Official US news 2023 thread

[Anonymous]

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Anonymous wrote:You can't sell online ads or magazines if the rankings don't have some movement. It is helpful to look at the rankings data over time to get a sense of school tiers: https://andyreiter.com/datasets/

Colby hasn't historically been regularly ranked in the top 15. They've often been in the high teens and 20s so that drop isn't huge.

Shocker: Columbia's real stats don't equate to being regularly ranked with Stanford, Harvard, and Yale!

This was always clear to students, which is why Columbia was never able to attract HYPSM cross admits.

USNWR is influential, unfortunately, but there are limits. Princeton has been #1 for the past umpteen years, but it isn't winning cross-admit battles with Harvard, Stanford, and MIT.

Unless you want to be a D3 athlete, I don't see MIT winning too many cross-admit battles with those schools either. With MIT's limited excellence in eng, CS, and econ, their ranking always feels a little inflated.

Stanford would probably be better than MIT in all of those top areas too and is also great in just about every other discipline.

Not better in engineering and technology. Close, but not better.

Stanford would likely get the nod in CS and MIT in the other engineering disciplines. Even if it is just close in MIT's very strongest areas, I can see the point about Stanford pretty clearly being the better overall school. Most people who get into the two "Boston area" schools don't choose MIT either. With Harvard, I would give MIT the clear advantage in CS and engineering though.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:You can't sell online ads or magazines if the rankings don't have some movement. It is helpful to look at the rankings data over time to get a sense of school tiers: https://andyreiter.com/datasets/

Colby hasn't historically been regularly ranked in the top 15. They've often been in the high teens and 20s so that drop isn't huge.

Shocker: Columbia's real stats don't equate to being regularly ranked with Stanford, Harvard, and Yale!

This was always clear to students, which is why Columbia was never able to attract HYPSM cross admits.

USNWR is influential, unfortunately, but there are limits. Princeton has been #1 for the past umpteen years, but it isn't winning cross-admit battles with Harvard, Stanford, and MIT.

No one cares much about #1 vs #3. But allowing a school that isn’t even legitimately T10 to cheat it’s way into the top 5 is a problem.

Ranking HYPSM as the top 5 this year is a good sign that they’ve learned from this experience.

[Anonymous]

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Anonymous wrote:You can't sell online ads or magazines if the rankings don't have some movement. It is helpful to look at the rankings data over time to get a sense of school tiers: https://andyreiter.com/datasets/

Colby hasn't historically been regularly ranked in the top 15. They've often been in the high teens and 20s so that drop isn't huge.

Shocker: Columbia's real stats don't equate to being regularly ranked with Stanford, Harvard, and Yale!

This was always clear to students, which is why Columbia was never able to attract HYPSM cross admits.

USNWR is influential, unfortunately, but there are limits. Princeton has been #1 for the past umpteen years, but it isn't winning cross-admit battles with Harvard, Stanford, and MIT.

Unless you want to be a D3 athlete, I don't see MIT winning too many cross-admit battles with those schools either. With MIT's limited excellence in eng, CS, and econ, their ranking always feels a little inflated.

Stanford would probably be better than MIT in all of those top areas too and is also great in just about every other discipline.

Not better in engineering and technology. Close, but not better.

Stanford would likely get the nod in CS and MIT in the other engineering disciplines. Even if it is just close in MIT's very strongest areas, I can see the point about Stanford pretty clearly being the better overall school. Most people who get into the two "Boston area" schools don't choose MIT either. With Harvard, I would give MIT the clear advantage in CS and engineering though.

For those who care about pure prestige and impressive name recognition (a lot of US News readers), Harvard and Yale can't be matched outside of Oxbridge, though Stanford and Princeton are getting there. Mass Tech and those perceived public universities in Chicago and Pennsylvania (Univ of __) aren't .

[Anonymous]

With great public universities like UVA, W&M, and Maryland, do local parents have a strong preference for in-state schools and tuition? Many states don't have high-end in-state options.

