Peer Colleges

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:This is what rankings should be based on, instead of the lists DCUM likes to make. Wake Forest and Liberty University are the only private that chose UVA as a peer. Very telling.

But Harvard didn't chose MIT as a peer. You don't think these schools are the same level?

Harvard recognizes its own inferiority

They are similar level, different types of schools.

[Anonymous]

These schools are free to put down whatever they want, and there are no hard and fast rules for it.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:It's not paywalled, an account is free. But if anyone wants me to search for a school for them I can, as I have an account.

Northwestern and Chicago please

Sure, only posting top 25 matches, some schools may have matched to more
Northwestern-
Rice, Emory, Vandy, Hopkins, Cornell, WashU, UChicago, Brown

UChicago-
Upenn, Yale, Northwestern, Caltech, WashU, Cornell, Brown, Hopkins

It seems as if UChicago and Columbia would have more in common for undergrads than UChicago and the distribution-requirements-light schools on this list.

UChicago is selective but prestige wise it's not there yet. It seems like the admissions office at Chicago agrees because so many of its students are ED students. They know they can't compete.

You’re on drugs

No, you're just delusional. UChicago takes 80% of its freshman class in the ED rounds. This artificially lowers the acceptance rate and lessons the effects of low RD yield.

If it were that easy to fill slots by ED, every school would do it, including podunk state
.
You actually need a strong brand to convince 5,000 students to apply ED. It's not as easy as it looks

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:This is what rankings should be based on, instead of the lists DCUM likes to make. Wake Forest and Liberty University are the only private that chose UVA as a peer. Very telling.

But Harvard didn't chose MIT as a peer. You don't think these schools are the same level?

MIT is a much better tech school than Harvard. Harvard is a much better humanities school than MIT. They don't do the same things.

[Anonymous]

Peer colleges is how colleges compare assessments such as faculty and student satisfaction, outcomes etc. and to identify a group of schools they should seek for faculty reviews for promotion and tenure cases. It's part about matching "relative ranking" but it's more importantly about looking for schools with similar size, funding structures, academic structures etc. So a tech university is going to have as a peer school other tech universities, a liberal arts college other LACs etc. There aren't perfect matches usually so they choose some schools that match on a range of factors and not others and try to get a good enough list for their purposes.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Peer colleges is how colleges compare assessments such as faculty and student satisfaction, outcomes etc. and to identify a group of schools they should seek for faculty reviews for promotion and tenure cases. It's part about matching "relative ranking" but it's more importantly about looking for schools with similar size, funding structures, academic structures etc. So a tech university is going to have as a peer school other tech universities, a liberal arts college other LACs etc. There aren't perfect matches usually so they choose some schools that match on a range of factors and not others and try to get a good enough list for their purposes.

I don't think this is exactly the case, why do lower-ranked schools choose much more prestigious "peers" when they know the favor wouldn't be returned.

[Anonymous]

Who did williams list?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Peer colleges is how colleges compare assessments such as faculty and student satisfaction, outcomes etc. and to identify a group of schools they should seek for faculty reviews for promotion and tenure cases. It's part about matching "relative ranking" but it's more importantly about looking for schools with similar size, funding structures, academic structures etc. So a tech university is going to have as a peer school other tech universities, a liberal arts college other LACs etc. There aren't perfect matches usually so they choose some schools that match on a range of factors and not others and try to get a good enough list for their purposes.

I don't think this is exactly the case, why do lower-ranked schools choose much more prestigious "peers" when they know the favor wouldn't be returned.

