US News 2020 rankings

[Anonymous]

“Disappeared into the eighties” is only a thing on this forum, where anything outside the Top 25 is considered a middling school. A ranking of 84 puts Elon in the Top 25% of national universities ranked. If I were them I would not be ashamed of it and would also promote in marketing materials.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:“So next step: there are 399 national universities out of which the top 25 are ranked. Of those top 25 ranked, 20 were in the top 25 in endowment per capita, including the top 19.”

Yep, huge correlation. Same story on the LAC side. I know as a parent who helped five kids develop their college lists that there’s a strong correlation between competitiveness for entry and endowment. Some outliers to be sure, but generally they align.

If there’s a correlation, competitiveness isn’t part of it because USNWR doesn’t use acceptance rate anymore.

I meant competitiveness not as a ratings factor but as indicator of difficulty gaining admission. I have a B student and trying to help him build a list of schools we’ve spent a lot of time in the CDS of various schools. Those with entering classes having higher test scores and greater percentages in the top decile/quartile/half of their HS classes tend to have higher endowments (and higher rankings).

Except you said there’s a relationship between endowment and competitiveness. That isn’t really true with USNWR, particularly as they don’t use acceptance rate to calculate their ranking.

Acceptance rate was never the best indicator of competitiveness because schools could induce applications from students they were likely to reject to reduce admission rate. That is why they dropped it (after I believe Stanford said they didn't want to report it any more). But standardized tests, etc. are still indicators of competitiveness and they do tend to correlate.

[Anonymous]

Before this year, Elon had been ranked by U.S. News & World Report in the Southern Region. The change came after the Carnegie Classification of Institutions of Higher Education created a new Doctoral/Professional classification which moved Elon into the national rankings. Before the move, Elon was named the top Southern University for the last six years.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:“Disappeared into the eighties” is only a thing on this forum, where anything outside the Top 25 is considered a middling school. A ranking of 84 puts Elon in the Top 25% of national universities ranked. If I were them I would not be ashamed of it and would also promote in marketing materials.

Except they used to tout their number one ranking all the time, so clearly THEY valued the high ranking. I agree with you that 84 is nothing whatsoever to be ashamed of, rather the opposite. But if you’ve spent any time on the USNWR website you know that just getting down to the eighties is an actual hassle.

[Anonymous]

From https://www.usnews.com/education/best-colleges/articles/rankings-faq

1. In brief, how does U.S. News rank colleges?

To rank colleges, U.S. News first places each school into a category based on its mission and, in some cases, its location (North, South, Midwest and West).

National Universities, which focus on research and offer several doctoral programs, are ranked separately from National Liberal Arts Colleges, and Regional Universities and Regional Colleges are compared with other schools in the same group and region.

[Anonymous]

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

Grouping Ranked Colleges

To make valid comparisons, schools are grouped by academic mission into 10 distinct rankings.

National Universities offer a full range of undergraduate majors, plus master's and doctoral programs, and emphasize faculty research or award professional practice doctorates.
National Liberal Arts Colleges focus almost exclusively on undergraduate education and award at least 50% of their degrees in the arts and sciences.
Regional Universities offer a broad scope of undergraduate degrees and some master's degree programs but few, if any, doctoral programs. We ranked them in four geographical groups: North, South, Midwest and West.
Regional Colleges focus on undergraduate education but grant fewer than 50% of their degrees in liberal arts disciplines. They sometimes predominantly award two-year associate degrees. We ranked them in four geographical groups: North, South, Midwest and West.

[Anonymous]

Wow, JMU is behind The Citidal and Rollins?

SMH.

[Anonymous]

The "reputation score" is 20% of the ranking and it used to include the results of surveys of college presidents, admissions deans, and school counselors.

They removed the school counselors from the equation for this round. So the reputation score is just what higher level administrators think of schools, not what the people who work with the students day-in and day-out think. Interesting.

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

[Anonymous]

The person pretending to be a UVA person bashing Michigan is just trying to work people up. Anyone who went to UVA knows that Michigan (and Berkeley, UCLA, etc) are excellent schools that are always in the same neighborhood in these rankings.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:“So next step: there are 399 national universities out of which the top 25 are ranked. Of those top 25 ranked, 20 were in the top 25 in endowment per capita, including the top 19.”