[Anonymous]

MIT is world famous.

[Anonymous]

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Anonymous wrote:Notre Dame at 18, tied with Columbia and only one behind Cornell.

Notre Dame is Ivy level.

Almost, but not quite!

Notre Dame would never want to join the Ivy League anyway! It is happy to be ranked right there and fully independent to print football $$!

The Ivy League isn't all it is cracked up to be. Georgetown wouldn't even give up its basketball TV $$ to join.

Remember that the ancient 8 really is just an old but now low-level athletic conference!

This! A top school that has so much more to offer than the stuffy ivies. Love it.

Georgetown has crumbling buildings and mold to offer students. I don't get why anyone would pay private school tuition to go there.

You post this on every single thread. I'm sorry you were denied. It's probably time to move on.

It is impressive to me that Georgetown continues to attract such impressive students and rank as highly as they do with their financial limitations. If they can continue to invest well and generate high-end donations, they have a lot of upside.

Gtown is tied with Emory this year but has an endowment smaller than many of the elite liberal arts colleges (Williams, Amherst, Swarthmore, Pomona, Wellesley, and Bowdoin).

Peers like Emory, WashU, Vandy, Rice, USC, Notre Dame, and NYU all have endowments of over $5.5 billion compared under $2.6 billion for GTown. $$ is a real issue for Georgetown.

Idk if Georgetown is an academic peer of Rice and Vandy. Their admission statistics must be very different.

Georgetown does not use the common application, so the applicant pool is self selecting. As such, many hypothesize that their actual rate of admission would be much lower if they did.

You have posted this in numerous forums over the last two weeks, yet never provide a cite. It's simply not a true statement, although you want it to be

Dp, but I agree. My kid wasn’t willing to jump through the Georgetown admission hoops, but would have applied if they accepted the common app. It’s pretty stupid decision on Georgetown’s part than turns off a number of qualified applicants.

If you can't be bothered with the 'admission hoops', then Georgetown doesn't want you.

A lot of top students are fine with that, but it isn’t in the university’s interests to have an increasing smaller applicant pool.

They don't need USNWR to validate them.

A former Georgetown dean asserted, as to why they won't join the rat race and move to the common app to boost ratings: “we don’t succumb to the false gods.”

No. The real reason Georgetown doesn’t join the Common App is because they don’t want to encourage those with financial need. Relative to other well-ranked schools, Georgetown’s endowment is dinky, which impacts their ability to provide needs-blind admission. If they admit few with need, they can still tout their aid. Georgetown is not on any “best value” list.

Most schools do not have much of their endowment devoted to undergraduate need based aid. A lot of the endowment may not even have anything to do with the entire undergraduate program (i.e., it belongs to the medical school, law school, graduate business school, etc.). Most private schools (and some public schools) build their aid budget by charging well-to-do students more than the cost of attendance and use part of the surplus to fund aid for lower income students. It is a redistribution.

Some aid is redistribution, but the most elite schools who offer the most grant aid and a needs-blind admission policy DO have endowment funds dedicated to this cause. If was just redistribution, more schools could offer great aid. It takes dedicated funds.

Yes, they do have endowment funds for aid, but it is far less than the amount that comes from redistribution at most schools, including those that are need blind.

If you want to be great at this, it takes a lot of endowment funds. For example, take a look at Vanderbilt’s “Opportunity Vanderbilt” program. It is and endowment program that funds grants for need- based aid. Vanderbilt is consistently recognized as a great school for need-based aid. Same thing at other elite schools. Do a little research.

Well, this economist and NBER researcher studied many institutions and came to the conclusion that "only a small fraction of endowment returns are dedicated to financial aid." Schools would like you to believe that need-based aid is coming from endowment beneficence. It isn't the case in general. https://people.ucsc.edu/~gbulman/endowment_4_2022.pdf

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:MIT is world famous.

It is close to top or top in many world rankings.

