The Absurdity of U.S. News College Rankings - Per Malcolm Gladwell

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:They became pointless once they started rewarding metrics like diversity, % of pell grant recipients, and how much professors get paid.

Everyone knows the elite undergraduate are Ivies, Stanford, and MIT (and Notre Dame if you're a Catholic school valedictorian).

They also ruined the high school rankings with the same social engineering non sense.

They have always had professors pay and "institutional funds" - cough endowment cough - in their ranking, which is how many privates which are objectively considered weaker in academia are for some reason ranked higher than Berkeley, Michigan, et. al.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

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Anonymous wrote:Yeah what the ill-informed and nasty PP doesn't realize is that the schools that have benefited from rankings the most are the non-Harvard/Yale Ivies. The Ivy League went from being an old-school athletic conference to having the level of prestige they enjoy today. But sure, take it out on these other schools. The confident stupidity and lack of self-awareness truly knows no bounds.

What a ridiculous post. The Ivies have been the Ivies and ergo have been synonymous with prestige and top academics for a long time, whether deserved or undeserved. This is true in the US and it is true internationally.

The smaller Ivies - Brown and Dartmouth - are less recognized by name alone internationally but rather their affiliation to the Ivies. However in the US they have always been prestigious nationally and particularly in the Northeast - the economic and political center of the US.

Cornell in particularly is very popular internationally despite Americans desperately trying to compare it to a state school.

The Ivy League is an athletic conference. USNWR entrenched their status as prestigious schools; they weren't all considered prestigious beforehand.

Uh no, the Ivies were always considered prestigious regardless of USNews. The Ivies are the oldest colleges in the US and targetted wealthy and politically powerful Northeastern families, ergo they were prestigious.

Schools like Dartmouth were definitely a boy's club for wealthy white males, and perhaps cared more about non-academic factors, was never much of a research university, etc., but it was still prestigious.

No one outside of America even remotely cared about the Ivy League until US News. And the same drop in acceptance rate that the upthread PP keeps bringing up about schools like UChicago occurred across the board with the Ivies as well.

The opposite is true.
People in many foreign countries have no idea what schools are in the Ivy league (maybe except Harvard), but they only know the Ivy league is prestigious. Just like they don't know who are the Oscar Academy winners, but they know that's a prestigious award and honor. So just say to them you are from a Ivy league school you have the prestige. As simple as that.

That may be true today, but not in the 70s and 80s, before college rankings became mainstream.

No, it has literally always been true. If there's one thing that the Ivies have, its brand. The Ivies have been synonymous with the best universities in the country - whether deserved or not - both nationally and internationally far earlier than the advent of rankings.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I wonder if the higher ranked USNWR schools have physically uglier and weaker students. Someone should do a survey. It would be easy to take random samples at a statistically relevant number then have the public rate unidentified photos. Looks are equal or more important in life than almost anything and it would be good to be associated with an institution with higher ranked attractiveness.

Unlikely, considering individuals who come from wealth tend to be more attractive and healthier (for obvious selection and socioeconomic reasons).

Sure, wealthy private universities known for party culture may have more attractive students than the Ivies, but certainly not true when comparing the Ivies to the average university.

Places like JMU and U of South Carolina have better looking people with healthier and more fertile bodies than the elite schools. Look at people like Hillary and Bill Gates or the tech billionaires. They are really unattractive and are pretty typical for the ivys. Personally I’d rather be decent looking with a healthy fertile body and go to JMU.

Yes, poor and lower-middle-class/middle-class people white people are better looking than the sons and daughters of American wealthy and socially connected.... you do realize stupidity in this line of reasoning? Besides first Gen kids, the top schools are filled with kids that had the best food, played on top travel sports teams (they have tons of athletes), top medical care. They come from households that have the best, freshest food and have an unusually high percentage of students coming from families in the top income brackets around the globe. Do you really think all rich people are ugly and marry ugly people? Do you think that the rich do not fix unpleasant features or there is rampant obesity of the physically active wealthy class?

I think this is just your personal fantasy and justification.

Obviously Marybeth with her 2nd baby on the way and Hank with the chip tooth from popping open beer bottles and minor concussion from smashing beer cans on his head is far better looking than those Harvard nerds!

