With US News Being Challenged by Top Schools, Does it Make More Sense to Combine Rankings?

[Anonymous]

*Stanford is typically ranked in the USNWR T5

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Since US News is potentially being undermined by unhappy universities that dislike US News' system, is shifting to a more balanced approach a better representation of where colleges stand? For example, using something like this which was previously shared to avoid over-reliance on one source:

Given how well Georgetown places in business and politics, having them in the T15 isn’t crazy!

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:The problem I have with Duke is that its overall departmental rankings are not nearly as high as its so called peers. A top ten school should be loaded with top ten, even top 20 departments. Duke is severely lacking in that regard.

Duke law and medicine are both T5. Law and Medicine covers a lot. You should be able to find a lot of sub-disciplines in T10 within law and medicine. Duke Business is T11, should have a lot of sub-disciplines in T10. Duke's BME is T3, public policy T5, environment T5, econ T5, just list a few.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

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Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:There’s a certain amount of privilege that comes from being able to spend the equivalent of a new home for each child on college tuition and honestly say that you don’t care about rankings or the perceived status of a school and can solely pick a school based on perfect fit for a child (as you’ve had the resources to personally visit all of these schools). More power to you if you’re at that point.

My sprinkler box broke yesterday. In a quick Google search, I pulled up at least a half-dozen rankings of different sprinkler boxes ranging in cost from $100-$200.

So, it’s sort of wacky to me that the colleges themselves just want to wish away the large demand for college rankings when people are spending *hundreds* of thousands of dollars over the course of 4 years.

I’m not saying that the US News rankings or other ranking systems like them are accurate, infallible or should be taken as gospel. There are a lot of flaws with them. However, this notion that all people should be above these rankings and they’re worthless is, as I’ve noted above, a super-privileged position. This is the single largest financial decision most people will have outside of their house (and maybe even more than their house). When there is demand for multiple rankings for $100-$200 sprinkler boxes, it’s perfectly reasonable that there’s going to be a ton of demand for colleges that cost upwards of $90,000 per year. If the US News rankings aren’t there, then someone else will fill that void.

PP said start with a vetted list (such as the guides published by Princeton Review). From those few hundred schools, do the research to find what is best for your child. Mine, for example, did not want a large school, or a religious school or an urban school. She limited her search to the East Coast. She wanted to study STEM and was not drawn to Greek life or a big party scene.

Not really privileged. It just takes time and knowing your child.

PP here. That’s perfectly fine about researching the atmospheric factors of large vs. small, urban vs. college town, Greek-heavy vs. little Greek life, etc.

However, to deny that people aren’t going to want to know whether a school is perceived to be highly-ranked on academic prestige (however it’s defined) when they’re spending so much money on a college education is putting the proverbial head in the sand.

What I’m seeing is that college administrators want for everyone to focus on the atmospheric factors that you’ve pointed out. And, to be clear, all of that is very important.

However, it’s disingenuous for those same colleges to get bothered when they’re being measured on academic prestige even though (a) these are academic institutions, (b) they’re charging so much tuition money, and (c ) the top schools are essentially lottery systems of exclusivity when it comes to admissions. They’re all perpetuating elite status in their admissions processes, yet then complain when other parties (like the US News) start ranking them on elite status relative to each other. I have little sympathy for that stance.

If schools wouldn’t have such opaque admissions processes along with being much more transparent about graduate outcomes, maybe people wouldn’t turn to rankings systems as much. However, nature abhors a vacuum.

This. Beautifully said.

FWIW, the schools who complain about USNWR are the ones trying to sell themselves as more prestigious than they are. USNWR cuts through the colleges' sales bs ("An Ivy is an Ivy!") and gives consumers the real scoop on prestige.

No one is saying people shouldn't look at campus size, location, and other factors as well.

US News isn't a measure of prestige though. It measures whatever it's supposed to measure. If it was a measure of prestige, Harvard would be #1 every year. Remember before the scandal, Columbia was #2 and Stanford was #6, neither of which are believable.

