If the colleges are all lying about their stats, why does anyone care about rankings?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:It’s all a game.

Test optional?
Only high test scores are received and reported, skyrocketing the averages.

Spring freshman admits? First year or semester abroad? Their stats won’t be reported as freshman data.

I could go on. But yes, it’s a game. Some colleges play better than others. And anyone who thinks that an education at one top 25 school is vastly superior to another based on rankings is delusional.

Is a Princeton education vastly superior to a bottom-tier school? Yep, sure is. Anyone who thinks otherwise is delusional.

[Anonymous]

If you have been on any tours and sit through the information session where they put up the profile of their average student, that is not true picture of their average student.

The tour guide on one of our tours is also a close family friend, they said they do that to sell the parents on the idea that only the brightest and best go to their school and all others should not apply.

Sad but true.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:It’s all a game.

Test optional?
Only high test scores are received and reported, skyrocketing the averages.

Spring freshman admits? First year or semester abroad? Their stats won’t be reported as freshman data.

I could go on. But yes, it’s a game. Some colleges play better than others. And anyone who thinks that an education at one top 25 school is vastly superior to another based on rankings is delusional.

Is a Princeton education vastly superior to a bottom-tier school? Yep, sure is. Anyone who thinks otherwise is delusional.

so the person who works for me who went to Princeton while I went to an average state school is vastly superior? OK, I will remind them of that.

[Anonymous]

Nah, but you would have been a vastly superior version of yourself had you gone to Princeton!

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:If you have been on any tours and sit through the information session where they put up the profile of their average student, that is not true picture of their average student.

The tour guide on one of our tours is also a close family friend, they said they do that to sell the parents on the idea that only the brightest and best go to their school and all others should not apply.

Sad but true.

What are you talking about? You think that the stats are about some "average" student they plucked out of the entire pool? That doesn't make any sense. They are the averages across the entire accepted or enrolling class.

[Anonymous]

Top schools have exit counselors whose job it is to pressure and keep failing/unhappy kids enrolled.

If you drop or fail out of some huge Tailgate State or Directional U literally nobody will even notice, let alone care to convince you to stay.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:It’s all a game.

Test optional?
Only high test scores are received and reported, skyrocketing the averages.

Spring freshman admits? First year or semester abroad? Their stats won’t be reported as freshman data.

I could go on. But yes, it’s a game. Some colleges play better than others. And anyone who thinks that an education at one top 25 school is vastly superior to another based on rankings is delusional.

Is a Princeton education vastly superior to a bottom-tier school? Yep, sure is. Anyone who thinks otherwise is delusional.

so the person who works for me who went to Princeton while I went to an average state school is vastly superior? OK, I will remind them of that.

Probably not, but that person likely understands how to craft a cogent argument. Yikes.

[Anonymous]

Rankings help people who don't have any idea how to judge schools or even have much first-hand knowledge of colleges to sort through the endless choices. If you have a top student, much of what goes into the rankings is irrelevant and you know that there are many schools that can serve your child well. I don't worry that my DC will drop out of college so small differences in graduation rates are meaningless. While I want my DC to go to an diverse school (economically, and ethnically) with lots of financial aid, we don't get any so it we are not personally affected. My DC is a humanities student, so the quality of the STEM departments is a lot less important than the quality of the traditional liberal arts departments and the caliber of DC's classmates in those majors.

[Anonymous]

People care about the rankings because they become established wisdom for what is a good school. People being people, they care less about statistical rigor than about how they measure up. There's really nothing wrong with that and I'm not against rankings.

But since you asked, you should think a bit more about what makes these rankings so terrible:

First, once you reduce anything to a score, people will manipulate that score to their benefit. (A classic case of "what gets measured gets done".) One example from the grad schools rankings: many law schools hire their recent grads part-time to work in the career office so they'd count in the "graduate employment %" ratings. Good in some ways, bad in others! Likewise, do undergrads care about professors' salary or research credentials if the profs never teach? Are applications, grades and test scores being gamed?

Second, the criteria used are not transparent, so its very unlikely your criteria are the same as USNWR's. Put it another way, if you said: "Rank these men from 1-10 on these 5 attributes that i've weighted, and then you marry the one who scores the highest: looks, brains, personality, wealth and fitness" -- it would be pretty obvious that what the flaws in this approach are. I might place "looks" higher than "fitness". You may feel the opposite. We might rank a man differently who is naturally fit vs. one who works out vs. one who has plastic surgery -- or we might not. We might value self-made wealth higher than inherited money (or, inherited wealth may be a proxy for "class", so we might leave it in, since we what we really want to do is summer in Block Island.) We might say it's a trap and you're tricking me into marrying a vain douche by pretending you're being scientific. None of this is to say it's not important to pick the right partner, or even that "conventional wisdom" isn't important, just that it's dangerous to make a personal decision based on someone else's criteria.

