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

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:you one hundred percent did. I believe you said you were envious of URMs accepted at desirable schools but their discomfort was "irrelevant and minor" because your family needs the data. That is an established definition of racism. I don't know or care about the impact of the URMs i just need what I need and be damned with them and their needs. It's prioritizing your needs over others and minimizing the impact. Maybe you should read a book about racism because you are a textbook case. You are a total and complete racist. Racism does me calling me a name which you did anyway. You have been called on your behavior by the data scientist. You are not 100% right.

Fighting my vow not to bite the trollbait, but just to prove how off the handle you are, I said these two things:

"hostility for URMs and athletes" is not a thing I have experienced, except for envy, and while that distasteful it is irrelevant to dots on a scattergram.

I didn't say I had envy - I said I had experienced it. I have a kid at one of the colleges everyone longs for.

Clearly indicating people expressed envy toward my family, yet I submitted the data anyway. So you could not be more wrong about that. I can only assume you are trolling since I am confident you read well.

This is absolutely my last post to you. If you want the last word, with more insults, go right ahead if it will make you feel better. I can bear it, and it might be the only good I can do for you.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:you one hundred percent did. I believe you said you were envious of URMs accepted at desirable schools but their discomfort was "irrelevant and minor" because your family needs the data. That is an established definition of racism. I don't know or care about the impact of the URMs i just need what I need and be damned with them and their needs. It's prioritizing your needs over others and minimizing the impact. Maybe you should read a book about racism because you are a textbook case. You are a total and complete racist. Racism does me calling me a name which you did anyway. You have been called on your behavior by the data scientist. You are not 100% right.

Fighting my vow not to bite the trollbait, but just to prove how off the handle you are, I said these two things:

"hostility for URMs and athletes" is not a thing I have experienced, except for envy, and while that distasteful it is irrelevant to dots on a scattergram.

I didn't say I had envy - I said I had experienced it. I have a kid at one of the colleges everyone longs for.

Clearly indicating people expressed envy toward my family, yet I submitted the data anyway. So you could not be more wrong about that. I can only assume you are trolling since I am confident you read well.

This is absolutely my last post to you. If you want the last word, with more insults, go right ahead if it will make you feel better. I can bear it, and it might be the only good I can do for you.

ok. You have not at all said anything that would change anyone's mind that you are a racist. You clearly think the emotional well-being of URM kids is as you say "irrelevant and distatseful" and they have no right to keep their personal information because you choose not to do so for your white kid that blended into a large group. THAT is racist.
You have called me childish and selfish but I have raised valid points. YOU ARE A RACIST and if your kids are THEY WILL STRUGGLE IN LIFE. Finally, because you can not imagine anyone disagreeing with you you have labelled me a troll. is the data scientist a troll too?

[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.

US News' ranking have ruined higher education in the US.

I think all private colleges should be abolished. Everyone should have an equal chance to go to any college in the US.

They should all cost the same, and FA should be equal everywhere.

Sure, there will be inequities, but the insane frenzy to get kids into the schools ranked highest by US News is a crazed race to nowhere.

All those huge endowments at private colleges, like HYPS, should be absorbed by the Federal government, and money should be paid from the Federal purse equally to colleges all over the US.

Enough is enough with this crazy "elite" system of education in the US. Make it more like the European system, less the insistence that a kid decide what he wants to do when he's 12.

College should be very low cost to everyone who wants to go to college in the US, and they shouldn't have to go to a "top" school to get a great education.

US News rankings, along with the SAT and ACT tests, are garbage. They all belong in the trash.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

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.

US News' ranking have ruined higher education in the US.

I think all private colleges should be abolished. Everyone should have an equal chance to go to any college in the US.

They should all cost the same, and FA should be equal everywhere.

Sure, there will be inequities, but the insane frenzy to get kids into the schools ranked highest by US News is a crazed race to nowhere.

All those huge endowments at private colleges, like HYPS, should be absorbed by the Federal government, and money should be paid from the Federal purse equally to colleges all over the US.

Enough is enough with this crazy "elite" system of education in the US. Make it more like the European system, less the insistence that a kid decide what he wants to do when he's 12.

College should be very low cost to everyone who wants to go to college in the US, and they shouldn't have to go to a "top" school to get a great education.

US News rankings, along with the SAT and ACT tests, are garbage. They all belong in the trash.

it is an interesting dream. People do not give up power easily. However, if it happened in the US elites would simply send their kids out of the country rather than go to state.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

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.

US News' ranking have ruined higher education in the US.

I think all private colleges should be abolished. Everyone should have an equal chance to go to any college in the US.

They should all cost the same, and FA should be equal everywhere.

Sure, there will be inequities, but the insane frenzy to get kids into the schools ranked highest by US News is a crazed race to nowhere.

All those huge endowments at private colleges, like HYPS, should be absorbed by the Federal government, and money should be paid from the Federal purse equally to colleges all over the US.

Enough is enough with this crazy "elite" system of education in the US. Make it more like the European system, less the insistence that a kid decide what he wants to do when he's 12.

College should be very low cost to everyone who wants to go to college in the US, and they shouldn't have to go to a "top" school to get a great education.

US News rankings, along with the SAT and ACT tests, are garbage. They all belong in the trash.

it is an interesting dream. People do not give up power easily. However, if it happened in the US elites would simply send their kids out of the country rather than go to state.

US higher ed institutions are one of the biggest draws of talent to the US and they are the generators of the fundamental research that underlies much of US innovation. They represent one of the few things the US has reliably going for it. I hope we don't destroy them. I do agree we need to figure out equity though. The European model is not producing nearly as much innovation/research so I'm not sure we want to copy that.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I knew this thread would soon become another one of those pointless arguments about prestige, like grown men fighting over whether Michael Jordan or Magic Johnson was the better player.

So here’s the tier list from the last one of these threads, which became a ridiculous 30-page brawl until people more or less reached a consensus.

Undergraduate:

Harvard Stanford MIT Yale Princeton
Columbia Caltech
Penn Chicago
Duke Northwestern
Dartmouth Brown
Cornell JHU
Berkeley

Overall:

Harvard
Stanford MIT Yale
Columbia Princeton
Penn Chicago
Berkeley
Duke Northwestern

Wrong

Harvard Stanford MIT
Yale Princeton Caltech Columbia (yes, NYC)
Penn
Dartmouth Brown Cornell
Chicago
Duke Northwestern
JHU
Berkeley

Overall:
Harvard Stanford MIT Berkeley
Princeton Yale Columbia Penn
Chicago Cornell
Dartmouth Brown Duke Northwestern

Wrong

Undergraduate:
Harvard Stanford MIT
Yale Princeton Columbia Caltech
Penn Chicago
Dartmouth Brown
Duke Cornell Northwestern JHU
Berkeley

Overall:
Harvard Stanford Berkeley MIT Columbia
Princeton Yale Penn
Chicago Cornell
Dartmouth Brown Duke Northwestern

You clearly don't work in academia because there is absolutely no way Dartmouth and Brown would be included in a list of the overall best universities in the nation.

Undergraduate:

Harvard Stanford MIT Yale Princeton
Columbia Caltech
Penn Chicago
Duke Northwestern
Dartmouth Brown
Cornell JHU
Berkeley

Overall:

Harvard
Stanford MIT Yale
Columbia Princeton
Penn Chicago Berkeley
Duke Northwestern

Sounds about right, especially the second list if you aggregate undergrad+grad and US+international perception of these schools. Although I would put Stanford on the level of Harvard in terms of overall rankings because its STEM program is superior.