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:This is one of the most entertaining threads on here in a while. *Grabs popcorn.* Thank you all!!

I'll also add my two cents. For context, I am not American. I have some ties with the DC area and used to live here, but have long ties with international school networks in the Middle East (namely Turkey, but also Gulf region) and East Asia (namely Hong Kong).

Without a doubt, Harvard, Yale, Stanford, and MIT are the most prestigious schools. Other coveted names include Columbia, UChicago, Duke, Northwestern, Georgetown, Johns Hopkins, and Duke. Rest of the Ivy League is also choice (Cornell gets high marks relative to its stance on the US News list). And I am sorry to say but the unfortunate reality is that "private" trumps "public". It's a brand name, after all, that people are wanting to pay for. But of the publics, the only ones that people care about are Berkeley, Michigan, and UCLA.

I think there is merit to both arguments being thrown around, though I can't say authoritatively if US News is solely responsible for the prestige of some of these names. The aforementioned schools have been prestigious for a long while, but they have also received a hefty bump in the last two decades, that is true (but this also extends to the Ivies).

The schools that are curious to me (rated highly by US News but not really seen as coveted as the aforementioned school) are the ones like Vanderbilt, Emory, Notre Dame, Washington StL, and Dartmouth.

Also worth noting that the global jet set strongly prefers unis located in or near major cities with international airports.

And a fun addendum for British unis: the most obvious names are Oxford, Cambridge, and LSE, though in my circles American universities are preferred. I am aware, however, that in India and Pakistan (and presumably other Commonwealth/Commonwealth-adjacent countries), Oxbridge/LSE may be preferred with the exception of HYSM.

But did you live abroad as a toddler for 7 years and learned Spanish through Duolingo? Otherwise how do you know what universities those abroad strive for?

In my experience, Georgetown is more coveted than Duke or Hopkins, although obviously Hopkins is coveted by those interested in medicine.
This is due to Georgetown being Jesuit - who run academically rigorous K-12 schools across the world and ergo have a strong reputation globally - and being in Washington DC.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:The other problem with Gladwell is that he's often wrong.

Forty percent of a school's rank comes from its success at retaining and graduating students within 150% of normal time (six years), graduate indebtedness, and social mobility factors. Graduation rates themselves have the highest weight in outcomes and in our rankings because degree completion is necessary to receive the full benefits of undergraduate study from employers and graduate schools. We approach outcomes from angles of graduation and retention (22%), graduation rate performance (8%), social mobility (5%) and, new this year, graduate indebtedness (5%).

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

What Gladwell is probably saying is that the objective factors you cite above are correlated with the factors that Gladwell cited.

I think USNWR has probably done some good, but it has probably been easily outweighed by the bad. By not taking into account cost and providing a rigid ordinal ranking, it has supported the massive runup in tuition and fees and student debt since the 1980s. The other factor is it encourages gaming of the numbers which doesn't really add value. Almost all of them can be gamed, and sometimes it is difficult to separate what is gaming vs progress. UVA was the #1 ranked public for a while and one of its advantages was graduation rate. Schools like UCLA used to be some distance behind. Now UCLA, Michigan, etc. have 6 year graduation rates (but not necessarily 4 year) that are pretty similar to UVA. Was that because UCLA is now a better school, or did it just make it easier to graduate? GPA inflation, which had started in the Vietnam War era, accelerated during the USNWR era, to the extent that schools like Brown don't have too much room to go higher.

Ironically, UVA had a high 4 and 6-year graduation rate specifically due to their easier coursework and domination of easier majors than Berkeley, Michigan, etc. And fewer students studying and working part-time due to having a wealthier student base.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Yeah what the ill-informed and nasty PP doesn't realize is that the schools that have benefited from rankings the most are the non-Harvard/Yale Ivies. The Ivy League went from being an old-school athletic conference to having the level of prestige they enjoy today. But sure, take it out on these other schools. The confident stupidity and lack of self-awareness truly knows no bounds.

What a ridiculous post. The Ivies have been the Ivies and ergo have been synonymous with prestige and top academics for a long time, whether deserved or undeserved. This is true in the US and it is true internationally.