Finally, USNWR is dangerous because it sets the tone for all of American higher education. They have influence that is wildly out of proportion to the amount of power a 3rd tier regional magazine should have. Because their rankings are flawed (or, at the very least, not clearly vetted to the public) they are pushing american education in ways that are not good for students or society as a whole.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Rankings help people who don't have any idea how to judge schools or even have much first-hand knowledge of colleges to sort through the endless choices. If you have a top student, much of what goes into the rankings is irrelevant and you know that there are many schools that can serve your child well. I don't worry that my DC will drop out of college so small differences in graduation rates are meaningless. While I want my DC to go to an diverse school (economically, and ethnically) with lots of financial aid, we don't get any so it we are not personally affected. My DC is a humanities student, so the quality of the STEM departments is a lot less important than the quality of the traditional liberal arts departments and the caliber of DC's classmates in those majors.

Thoughtful approach, though many (certainly nowhere near all) high caliber students do tend to choose well-regarded (ranked) institutions. And a high percentage of students change majors so it’s a risk to consider departmental excellence in a vacuum.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:If you have been on any tours and sit through the information session where they put up the profile of their average student, that is not true picture of their average student.

The tour guide on one of our tours is also a close family friend, they said they do that to sell the parents on the idea that only the brightest and best go to their school and all others should not apply.

Sad but true.

No, they have wanted all others to apply to get their admit rate down.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:People care about the rankings because they become established wisdom for what is a good school. People being people, they care less about statistical rigor than about how they measure up. There's really nothing wrong with that and I'm not against rankings.

But since you asked, you should think a bit more about what makes these rankings so terrible:

First, once you reduce anything to a score, people will manipulate that score to their benefit. (A classic case of "what gets measured gets done".) One example from the grad schools rankings: many law schools hire their recent grads part-time to work in the career office so they'd count in the "graduate employment %" ratings. Good in some ways, bad in others! Likewise, do undergrads care about professors' salary or research credentials if the profs never teach? Are applications, grades and test scores being gamed?

Second, the criteria used are not transparent, so its very unlikely your criteria are the same as USNWR's. Put it another way, if you said: "Rank these men from 1-10 on these 5 attributes that i've weighted, and then you marry the one who scores the highest: looks, brains, personality, wealth and fitness" -- it would be pretty obvious that what the flaws in this approach are. I might place "looks" higher than "fitness". You may feel the opposite. We might rank a man differently who is naturally fit vs. one who works out vs. one who has plastic surgery -- or we might not. We might value self-made wealth higher than inherited money (or, inherited wealth may be a proxy for "class", so we might leave it in, since we what we really want to do is summer in Block Island.) We might say it's a trap and you're tricking me into marrying a vain douche by pretending you're being scientific. None of this is to say it's not important to pick the right partner, or even that "conventional wisdom" isn't important, just that it's dangerous to make a personal decision based on someone else's criteria.

Finally, USNWR is dangerous because it sets the tone for all of American higher education. They have influence that is wildly out of proportion to the amount of power a 3rd tier regional magazine should have. Because their rankings are flawed (or, at the very least, not clearly vetted to the public) they are pushing american education in ways that are not good for students or society as a whole.

Rankings are going to happen no matter what. I just wish USNews chose more criteria that had positive impacts or at least no negative impacts. (Perhaps the use of graduation rates has been positive. If you look back, this is what set UVA and W&M apart from other publics, but they took note and have focused on this, and perhaps that isn't a bad thing.) The focus on resources (direct and indirect) rather than efficiency, though, is probably quite damaging. It rewards schools for jacking up costs and doing things that are probably frivolous from an undergraduate's standpoint at a time when student debt is skyrocketing and defaults are growing fast.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:It’s all a game.

Test optional?
Only high test scores are received and reported, skyrocketing the averages.

Spring freshman admits? First year or semester abroad? Their stats won’t be reported as freshman data.

I could go on. But yes, it’s a game. Some colleges play better than others. And anyone who thinks that an education at one top 25 school is vastly superior to another based on rankings is delusional.

Is a Princeton education vastly superior to a bottom-tier school? Yep, sure is. Anyone who thinks otherwise is delusional.

so the person who works for me who went to Princeton while I went to an average state school is vastly superior? OK, I will remind them of that.

