WSJ Rankings 2025

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:It's all in the criteria they choose. We've seen several rankings this week, all drastically different. Would be better for families to be able to choose the criteria that are the most important to them, and then have rankings list colleges based on what that family needs.

Exists: https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2023/opinion/build-your-own-college-rankings.html

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I do like the criteria though.. Limited fluff/BS factors, not based on hoity-toity professorial 'reputation' opinions (like we care). It's all about the money.

Though it is a weird methodology that they actually use. It's not just raw salary data for the schools.

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. These scores were then combined with scores for raw graduate salaries to factor in absolute performance alongside performance relative to our estimates. Our analysis for this metric used research on this topic by the policy-research think tank the Brookings Institution as a guide.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Top 20 for those interested without subscriptions:
1: Princeton
2: Babson
3: Stanford
4: Yale
5: Claremont McKenna
6: MIT
7: Harvard
8: Berkeley
9: Georgia Tech
10: Davidson
11: Bentley
12: UC Davis
13: Penn
14: Columbia
15: Lehigh
16: San Jose State
17: Notre Dame
18: UC Merced
19: Virginia Tech
20: Harvey Mudd

I kind of like the list - very pre-professional focused and makes sense for the type who read WSJ. Methodology is 70% Student Outcomes, 20% Learning Environment, and 10% Diversity, with each of those broken up with different metrics.

Back in 2000ish, WSJ supposedly hired a monkey to throw darts at a board of stocks to pick stocks to invest in. A jokey way to show the list doesn't matter in an irrational market. Always wondered what happened to that monkey.. Looks like he still works for WSJ!

That list is hysterical!!! Definitely Onion material

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I do like the criteria though.. Limited fluff/BS factors, not based on hoity-toity professorial 'reputation' opinions (like we care). It's all about the money.

Though it is a weird methodology that they actually use. It's not just raw salary data for the schools.

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. These scores were then combined with scores for raw graduate salaries to factor in absolute performance alongside performance relative to our estimates. Our analysis for this metric used research on this topic by the policy-research think tank the Brookings Institution as a guide.

+1
Even the raw salary data that some institutions collect raises questions, but this puzzles me even more.
What exactly are they using, and how reliable is it?

[Anonymous]

Can someone please post the top 50. or at least #21 through #50 as the top 20 have already been posted ?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Towson Universty at number 40 in the U.S.– wow!

Sorry, the ranking just lost all credibility by ranking Towson at #40.

- a Towson alum

Tons of kids are debating between CalTech at #39 and Towson at #40.

[Anonymous]

Emory 103? But Babson at 2?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Emory 103? But Babson at 2?

Emory went from 20 to 103 in 2 years. Crazy work.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Emory 103? But Babson at 2?

NYU is 273, but I doubt Stern kids think they are at any job market disadvantage.

[Anonymous]

Curious if a UC Merced admit would trade that for Harvey Mudd?

Nah. That's why UC Merced's yield is 9%. Not its admit rate, its yield rate.

These rankings just get more absurd to pull in the clicks. TikTok meet college admissions.

[Anonymous]

NYU at 273 is a joke.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Can someone please post the top 50. or at least #21 through #50 as the top 20 have already been posted ?

Hope these screenshots are ok.

[Anonymous]

Finally, a ranking criteria that makes sense. Kudos to WSJ! As a parent, I'm a lot more interested in financial impact of degree vs how many pell grants students at a particular school obtains. You naysayers are the sheeple.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Finally, a ranking criteria that makes sense. Kudos to WSJ! As a parent, I'm a lot more interested in financial impact of degree vs how many pell grants students at a particular school obtains. You naysayers are the sheeple.

I don't think you are interpreting the WSJ rankings correctly...WSJ looks at net cost of attendance and payback (which heavily favors schools like Princeton and others with generous financial aid and Pell grant recipients). Even the financial impacts are heavily weighted by the background of the kids attending.

Many of the schools with wealthier student bodies fare exceptionally poorly in the WSJ rankings.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Can someone please post the top 50. or at least #21 through #50 as the top 20 have already been posted ?

Top 50....plus 150 extra as bonus...