VT ahead of WM in USNews

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:It’s because the focus of the rankings has changed to how schools help lower income and first gen students rather than things like class sizes and undergrad education. That has been VT’s focus for the the last few years.

From the NYT article :


“The company discarded five factors that often favored wealthy colleges and together made up 18 percent of a school’s score, including undergraduate class sizes, alumni giving rates and high school class standing.

This year’s formula, which relied more on data sources beyond submissions by schools, also gave less weight to overall graduation rates and financial resources per student, which examines how much, on average, a university spends per student on costs like instruction and research.”

Ignoring undergrad class size when ranking undergrad institutions seems questionable at best

The class size was so flawed. Gave top scores to class size under 20, but most college profs will tell you a room of 12 kids sometimes doesn't have enough voices for real discussion. 20 is fine. Also, it really skews my subject. There are not a lot of STEM classes with tiny numbers. So some schools tried to through labs in there, which is so different. It made no sense.

I agree. But there is a huge difference between a class of 25 and a class of 200. I do have a WM student and she’s had one class over 30 kids each of her first 3 semesters. And nothing over 80. Largely Intro classes (s freshmen tend to take). That’s a different experience than almost all Intro classes being 200. I think that has enormous value, and my other kid is at a SLAC. USNWR is free to you feel otherwise. I am very pleased with quality of education at WM— whether it’s ranked 35 or 50.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:parent of a kid who just transferred from Va Tech to W&M here. Va Tech is a great school but most of our kid's classes were enormous and would continue to be into their sophomore year. 500 students in a class but the real issue were labs - which in our kid's freshman year were run by TAs. This year, our kid would have had a lab with 60 students.
Happier so far at W&M but no school is perfect.
Rankings help narrow down choices but for anyone looking at any school, just understand what your student needs to thrive.

This. Schools with meteoric rises and falls— like Tulane, CWRU, Wale Forest and Chicago have suddenly gone from meh to amazing to meh overnight. Change/ improvements or declines are incremental. WM, VT, UVA (Tulane, Chicago, CWRU, NEU, WFU) are the same schools they were last year. UNC and UVA are peers when UVA is “winning” by a place or 2. And when UNC takes the lead. No one who really likes WM should say— but VT now leads in the rankings, so that’s where I’m going for my government degree.

People need to look a lot less at the actually ranking and look at the underlying data that matters to them. Is it class size or DEI or terminal degrees or outcomes or graduation rate? Do you think alumni giving means something (for a financially stable school)?

USNWR has gone from trying to rank academic excellent to putting value on things like DEI. If DEI is important to you, that’s great. But it’s really the same as the Wall Street Journal ranking. A SLAC without an engineering school will always do poorly. But that’s irrelevant if your kid isn’t in engineering. What matters then is outcomes in their area of study.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:This is heartbreaking, DD was preparing to apply ED at W&M and now I need to sit her down to break this news to her.

Break what news to her. It’s the same school as it was last year. If she has a problem with the lack of Pell grants, etc, she should not have been planning to apply ED anyway. If it was an interest in IR, wants a smaller school, small class sizes, likes the feel of campus, thinks it’s a good fit—. that’s still there. It’s just not being captured in the ranking.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Rankings now pay more attention to outcomes than before.
VA Tech has better outcome

https://collegescorecard.ed.gov/school/?233921-Virginia-Polytechnic-Institute-and-State-University
$77,621

https://collegescorecard.ed.gov/school/?231624-William-Mary
$69,897

Ranking makes sense.

Not really. VT has strong engineering and CS. WM has no engineering a a smaller, weaker CS department. That’s the entire pay gap. If your kid wants CS and engineering VT is 109% a better school for them. Pre-med, pre-law, humanities, etc, you need to dig deeper and look at those specific outcomes.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:unless you are going to be a lawyer liberal arts is garbage in general for rich kids who don't need to work

My kid is a WM with a double major in IR and a critical language in very high demand, especially for US citizen speakers who can get a security clearance. She’ll be fine with her humanities major. And almost certainly come out with a job offer that includes paying for her Masters. She has done much better with summer opportunities than her STEM major sibling.