The smaller Ivies - Brown and Dartmouth - are less recognized by name alone internationally but rather their affiliation to the Ivies. However in the US they have always been prestigious nationally and particularly in the Northeast - the economic and political center of the US.

Cornell in particularly is very popular internationally despite Americans desperately trying to compare it to a state school.

The Ivy League is an athletic conference. USNWR entrenched their status as prestigious schools; they weren't all considered prestigious beforehand.

Uh no, the Ivies were always considered prestigious regardless of USNews. The Ivies are the oldest colleges in the US and targetted wealthy and politically powerful Northeastern families, ergo they were prestigious.

Schools like Dartmouth were definitely a boy's club for wealthy white males, and perhaps cared more about non-academic factors, was never much of a research university, etc., but it was still prestigious.

No one outside of America even remotely cared about the Ivy League until US News. And the same drop in acceptance rate that the upthread PP keeps bringing up about schools like UChicago occurred across the board with the Ivies as well.

The opposite is true.
People in many foreign countries have no idea what schools are in the Ivy league (maybe except Harvard), but they only know the Ivy league is prestigious. Just like they don't know who are the Oscar Academy winners, but they know that's a prestigious award and honor. So just say to them you are from a Ivy league school you have the prestige. As simple as that.

They certainly know Stanford, Berkeley and MIT.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:This is one of the most entertaining threads on here in a while. *Grabs popcorn.* Thank you all!!

I'll also add my two cents. For context, I am not American. I have some ties with the DC area and used to live here, but have long ties with international school networks in the Middle East (namely Turkey, but also Gulf region) and East Asia (namely Hong Kong).

Without a doubt, Harvard, Yale, Stanford, and MIT are the most prestigious schools. Other coveted names include Columbia, UChicago, Duke, Northwestern, Georgetown, Johns Hopkins, and Duke. Rest of the Ivy League is also choice (Cornell gets high marks relative to its stance on the US News list). And I am sorry to say but the unfortunate reality is that "private" trumps "public". It's a brand name, after all, that people are wanting to pay for. But of the publics, the only ones that people care about are Berkeley, Michigan, and UCLA.

I think there is merit to both arguments being thrown around, though I can't say authoritatively if US News is solely responsible for the prestige of some of these names. The aforementioned schools have been prestigious for a long while, but they have also received a hefty bump in the last two decades, that is true (but this also extends to the Ivies).

The schools that are curious to me (rated highly by US News but not really seen as coveted as the aforementioned school) are the ones like Vanderbilt, Emory, Notre Dame, Washington StL, and Dartmouth.

Also worth noting that the global jet set strongly prefers unis located in or near major cities with international airports.

And a fun addendum for British unis: the most obvious names are Oxford, Cambridge, and LSE, though in my circles American universities are preferred. I am aware, however, that in India and Pakistan (and presumably other Commonwealth/Commonwealth-adjacent countries), Oxbridge/LSE may be preferred with the exception of HYSM.

But did you live abroad as a toddler for 7 years and learned Spanish through Duolingo? Otherwise how do you know what universities those abroad strive for?

In my experience, Georgetown is more coveted than Duke or Hopkins, although obviously Hopkins is coveted by those interested in medicine.
This is due to Georgetown being Jesuit - who run academically rigorous K-12 schools across the world and ergo have a strong reputation globally - and being in Washington DC.

What on earth are you talking about, Karen? What is with these weird toddler and Duolingo jokes? You sound like the most basic Karen from like mfing Bethesda. Sit down.

[Anonymous]

Georgetown boosters out on full patrol tonight.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:The other problem with Gladwell is that he's often wrong.

Forty percent of a school's rank comes from its success at retaining and graduating students within 150% of normal time (six years), graduate indebtedness, and social mobility factors. Graduation rates themselves have the highest weight in outcomes and in our rankings because degree completion is necessary to receive the full benefits of undergraduate study from employers and graduate schools. We approach outcomes from angles of graduation and retention (22%), graduation rate performance (8%), social mobility (5%) and, new this year, graduate indebtedness (5%).

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

What Gladwell is probably saying is that the objective factors you cite above are correlated with the factors that Gladwell cited.

