With US News Being Challenged by Top Schools, Does it Make More Sense to Combine Rankings?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Ranking college makes no sense at all. What is the point?

Coming from a different country, rankings have been useful in understanding the college landscape. Of course they're not meant to be the only consideration, but they help give a general sense of where things stand. I never would have known, for example, that Rice is a very good university.

+1 in my country we only knew a few American schools like MIT, Harvard, Caltech, Duke, Stanford, and a few others. There are many more great universities that we didn’t know about until coming here.

So are all the rankings obsessed posters on here immigrants? They rely on the rankings to learn about schools they don’t hear about in movies or overseas? I never understood the obsession with USNWR, but this makes more sense.

Yes, because immigrants are the ones with tens of thousands of dollars to spend on private college counselors and test prep resources to get their kids into the top schools. Not to mention the hundreds of thousands spent on getting kids into top schools through niche sports. Or straight up buying seats at top universities as seen through Varsity Blues. Only immigrants do all that, no white people would ever be that obsessed!

+1 calling the ranking obsession an immigrant phenomenon is laughable. Look at the demographics of the top boarding schools that feed into these top schools and it’s very obvious that immigrants are far from the only people who want to get their kids into Harvard, Duke, etc.

Are you really going to claim that some cultures are not more into status (ie. name brands) than others? Look at wedding traditions.

I actually know someone who included the name of their kid's college in her wedding invitation. NO American would have done that.

(Note: lots of Americans are status conscious, don't get me wrong, but such displays if status/money are definitely very common in some Asian cultures. )

We live in NYC and I know many couples whose wedding announcements in NYTimes always lists the educational background of the bride and the groom.

[Anonymous]

To be frank, people really only care about $$ and prestige here (and a lot of places). Couldn't a ranking system do a good job combining these? Unfortunately, none of those rankings really does it. If you could pull it off in a semi-credible way, you'd have amazing clickbait!

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:How is duke #4?

I guess it depends on which ranking games you include and exclude.

Eh I can live with that Duke is a top school. Seeing Brown drop all the way to #22 was an actual shock for me, I think it's been increasing in popularity over the last decade.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:No, the schools dislike all of the rankings. The others just don't get enough eyeballs for them to actually complain about!
Unfortunately for those outlets, they are hardly part of the conversation.

At the very least, Wall Street Journal, Forbes, and Niche definitely get lots of eyeballs. Anytime you google rankings Niche is always one of the first to pop up.

I'm I doing something wrong? When I Google college rankings I see USNWR, then Google inserts its "People also ask" and "Top Stories" results, and only after that do Niche, Forbes, and Money even appear. The algorithm is pretty clear on this one

You realize Google always does that after the first result? LOL

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:There’s a certain amount of privilege that comes from being able to spend the equivalent of a new home for each child on college tuition and honestly say that you don’t care about rankings or the perceived status of a school and can solely pick a school based on perfect fit for a child (as you’ve had the resources to personally visit all of these schools). More power to you if you’re at that point.

My sprinkler box broke yesterday. In a quick Google search, I pulled up at least a half-dozen rankings of different sprinkler boxes ranging in cost from $100-$200.

So, it’s sort of wacky to me that the colleges themselves just want to wish away the large demand for college rankings when people are spending *hundreds* of thousands of dollars over the course of 4 years.

I’m not saying that the US News rankings or other ranking systems like them are accurate, infallible or should be taken as gospel. There are a lot of flaws with them. However, this notion that all people should be above these rankings and they’re worthless is, as I’ve noted above, a super-privileged position. This is the single largest financial decision most people will have outside of their house (and maybe even more than their house). When there is demand for multiple rankings for $100-$200 sprinkler boxes, it’s perfectly reasonable that there’s going to be a ton of demand for colleges that cost upwards of $90,000 per year. If the US News rankings aren’t there, then someone else will fill that void.

I don't have an issue with making the college info available to consumers. That is super valuable. What I take issue with is the specific rankings. It makes people think there is a meaningful difference between colleges that probably hade really minimal difference in their actual scores. See the PP's gripe about the exact rank of Duke at #4. Duke is an excellent school. Figuring out if it's #4 or #7 or #15 is stupid and adds nothing to help you decide where to apply to colleges. You hear people say you should go to the highest ranked school you get into as if that's a meaningful discriminator when the actual difference between a #40 and #30 is likely very small in the statistical model while the #40 might have some aspects that are a lot more meaningful to the student than the #30.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Ranking college makes no sense at all. What is the point?