Yep, huge correlation. Same story on the LAC side. I know as a parent who helped five kids develop their college lists that there’s a strong correlation between competitiveness for entry and endowment. Some outliers to be sure, but generally they align.

If there’s a correlation, competitiveness isn’t part of it because USNWR doesn’t use acceptance rate anymore.

I meant competitiveness not as a ratings factor but as indicator of difficulty gaining admission. I have a B student and trying to help him build a list of schools we’ve spent a lot of time in the CDS of various schools. Those with entering classes having higher test scores and greater percentages in the top decile/quartile/half of their HS classes tend to have higher endowments (and higher rankings).

Except you said there’s a relationship between endowment and competitiveness. That isn’t really true with USNWR, particularly as they don’t use acceptance rate to calculate their ranking.

You misunderstand the meaning of correlation.

NP. Here are acceptance rates along with the top National Universities ranked by endowment per capita.

While there appears to be a correlation, there are a few that don't seem to fall in line:

Notre Dame with 18% acceptance rate but ranked 9th.
Hopkins with 11% acceptance rate but ranked at bottom.

Other than those outliers, I do see a correlation.

Princeton University 5%
Yale University 6%
Harvard University 5%
Stanford University 4%
Massachusetts Institute of Technology 7%
California Institute of Technology 7%
Rice University 11%
Dartmouth College 9%
University of Notre Dame 18%
Northwestern University 8%
University of Chicago 7%
Duke University 9%
University of Pennsylvania 8%
Washington University in St. Louis 15%
Emory University 19%
Brown University 8%
Vanderbilt University 10%
Columbia University 6%
Cornell University 11%
University of Virginia 26%
University of Michigan 23%
University of Rochester 29%
Lehigh University 22%
Case Western Reserve University 29%
Johns Hopkins 11%

[Anonymous]

Agree with rankings except the move up for Michigan. UVA has always ranked higher so there's no reason for the students move up other than as a cheap ploy to sell magazines.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Michigan is a garbage commuter school. It should be ranked 75, not 25. UVA has a 1550 SAT average while Umich is only 1250 average, how is UVA ranked lower? what a joke ranking.

Wow you wildly overstate UVA's stats. There's no reason to make up an inflated number for a really great college like UVA. It's 75th percentile SAT score is just 1500 -- in other words only 25% of UVA students beat 1500. https://admission.virginia.edu/admission/statistics

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:The "reputation score" is 20% of the ranking and it used to include the results of surveys of college presidents, admissions deans, and school counselors.

They removed the school counselors from the equation for this round. So the reputation score is just what higher level administrators think of schools, not what the people who work with the students day-in and day-out think. Interesting.

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

this is why USNWR is the most flawed ranking. A small circle of friendly deans vote for certain schools. this has nothing to do with quality of education.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Elon and CNU appear to be on the rise. They're on our list for safeties.

I have a hard time making sense of the "regional universities" category-- JMU always does well for this in VA and CNU is rising in it, but that category means they can never be more than a regional school? Not that it can't be a fantastic school for those that want that, but I don't quite get why JMU will always be a regional school while GMU is a national university. And what are the implications for that? It seems like the regional category puts a strong upper limit on growth/status potential.

I believe schools "graduate" from being a regional. I believe it's whete your students originate. Just this year Elon moved from regional to National University.

I thought the Regional school category had to do with the number of majors the school had. I remember reading somewhere that a regional school was smaller and had less number of majors and graduate programs. In fact, here's what US News says about Regional Schools: Regional Universities offer a full range of undergraduate programs and some master's programs but few doctoral programs.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Michigan is a garbage commuter school. It should be ranked 75, not 25. UVA has a 1550 SAT average while Umich is only 1250 average, how is UVA ranked lower? what a joke ranking.

Wow you wildly overstate UVA's stats. There's no reason to make up an inflated number for a really great college like UVA. It's 75th percentile SAT score is just 1500 -- in other words only 25% of UVA students beat 1500. https://admission.virginia.edu/admission/statistics

Accordion to prep scholar, UVA’s average SAT is 1365, while Michigan’s is 1415. The acceptance rates are both 27-28%. I don’t know where the Michigan bashing poster got his/her numbers. Even Harvard doesn’t have an average SAT of 1550; it’s 1520.