Don’t underestimate the humanities. Or lawyers.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:My Tech kid has all classes under 100 kids, and some lower. She did get out of most basic classes with her AP scores, so maybe that is why. Honestly, non of her STEM friends went to W&M, even though they got in. They went to Tech, UVA, and CNU- or out of state like Perdue and tech universities in the NorthEast. It came off as a school in flux (with construction and needed updates) with a strength in humanities. The people we know going there are all humanities majors. It makes sense that if STEM is the goal- then W&M won’t fare well in rankings.

My STEM kid is having a great experience at W&M. Small classes, tons of access to profs and research opportunities! STEM isn’t just engineering.

Good to hear. I wrote about my kid at Tech and DC is math/physics. Not engineering.

That’s what my kid is doing! So great so far. I have been shocked at how much professors love to interact with the kids. Definitely the ethos there.

[Anonymous]

Take US News rankings with a grain of salt. They radically overhauled their methodology, which resulted in some turmoil in the rankings. For example, they heavily weight research, but only certain kinds of research (STEM) and that which places in certain journals/presses. That will affect liberal arts colleges in national rankings the most.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:My Tech kid has all classes under 100 kids, and some lower. She did get out of most basic classes with her AP scores, so maybe that is why. Honestly, non of her STEM friends went to W&M, even though they got in. They went to Tech, UVA, and CNU- or out of state like Perdue and tech universities in the NorthEast. It came off as a school in flux (with construction and needed updates) with a strength in humanities. The people we know going there are all humanities majors. It makes sense that if STEM is the goal- then W&M won’t fare well in rankings.

Having 100 person advanced classes doesn't seem great.

100 students seated in an auditorium with a TA instructing does not impress me.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I read a story on WTOP where they quoted the USNW people as saying they are favoring schools with strong STEM over general liberal arts education.

Maybe the above rationale explains why UVA is getting kicked out of top 25 this year.

Weakness in STEM has been pulling UVA down for decades.

Actually, UVA moved up from 25 to 24. The OP of the thread giving the results forgot to insert UVA at 24. And it's doing just find with STEM thank you very much - signed Dad of aerospace engineer at UVA. Jim Ryan has made some incredible additions to the STEM programs. YOu should read about them something.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:My Tech kid has all classes under 100 kids, and some lower. She did get out of most basic classes with her AP scores, so maybe that is why. Honestly, non of her STEM friends went to W&M, even though they got in. They went to Tech, UVA, and CNU- or out of state like Perdue and tech universities in the NorthEast. It came off as a school in flux (with construction and needed updates) with a strength in humanities. The people we know going there are all humanities majors. It makes sense that if STEM is the goal- then W&M won’t fare well in rankings.

My STEM kid is having a great experience at W&M. Small classes, tons of access to profs and research opportunities! STEM isn’t just engineering.

Correct. It's just the E.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:unless you are going to be a lawyer liberal arts is garbage in general for rich kids who don't need to work

Being well educated is a value that many people hold.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I read a story on WTOP where they quoted the USNW people as saying they are favoring schools with strong STEM over general liberal arts education.

Maybe the above rationale explains why UVA is getting kicked out of top 25 this year.

It didn't. UVA moved up from 25 to 24. Here. https://www.usnews.com/best-colleges/rankings/national-universities

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I read a story on WTOP where they quoted the USNW people as saying they are favoring schools with strong STEM over general liberal arts education.

Maybe the above rationale explains why UVA is getting kicked out of top 25 this year.

It didn't. UVA moved up from 25 to 24. Here. https://www.usnews.com/best-colleges/rankings/national-universities

No, UVA is at 26.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I read a story on WTOP where they quoted the USNW people as saying they are favoring schools with strong STEM over general liberal arts education.

Maybe the above rationale explains why UVA is getting kicked out of top 25 this year.

It didn't. UVA moved up from 25 to 24. Here. https://www.usnews.com/best-colleges/rankings/national-universities

No, UVA is at 26.

It moved up to 24. read right here. https://www.usnews.com/best-colleges/rankings/national-universities

[Anonymous]

My concern is that WM will adjust admissions to regain in the rankings.

The whole college industry seems hell bent on squeezing kids with parents making just a bit above average and for whom $400k is a non-neglbel amount, and $800k for two kids is actually quite a bit.