Which rankings are most important?
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Anonymous
The PP here. Thank you for your response. Your point is well taken. Having gone through the college selection with 3 kids and looking at hundreds of resumes annually, I just personally believe that kids are more likely to be successful in schools with a better fit - no matter the rank. And you cannot assume that every kid (no matter how smart they are) is going to be successful everywhere. For example, UChicago is a great highly ranked school and its graduates do very well. My BIL graduated from there and he loved it. However I can honestly say that, after looking at it for 2 of my kids (who both attend top ranked schools), it would not be a good fit for those 2. Thus, I do not think they would do as well there as they are doing at their current colleges. Even among the Ivies the campuses and cultures are different. A kid who would fit in well at Columbia might not fit in so well at Dartmouth - I just think students need to focus on more than just rankings and perceived employability. |
Anonymous
Fair enough. However I do think within the top 25 or top 10 LAC there are enough difference in fit in culture to pick a school that opens up those avenues (within the top 25 you have massive publics like cal or UCLA or you can go to somewhere microscopic like Williams). When I made comments of 'ivy' i didn't mean literally the ivies plus stanford. I meant the top 20-25 schools or top 10 LAC that have some national recognition among employers that pretty much target grads of 'elite' schools. |
Anonymous
DH of good friend was managing director of huge IB - undergrad school was low end of top 100 |
Anonymous
| The one thing that gets lost is that rankings don't measure is the teaching skill of the professor. Throughout my graduate and undergrad career, I went to a top 25, a school that was ranked around 100 and another that was at 150. If I had to rate my instructors, I'd say the best ones were at the 100 school followed closely by the 150, with the "elite" university as a very very distant third. The profs at the top tier college might have been good researchers or gotten published, but as lecturers they left a lot to be desired. |
Anonymous
| During the downturn my law firm saw an opportunity to "upgrade" their associate pool by laying off attorneys who had graduated from less "brand name" law schools and replacing them with Ivy-educated talent available in the market. |
Anonymous
That's in respect to law school though and not UG. If I knew anyone who could consistently crush 170+ on LSAT, I would tell them to go to the easiest grading school they know that still has some brand name recognition and major in a puff major while pulling a high GPA. Someone in the t14 including ivy law schools will pick up a kid like that regardless of where they went to UG. |
Anonymous
| Rankings don't matter much. As long as you do well in your undergraduate years, get good grades and get a Masters (or JD,MD, etc.) from a well-known school, you will be fine. |
Anonymous
The quality of professors is more important in some subjects than others. I had good and bad professors at my top 50 UG. At my top 10 law school I had both the BEST teacher I’ve had at any level and the WORST teacher I’ve had at any level. In law school the quality of the teacher (professor) is really, really important. It’s always good to have an effective teacher, but in some subjects it is essential. |
Anonymous
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Six ways colleges can game their rankings numbers:
Www.propublica.org/article/the-admission-arms-race-six-ways-colleges-can-game-their-numbers |
Anonymous
nice article. I have to commend Georgetown (not an alum) in staying away from common app. It's easy for MIT to do so given the strength, ranking, and world wide name recognition of the school while maintaining a sub 10% acceptance rate but for Georgetown to stay disciplined instead of playing the acceptance rate game is refreshing. I hypothesize that if Gtown went to the common app, they could drive acceptance rates down by at-least 5 points in one admissions cycle. |
Anonymous
I didn't realize that some colleges track your interest, and the likelihood you'll commit to them, by counting your visits to their website. So that's how DC got into the Ivy - DC was stalking them. |
Anonymous
| I'm skeptical of the idea that they track on-line interest only because it seems like it would suck up a lot of resources. Perhaps this is something they check if they are concerned someone is using them as a backup. Tracking their actual communications and visits makes more sense. But plenty of kids get into colleges they don;t visit because they can only afford to go once, to admits weekend. |
Anonymous
The Propublica article said they, or at least the one school they quoted, checks electronic footprints. Examples included knowing whether you opened their email or whether you logged into their system. I doubt they can tell which kids are stalking the website every day. Maybe only a small number of colleges do this. But there does appear to be a payoff, which is more certainty that you will enroll if accepted, which ups their yield numbers. |
Anonymous
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A helpful person on another thread posted this, which I'm adding here for the next time someone searches on "rankings":