I'm a professor and this is how we use 'peer college lists.' For a research university you need faculty's tenure cases to be reviewed by faculty at other research universities. Take UMBC or GMU--both recent R1 institutions. They need to look at schools with similar research focus, not schools that are similarly ranked but with less research. This ensures tenured faculty are experts. But the other R1 schools are all more established powerhouses who often have more resources for their faculty--there are less than 150 of them in the US. And one of the questions asked by reviewers is whether that person would be granted tenure at your own institution. So a place like Harvard notoriously doesn't grant tenure to hardly anyone (they fairly regularly don't grant tenure to tenure-track professors and instead do 'superstar' hires of established names for tenured positions) and they are a private institution, so that would not be a fair comparison. But let's say University of Wisconsin--a higher ranked school with a lot more resources, but a faculty who gets tenure there is not that different from a faculty who gets tenure at UMBC or GMU. The peer list will likely also include some R2 universities that are trying to become R1s. But they wouldn't include a higher ranked LAC or an R2 that's more like an LAC like W&M.

Fortunately the USNWR rankings and such aren't as meaningful at the faculty level--it's not like the best faculty go to the best institution--it's where there was a tenure line open in their field when they were looking--there may only be 10-20 tenure track positions in the whole country in your field in a given year depending on discipline. Changing jobs on the tenure track is not done lightly because you've done a lot of work setting up a lab/research agenda/connections and you're mentoring graduate students you are often their livelihood through your grants for several years and you are overseeing their theses/dissertations. Applying for a new position often involves a lot of intensive processes that last 6-9 months (including if you are a finalist doing a multi-day visit to a new institution where you give a public lecture, teach a class, have dozens of meetings) and then if you get the offer negotiating how your obligations on grants and with prior students will be handled. The norm is to bloom in the first tenure line position where you initially plant yourself and stay or to switch maybe 1 or 2 times in your whole career (many faculty have also had post-docs, visiting or adjunct positions for the first years out of PhD so are eager to establish a research and teaching home where they can build things up a bit rather than reinventing the wheel each time).

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Peer colleges is how colleges compare assessments such as faculty and student satisfaction, outcomes etc. and to identify a group of schools they should seek for faculty reviews for promotion and tenure cases. It's part about matching "relative ranking" but it's more importantly about looking for schools with similar size, funding structures, academic structures etc. So a tech university is going to have as a peer school other tech universities, a liberal arts college other LACs etc. There aren't perfect matches usually so they choose some schools that match on a range of factors and not others and try to get a good enough list for their purposes.

I don't think this is exactly the case, why do lower-ranked schools choose much more prestigious "peers" when they know the favor wouldn't be returned.

I'm a professor and this is how we use 'peer college lists.' For a research university you need faculty's tenure cases to be reviewed by faculty at other research universities. Take UMBC or GMU--both recent R1 institutions. They need to look at schools with similar research focus, not schools that are similarly ranked but with less research. This ensures tenured faculty are experts. But the other R1 schools are all more established powerhouses who often have more resources for their faculty--there are less than 150 of them in the US. And one of the questions asked by reviewers is whether that person would be granted tenure at your own institution. So a place like Harvard notoriously doesn't grant tenure to hardly anyone (they fairly regularly don't grant tenure to tenure-track professors and instead do 'superstar' hires of established names for tenured positions) and they are a private institution, so that would not be a fair comparison. But let's say University of Wisconsin--a higher ranked school with a lot more resources, but a faculty who gets tenure there is not that different from a faculty who gets tenure at UMBC or GMU. The peer list will likely also include some R2 universities that are trying to become R1s. But they wouldn't include a higher ranked LAC or an R2 that's more like an LAC like W&M.

Fortunately the USNWR rankings and such aren't as meaningful at the faculty level--it's not like the best faculty go to the best institution--it's where there was a tenure line open in their field when they were looking--there may only be 10-20 tenure track positions in the whole country in your field in a given year depending on discipline. Changing jobs on the tenure track is not done lightly because you've done a lot of work setting up a lab/research agenda/connections and you're mentoring graduate students you are often their livelihood through your grants for several years and you are overseeing their theses/dissertations. Applying for a new position often involves a lot of intensive processes that last 6-9 months (including if you are a finalist doing a multi-day visit to a new institution where you give a public lecture, teach a class, have dozens of meetings) and then if you get the offer negotiating how your obligations on grants and with prior students will be handled. The norm is to bloom in the first tenure line position where you initially plant yourself and stay or to switch maybe 1 or 2 times in your whole career (many faculty have also had post-docs, visiting or adjunct positions for the first years out of PhD so are eager to establish a research and teaching home where they can build things up a bit rather than reinventing the wheel each time).

