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

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:^^^ Sorry but you don't understand how statistics work.

You list only the extreme outliers and show differences in them as an example of a substantive difference. If you showed a graph of yield rates of all colleges, it would show that the yield rates for Stanford and Princeton are virtually equal.

Also, you assume yield rates = prestige, which has several gigantic flaws. First, it is a tiny cohort of people, and does not represent the general populace. Second, you assume that tiny cohort makes the choice based on prestige.

No one is claiming Princeton and Yale are not prestigious universities - they are. The question is whether they are as prestigious as Harvard/Stanford and even MIT today.

The answer is that they are not.

82% and 70% are not virtually equal. That is like saying the yield rate of Notre Dame and Princeton (58% and 70%) are virtually equal. They are not.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:^^^ Sorry but you don't understand how statistics work.

You list only the extreme outliers and show differences in them as an example of a substantive difference. If you showed a graph of yield rates of all colleges, it would show that the yield rates for Stanford and Princeton are virtually equal.

Also, you assume yield rates = prestige, which has several gigantic flaws. First, it is a tiny cohort of people, and does not represent the general populace. Second, you assume that tiny cohort makes the choice based on prestige.

No one is claiming Princeton and Yale are not prestigious universities - they are. The question is whether they are as prestigious as Harvard/Stanford and even MIT today.

The answer is that they are not.

82% and 70% are not virtually equal. That is like saying the yield rate of Notre Dame and Princeton (58% and 70%) are virtually equal. They are not.

You missed the entire point I was making. Assuming you are the original poster, you said

while Yale and Princeton are quite a bit further down.

My point was that you used a tiny selection of data, and that's not how data works. Looking at all the data, you realize the answer is "slightly lower, but still very near the top". Literally the opposite of "quite a bit further down"

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:^^^ Sorry but you don't understand how statistics work.

You list only the extreme outliers and show differences in them as an example of a substantive difference. If you showed a graph of yield rates of all colleges, it would show that the yield rates for Stanford and Princeton are virtually equal.

Also, you assume yield rates = prestige, which has several gigantic flaws. First, it is a tiny cohort of people, and does not represent the general populace. Second, you assume that tiny cohort makes the choice based on prestige.

No one is claiming Princeton and Yale are not prestigious universities - they are. The question is whether they are as prestigious as Harvard/Stanford and even MIT today.

The answer is that they are not.

82% and 70% are not virtually equal. That is like saying the yield rate of Notre Dame and Princeton (58% and 70%) are virtually equal. They are not.

You missed the entire point I was making. Assuming you are the original poster, you said

while Yale and Princeton are quite a bit further down.

My point was that you used a tiny selection of data, and that's not how data works. Looking at all the data, you realize the answer is "slightly lower, but still very near the top". Literally the opposite of "quite a bit further down"

Read the post again. Yale and Princeton are "quite a bit further down" from Stanford/MIT for tech specifically.

That is definitely true. The holy grail in tech is Stanford, MIT, Carnegie Mellon and Berkeley, and these universities are considered quite a bit better than the next tier of universities for tech.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Read the post again. Yale and Princeton are "quite a bit further down" from Stanford/MIT for tech specifically.

That is definitely true. The holy grail in tech is Stanford, MIT, Carnegie Mellon and Berkeley, and these universities are considered quite a bit better than the next tier of universities for tech.

But I was responding to your post answering my question! If those stats are not relevant to tech (and I agree they are not relevant to tech, or anything else WRT prestige) then don't post them in reply.

You just discounted your entire yield-statistical response.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Read the post again. Yale and Princeton are "quite a bit further down" from Stanford/MIT for tech specifically.

That is definitely true. The holy grail in tech is Stanford, MIT, Carnegie Mellon and Berkeley, and these universities are considered quite a bit better than the next tier of universities for tech.

But I was responding to your post answering my question! If those stats are not relevant to tech (and I agree they are not relevant to tech, or anything else WRT prestige) then don't post them in reply.

You just discounted your entire yield-statistical response.

How many kids voluntarily submit to parchment and is the data verified? I would need accurate and robust data to make such strong statements.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Read the post again. Yale and Princeton are "quite a bit further down" from Stanford/MIT for tech specifically.

That is definitely true. The holy grail in tech is Stanford, MIT, Carnegie Mellon and Berkeley, and these universities are considered quite a bit better than the next tier of universities for tech.

But I was responding to your post answering my question! If those stats are not relevant to tech (and I agree they are not relevant to tech, or anything else WRT prestige) then don't post them in reply.

You just discounted your entire yield-statistical response.

How many kids voluntarily submit to parchment and is the data verified? I would need accurate and robust data to make such strong statements.