I think USNWR has probably done some good, but it has probably been easily outweighed by the bad. By not taking into account cost and providing a rigid ordinal ranking, it has supported the massive runup in tuition and fees and student debt since the 1980s. The other factor is it encourages gaming of the numbers which doesn't really add value. Almost all of them can be gamed, and sometimes it is difficult to separate what is gaming vs progress. UVA was the #1 ranked public for a while and one of its advantages was graduation rate. Schools like UCLA used to be some distance behind. Now UCLA, Michigan, etc. have 6 year graduation rates (but not necessarily 4 year) that are pretty similar to UVA. Was that because UCLA is now a better school, or did it just make it easier to graduate? GPA inflation, which had started in the Vietnam War era, accelerated during the USNWR era, to the extent that schools like Brown don't have too much room to go higher.

Ironically, UVA had a high 4 and 6-year graduation rate specifically due to their easier coursework and domination of easier majors than Berkeley, Michigan, etc. And fewer students studying and working part-time due to having a wealthier student base.

Schools who don’t have a high percentage of their students in Engineering, typically have higher four year graduation rates. Engineers usually need more credit hours in their majors to graduate.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:He's got a bee in his bonnet about elite colleges.

He did a whole thing about how Bowdoin sucks because their food is better than Vassar's, meaning they spent more on that than financial aid.

Without, of course, doing any financial analysis of the procurement and preparation methodologies of the dining services. So he has no idea. Didn't stop him from making the correlative claim.

I do find him entertaining, but his BS is no better than any other entertainment that claims complex topics are simply illustrated.

That episode of his podcast made me so mad - I still think of it to this day. Why can't you have good food AND good financial aid? Why don't we want kids eating better food? It was such a false dichotomy. Such lazy thinking!!

The thing is, when he is wrong, he is really, really wrong. But sometimes I agree with him, which is when I start to wonder if he's wrong, then, too.

Me too! That’s the episode that made me stop listening to his podcast. It could have been a really interesting dive into what matters in college, what elite school can teach all kids but especially those who grew up in poverty and food deserts, and how schools spend money, but instead it was so short sighted and lazy.
I talk about that episode a lot. Good to know I’m not alone!
I mean, Bowdoin grows a lot of its own food, l

[Anonymous]

Gladwell is a 57-year-old childless Canadian. Why would anyone care what he thinks as it relates to what college to send your child to? Why doesn't he poll his New Yorker and media elite friends with teen and 20-something kids and see where they all send their kids (hint: Ivies, Stanford, Duke, Chicago, Barnard, Georgetown, NYU and the top few SLACs — period).

I agree the rankings have jumped the shark. But wanting to send your kid to an elite college isn't going anywhere. If anything, it's fiercer because when everyone teen goes to college, you signal your class status (and/or IQ) with a prestige bachelor's

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Gladwell is a 57-year-old childless Canadian. Why would anyone care what he thinks as it relates to what college to send your child to? Why doesn't he poll his New Yorker and media elite friends with teen and 20-something kids and see where they all send their kids (hint: Ivies, Stanford, Duke, Chicago, Barnard, Georgetown, NYU and the top few SLACs — period).

I agree the rankings have jumped the shark. But wanting to send your kid to an elite college isn't going anywhere. If anything, it's fiercer because when everyone teen goes to college, you signal your class status (and/or IQ) with a prestige bachelor's

It’s more prestigious to be good looking and healthy. But elite college is necessary to give ugly/unhealthy people something to cling to.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Gladwell is a 57-year-old childless Canadian. Why would anyone care what he thinks as it relates to what college to send your child to? Why doesn't he poll his New Yorker and media elite friends with teen and 20-something kids and see where they all send their kids (hint: Ivies, Stanford, Duke, Chicago, Barnard, Georgetown, NYU and the top few SLACs — period).

I agree the rankings have jumped the shark. But wanting to send your kid to an elite college isn't going anywhere. If anything, it's fiercer because when everyone teen goes to college, you signal your class status (and/or IQ) with a prestige bachelor's

I'm sorry but NYU is not an elite or prestigious school.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:The other problem with Gladwell is that he's often wrong.