HYPSM are top 5, as it should be. Stanford is number 3.

Columbia poured a ton of resources into committing fraud and was caught. They were caught using publicly available resources. Now they’re number 18, where they belong.

Ok but for the past decade US News was underranking Stanford heavily. Also Columbia is better than 18. I think this combined ranking putting it at 11 is reasonable.

You do realize that what you think is reasonable has been influenced by 3 decades of rankings, right?

Same to PP, who thinks HYPSM as top 5 is 'as it should be'.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:The problem I have with Duke is that its overall departmental rankings are not nearly as high as its so called peers. A top ten school should be loaded with top ten, even top 20 departments. Duke is severely lacking in that regard.

Duke law and medicine are both T5. Law and Medicine covers a lot. You should be able to find a lot of sub-disciplines in T10 within law and medicine. Duke Business is T11, should have a lot of sub-disciplines in T10. Duke's BME is T3, public policy T5, environment T5, econ T5, just list a few.

But everyone here is convinced that it’s an undergraduate ranking. Never heard Duke Law and Econ being top 5. You’re making things up….

[Anonymous]

I just checked on Duke Law. It is indeed in the top 5 at USNWR.

[Anonymous]

It’s in the top 5 because most of the real top law schools are boycotting USNWR.

[Anonymous]

Duke is #18 for graduate economics. Try again

https://www.usnews.com/best-graduate-schools/top-humanities-schools/economics-rankings

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

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Anonymous wrote:Ranking college makes no sense at all. What is the point?

+100 a “very good” university, per any ranking, doesn’t mean it’s good for all students.

Of course no one should literally pick by going in order of a ranking, but it's a general proxy for which schools have very strong academics, attract quality students, and open lots of doors. That is certainly useful information to have for many ambitious kids.

If you don’t know that Harvard has stronger academics, more accomplished students, and a better career network than University of Tennessee at Martin without the use of rankings, then I feel for you. But it makes 0 difference, and isn’t even qualifiable, whether Rice is “better” than Chicago or Hopkins or or Georgia Tech. None.

+1 They all have highly capable professors with varied interests they're pursuing. They all have top notch research labs. They all have plenty of strong opportunities for students to get experience working/interning in their field of interest. Some of this is quantifiable, but if you were to do it you'd find the differences so miniscule as to make their consideration far down the list of factors to consider.

[Anonymous]

This page is exactly what’s wrong with rankings. Quibbling over Duke, Georgetown, Columbia is nonsense. There is no way anyone can credibly say any of these are “better” than the others. They are just different, with different areas of strength and different weakness. Many of the supposed strengths and weaknesses are just value judgments. There is no actual science behind college rankings and we should all just ignore them.

And, to the poster who keeps chiming in that it helped them cull down the 3000+ colleges, you could absolutely do that without any ordinal ranking.

[Anonymous]

To Duke’s credit, they dropped out of reporting to USNWR for their medical and law schools.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:There’s a certain amount of privilege that comes from being able to spend the equivalent of a new home for each child on college tuition and honestly say that you don’t care about rankings or the perceived status of a school and can solely pick a school based on perfect fit for a child (as you’ve had the resources to personally visit all of these schools). More power to you if you’re at that point.

My sprinkler box broke yesterday. In a quick Google search, I pulled up at least a half-dozen rankings of different sprinkler boxes ranging in cost from $100-$200.

So, it’s sort of wacky to me that the colleges themselves just want to wish away the large demand for college rankings when people are spending *hundreds* of thousands of dollars over the course of 4 years.

I’m not saying that the US News rankings or other ranking systems like them are accurate, infallible or should be taken as gospel. There are a lot of flaws with them. However, this notion that all people should be above these rankings and they’re worthless is, as I’ve noted above, a super-privileged position. This is the single largest financial decision most people will have outside of their house (and maybe even more than their house). When there is demand for multiple rankings for $100-$200 sprinkler boxes, it’s perfectly reasonable that there’s going to be a ton of demand for colleges that cost upwards of $90,000 per year. If the US News rankings aren’t there, then someone else will fill that void.

