Forbes and Washington Monthly college rankings for 2022 just released this week
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Anonymous
You clearly aren't a college counselor |
Anonymous
For failing to get into an Ivy. |
Anonymous
God help us if we need redemption for that. |
Anonymous
Maybe they're not, but I am. You're not doing your students any favors if you're advising them that the US News rankings matter. |
Anonymous
+1 I'm also glad to see more people are realizing this. USNWR is moving off its throne as more of these rankings multiply and people start to see the arbitrariness of it all by where different schools land when you shake out the data in different ways. Fortunately that just dismantles the idea of any ranking system being that meaningful rather than giving the throne to a new competitor. USNWR will likely continue to lead the rankings, but just fewer people will care about the enterprise at all. It already seems a little pathetic when a school obviously is "working" the rankings rather than just following its mission. The shifts in colleges admissions policies with some going to test optional, some not reporting GPA on CDS due to variations in grading, some not reporting data to ranking systems at all, etc. are going to turn the tide away from this several decade way of focusing on ranking colleges because people will start to see they produce more "weird" results that don't align with reality (e.g., x school that gamed the ranking system didn't suddenly become so much better than y school that didn't). I think people will instead go back to something like the Princeton Review where they gather up a large group of colleges generally considered good and reputable and don't rank them. But I think the difference will be they add more targeted data and maybe even rankings within categories so you can look up what matters to you (e.g., career outcomes for psychology majors, alumni satisfaction with school, Med school admissions rates)plus more qualitative aspects about the schools to guide your decision-making. It may take awhile, but I've already seen it happening. |
Anonymous
Agreed. None of the rankings matter |
Anonymous
You can ignore the gold standard all you want and keep saying USNWR doesn’t matter but it is the reason schools are behaving the way they are about admissions …. Everything is tied to the reporting of stats to USNWR. I’m not saying that’s correct but it is what it is. Hence the fuss over number of acceptances and focus on yield, stats, gpa and test scores. This problem is what us driving admissions offices and marketing for our nation’s institutions of higher learning. To ignore that is foolish. All of the other ranks started because everyone realized there is money in rankings (wash Monthly sells ads to institutions hoping for a good rating; also pants and students subscribe to see the list). |
Anonymous
This isn't quite right. Yield doesn't impact USNWR rankings--colleges care about that because they care about managing enrollment. A lot of the admissions factors have nothing to do with rankings--they have everything to do with enrollment. Admissions is a relatively small aspect of USNWR rankings but a critical part of colleges being able to pay their expenses. Some colleges care a lot about USNWR and adjust their behaviors to its measures. Most colleges care somewhat. But I work in higher ed, the impact of the rankings is waning rather than growing. |
Anonymous
Pretty funny that in a year when USNWR actually had to de-list the university it had ranked number 2 in the entire country because of submission of suspect (and unverified) data that USNWR relied on - leaving just as much egg on USNWR's face as on Columbia's -- some DCUMer is arguing that USNWR rankings serve as some sort of gold standard and that no other publication devotes the resources to the task that USNWR does. |
Anonymous
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Both US News and the Wall Street Journal / Times Higher Education ratings systems provide a wealth of information for readers to use or to ignore.
No one forces anyone to read, respect, or to use either or any rating & ranking system. They just provide information. Interesting how some disparage rating and ranking systems, yet blindly buy into anecdotes of a happy parent who is pleased that his or her student reportedly loved or enjoyed the experience at XYZ school. |
Anonymous
I wasn't claiming college counselors should tell their students the rankings don't matter to colleges. They should be telling them they don't matter with regard to the students' future success. |
Anonymous
false equivalents. USNWR does police its submissions. A lot of colleges have been caught in submitting things that were "off" but from an administrative point of view it's very confusing and costly to supply all the material USNWR wants. And not every administrator at every college in the US who reports gets it right. |
Anonymous
Yield is most definitely reported. It was the only thing that the admissions office at Princeton cared about when DS applied SCEA. "If DS is admitted SCEA, will they absolutely attend?" |
Anonymous
| Did they calculate Forbes correctly? Pomona fell by 60+ spots while the methodology is similar and so are the institutional characteristics. It has been ranked in the top 20 for the last decade or so. |
Anonymous
Let's hope you are correct. Pursuit of rankings has probably driven up hundreds of billions in costs and debt. |