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

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

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.

It is for the 80000 kids that apply and wealthy people creative and urban dwellers. It’s not for Virginia stem parents. It’s also the number 1dream school for the last 10 years or so.

[Anonymous]

NYU today is in a sweet spot where it's not as selective such that it's aspirational for wealthy mediocre students and academically strong enough such that it's a strong (and wealthy) student would still find it a good fit. And it's in the best part of Manhattan.

Elite medical, law, business, math, and fine arts make it a great school today, although obviously there are many privates with the academics and a more supportive academic environment to boot for the money.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

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.

It is for the 80000 kids that apply and wealthy people creative and urban dwellers. It’s not for Virginia stem parents. It’s also the number 1dream school for the last 10 years or so.

By this metric the California state system is the most prestigious set of schools in the country, far more than the Ivy League.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

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.

It is for the 80000 kids that apply and wealthy people creative and urban dwellers. It’s not for Virginia stem parents. It’s also the number 1dream school for the last 10 years or so.

I don't think many people in New York (the "urban dwellers" you speak of) view NYU as elite or prestigious. It's seen as an oversized school filled to the brim with obnoxious college students, an institution that offers a state school education at the hefty price of a private school.

-a New Yorker.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

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.

It is for the 80000 kids that apply and wealthy people creative and urban dwellers. It’s not for Virginia stem parents. It’s also the number 1dream school for the last 10 years or so.

I don't think many people in New York (the "urban dwellers" you speak of) view NYU as elite or prestigious. It's seen as an oversized school filled to the brim with obnoxious college students, an institution that offers a state school education at the hefty price of a private school.

-a New Yorker.

You are one of the ones that give us a bad name.

[Anonymous]

If you are talking about universities as a whole including various colleges and grad programs, NYU is absolutely elite and prestigious. At the highest level. Tough to surpass honestly.

[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.

Notre Dame is an “elite undergrad” and everyone knows it?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

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.

Notre Dame is an “elite undergrad” and everyone knows it?

I am not a fan of the school and I think the movie Rudy sucks, but this thread is about the rankings, and ND is #19 out of 3,000 schools, so the maths say yes, it is an elite undergrad.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

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.

Lol no one who made it into Brown wants to be someone else’s cheerleader. And if they were doing cheer (if that’s even a thing there), it would be a small part of their life far down from research, internships, travel, or playing their own sport (as opposed to cheering for one).

[Anonymous]

Lol this silly cheerleader thing baffles me... but coincidentally when my kid was accepted at Brown we came across videos from this young woman:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EqtQpdfQ8MM&ab_channel=LivingLikeLisa

So, you can be smart, attractive, accomplished, a cheerleader, and attend Brown if you wanna.

BTW I don't recommend sitting through the video, just offering as proof.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Brown has really benefitted from being in the Ivy League. It was always thought of as perhaps the poorest of the Ivy League schools. The halo effect of the Ivy League has helped them with admissions and they have made up some ground on building up their endowment.

You are misinformed, and you did not read even this thread, let alone do research, before you saw fit to comment. The post at 06/29/2021 12:13 has an article from the NY Times completely disproving your from-the-backside theory.

That boost in admissions was the product of John F. Kennedy, Jr. It was pre-USNWR. I don't know how he ended up at Brown, but I don't think he was the best student and other schools like Harvard (where his father and sister matriculated) may not have been an option.

https://pagesix.com/2017/10/09/jackie-worked-hard-to-keep-jfk-jr-from-flunking-college-classes/

My comment was not specifically on the number of applicants to Brown in 1983. I was about the schools financial situation and how it was viewed vs. the other Ivy League schools.

Spin, makes excuses and backpedal if you must, but not only do you have no evidence for your claims of either post, that article directly contradicts your original claim and you know it. Just admit you were wrong. It's not hard to do.