[Anonymous]

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Anonymous wrote:You can't sell online ads or magazines if the rankings don't have some movement. It is helpful to look at the rankings data over time to get a sense of school tiers: https://andyreiter.com/datasets/

Colby hasn't historically been regularly ranked in the top 15. They've often been in the high teens and 20s so that drop isn't huge.

Shocker: Columbia's real stats don't equate to being regularly ranked with Stanford, Harvard, and Yale!

This was always clear to students, which is why Columbia was never able to attract HYPSM cross admits.

USNWR is influential, unfortunately, but there are limits. Princeton has been #1 for the past umpteen years, but it isn't winning cross-admit battles with Harvard, Stanford, and MIT.

Unless you want to be a D3 athlete, I don't see MIT winning too many cross-admit battles with those schools either. With MIT's limited excellence in eng, CS, and econ, their ranking always feels a little inflated.

Stanford would probably be better than MIT in all of those top areas too and is also great in just about every other discipline.

Not better in engineering and technology. Close, but not better.

Stanford would likely get the nod in CS and MIT in the other engineering disciplines. Even if it is just close in MIT's very strongest areas, I can see the point about Stanford pretty clearly being the better overall school. Most people who get into the two "Boston area" schools don't choose MIT either. With Harvard, I would give MIT the clear advantage in CS and engineering though.

The other way at looking at it, though, is MIT is unmatched overall in its focus areas.

[Anonymous]

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Anonymous wrote:Faculty members get tenure at prestigious R1 research universities primarily because of their research and publications. Many of them do not focus a lot of time and effort into teaching undergrads and some avoid it completely if they can. You may get well-known professors but that doesn't equate to "better" in terms of teaching and classroom experience (particularly for undergrads).

So why does everyone want to get into an ivy when it isn’t about the teaching?

Dartmouth, Brown, and Princeton probably have very good teaching. But USNWR rankings and research reputations have little to do with actual quality of education.

There's a ranking for that, too!

Best Undergraduate Teaching, National Universities

1. Elon
2. Brown
3. Princeton (tie)
3. Rice (tie)
5. Boston College (tie)
5. Dartmouth (tie)
7. Georgia State (tie)
7. William & Mary (tie)
9. University of Maryland, Baltimore County (tie)
9. Notre Dame (tie)

https://www.usnews.com/best-colleges/rankings/national-universities/undergraduate-teaching

Best Undergraduate Teaching, Liberal Arts Colleges

1. Carleton
2. Amherst
3. Agnes Scott (tie)
3. Bowdoin (tie)
3. Davidson (tie)
6. Grinnell (tie)
6. Swarthmore (tie)
8. Bates
9. Colorado College (tie)
9. Pomona

https://www.usnews.com/best-colleges/rankings/national-liberal-arts-colleges/undergraduate-teaching

Yes, but these are for some reason separate from the main USNWR rankings, which are about overall resources and budgets, not about what it is actually focused on (e.g. teaching).

[Anonymous]

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Anonymous wrote:Why do people care about this crap?

People in the DC area love showing off where they went to school or where their kids go. College shirts here are like the Apple, Google, and Facebook shirts and hoodies all over Silicon Valley.

It’s all they have.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

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Anonymous wrote:You can't sell online ads or magazines if the rankings don't have some movement. It is helpful to look at the rankings data over time to get a sense of school tiers: https://andyreiter.com/datasets/

Colby hasn't historically been regularly ranked in the top 15. They've often been in the high teens and 20s so that drop isn't huge.

Shocker: Columbia's real stats don't equate to being regularly ranked with Stanford, Harvard, and Yale!

This was always clear to students, which is why Columbia was never able to attract HYPSM cross admits.

USNWR is influential, unfortunately, but there are limits. Princeton has been #1 for the past umpteen years, but it isn't winning cross-admit battles with Harvard, Stanford, and MIT.

Unless you want to be a D3 athlete, I don't see MIT winning too many cross-admit battles with those schools either. With MIT's limited excellence in eng, CS, and econ, their ranking always feels a little inflated.