PP said start with a vetted list (such as the guides published by Princeton Review). From those few hundred schools, do the research to find what is best for your child. Mine, for example, did not want a large school, or a religious school or an urban school. She limited her search to the East Coast. She wanted to study STEM and was not drawn to Greek life or a big party scene.

Not really privileged. It just takes time and knowing your child.

PP here. That’s perfectly fine about researching the atmospheric factors of large vs. small, urban vs. college town, Greek-heavy vs. little Greek life, etc.

However, to deny that people aren’t going to want to know whether a school is perceived to be highly-ranked on academic prestige (however it’s defined) when they’re spending so much money on a college education is putting the proverbial head in the sand.

What I’m seeing is that college administrators want for everyone to focus on the atmospheric factors that you’ve pointed out. And, to be clear, all of that is very important.

However, it’s disingenuous for those same colleges to get bothered when they’re being measured on academic prestige even though (a) these are academic institutions, (b) they’re charging so much tuition money, and (c ) the top schools are essentially lottery systems of exclusivity when it comes to admissions. They’re all perpetuating elite status in their admissions processes, yet then complain when other parties (like the US News) start ranking them on elite status relative to each other. I have little sympathy for that stance.

If schools wouldn’t have such opaque admissions processes along with being much more transparent about graduate outcomes, maybe people wouldn’t turn to rankings systems as much. However, nature abhors a vacuum.

This. Beautifully said.

FWIW, the schools who complain about USNWR are the ones trying to sell themselves as more prestigious than they are. USNWR cuts through the colleges' sales bs ("An Ivy is an Ivy!") and gives consumers the real scoop on prestige.

No one is saying people shouldn't look at campus size, location, and other factors as well.

US News isn't a measure of prestige though. It measures whatever it's supposed to measure. If it was a measure of prestige, Harvard would be #1 every year. Remember before the scandal, Columbia was #2 and Stanford was #6, neither of which are believable.

HYPSM are top 5, as it should be. Stanford is number 3.

Columbia poured a ton of resources into committing fraud and was caught. They were caught using publicly available resources. Now they’re number 18, where they belong.

Ok but for the past decade US News was underranking Stanford heavily. Also Columbia is better than 18. I think this combined ranking putting it at 11 is reasonable.

You do realize that what you think is reasonable has been influenced by 3 decades of rankings, right?

Same to PP, who thinks HYPSM as top 5 is 'as it should be'.

That "as it should be" also existed before the rankings and then was reinforced by it. I read a history of the rankings development that said their initial model did not have all of HYPSM at the top so they changed the model to make it so they did. Because they felt the public would not accept a ranking as valid that didn't reinforce existing perceptions. Nobody wants to hear that the actual data might show something else.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:It’s in the top 5 because most of the real top law schools are boycotting USNWR.

Every top law school, including Duke, boycotted US News. The only one that didn’t was UChicago, probably because US News has been very generous to them.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:The problem I have with Duke is that its overall departmental rankings are not nearly as high as its so called peers. A top ten school should be loaded with top ten, even top 20 departments. Duke is severely lacking in that regard.

Duke law and medicine are both T5. Law and Medicine covers a lot. You should be able to find a lot of sub-disciplines in T10 within law and medicine. Duke Business is T11, should have a lot of sub-disciplines in T10. Duke's BME is T3, public policy T5, environment T5, econ T5, just list a few.

But everyone here is convinced that it’s an undergraduate ranking. Never heard Duke Law and Econ being top 5. You’re making things up….

This is an undergrad ranking. The sources are all undergrad-focused: US News, Wall Street Journal, Forbes, Niche, etc. All the schools in the top 20 overall here have strong undergrad programs and teaching.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:There’s a certain amount of privilege that comes from being able to spend the equivalent of a new home for each child on college tuition and honestly say that you don’t care about rankings or the perceived status of a school and can solely pick a school based on perfect fit for a child (as you’ve had the resources to personally visit all of these schools). More power to you if you’re at that point.

