UVA has a lower acceptance rate than Wake and essentially the same as BC. But it doesn’t really matter, you’re one of those silly people that thinks that there is some meaningful difference to be derived between all of these extremely low acceptance rates. |
What actually happens is reflected in the combination of acceptance rate, yield rate, cohort quality, retention rate, and graduation rate. It's the result of collective decisions by the students so it's the most meaningful fact, not what USNWR suggests. |
USNWR can scream all it can Rutgers is higher ranked school, but in the real world people almost completely ignore that and choose Northeastern. |
Where to I find this "what actually happens" metric that you keep toping about? You don't think that privates game the system? Have you ever received mail or email for Case or Chicago? |
What do you mean? Those are readily available. Schools should report that so that students can see. If a school ends up with 18% yield rate in 2024. It means that less than 2 out of 10 people decided to attend in 2024. If a school ends up with 90% retention rate in 2023, It means that 1 out of 10 students decided to leave in 2024. These are what happened. Real action by the students. I think these are vital information and people reference them for the next cycle. |
Acceptance rate can be manipulated (by inducing more applicants, most of the unqualified), so they correctly dropped it. It isn't the best indicator of true selectivity and quality of the enrolled student body. |
Hence I said 1000 times the combination of acceptance rate, yield rate, cohort quality, retention rate, and graduation rate. |
Can you please produce your list based on these metrics you claim to track. |
You cannot compare yield rates between schools which have two ED rounds versus schools that have no ED, so that is going to be tough. |
Yes, and please give us the weighting of each of the criteria. Since you’ve clearly thought about this so much it shouldn’t be a problem. |
Sure you can, you just need to look at it in aggregate. ED is just a yield contract. |
If many high stat kids choose a school as definite 1st choice, there's reason for it. That says a lot about that school. Hence part of the combination includes cohort quality. |
Selective private schools don't have the same mandate as public schools, even the best public schools. So the private schools get to cherry pick the high stat students. This is nothing new. That's why someone mentioned Rutgers, Rutgers is a public university. Same thing as UConn and Penn State. Once the private schools get to all the good students in Connecticut and New Jersey, there isn't a lot left for the flagships. I don't know why that is so, but for whatever reason that is the culture in the northeast.
Thankfully, UVA has an incredible niche of attracting top Virginia talent. |
But continue to include the thing that can be manipulated? And don’t factor in what industry experts think about the quality of education taking place? The problem with what you propose it can reward those schools where good students flock mostly because of non academic factors like location or dorms. USNWR isn’t perfect but it’s the best option available and it’s not close. |
USNWR significantly hurt their credibility when they started implicitly adjusting their rankings first to get a couple of Publics into the top 25 and then by adding social justice factors like economic mobility and Pell grant factors again designed to bump publics. That said the others are even worse. But in the end it isn't that hard to line out ones that are obviously ridiculous and discount large moves that anyone thinking can see were caused by these adjustments rather than reality. Tufts and Middlebury didn't each drop about 15 spots in 5 years, no public is really a T20, etc. And most of all, you can't be that granular in the first place. |