US News 2020 rankings

[Anonymous]

This used to be a ranking that parents and students could use to seriously determine the prestige of the school and academic strength of the incoming class profile without getting caught up in "woke" "social engineering" metrics. Now they too have fallen for this nonsense.

Why can't one ranking focus on prestige and just pure academic strength of the incoming students? You have other rankings that deal with all the "social mobility" nonsense.

[Anonymous]

This ranking has become a joke. It's formula now favors really rich privates that can lavish their endowment funds on "poor" students, over colleges that may try to focus on getting academically well prepared students and not discriminate based on SES.

This change in the ranking methodology will hurt middle class students a lot as colleges try to appease these idiots by now bringing in more Pell grant students at the lower end and fill the rest of the class with rich full pays to make up for the lost revenue. The folks that will suffer are deserving middle class kids that need financial aid but are not poor enough to qualify for Pell grants

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Michigan at 25, lol. What a joke. Everyone in the know knows that UVA is a superior school

Joke’s on you - those in the know rank Michigan higher.

[Anonymous]

Until you realize that the way this list is built is via a survey of people way too busy to know what is going on in other schools’ classrooms. The notion is absurd. I’d be surprised if they truly know what’s going on in their own schools’ classroom.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:This ranking has become a joke. It's formula now favors really rich privates that can lavish their endowment funds on "poor" students, over colleges that may try to focus on getting academically well prepared students and not discriminate based on SES.

This change in the ranking methodology will hurt middle class students a lot as colleges try to appease these idiots by now bringing in more Pell grant students at the lower end and fill the rest of the class with rich full pays to make up for the lost revenue. The folks that will suffer are deserving middle class kids that need financial aid but are not poor enough to qualify for Pell grants

I don’t know about this. Many of the schools who dropped in the rankings seem to be wealthy private schools that are good but not elite. I guess it’s true that they aren’t rich enough to fully meet student needs, like Harvard. But isn’t that something that should be considered? Does it make sense to pay $70K a year for an undergraduate degree at B+ private?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:This ranking has become a joke. It's formula now favors really rich privates that can lavish their endowment funds on "poor" students, over colleges that may try to focus on getting academically well prepared students and not discriminate based on SES.

This change in the ranking methodology will hurt middle class students a lot as colleges try to appease these idiots by now bringing in more Pell grant students at the lower end and fill the rest of the class with rich full pays to make up for the lost revenue. The folks that will suffer are deserving middle class kids that need financial aid but are not poor enough to qualify for Pell grants

I don’t know about this. Many of the schools who dropped in the rankings seem to be wealthy private schools that are good but not elite. I guess it’s true that they aren’t rich enough to fully meet student needs, like Harvard. But isn’t that something that should be considered? Does it make sense to pay $70K a year for an undergraduate degree at B+ private?[/quote]
That depends on your financial situation. Does it make sense to buy a Bentley? Well that depends on how rich you are. How does how much discounting a school provides in COA to poor kids based on the size of its endowment, reflect on the education for ALL KIDS in that school or across schools? or make it better than another school that chooses not to court such kids.

Why should courting the poorest of kids and providing huge discounts be a priority for every institution. Its ok for some institutions to do this, but to shame others that don't do it is just crazy talk. And ranking and stacking institutions provides terrible incentives for colleges to shaft one set of kids to help another set of kids. I wouldn't want to buy a home in a neighborhood where a builder used this formula to sell his houses. "Hmm, you are poor, here, take this $1 Million house for free. Hey you, I see you are rich, pay $2M for this same house"

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:This ranking has become a joke. It's formula now favors really rich privates that can lavish their endowment funds on "poor" students, over colleges that may try to focus on getting academically well prepared students and not discriminate based on SES.

This change in the ranking methodology will hurt middle class students a lot as colleges try to appease these idiots by now bringing in more Pell grant students at the lower end and fill the rest of the class with rich full pays to make up for the lost revenue. The folks that will suffer are deserving middle class kids that need financial aid but are not poor enough to qualify for Pell grants

I don’t know about this. Many of the schools who dropped in the rankings seem to be wealthy private schools that are good but not elite. I guess it’s true that they aren’t rich enough to fully meet student needs, like Harvard. But isn’t that something that should be considered? Does it make sense to pay $70K a year for an undergraduate degree at B+ private?[/quote]
That depends on your financial situation. Does it make sense to buy a Bentley? Well that depends on how rich you are. How does how much discounting a school provides in COA to poor kids based on the size of its endowment, reflect on the education for ALL KIDS in that school or across schools? or make it better than another school that chooses not to court such kids.

Why should courting the poorest of kids and providing huge discounts be a priority for every institution. Its ok for some institutions to do this, but to shame others that don't do it is just crazy talk. And ranking and stacking institutions provides terrible incentives for colleges to shaft one set of kids to help another set of kids. I wouldn't want to buy a home in a neighborhood where a builder used this formula to sell his houses. "Hmm, you are poor, here, take this $1 Million house for free. Hey you, I see you are rich, pay $2M for this same house"

Colleges do this all the time to full freight paying suckers. The suckers effectively subsidize others.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:The person pretending to be a UVA person bashing Michigan is just trying to work people up. Anyone who went to UVA knows that Michigan (and Berkeley, UCLA, etc) are excellent schools that are always in the same neighborhood in these rankings.