My sprinkler box broke yesterday. In a quick Google search, I pulled up at least a half-dozen rankings of different sprinkler boxes ranging in cost from $100-$200.

So, it’s sort of wacky to me that the colleges themselves just want to wish away the large demand for college rankings when people are spending *hundreds* of thousands of dollars over the course of 4 years.

I’m not saying that the US News rankings or other ranking systems like them are accurate, infallible or should be taken as gospel. There are a lot of flaws with them. However, this notion that all people should be above these rankings and they’re worthless is, as I’ve noted above, a super-privileged position. This is the single largest financial decision most people will have outside of their house (and maybe even more than their house). When there is demand for multiple rankings for $100-$200 sprinkler boxes, it’s perfectly reasonable that there’s going to be a ton of demand for colleges that cost upwards of $90,000 per year. If the US News rankings aren’t there, then someone else will fill that void.

PP said start with a vetted list (such as the guides published by Princeton Review). From those few hundred schools, do the research to find what is best for your child. Mine, for example, did not want a large school, or a religious school or an urban school. She limited her search to the East Coast. She wanted to study STEM and was not drawn to Greek life or a big party scene.

Not really privileged. It just takes time and knowing your child.

PP here. That’s perfectly fine about researching the atmospheric factors of large vs. small, urban vs. college town, Greek-heavy vs. little Greek life, etc.

However, to deny that people aren’t going to want to know whether a school is perceived to be highly-ranked on academic prestige (however it’s defined) when they’re spending so much money on a college education is putting the proverbial head in the sand.

What I’m seeing is that college administrators want for everyone to focus on the atmospheric factors that you’ve pointed out. And, to be clear, all of that is very important.

However, it’s disingenuous for those same colleges to get bothered when they’re being measured on academic prestige even though (a) these are academic institutions, (b) they’re charging so much tuition money, and (c ) the top schools are essentially lottery systems of exclusivity when it comes to admissions. They’re all perpetuating elite status in their admissions processes, yet then complain when other parties (like the US News) start ranking them on elite status relative to each other. I have little sympathy for that stance.

If schools wouldn’t have such opaque admissions processes along with being much more transparent about graduate outcomes, maybe people wouldn’t turn to rankings systems as much. However, nature abhors a vacuum.

This. Beautifully said.

FWIW, the schools who complain about USNWR are the ones trying to sell themselves as more prestigious than they are. USNWR cuts through the colleges' sales bs ("An Ivy is an Ivy!") and gives consumers the real scoop on prestige.

No one is saying people shouldn't look at campus size, location, and other factors as well.

US News isn't a measure of prestige though. It measures whatever it's supposed to measure. If it was a measure of prestige, Harvard would be #1 every year. Remember before the scandal, Columbia was #2 and Stanford was #6, neither of which are believable.

HYPSM are top 5, as it should be. Stanford is number 3.

Columbia poured a ton of resources into committing fraud and was caught. They were caught using publicly available resources. Now they’re number 18, where they belong.

Ok but for the past decade US News was underranking Stanford heavily. Also Columbia is better than 18. I think this combined ranking putting it at 11 is reasonable.

You do realize that what you think is reasonable has been influenced by 3 decades of rankings, right?

Same to PP, who thinks HYPSM as top 5 is 'as it should be'.

That "as it should be" also existed before the rankings and then was reinforced by it. I read a history of the rankings development that said their initial model did not have all of HYPSM at the top so they changed the model to make it so they did. Because they felt the public would not accept a ranking as valid that didn't reinforce existing perceptions. Nobody wants to hear that the actual data might show something else.

+1 many have come out and said the undergrad experience at Harvard isn't actually great, as many of the professors are more focused on their research. But we're so used to Harvard being at the top that I think people are willing to ignore that.