This is BS. All of the LAC's picked Dartmouth as a peer, yet Dartmouth didn't pick any LAC's and only picked top 10 schools. Why would that be? It's clearly not about similarity but about seeming more prestigious than one really is.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Who did williams list?

Williams College
Haverford, Grinnell, Wesleyan, Pomona, Carleton, Midd, Bowdoin, and Swarthmore are matches
Williams also chose Amherst and Dartmouth but they did not reciprocate
Davidson, Vassar, Colby, Wash& Lee, Oberlin, Wellesley, and others chose Williams but Williams did not reciprocate.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Peer colleges is how colleges compare assessments such as faculty and student satisfaction, outcomes etc. and to identify a group of schools they should seek for faculty reviews for promotion and tenure cases. It's part about matching "relative ranking" but it's more importantly about looking for schools with similar size, funding structures, academic structures etc. So a tech university is going to have as a peer school other tech universities, a liberal arts college other LACs etc. There aren't perfect matches usually so they choose some schools that match on a range of factors and not others and try to get a good enough list for their purposes.

I don't think this is exactly the case, why do lower-ranked schools choose much more prestigious "peers" when they know the favor wouldn't be returned.

I'm a professor and this is how we use 'peer college lists.' For a research university you need faculty's tenure cases to be reviewed by faculty at other research universities. Take UMBC or GMU--both recent R1 institutions. They need to look at schools with similar research focus, not schools that are similarly ranked but with less research. This ensures tenured faculty are experts. But the other R1 schools are all more established powerhouses who often have more resources for their faculty--there are less than 150 of them in the US. And one of the questions asked by reviewers is whether that person would be granted tenure at your own institution. So a place like Harvard notoriously doesn't grant tenure to hardly anyone (they fairly regularly don't grant tenure to tenure-track professors and instead do 'superstar' hires of established names for tenured positions) and they are a private institution, so that would not be a fair comparison. But let's say University of Wisconsin--a higher ranked school with a lot more resources, but a faculty who gets tenure there is not that different from a faculty who gets tenure at UMBC or GMU. The peer list will likely also include some R2 universities that are trying to become R1s. But they wouldn't include a higher ranked LAC or an R2 that's more like an LAC like W&M.

Fortunately the USNWR rankings and such aren't as meaningful at the faculty level--it's not like the best faculty go to the best institution--it's where there was a tenure line open in their field when they were looking--there may only be 10-20 tenure track positions in the whole country in your field in a given year depending on discipline. Changing jobs on the tenure track is not done lightly because you've done a lot of work setting up a lab/research agenda/connections and you're mentoring graduate students you are often their livelihood through your grants for several years and you are overseeing their theses/dissertations. Applying for a new position often involves a lot of intensive processes that last 6-9 months (including if you are a finalist doing a multi-day visit to a new institution where you give a public lecture, teach a class, have dozens of meetings) and then if you get the offer negotiating how your obligations on grants and with prior students will be handled. The norm is to bloom in the first tenure line position where you initially plant yourself and stay or to switch maybe 1 or 2 times in your whole career (many faculty have also had post-docs, visiting or adjunct positions for the first years out of PhD so are eager to establish a research and teaching home where they can build things up a bit rather than reinventing the wheel each time).

This is BS. All of the LAC's picked Dartmouth as a peer, yet Dartmouth didn't pick any LAC's and only picked top 10 schools. Why would that be? It's clearly not about similarity but about seeming more prestigious than one really is.

Dartmouth is a weird case because it's mainly LAC like, but it has some graduate programs and so is rated as a national research university (and has switched between R1 and R2) so it needs to have peers that are research universities. LACs are more flexible because they are not rated as research universities--but good LACs are increasing research productivity so Dartmouth is an aspirational peer in this regard.

