stanford in the top 3 and having Columbia and Chicago i the top 5 is absurd. Especially Chicago at #3 is beyond absurd. So laughable.

What would you put above Columbia and U Chicago? Let me guess, CalTech or Brown?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:1a. Harvard, Stanford, MIT

1b. Yale, Princeton

2. Columbia, Penn, Dartmouth

3a. Chicago, Duke, Brown, Cornell

Whoa, Dartmouth is in the same class as Columbia and Penn? Sure....

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:1a. Harvard, Stanford, MIT

1b. Yale, Princeton

2. Columbia, Penn, Dartmouth

3a. Chicago, Duke, Brown, Cornell

Whoa, Dartmouth is in the same class as Columbia and Penn? Sure....

Clueless troll. People in the know recognize who goes to Dartmouth.