Are you replying to PP or the one prior?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Read the post again. Yale and Princeton are "quite a bit further down" from Stanford/MIT for tech specifically.

That is definitely true. The holy grail in tech is Stanford, MIT, Carnegie Mellon and Berkeley, and these universities are considered quite a bit better than the next tier of universities for tech.

But I was responding to your post answering my question! If those stats are not relevant to tech (and I agree they are not relevant to tech, or anything else WRT prestige) then don't post them in reply.

You just discounted your entire yield-statistical response.

How many kids voluntarily submit to parchment and is the data verified? I would need accurate and robust data to make such strong statements.

Are you replying to PP or the one prior?

Replying to the poster that used parchment as a basis for determining college prestige.

[Anonymous]

DP, but Parchment is wildly inconclusive. It's just not a reliable source, but I guess that doesn't matter to the hordes of people who have now come to reference it as their Bible.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:The world rankings are more logical and respected globally.

This is simply not true. The global rankings are even more nonsensical, and one of them, QS, is notorious for its British bias.

The global rankings do a good job of what they are for: ranking reputations of universities globally.

No one thinks that Vanderbilt or Duke are more reputed institutions than UC Berkeley, but the undergraduate rankings incorrectly ranks it as such.

The National Universities ranking is a misnomer. It should obviously be renamed to indicate it ranks based on undergraduate studies specifically.

This is where the problem lies. How can you say “No one thinks Vanderbilt or Duke is more reputed than Berkeley”. What are you basing that on, your own perception of how they rank?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:It's strange that a bankrupt magzine has so much sway on the higher-education systems.

That US NEWS ranking University of Florida much higher than Univ of Washington should make people think twice. Instead, people just take the ranking as if god-given.

People hear about University of Florida. No one thinks about University of Washington anymore than they do University of Kansas.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:It's strange that a bankrupt magzine has so much sway on the higher-education systems.

That US NEWS ranking University of Florida much higher than Univ of Washington should make people think twice. Instead, people just take the ranking as if god-given.

People hear about University of Florida. No one thinks about University of Washington anymore than they do University of Kansas.

This post is embarrassingly stupid and shows rather clearly how heavily the USNews rankings play in the mind's of idiots.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I heard Malcolm Gladwell explain this on Farid Zakariah’s program today this way:
There are five different variables in U.S. News algorithm, of which the one with the most weight is a given institution’s reputation. To get this, all the college/university Presidents are asked to give their opinion of the reputation of all other institutions on a scale of 1 to 5. What does a college President in one part of the country know about colleges in other parts of the country? But this reputation value contributes the most to a college’s ranking in the results. He said, some smart hackers got into the algorithm and they could correlate a college’s reputation value depends on three factors with a 91.3% correlation. The three factors are the size of a college’s endowment, the annual tutu on fee it charges, and the percent of white students in its student body. In other words, the richer a colleges, the more it serves the rich people (who can afford to pay high tuition fee), and the more it attracts white students, it’s ranking in the U.S. News list will be higher. He said he could talk about the other four variables similarly. No wonder we don’t see much of State Schools and none of HBCUs in the top 40 or 60 national colleges/universities. Same thing goes for many liberal arts colleges where undergraduate education is the focus.

This ranking of including the white students percentage as a positive factor will violate the Fed law in my industry. A company that does this will be sued into bankruptcy. Of course, USNews is already bankrupted and probably does not care anymore.

Just saying.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Read the post again. Yale and Princeton are "quite a bit further down" from Stanford/MIT for tech specifically.

That is definitely true. The holy grail in tech is Stanford, MIT, Carnegie Mellon and Berkeley, and these universities are considered quite a bit better than the next tier of universities for tech.

But I was responding to your post answering my question! If those stats are not relevant to tech (and I agree they are not relevant to tech, or anything else WRT prestige) then don't post them in reply.

You just discounted your entire yield-statistical response.

How many kids voluntarily submit to parchment and is the data verified? I would need accurate and robust data to make such strong statements.

I think most Parchment data comes from participating high schools.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:He went to Trinity College so he just sounds bitter to me.

University of Toronto. That’s an excellent school.

If you are in the School of Arts and Science at Toronto, you apply to a college as well as to U of T.

Trinity and Victoria are among the most prestigious colleges at Toronto. They are modeled on the Cambridge/Oxford models. The colleges provide residual services and also some classes.

If you are in Vic you are attending Victoria University at the University of Toronto https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Victoria_University,_Toronto

Same with Trin.

[Anonymous]

U of T college system https://www.artsci.utoronto.ca/future/student-experience/college-system