Coming from a different country, rankings have been useful in understanding the college landscape. Of course they're not meant to be the only consideration, but they help give a general sense of where things stand. I never would have known, for example, that Rice is a very good university.

+1 in my country we only knew a few American schools like MIT, Harvard, Caltech, Duke, Stanford, and a few others. There are many more great universities that we didn’t know about until coming here.

So are all the rankings obsessed posters on here immigrants? They rely on the rankings to learn about schools they don’t hear about in movies or overseas? I never understood the obsession with USNWR, but this makes more sense.

Yes, because immigrants are the ones with tens of thousands of dollars to spend on private college counselors and test prep resources to get their kids into the top schools. Not to mention the hundreds of thousands spent on getting kids into top schools through niche sports. Or straight up buying seats at top universities as seen through Varsity Blues. Only immigrants do all that, no white people would ever be that obsessed!

+1 calling the ranking obsession an immigrant phenomenon is laughable. Look at the demographics of the top boarding schools that feed into these top schools and it’s very obvious that immigrants are far from the only people who want to get their kids into Harvard, Duke, etc.

Are you really going to claim that some cultures are not more into status (ie. name brands) than others? Look at wedding traditions.

I actually know someone who included the name of their kid's college in her wedding invitation. NO American would have done that.

(Note: lots of Americans are status conscious, don't get me wrong, but such displays if status/money are definitely very common in some Asian cultures. )

We live in NYC and I know many couples whose wedding announcements in NYTimes always lists the educational background of the bride and the groom.

So true and not just in NYC. My wife's family really wanted to list our combined 6 degrees from highly-ranked schools.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:To be frank, people really only care about $$ and prestige here (and a lot of places). Couldn't a ranking system do a good job combining these? Unfortunately, none of those rankings really does it. If you could pull it off in a semi-credible way, you'd have amazing clickbait!

I think all you'd have to do for this is rank by acceptance rate. That shows how hard a school is to get into which generally maps to how well known and desirable it is considered. Doesn't mean anything about whether or not the education at any of those is better than any place else.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Ranking college makes no sense at all. What is the point?

+100 a “very good” university, per any ranking, doesn’t mean it’s good for all students.

Of course no one should literally pick by going in order of a ranking, but it's a general proxy for which schools have very strong academics, attract quality students, and open lots of doors. That is certainly useful information to have for many ambitious kids.

No, it isn't though. That's the point.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:No, the schools dislike all of the rankings. The others just don't get enough eyeballs for them to actually complain about!
Unfortunately for those outlets, they are hardly part of the conversation.

At the very least, Wall Street Journal, Forbes, and Niche definitely get lots of eyeballs. Anytime you google rankings Niche is always one of the first to pop up.

I'm I doing something wrong? When I Google college rankings I see USNWR, then Google inserts its "People also ask" and "Top Stories" results, and only after that do Niche, Forbes, and Money even appear. The algorithm is pretty clear on this one

You realize Google always does that after the first result? LOL

No it doesn't. Google best cities

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:To be frank, people really only care about $$ and prestige here (and a lot of places). Couldn't a ranking system do a good job combining these? Unfortunately, none of those rankings really does it. If you could pull it off in a semi-credible way, you'd have amazing clickbait!

I think all you'd have to do for this is rank by acceptance rate. That shows how hard a school is to get into which generally maps to how well known and desirable it is considered. Doesn't mean anything about whether or not the education at any of those is better than any place else.

Sadly that was gamed far too easily decades years ago.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:To be frank, people really only care about $$ and prestige here (and a lot of places). Couldn't a ranking system do a good job combining these? Unfortunately, none of those rankings really does it. If you could pull it off in a semi-credible way, you'd have amazing clickbait!

I think all you'd have to do for this is rank by acceptance rate. That shows how hard a school is to get into which generally maps to how well known and desirable it is considered. Doesn't mean anything about whether or not the education at any of those is better than any place else.

Sadly that was gamed far too easily decades years ago.

Regardless, the schools considered most prestigious generally have the lowest acceptance rates. It may not mean much beyond that top tier but for people who only care about prestige, that's where to start.

[Anonymous]

No, we need to provide the data to students and let them make their own rankings, like this blog suggests.

https://lesshighschoolstress.com/blog/

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:There’s a certain amount of privilege that comes from being able to spend the equivalent of a new home for each child on college tuition and honestly say that you don’t care about rankings or the perceived status of a school and can solely pick a school based on perfect fit for a child (as you’ve had the resources to personally visit all of these schools). More power to you if you’re at that point.

