Will schools like Wake and Tulane fall in popularity as they fell in rankings?
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Anonymous
That was one of the biggest surprise for me today. It’s currently ranked higher in the Big Ten than Indiana and tied with PSU. |
Anonymous
| Why isn’t small class size considered a plus? I would have to guess a class of 20 is going to hand a vastly different flavor than a class of 200. |
Anonymous
+ 1,000 |
Anonymous
Tulane did as well |
Anonymous
+2 All of the silly parents bragging about their kid's school and its place in the rankings, are now calling the rankings idiotic after their school tanked. This is so enjoyable! |
Anonymous
| Haters!!!!!! |
Anonymous
It is all very dumb. Ranking is for people who lack confidence and can't think for themselves, I guess. To think that you would judge a school differently over a "rank" change when the school itself and the schools it is ranked against haven't changed at all. Madness. |
Anonymous
Yes I am trying to figure out what does it even mean? What are the real world implications? Is it just ego driven competition in certain segments of the UMC? I know plenty of UMC for who this won't matter at all. They would rather send their kids to Wake et. al. so they continue to network with the same people they always would, which is not Michigan State. FWIW of all of the high ranked publics, UNC is the most overrated. That school is extremely messed up right now, a lot of it due to the legislature and politics in NC. |
Anonymous
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National vs regional is a designation that isn’t decided by the public.
Wake was the #1 school in the Southern region in USNWR when I started, but got changed to a national university in either 96 or 97. It is still the same school either way. I always thought it was a bit hard to compare it to much larger schools in the national list. Now, it has grown since I was there, so that changes it a bit. I loved the size of 3600 students-it was big enough to not know everyone, but also small enough for those class sizes and good interaction with professors. It is still a good school with a lovely campus that appeals to a certain type of student |
Anonymous
| It's brutal for Tulane, which relies so heavily on ED. Who's going to ED to #73? |
Anonymous
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Here’s the letter from Vanderbilt:
http://view.comms.vu.edu/?qs=ffde8b61400da34d1c6d4041de053bd1199e3e56308fe95b91f16c156d7184d115202fd1fada9f200c8be7e7476b059dfd6b2af5397cb3c830e7ab4fff9742383078f59133128165ba141edb0d8b5534 It lays out why the new rankings unfairly penalize smaller research universities, and why the methodology is so flawed. I’m not a Vandy alum, but I think this letter makes a lot of sense. |
Anonymous
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Here’s the text:
Dear Vanderbilt families, Vanderbilt is stronger than at any time in its history: Our students and faculty are our most qualified ever. Our finances are remarkably sound, our fundraising is reaching new highs and our research enterprise is thriving. As a result, our graduates are thriving as well. In the U.S. News & World Report college rankings released today, Vanderbilt again placed among the top 20 national universities, tying with Dartmouth for 18th. Last year, we tied with Brown for 13th. The change in our ranking is entirely due to changes in U.S. News’ methodology. Indeed, on the rankings criteria that stayed the same as in previous years, we maintained or improved our performance. U.S News’ change in methodology has led to dramatic movement in the rankings overall, disadvantaging many private research universities while privileging large public institutions. To look at just a few examples, The University of Chicago dropped from sixth to 12th. Dartmouth moved down six places. Berkeley and UCLA are now tied for 15th after placing 20th last year, and UNC advanced seven places to 22nd. Some schools have seen quite dramatic declines: Wake Forest dropped 18 places, Tulane slid 29. Washington University in St. Louis dropped out of the top 20, and NYU lost 10 places, moving to 35 from 25. Specifically, U.S. News has made significant methodological changes that reduce the emphasis on metrics that measure faculty and student quality—and that increase the emphasis on social mobility, which they measure using incomplete and misleading data. Measuring social mobility is an important consideration, to be sure. Vanderbilt is profoundly committed to offering access to qualified students from all backgrounds. But it is deeply misleading for U.S. News to commingle this policy concern with measures of education quality. Among the new methodology’s many flaws, the following are most glaring: Some of the rankings’ key measures of academic quality, where Vanderbilt has historically done well—such as faculty with the highest