No. They all are much better than Uva overall!

Are they for undergraduates? I've lived near both both Berkeley and UCLA and really, really question their commitment to educating undergraduates. Have less insight to Michigan and UVA.

Probably a good measure of focus on undergraduates is the Undergraduate Teaching ranking, which places the public schools as follows:

3. Georgia State
5. William and Mary
8. Miami University Ohio
10. ASU
12. UMBC
13. Michigan
23. Ohio State
23. UVA
34. UC Berkley
35. UC Riverside
29. Georgia Tech
40. UC Merced
40. UC Santa Cruz
40. U of Georgia
49. University of Central Florida
49. University of Florida
49. UT Austin

One of the fascinating things about all the rankings is that they largely don't even attempt to measure schools based on what they are supposed to do -- educate. Perhaps too difficult to measure, but perhaps not enough actually care.

[Anonymous]

Seems odd to me that William and Mary is ranked 5 in undergraduate teaching and 15 (I think) in undergraduate research but lost ground overall.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:This used to be a ranking that parents and students could use to seriously determine the prestige of the school and academic strength of the incoming class profile without getting caught up in "woke" "social engineering" metrics. Now they too have fallen for this nonsense.

Why can't one ranking focus on prestige and just pure academic strength of the incoming students? You have other rankings that deal with all the "social mobility" nonsense.

Even before all this madness started, you could just look at the SAT (or ACT) scores, and that pretty much told you most of what you wanted to know. Some publications ranked by number of stars, etc.

Playing the USNews game has allowed some schools to shoot into the stratosphere because they could do it better, not because they are particularly good at educating undergrads.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Seems odd to me that William and Mary is ranked 5 in undergraduate teaching and 15 (I think) in undergraduate research but lost ground overall.

Those rankings don't factor in the overall ranking. If they added undergraduate research to the overall ranking criteria, the top schools would go off and figure a way to get all students to do research.

William & Mary's been hurt by the social mobility (Pell Grant) component. I suspect UVA has as well in a sense, but it didn't cause them to drop as much, but it is certainly a disadvantaged there compared to UCLA and Berkeley, which have a much higher percentage of Pell recipients. The odd thing is UVA and W&M do a really good job of graduating the Pell recipients they do have. I think they are among the best.

William & Mary has also long been hurt by the resource ranking, which is below 100 or something like that. Some of the posts here focus on endowment, and certainly some schools like Princeton are richer than Croesus, but one of the big factors is having a medical school and medical center, and many of the top schools have a medical school. William & Mary doesn't have one. I suspect the biggest reason UCLA is above Berkeley, which probably has many in California scratching their heads, is because UCLA has one and Berkeley doesn't. I doubt that it makes any meaningful impact on undergraduate education there.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Michigan at 25, lol. What a joke. Everyone in the know knows that UVA is a superior school

Joke’s on you - those in the know rank Michigan higher.

Michigan is full of status-obsessed OOS kids who shotgun blast apps to every top 20 private, get rejected from literally all of them, then go to Ann Arbor and binge drink and blow lines for four years cheering on sport ball student-athletes who can't read above a 5th grade level.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Michigan at 25, lol. What a joke. Everyone in the know knows that UVA is a superior school

Joke’s on you - those in the know rank Michigan higher.

Michigan is full of status-obsessed OOS kids who shotgun blast apps to every top 20 private, get rejected from literally all of them, then go to Ann Arbor and binge drink and blow lines for four years cheering on sport ball student-athletes who can't read above a 5th grade level.

I toured UVa before choosing a law school. My tour guide stated "We play a lot of softball," when asked how UVa students spend their time. He stated that classes didn't take up that much time. Not impressed.

[Anonymous]

Uva is full of terrible people. Every grad I have met is a pompous ass.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:The person pretending to be a UVA person bashing Michigan is just trying to work people up. Anyone who went to UVA knows that Michigan (and Berkeley, UCLA, etc) are excellent schools that are always in the same neighborhood in these rankings.

No. They all are much better than Uva overall!

Are they for undergraduates? I've lived near both both Berkeley and UCLA and really, really question their commitment to educating undergraduates. Have less insight to Michigan and UVA.

Probably a good measure of focus on undergraduates is the Undergraduate Teaching ranking, which places the public schools as follows:

3. Georgia State
5. William and Mary
8. Miami University Ohio
10. ASU
12. UMBC
13. Michigan
23. Ohio State
23. UVA
34. UC Berkley
35. UC Riverside
29. Georgia Tech
40. UC Merced
40. UC Santa Cruz
40. U of Georgia
49. University of Central Florida
49. University of Florida
49. UT Austin

One of the fascinating things about all the rankings is that they largely don't even attempt to measure schools based on what they are supposed to do -- educate. Perhaps too difficult to measure, but perhaps not enough actually care.

It appears they did that right there. So your kid going to go to Georgia State now? I didn’t think so.