Forty percent of a school's rank comes from its success at retaining and graduating students within 150% of normal time (six years), graduate indebtedness, and social mobility factors. Graduation rates themselves have the highest weight in outcomes and in our rankings because degree completion is necessary to receive the full benefits of undergraduate study from employers and graduate schools. We approach outcomes from angles of graduation and retention (22%), graduation rate performance (8%), social mobility (5%) and, new this year, graduate indebtedness (5%).

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

What Gladwell is probably saying is that the objective factors you cite above are correlated with the factors that Gladwell cited.

I think USNWR has probably done some good, but it has probably been easily outweighed by the bad. By not taking into account cost and providing a rigid ordinal ranking, it has supported the massive runup in tuition and fees and student debt since the 1980s. The other factor is it encourages gaming of the numbers which doesn't really add value. Almost all of them can be gamed, and sometimes it is difficult to separate what is gaming vs progress. UVA was the #1 ranked public for a while and one of its advantages was graduation rate. Schools like UCLA used to be some distance behind. Now UCLA, Michigan, etc. have 6 year graduation rates (but not necessarily 4 year) that are pretty similar to UVA. Was that because UCLA is now a better school, or did it just make it easier to graduate? GPA inflation, which had started in the Vietnam War era, accelerated during the USNWR era, to the extent that schools like Brown don't have too much room to go higher.

Ironically, UVA had a high 4 and 6-year graduation rate specifically due to their easier coursework and domination of easier majors than Berkeley, Michigan, etc. And fewer students studying and working part-time due to having a wealthier student base.

Schools who don’t have a high percentage of their students in Engineering, typically have higher four year graduation rates. Engineers usually need more credit hours in their majors to graduate.

Also many engineering students decide to pursue BS/MS degrees, and take one or two extra years to graduate. Stanford is ranked so low on USNWR because this decreases their % of 4-year graduations. Another reason why the ranking is so stupid.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I wonder if the higher ranked USNWR schools have physically uglier and weaker students. Someone should do a survey. It would be easy to take random samples at a statistically relevant number then have the public rate unidentified photos. Looks are equal or more important in life than almost anything and it would be good to be associated with an institution with higher ranked attractiveness.

Unlikely, considering individuals who come from wealth tend to be more attractive and healthier (for obvious selection and socioeconomic reasons).

Sure, wealthy private universities known for party culture may have more attractive students than the Ivies, but certainly not true when comparing the Ivies to the average university.

Places like JMU and U of South Carolina have better looking people with healthier and more fertile bodies than the elite schools. Look at people like Hillary and Bill Gates or the tech billionaires. They are really unattractive and are pretty typical for the ivys. Personally I’d rather be decent looking with a healthy fertile body and go to JMU.

Yes, poor and lower-middle-class/middle-class people white people are better looking than the sons and daughters of American wealthy and socially connected.... you do realize stupidity in this line of reasoning? Besides first Gen kids, the top schools are filled with kids that had the best food, played on top travel sports teams (they have tons of athletes), top medical care. They come from households that have the best, freshest food and have an unusually high percentage of students coming from families in the top income brackets around the globe. Do you really think all rich people are ugly and marry ugly people? Do you think that the rich do not fix unpleasant features or there is rampant obesity of the physically active wealthy class?

I think this is just your personal fantasy and justification.

Nope. From my anecdotal experience the higher rated schools have uglier, less healthy looking alumni. Plus a higher degree of mental illness and special needs children. But definitely more research needs to be done and tabulated in rankings so the public can pick among attractiveness and health qualities of different schools.

If you check the cheerleader pictures at say.. the university of South Carolina then line them up next to the cheerleaders at say Brown, you’ll see what I mean. Most young people if they could choose would look like and be a South Carolina cheerleader than look like a Brown cheerleader in that you will probably have a more charmed life overall. You would have to think about it for a few minutes, but most would choose the good looks and vitality option.

You are too stupid to realize no one beautiful wants to be a cheerleader at Brown. So low class! Get your middle America limited mind to realize all the famous kids (models/actors/ billionaire kids of trophy wives) don’t want to be cheerleaders cause they want to go to LA, Paris and compounds on the weekend. Please don’t use a standard that is completely irrelevant to judge a school. Your so naive and frankly ignorant.