The choice of peer institutions has real on the ground implications for universities--it's who you can pick as a faculty reviewer, who your state can compare you to etc. It's not marketing--it might be colleges similar to you or ones who align with your current aspirations.

[Anonymous]

OP, if you are still here, who did Northeastern U and Boston U list as their peers? Thanks!

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:This is what rankings should be based on, instead of the lists DCUM likes to make. Wake Forest and Liberty University are the only private that chose UVA as a peer. Very telling.

But Harvard didn't chose MIT as a peer. You don't think these schools are the same level?

I'm surprised Harvard chose anyone as a peer.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:This is what rankings should be based on, instead of the lists DCUM likes to make. Wake Forest and Liberty University are the only private that chose UVA as a peer. Very telling.

Top privates almost as a rule don't choose public schools. There is probably some sense in that, as public/private would be a clear dimension for choosing a peer.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Peer colleges is how colleges compare assessments such as faculty and student satisfaction, outcomes etc. and to identify a group of schools they should seek for faculty reviews for promotion and tenure cases. It's part about matching "relative ranking" but it's more importantly about looking for schools with similar size, funding structures, academic structures etc. So a tech university is going to have as a peer school other tech universities, a liberal arts college other LACs etc. There aren't perfect matches usually so they choose some schools that match on a range of factors and not others and try to get a good enough list for their purposes.

I don't think this is exactly the case, why do lower-ranked schools choose much more prestigious "peers" when they know the favor wouldn't be returned.

I'm a professor and this is how we use 'peer college lists.' For a research university you need faculty's tenure cases to be reviewed by faculty at other research universities. Take UMBC or GMU--both recent R1 institutions. They need to look at schools with similar research focus, not schools that are similarly ranked but with less research. This ensures tenured faculty are experts. But the other R1 schools are all more established powerhouses who often have more resources for their faculty--there are less than 150 of them in the US. And one of the questions asked by reviewers is whether that person would be granted tenure at your own institution. So a place like Harvard notoriously doesn't grant tenure to hardly anyone (they fairly regularly don't grant tenure to tenure-track professors and instead do 'superstar' hires of established names for tenured positions) and they are a private institution, so that would not be a fair comparison. But let's say University of Wisconsin--a higher ranked school with a lot more resources, but a faculty who gets tenure there is not that different from a faculty who gets tenure at UMBC or GMU. The peer list will likely also include some R2 universities that are trying to become R1s. But they wouldn't include a higher ranked LAC or an R2 that's more like an LAC like W&M.

Fortunately the USNWR rankings and such aren't as meaningful at the faculty level--it's not like the best faculty go to the best institution--it's where there was a tenure line open in their field when they were looking--there may only be 10-20 tenure track positions in the whole country in your field in a given year depending on discipline. Changing jobs on the tenure track is not done lightly because you've done a lot of work setting up a lab/research agenda/connections and you're mentoring graduate students you are often their livelihood through your grants for several years and you are overseeing their theses/dissertations. Applying for a new position often involves a lot of intensive processes that last 6-9 months (including if you are a finalist doing a multi-day visit to a new institution where you give a public lecture, teach a class, have dozens of meetings) and then if you get the offer negotiating how your obligations on grants and with prior students will be handled. The norm is to bloom in the first tenure line position where you initially plant yourself and stay or to switch maybe 1 or 2 times in your whole career (many faculty have also had post-docs, visiting or adjunct positions for the first years out of PhD so are eager to establish a research and teaching home where they can build things up a bit rather than reinventing the wheel each time).

This is BS. All of the LAC's picked Dartmouth as a peer, yet Dartmouth didn't pick any LAC's and only picked top 10 schools. Why would that be? It's clearly not about similarity but about seeming more prestigious than one really is.

Here's an article about the kinds of processes schools go through to get their peer institution list: https://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/ED531716.pdf