Sample sizes of one never work very well unless the universe is one.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:People care about the rankings because they become established wisdom for what is a good school. People being people, they care less about statistical rigor than about how they measure up. There's really nothing wrong with that and I'm not against rankings.

But since you asked, you should think a bit more about what makes these rankings so terrible:

First, once you reduce anything to a score, people will manipulate that score to their benefit. (A classic case of "what gets measured gets done".) One example from the grad schools rankings: many law schools hire their recent grads part-time to work in the career office so they'd count in the "graduate employment %" ratings. Good in some ways, bad in others! Likewise, do undergrads care about professors' salary or research credentials if the profs never teach? Are applications, grades and test scores being gamed?

Second, the criteria used are not transparent, so its very unlikely your criteria are the same as USNWR's. Put it another way, if you said: "Rank these men from 1-10 on these 5 attributes that i've weighted, and then you marry the one who scores the highest: looks, brains, personality, wealth and fitness" -- it would be pretty obvious that what the flaws in this approach are. I might place "looks" higher than "fitness". You may feel the opposite. We might rank a man differently who is naturally fit vs. one who works out vs. one who has plastic surgery -- or we might not. We might value self-made wealth higher than inherited money (or, inherited wealth may be a proxy for "class", so we might leave it in, since we what we really want to do is summer in Block Island.) We might say it's a trap and you're tricking me into marrying a vain douche by pretending you're being scientific. None of this is to say it's not important to pick the right partner, or even that "conventional wisdom" isn't important, just that it's dangerous to make a personal decision based on someone else's criteria.

Finally, USNWR is dangerous because it sets the tone for all of American higher education. They have influence that is wildly out of proportion to the amount of power a 3rd tier regional magazine should have. Because their rankings are flawed (or, at the very least, not clearly vetted to the public) they are pushing american education in ways that are not good for students or society as a whole.

US News got wise to the "Law school funded" positions many years ago, and do not give remotely full credit for those positions. The US News numbers are typically generated from the ABA reports, although US News submission is separate. -- Signed exhausted CSO director who spends more of his days during some parts of the year checking stats and chasing unhappy grads than counseling current students (because the ABA has become the audit police who want an extensive paper trail for everything.)

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:People care about the rankings because they become established wisdom for what is a good school. People being people, they care less about statistical rigor than about how they measure up. There's really nothing wrong with that and I'm not against rankings.

But since you asked, you should think a bit more about what makes these rankings so terrible:

First, once you reduce anything to a score, people will manipulate that score to their benefit. (A classic case of "what gets measured gets done".) One example from the grad schools rankings: many law schools hire their recent grads part-time to work in the career office so they'd count in the "graduate employment %" ratings. Good in some ways, bad in others! Likewise, do undergrads care about professors' salary or research credentials if the profs never teach? Are applications, grades and test scores being gamed?

Second, the criteria used are not transparent, so its very unlikely your criteria are the same as USNWR's. Put it another way, if you said: "Rank these men from 1-10 on these 5 attributes that i've weighted, and then you marry the one who scores the highest: looks, brains, personality, wealth and fitness" -- it would be pretty obvious that what the flaws in this approach are. I might place "looks" higher than "fitness". You may feel the opposite. We might rank a man differently who is naturally fit vs. one who works out vs. one who has plastic surgery -- or we might not. We might value self-made wealth higher than inherited money (or, inherited wealth may be a proxy for "class", so we might leave it in, since we what we really want to do is summer in Block Island.) We might say it's a trap and you're tricking me into marrying a vain douche by pretending you're being scientific. None of this is to say it's not important to pick the right partner, or even that "conventional wisdom" isn't important, just that it's dangerous to make a personal decision based on someone else's criteria.

Finally, USNWR is dangerous because it sets the tone for all of American higher education. They have influence that is wildly out of proportion to the amount of power a 3rd tier regional magazine should have. Because their rankings are flawed (or, at the very least, not clearly vetted to the public) they are pushing american education in ways that are not good for students or society as a whole.

US News got wise to the "Law school funded" positions many years ago, and do not give remotely full credit for those positions. The US News numbers are typically generated from the ABA reports, although US News submission is separate. -- Signed exhausted CSO director who spends more of his days during some parts of the year checking stats and chasing unhappy grads than counseling current students (because the ABA has become the audit police who want an extensive paper trail for everything.)

Yes, USNews got rid of the "law school funded" and the dubious admission rate input for colleges this year, but they've let a number of dubious practices continue. Northeastern has risen something like 150 spots with practices like putting low stat kids in what is in effect spring admission (they start off in a coop program). The resource numbers are open to manipulation, etc.