degrees attainable in their fields and the percentage of entering students who are in the top 10 percent of their high-school class—were eliminated, while others, including faculty resources, were assigned less weight. Previously, U.S. News eliminated student selectivity as a factor. Criteria related to social mobility have been given more weight, such as the percentage of Pell students. Students from all backgrounds succeed at Vanderbilt at a higher rate than at many other institutions, but because Vanderbilt’s overall percentage of Pell and first-generation students is lower than at many state institutions, U.S. News’ metric for Vanderbilt is lower, affecting our ranking. Data about earnings, indebtedness and first-generation students are being sourced for the first time from the U.S. Department of Education’s College Scorecard. The scorecard only captures about one-third of Vanderbilt undergraduates—those who receive Pell grants or federal loans. In other words, U.S. News is not factoring in the two-thirds of our graduates who did not rely on federal funds when determining the value of a Vanderbilt education, resulting in a highly non-representative sample. To put it differently, the U.S. News ranking puts no value on the career outcomes of any of our students not receiving federal aid. That is particularly ironic, considering that the main reason so few of our students rely on federally subsidized aid is because of the generous aid we provide through Opportunity Vanderbilt and other programs—a total of $366 million in 2022–23. U.S. News is no longer including financial information about academic expenditures from Vanderbilt University Medical Center when calculating our score for expenditures per student, despite our sharing faculty, facilities and funds with VUMC and overseeing much of that at our cost. Because Vanderbilt and VUMC are separate legal entities, we report our finances separately to the federal government. We have challenged this decision with U.S. News in recent months, since VUMC makes such a significant contribution to our educational environment—and many of our peers factor in the expenditures of their medical centers—to no avail. As a research university, we are particularly distressed by the lack of rigor and competence that has increasingly characterized U.S. News’ annual lists. This year’s changes come after several years of questionable decisions by U.S. News & World Report. Columbia University withdrew from participation in the rankings earlier this year in protest, as have several professional schools, including our own Law School. There was similar turmoil in the rankings of schools of medicine; some, such as Harvard Medical School, have withdrawn from participating in the rankings. At Vanderbilt, we are considering our next steps in light of this year’s developments. Going forward, we will share more of the data and metrics we believe are the most pertinent to academic excellence and outstanding outcomes for our graduates. In the near term, we are offering a webinar on Friday, Sept. 29, at noon CT, in which Vanderbilt’s Data and Strategic Analytics team will share their analysis of this year’s U.S. News rankings and answer your questions. Register here. As always, we are interested in hearing from you on this matter or on any other related to your family's experience at Vanderbilt. Thank you for entrusting us with your student's education, and for being an integral part of our university community. Sincerely, Daniel Diermeier Chancellor C. Cybele Raver Provost |
Anonymous
Academics at Wake are hard hence 'work' forest. Students are always transferring to UNC for easier academics. |
Anonymous
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First, the schools aren’t that similar. Tulane, like NE, has been actively gaming the ratings in recent years and has move up a bit as a result. They are doing outreach the right places and New Orleans is a big draw for some students. I don’t see that changing.
Before this year, Wake has been firmly ensconced in the 25 to 30 range in the rankings for close to 3 decades. I’m not saying this because the ranking is significant but to point out they were not gaming anything. At 5500 students, it’s smaller than most national universities. Class sizes really are small, even introductory lectures. The terminal degree of faculty factor that has been eliminated is an area they did very well. More than 98 percent of the class is employed or in grad school within six months of graduation. And they are very competitive in the ACC in numerous sports. My student loves it. |
Anonymous
Does NE mean Northeasteern? Northeastern is one school that actually produces actual meaningful results. Maybe more comparable to a school like Lehigh which climbed up a lot this year. Northeastern with much larger population is probably better than smaller Wake Forest in most of the major metrics. |