My sprinkler box broke yesterday. In a quick Google search, I pulled up at least a half-dozen rankings of different sprinkler boxes ranging in cost from $100-$200.

So, it’s sort of wacky to me that the colleges themselves just want to wish away the large demand for college rankings when people are spending *hundreds* of thousands of dollars over the course of 4 years.

I’m not saying that the US News rankings or other ranking systems like them are accurate, infallible or should be taken as gospel. There are a lot of flaws with them. However, this notion that all people should be above these rankings and they’re worthless is, as I’ve noted above, a super-privileged position. This is the single largest financial decision most people will have outside of their house (and maybe even more than their house). When there is demand for multiple rankings for $100-$200 sprinkler boxes, it’s perfectly reasonable that there’s going to be a ton of demand for colleges that cost upwards of $90,000 per year. If the US News rankings aren’t there, then someone else will fill that void.

I don't have an issue with making the college info available to consumers. That is super valuable. What I take issue with is the specific rankings. It makes people think there is a meaningful difference between colleges that probably hade really minimal difference in their actual scores. See the PP's gripe about the exact rank of Duke at #4. Duke is an excellent school. Figuring out if it's #4 or #7 or #15 is stupid and adds nothing to help you decide where to apply to colleges. You hear people say you should go to the highest ranked school you get into as if that's a meaningful discriminator when the actual difference between a #40 and #30 is likely very small in the statistical model while the #40 might have some aspects that are a lot more meaningful to the student than the #30.

Well said.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Ranking college makes no sense at all. What is the point?

Coming from a different country, rankings have been useful in understanding the college landscape. Of course they're not meant to be the only consideration, but they help give a general sense of where things stand. I never would have known, for example, that Rice is a very good university.

+1 in my country we only knew a few American schools like MIT, Harvard, Caltech, Duke, Stanford, and a few others. There are many more great universities that we didn’t know about until coming here.

So are all the rankings obsessed posters on here immigrants? They rely on the rankings to learn about schools they don’t hear about in movies or overseas? I never understood the obsession with USNWR, but this makes more sense.

Yes, because immigrants are the ones with tens of thousands of dollars to spend on private college counselors and test prep resources to get their kids into the top schools. Not to mention the hundreds of thousands spent on getting kids into top schools through niche sports. Or straight up buying seats at top universities as seen through Varsity Blues. Only immigrants do all that, no white people would ever be that obsessed!

+1 calling the ranking obsession an immigrant phenomenon is laughable. Look at the demographics of the top boarding schools that feed into these top schools and it’s very obvious that immigrants are far from the only people who want to get their kids into Harvard, Duke, etc.

Are you really going to claim that some cultures are not more into status (ie. name brands) than others? Look at wedding traditions.

I actually know someone who included the name of their kid's college in her wedding invitation. NO American would have done that.

(Note: lots of Americans are status conscious, don't get me wrong, but such displays if status/money are definitely very common in some Asian cultures. )

We live in NYC and I know many couples whose wedding announcements in NYTimes always lists the educational background of the bride and the groom.

Of course. Such announcements always include biographical information. I was describing the wedding INVITATION (which is entirely different).

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:There’s a certain amount of privilege that comes from being able to spend the equivalent of a new home for each child on college tuition and honestly say that you don’t care about rankings or the perceived status of a school and can solely pick a school based on perfect fit for a child (as you’ve had the resources to personally visit all of these schools). More power to you if you’re at that point.

My sprinkler box broke yesterday. In a quick Google search, I pulled up at least a half-dozen rankings of different sprinkler boxes ranging in cost from $100-$200.

So, it’s sort of wacky to me that the colleges themselves just want to wish away the large demand for college rankings when people are spending *hundreds* of thousands of dollars over the course of 4 years.

I’m not saying that the US News rankings or other ranking systems like them are accurate, infallible or should be taken as gospel. There are a lot of flaws with them. However, this notion that all people should be above these rankings and they’re worthless is, as I’ve noted above, a super-privileged position. This is the single largest financial decision most people will have outside of their house (and maybe even more than their house). When there is demand for multiple rankings for $100-$200 sprinkler boxes, it’s perfectly reasonable that there’s going to be a ton of demand for colleges that cost upwards of $90,000 per year. If the US News rankings aren’t there, then someone else will fill that void.

PP said start with a vetted list (such as the guides published by Princeton Review). From those few hundred schools, do the research to find what is best for your child. Mine, for example, did not want a large school, or a religious school or an urban school. She limited her search to the East Coast. She wanted to study STEM and was not drawn to Greek life or a big party scene.

Not really privileged. It just takes time and knowing your child.