WSJ Rankings 2025
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Anonymous
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If the colorful Top 20 rankings in various academic and non-academic areas that I keep seeing in social media are representative of how content creators are now resigned to capturing eyeballs, I guess that explains the WSJ 2025 rankings.
For me, the pursuit of an undergraduate education is a blend of the actual educational experience, establishing the foundation for a career path (for graduate school or the start of a career), and social / personal development. Of these, that third part of the equation is of utmost importance. I already know that my children have the intellectual chops and personal motivations to seek out a successful, impactful career. What I hope for them to gain from an undergraduate education is to position themselves to help make the world a better place while having the best college experience possible. Treating college like a make-or-break pre-professional Hunger Games, where average pay rate after five or ten years (average?) is vitally important, really suggests that college is a job for your kid, and little more. |
Anonymous
Thanks. I did count and did not get fifty, but ran out of time and didn't want to go fishing for the missing ones. Glad you added them. |
Anonymous
I am the one who posted the list. It is time consuming. You are welcome to add the LACS to the list. |
Anonymous
Never heard of the school until this year. Everything has become too preprofessional. My kid is at Harvard with the goal of getting a PhD in Math. I told her not to think about internships. Money follows passion. |
Anonymous
*********** To answer your question -- my "favored" school i.e. my alma mater is one of the top 20 schools in this table, as it was last year. Sorry my friend, your attempt to attack me is a failure. And my analysis remains correct though your opinions of me are not very mature. How old are you? |
Anonymous
Was Elon ranked higher than some Ivies? LOL. That is all you need to know about the list. |
Anonymous
This is the exact logic applied to these rankings, and how the scores were calculated. |
Anonymous
However, the decision to apply an expected result (e.g. actual graduation rate vs 'expected' graduation rate) is a qualitative one, as are the weightings. This is what is meant by an objective (for the data) to subjective (for the scoring) back to objective (for the ranking) flaw in the methodology and inference. |
Anonymous
ummm yea, tell that to every starving artist/musician/actor. FWIW, my one kid is a dual math major, and another loves the theater. |
Anonymous
No, of course not. This is how we know the list is based on made up statistics. I mean the single largest score under "student outcomes" was obtained this way - look at how many steps it takes to get the score, based on subjective "metrics."
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Anonymous
Please stop engaging in this back and forth about alma maters or your kids' schools' rankings. This is going to continue forever. FWIW I agree with you that it's immature for the PP to accuse people of only disagreeing with the WSJ rankings because their school or their kids' schools didn't make the cut, but just ignore it. I actually like the factors in the WSJ rankings. I can see how some people might prefer a USN style ranking and others might prefer a WSJ style ranking. However, the method is obviously flawed simply because of the vast differences between one year and the next, as pointed out by a PP. Perhaps if this list gets any traction, they will invest more in resources and establish a more robust methodology. |
Anonymous
I had the same reaction.  it is a luxury to be able to follow one's passion without thought to income. However, aside from the very top success stories, most of the musicians and artists I know who manage to live comfortably are only able to do so because they come from wealthy families or have a spouse with a high earning career.
This makes me wonder... if the WSJ rankings are heavily skewed towards ROI, this will definitely ding schools that have more humanities and arts majors, and favor schools that have more kids go into finance. Anyone know if this is factored into the methods somehow? |
Anonymous
"Salary impact (33%): This measures the extent to which a college boosts its graduates’ salaries beyond what they would be expected to earn regardless of which college they attended. We used statistical modeling to estimate what we would expect the median earnings of a college’s graduates to be on the basis of the exam results of its students prior to attending the college and the cost of living in the state in which the college is based. We then scored the college on its performance against that estimate." "Graduation rate impact (20%): This is a measure of a college’s performance in ensuring that its students graduate, beyond what would have been expected of the students regardless of which college they attended. We used statistical modeling to estimate what we would expect a college’s graduation rate to be on the basis of the exam results of its students prior to attending the college and the proportion of their students whose family income is $110,000 per year or higher. We then scored the college on its performance against that estimate. These scores were then combined with scores for raw graduation rates to factor in absolute performance alongside performance relative to our estimates." The mental gymnastics are in the assumptions they put into the "statistical modeling". You can get a model to say whatever you want if you just adjust the assumptions, and the result will not be "hard and quantitative" no matter how much hard, quantitative data you feed into it. |
Anonymous
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The fact that the whiners cannot explain away is why HPYSM did so well while so many other high brow schools did not. If the methodology is a complete sham or just random, HPYSM would not constitute half of the top 10. Further, other top universities and LACs make the top 10, top 20, and top 50. Again, this is not random. The head scratching and consternation is really around a set of “treasured” schools that didn’t perform well. Perhaps, it would be better to understand why those didn’t perform well instead of assailing the methodology.
As for the methodology, it is not primarily a survey. That’s just a weak way of dismissing the results. What people seem to struggle with most is the comparison of student outcomes to expectations. Expectations account for two things: the quality of the student body and the regional cost of living. So, a Williams or Amherst faces more headwinds than Kenyon. Yet, there is no guarantee that Kenyon will punch above its weight. What’s eye opening is that HPYSM have probably the highest expectations hurdle, and yet, they jumped it - big time! Claremont McKenna and Davidson also standout here. Take note. |
Anonymous
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"What’s eye opening is that HPYSM have probably the highest expectations hurdle, and yet, they jumped it - big time!"
Schools that have their pick of the best students in the world, have huge prestige, enormous endowments, and powerful alumni networks "exceed expectations". Yay! (polite golf clap) |