USNWR College Rankings 2018 - Reactions?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Actually, UChicago vs Yale is 24:76.

Parchment is a good tool to see how schools do cross-admit wise. It's especially accurate when you look at schools in the same tier (so UChicago vs Yale would be representative, where as UChicago vs Penn State might not).

http://www.parchment.com/c/college/tools/college-cross-admit-comparison.php?compare=University+of+Chicago&with=Yale+University

This tool says a lot. HYPSM win against pretty much everyone else. However, Williams does not win so readily against other LACs- more go to Swarthmore and Pomona. In essence, HYPMS are really in a tier of their own, but Williams and Amherst aren't so much higher than other top LACs.

Parchment is what we call junk data. No chance the 24/76 is accurate.

[Anonymous]

??? I know several kids who picked U'Chicago over Yale in recent years. It's definitely not 1%. The numbers are based off actual students filling out where they were admitted and where they matriculate. It is one of the most comprehensive databases out there since it's a prominent transcript company. Even NYTimes used it: https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2014/09/04/upshot/college-picks.html?mcubz=0

Everything I've plugged in seems consistent with I'd expect. Harvard Yale 61/39. Harvard Stanford 56/44 (this one is actually validated by Stanford). Harvard Columbia 90/10. Columbia Cornell 81/19. Columbia Brown 66/34. MIT Caltech 75/25 (MIT's yield is much larger).

[Anonymous]

Parchment is full of fake submissions.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:William and Mary drops a lot.

Maybe I'm judging solely by the caliber of kids going from NOVA, but that's hard to imagine. No connection to WM, but I 't see it.

I was wrong.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Wake Forest (#27) above Michigan (#28)?

Surprised Michigan is that high.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Wake Forest (#27) above Michigan (#28)?

Admit rate now down to 30 percent; new 10 million dollar atheistic facility; new downtown facility for their engineering and medical schools; perhaps that helps?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Curious to see if there will be any shake-ups in the top 20.

There never are.

Don't know if it qualifies as a shake up, but Yale has dropped out of the top 3 in a tie for 5th. Duke drops down a notch to #9.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Predictions?

SMU big gains.

Northeastern continues to rise.

When I was in college in the Boston area in the late 1980s Northeastern was a fourth tier commuter school. It has gamed the system more transparently than any other school.

And still sucks.

Gamed the system, or offered a differentiated product that proved to be popular? Maybe it partly went up in the rankings because the graduates did well at what they were doing? I don't know much about northeastern, but I do know your answer was ridiculous.

BU was also a fourth rate school once.... bfd.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Predictions?

SMU big gains.

Northeastern continues to rise.

When I was in college in the Boston area in the late 1980s Northeastern was a fourth tier commuter school. It has gamed the system more transparently than any other school.

And still sucks.

Gamed the system, or offered a differentiated product that proved to be popular? Maybe it partly went up in the rankings because the graduates did well at what they were doing? I don't know much about northeastern, but I do know your answer was ridiculous.

Still is.

BU was also a fourth rate school once.... bfd.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Curious to see if there will be any shake-ups in the top 20.

There never are.

Don't know if it qualifies as a shake up, but Yale has dropped out of the top 3 in a tie for 5th. Duke drops down a notch to #9.

Surprised Yale dropped down but Princeton moved up.

[Anonymous]

Anybody else thinks USNWR messes with the weights every year to get a respectable-but-not-too-shocking shakeup that's "newsworthy"?

Having built indices myself, I know that messing with the weights is really easy to do, even as you publish the indicators that go into your index. Who knows, maybe they publish an unchanging set of weights too, although I don't respect this enough to investigate (even though DC's college is at #5 this year).

[Anonymous]

Um, what? Yale is ranked 3rd from 4th last year, Princeton has been 1 for the last 7 years.

The biggest movers in the top 30 are Harvey Mudd (went up by 9), NYU (went up by 6) and Haverford (went down by 6), but most schools are 0-2 positions of where they were last year.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Predictions?

SMU big gains.

Northeastern continues to rise.

When I was in college in the Boston area in the late 1980s Northeastern was a fourth tier commuter school. It has gamed the system more transparently than any other school.

And still sucks.

Gamed the system, or offered a differentiated product that proved to be popular? Maybe it partly went up in the rankings because the graduates did well at what they were doing? I don't know much about northeastern, but I do know your answer was ridiculous.

BU was also a fourth rate school once.... bfd.

There was a good article on Northeastern in the NYT a while back. They brought in a new president I believe in the early 1990s and his only agenda was to game the USNWR......that's where all of the school's resources went. And guess what, it worked! At the time it was very controversial amongst the faculty but in a world where people are obsessed with these idiotic rankings it was a smart strategy. Still probably only the 7th best school in Boston at best.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Wake Forest (#27) above Michigan (#28)?

Didn't Wake Forest syptay the same. Wake alum, and it's been 35 or above for the last 20 years, since in move from the LAC category.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Um, what? Yale is ranked 3rd from 4th last year, Princeton has been 1 for the last 7 years.

The biggest movers in the top 30 are Harvey Mudd (went up by 9), NYU (went up by 6) and Haverford (went down by 6), but most schools are 0-2 positions of where they were last year.

Pretty sure Harvard and Stanford have been #1 within the last 7 years.