Wow. If you throw a rock into a pack of wild dogs, the one you hit will always yelp. You can go on the attack like a page out of the Trump playbook, but all of this stuff is documented:

Regarding John F. Kennedy Jr. and its impact on Brown, see pp. 136-138 in "America's Reluctant Prince: The Life of John F. Kennedy Jr." by Steven Gillon

"The application material made public in 2017 did not include his transcripts from Collegiate and Andover or his SAT scores. But it is unlikely that scores and grades would have mattered. Brown needed John more than he needed Brown." "When word had spread that John was on campus, the University boasted a record number of applications . . . " "There can be little doubt that the buzz generated by John's admission helped boost the school's profile and popularity. Brown's decision to recruit and admit John despite his lackluster academic record accomplished exactly what the university had planned." "Years later, Rogers bragged that in his two decades as admissions director, his greatest contribution was 'the the admission and matriculation of John.' He observed correctly that 'people began to talk about John'."

Regarding Brown's finances, it remains the Ivy with the lowest endowment despite having the best endowment performance in recent years. You can see this information on Wikipedia. Brown is not a very large school, but it is still larger than either Dartmouth or Princeton, and it is not that much smaller than Yale. On a per student basis, those schools have endowments that are 7.7X to 2.1X as large as Brown's endowment. Cornell has a lower endowment per student, but it has historically been more of a research university, and it has used research to bolster its finances. The period I referred when the university was not on solid financial footing is even documented on Brown's website. See the description of President Hornig's tenure:

"His years at Brown were not easy. The University was running significant deficits when he began as president, the national economy was troubled, and the energy crisis of the early 1970s was worsening an already difficult time. Hornig made very difficult decisions, reducing University expenditures by 15 percent, developing a three-year austerity plan, even reducing the size of the faculty. Difficult as the work was, Hornig could see its eventual success. When he resigned in 1975 (serving through the 1975-76 academic year), he had reduced the annual deficit from $4.1 million in 1970-71 to $636,000."

[Anonymous]

Sorry, fail, no gish gallop for you!

You explicitly mentioned admissions in your first post, and nothing of JFK Jr. The NYTIMES link proved that wrong.

Suddenly you're all "JFK Jr made Brown popular like Hammer did with puffy pants!" which has no relevance to the original post.

Fail.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Sorry, fail, no gish gallop for you!

You explicitly mentioned admissions in your first post, and nothing of JFK Jr. The NYTIMES link proved that wrong.

Suddenly you're all "JFK Jr made Brown popular like Hammer did with puffy pants!" which has no relevance to the original post.

Fail.

I see you are taking a page from the Trump / Roy Cohn playbook yet again and going on the attack.

You said I didn't support my points in either post. In response to your link to a NYT article from 1983, I pointed out that that was the JFK Jr. effect, which it was. Then you come back and say it has no relevance to the original post. Nice attempted moving of the goal posts. I covered the points in the original post as well.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Sorry, fail, no gish gallop for you!

You explicitly mentioned admissions in your first post, and nothing of JFK Jr. The NYTIMES link proved that wrong.

Suddenly you're all "JFK Jr made Brown popular like Hammer did with puffy pants!" which has no relevance to the original post.

Fail.

I see you are taking a page from the Trump / Roy Cohn playbook yet again and going on the attack.

You said I didn't support my points in either post. In response to your link to a NYT article from 1983, I pointed out that that was the JFK Jr. effect, which it was. Then you come back and say it has no relevance to the original post. Nice attempted moving of the goal posts. I covered the points in the original post as well.

How the hell is referring to your original posts "moving the goalposts"? It's the EXACT OPPOSITE.

Fail. Fail every time.

[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.

Berkeley and Michigan now have significantly higher 4 and 6 year graduation rates. Based on your logic, this must mean they too now have easier coursework and easier majors and/or wealthier student base. (Michigan has essentially the same family income and slightly higher percentage from top 1% according to NYT, BTW.) Or perhaps another explanation is Berkeley and Michigan saw how USNWR rankings worked and fixed graduation rates by whatever means necessary to get more points.