why the usnwr best college list is ridiculous

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Also, what does it all mean? It is mostly ego and...what?

Aside from some of the few places where students have access to amazing undergrad faculty (and that varies withing schools by departments) school is ultimately what you put into it.

I think having a ranking of tiers of schools would make more sense, without ranking the schools within each band/tier.

This. When we started searching I sorted schools by some basic minimum requirements, like an 80%+ freshmen retention rate. That tells me kids aren't hating their experience. And, a good graduation rate. Not sending my kids to a school where half don't graduate. Limited to the college size and general region DD wanted and sorted on % getting degrees in her area since she wanted a small school but I think if you are going small it's important to still have a good cohort in your field so you have more peers and faculty.
The spreadsheet available here was really helpful for this analysis: https://diycollegerankings.com/

I also looked at CDSs to see what % of the class were in the top 25% of their HS class or what % had a 4.0+ GPA.

Sure that takes more work than just looking at a list someone else made.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:it's still the gold standard, whether you like it or not.

For what. This list does not guarantee outcomes. I attended a shi----y big midwestern University with no prestige. But you would not know it unless I told you. And there are many like me.

The problem is that the people who have verifiably the best financial outcomes all went to top schools (or dropped out of them). Gates, Zuckerberg, Bezos, Altman, Schwarzman, Griffin, et al.

Nobody ever says what their own outcome actually is, nor names their friend/cousin/friend's cousin that supposedly also went to some no-name shitty university and is now super-successful.

So, if all anyone will offer on DCUM is anecdotes without being willing to provide any specifics...you won't persuade anyone.

OK but these are 1 out of millions. The odds of anyone ending up like them are supremely low. These people are also likely sociopaths as well.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:it's still the gold standard, whether you like it or not.

Rankings are not useful and the USNWR one is particularly useless.

“Art & Science Group, a higher education consultancy, found that some 40 percent of students do not use rankings at all when they are picking colleges and that only 3 percent turn to them through the whole of their college searches.”

What on earth is “Art & Science Group”? All the parents at our kids’ school talk about rankings and most definitely use USNWR. You’re kidding yourself by pretending otherwise.
DP

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:“Selectivity” is so game-able.

You can't game having full of 1500 SAT kids vs 1200 SAT kids

Of course you can when most of those kids are TO. Stop kidding yourself that all of the kids at a school have “1500 SATs.”
DP

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:What's most ridiculous is the premise that there can be any objective ranking of colleges.

It's like ranking the best places to live in America. Online dorks may argue about median earnings, crime rates, etc. But, at the end of the day, it really doesn't make one city any better for any individual than another. BTW, USNWR does just this. Are you dorks packing your bags for Naples, FL or Boise, ID?
https://realestate.usnews.com/places/rankings/best-places-to-live

Um, all we have to do is look at moving trends to know that people are, indeed, moving to Florida, Texas, Idaho, etc. That’s not something that’s been fabricated.
https://www.marketwatch.com/guides/moving-services/moving-statistics/

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:it's still the gold standard, whether you like it or not.

Rankings are not useful and the USNWR one is particularly useless.

“Art & Science Group, a higher education consultancy, found that some 40 percent of students do not use rankings at all when they are picking colleges and that only 3 percent turn to them through the whole of their college searches.”

It's still the gold standard. Colleges fight tooth and nail over it. All college counselors read USNWR. All schools brag about their position on USNWR unless they have something to hide. Wiki posts the rankings on individual
college pages. And, of great importance, the full-pay international students (which all schools want because international students inflate diversity figures and are usually full-pay) and their counselors treat it like the Bible

+100

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:it's still the gold standard, whether you like it or not.

For what. This list does not guarantee outcomes. I attended a shi----y big midwestern University with no prestige. But you would not know it unless I told you. And there are many like me.

DP. That’s why I like the WSJ rankings, which are based on outcomes.

[Anonymous]

Fine, plenty of straight SAT ranking data out there: https://www.collegeraptor.com/college-rankings/details/MedianSAT/

The top 10 is shuffled, but not too different than what you would expect.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:What's most ridiculous is the premise that there can be any objective ranking of colleges.

It's like ranking the best places to live in America. Online dorks may argue about median earnings, crime rates, etc. But, at the end of the day, it really doesn't make one city any better for any individual than another. BTW, USNWR does just this. Are you dorks packing your bags for Naples, FL or Boise, ID?
https://realestate.usnews.com/places/rankings/best-places-to-live

This. And fwiw US news failed at its primary business and hangs onto this desperately bc otherwise it would be bankrupt

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Fine, plenty of straight SAT ranking data out there: https://www.collegeraptor.com/college-rankings/details/MedianSAT/

The top 10 is shuffled, but not too different than what you would expect.

But again - many of the students at these schools go TO (except at MIT, I believe). So this isn’t accurate at all.

[Anonymous]

Hopkins and Duke are tied. USNWR is trolling us all

[Anonymous]

Folks could easily interpret the rankings in bands. HYPSM is probably indisputably the top. The remaining 5-20 are about the same - the greater difference will be the match with the particular kid. And so on.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:
The most heavily weighted "peer assessment" 20% ha!

So? Colleges know a lot about each other. It’s a whole industry. People work or attend multiple institutions over time, meeting others who have done the same. It’s not unlike people in whatever line of business you might be familiar with knowing more about their competition than the general public. Peer review is integral to academia in general, and this peer assessment category which only USNWR has meaningful data on is a big part of what their rankings have fewer sanity test fails than those from other publications (like WSJ’s having UC Merced and San Jose State over Duke, Northwestern, UChicago, and Johns Hopkins). WSJ, Forbes, and even Niche over-rely on data only a few years out from college to try to do something different. All rankings are flawed, but USNWR is the least flawed, the least volatile, and more influential than all the others combined.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:There is absolutely nothing merit-based (academics) in the rankings.

https://www.usnews.com/education/best-colleges/articles/how-us-news-calculated-the-rankings

For schools that require scores there was a 5% weight factor--and for those w/out scores 0%.

That was it. 95% was just pure Bullsh*t

The most heavily weighted "peer assessment" 20% ha!

Student-faculty ratio (prob one of the most important factors for undergrads)...a mere 3%

nothing on gpa/selectivity, etc.

Absolutely. Its lame. I wish it would go back to mostly about the student and faculty quality, class size, ratios, and academic opportunities for undergraduates(which endowment only hints at)

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:it's still the gold standard, whether you like it or not.

For what. This list does not guarantee outcomes. I attended a shi----y big midwestern University with no prestige. But you would not know it unless I told you. And there are many like me.

DP. That’s why I like the WSJ rankings, which are based on outcomes.

Over half the USNWR weighting goes to outcome factors including graduation rates, debt, and income.