Stanford would probably be better than MIT in all of those top areas too and is also great in just about every other discipline.

Not better in engineering and technology. Close, but not better.

Stanford would likely get the nod in CS and MIT in the other engineering disciplines. Even if it is just close in MIT's very strongest areas, I can see the point about Stanford pretty clearly being the better overall school. Most people who get into the two "Boston area" schools don't choose MIT either. With Harvard, I would give MIT the clear advantage in CS and engineering though.

For those who care about pure prestige and impressive name recognition (a lot of US News readers), Harvard and Yale can't be matched outside of Oxbridge, though Stanford and Princeton are getting there. Mass Tech and those perceived public universities in Chicago and Pennsylvania (Univ of __) aren't .

Stanford’s prestige is the same as Harvard’s—maybe greater.. Oxbridge is not at Harvard or Stanford’s level; it’s more like Columbia or UCLA.

[Anonymous]

Is this really a serious discussion for people, or just the college admissions equivalent of locker room b.s.? The comments here seem so earnest, but it's hard to imagine how smart people can really believe they're able to parse out differences in quality between schools that all provide an excellent education and all have (mostly) students who are in the top 1-2% intellectually. Or that it matters. You simply don't have the data you need to do it. Nobody does.

[Anonymous]

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Anonymous wrote:Regarding to G'Town's ranking, I feel it has something to do with the lack of STEM program, and this hurts its academic reputation. It graduates successful bankers, doctors, lawyers and politicians, etc., but not scientists and engineers. This probably is due to its resource, or by design. Who would go to college in DC. for engineering?

It seems like schools with small endowments, and limited physical space for expansion, like Georgetown Tufts BC and William and Mary are going to be on the downslope over the next 10 years, while public universities like U Florida and UT Austin are going to keep rising because of their research capabilities, and their overall appeal.

William & Mary especially since their endowment is well over $1 billion below the next lowest in that group. Georgetown is unique among those mentioned because of its truly national brand. Georgetown would likely rise a few spots ranking wise just by using the common application and instituting an early decision program.

Going to common app will have no impact on Georgetown's ranking.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

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Anonymous wrote:Regarding to G'Town's ranking, I feel it has something to do with the lack of STEM program, and this hurts its academic reputation. It graduates successful bankers, doctors, lawyers and politicians, etc., but not scientists and engineers. This probably is due to its resource, or by design. Who would go to college in DC. for engineering?

It seems like schools with small endowments, and limited physical space for expansion, like Georgetown Tufts BC and William and Mary are going to be on the downslope over the next 10 years, while public universities like U Florida and UT Austin are going to keep rising because of their research capabilities, and their overall appeal.

William & Mary especially since their endowment is well over $1 billion below the next lowest in that group. Georgetown is unique among those mentioned because of its truly national brand. Georgetown would likely rise a few spots ranking wise just by using the common application and instituting an early decision program.

Going to common app will have no impact on Georgetown's ranking.

Not on their ranking, but many more would apply and thus their admission rate would go down, significantly.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

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Anonymous wrote:Faculty members get tenure at prestigious R1 research universities primarily because of their research and publications. Many of them do not focus a lot of time and effort into teaching undergrads and some avoid it completely if they can. You may get well-known professors but that doesn't equate to "better" in terms of teaching and classroom experience (particularly for undergrads).

So why does everyone want to get into an ivy when it isn’t about the teaching?

Typically they look to the lower level D1 Ivy League because they are limited athletically and are not good enough to play at a Power 5 school like Stanford, Northwestern, or Duke.

This seems to be an odd response. Not everyone wants to play college level sports. My guess is the brand recognition that Ivies still hold. Someone looking at a resume and sees Columbia will recognize the school and know the applicant likely has certain baseline abilities. If I got a resume from Pamona or Harvey Mudd - at least before I had kids and started to pay attention to such things - I would have no basis for opinion.