Acceptance rate is not an especially meaningful indication of selectivity because it tells you more about how many applied than what it took to get in. The DOE publishes information as to the average SAT and ACT component scores of admitted students. You can search by lowest 25% or highest 25%. If you are looking for the “easiest” school to get into, you’d look at lowest 25% - which points to the lowest score that gives you a chance to get in. http://nces.ed.gov/ipeds/datacenter/mastervariablelist.aspx?stepId=2 The website is not user friendly when it comes to comparing a broad range of schools, but play around enough and you’ll notice that HYP are NOT the most difficult schools to get into – schools like Cal Tech, Washington University and Harvey Mudd require higher scores. It would be nice to see an overall SAT ranking – the site linked does it by each STA component. The website does allow you to sort by bottom 25% composite ACT score, which tells you which schools are the most difficult to squeeze into. Here is the top part of that list: (apologies if the format is messed up) http://nces.ed.gov/ipeds/datacenter/Ranking.aspx?hfSelectedIds=10651|11||| California Institute of Technology Pasadena CA Harvey Mudd College Claremont CA Yale University New Haven CT University of Notre Dame Notre Dame IN Massachusetts Institute of Technology Cambridge MA Washington University in St Louis Saint Louis MO Franklin W. Olin College of Engineering Needham MA Princeton University Princeton NJ Harvard University Cambridge MA University of Chicago Chicago IL Northwestern University Evanston IL Pomona College Claremont CA Columbia University in the City of New York New York NY Vanderbilt University Nashville TN Rice University Houston TX Middlebury College Middlebury VT Stanford University Stanford CA Colgate University Hamilton NY Vassar College Poughkeepsie NY Duke University Durham NC Haverford College Haverford PA University of Pennsylvania Philadelphia PA Swarthmore College Swarthmore PA Emory University Atlanta GA Wesleyan University Middletown CT Georgetown University Washington DC Tufts University Medford MA Amherst College Amherst MA Bowdoin College Brunswick ME Dartmouth College Hanover NH Williams College Williamstown MA University of Michigan-Ann Arbor Ann Arbor MI Carleton College Northfield MN Johns Hopkins University Baltimore MD Tulane University of Louisiana New Orleans LA Boston College Chestnut Hill MA Wellesley College Wellesley MA Scripps College Claremont CA University of Southern California Los Angeles CA Claremont McKenna College Claremont CA Brown University Providence RI Reed College Portland OR Carnegie Mellon University Pittsburgh PA Davidson College Davidson NC Jewish Theological Seminary of America New York NY Cooper Union for the Advancement of Science and Art New York NY Cornell University Ithaca NY New York University New York NY Washington and Lee University Lexington VA Whitman College Walla Walla WA University of Richmond University of Richmond VA University of Virginia-Main Campus Charlottesville VA College of William and Mary Williamsburg VA University of Rochester Rochester NY Barnard College New York NY Hamilton College Clinton NY Case Western Reserve University Cleveland OH Kenyon College Gambier OH Oberlin College Oberlin OH Villanova University Villanova PA Lehigh University Bethlehem PA United States Air Force Academy USAFA CO University of Miami Coral Gables FL Northeastern University Boston MA Brandeis University Waltham MA Colby College Waterville ME Grinnell College Grinnell IA Macalester College Saint Paul MN St Olaf College Northfield MN Rose-Hulman Institute of Technology Terre Haute IN Babson College Wellesley MA Colorado School of Mines Golden CO George Washington University Washington DC Georgia Institute of Technology-Main Campus Atlanta GA Wheaton College Wheaton IL Occidental College Los Angeles CA University of California-Berkeley Berkeley CA Hendrix College Conway AR Gettysburg College Gettysburg PA Bucknell University Lewisburg PA Dickinson College Carlisle PA Willamette University Salem OR Lewis & Clark College Portland OR Denison University Granville OH University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill Chapel Hill NC SUNY at Geneseo Geneseo NY Southern Methodist University Dallas TX New College of Florida Sarasota FL University of Wisconsin-Madison Madison WI Rhodes College Memphis TN Sewanee-The University of the South Sewanee TN Trinity University San Antonio TX Brigham Young University-Provo Provo UT University of Puget Sound Tacoma WA SUNY at Binghamton Vestal NY Skidmore College Saratoga Springs NY Polytechnic Institute of New York University Brooklyn NY Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute Troy NY Fordham University Bronx NY Bryn Mawr College Bryn Mawr PA Ohio State University-Main Campus Columbus OH Lafayette College Easton PA Clemson University Clemson SC Furman University Greenville SC Santa Clara University Santa Clara CA University of San Diego San Diego CA University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign Champaign IL American University Washington DC Trinity College Hartford CT Boston University Boston MA Centre College Danville KY Drake University Des Moines IA Emerson College Boston MA Bentley University Waltham MA St John's College Annapolis MD Hampshire College Amherst MA Stonehill College Easton MA Loyola University Maryland Baltimore MD University of Minnesota-Twin Cities Minneapolis MN Gustavus Adolphus College Saint Peter MN Kalamazoo College Kalamazoo MI Truman State University Kirksville MO Saint Louis University-Main Campus Saint Louis MO St Louis College of Pharmacy Saint Louis MO Missouri University of Science and Technology Rolla MO University of Connecticut Storrs CT United States Coast Guard Academy New London CT University of Denver Denver CO Florida State University Tallahassee FL Illinois Wesleyan University Bloomington IL Loyola University-Chicago Chicago IL Butler University Indianapolis IN University of Georgia Athens GA Thomas Aquinas College Santa Paula CA University of California-San Diego La Jolla CA University of California-Los Angeles Los Angeles CA California Polytechnic State University-San Luis Obispo San Luis Obispo CA Grove City College Grove City PA Pennsylvania State University-Main Campus University Park PA University of Pittsburgh-Pittsburgh Campus Pittsburgh PA Muhlenberg College Allentown PA Rochester Institute of Technology Rochester NY Stony Brook University Stony Brook NY United States Military Academy West Point NY Elon University Elon NC The University of Texas at Austin Austin TX The University of Texas at Dallas Richardson TX Southwestern University Georgetown TX Beloit College Beloit WI Marquette University Milwaukee WI Milwaukee School of Engineering Milwaukee WI Purdue University-Main Campus West Lafayette IN University of St Thomas Houston TX Baylor University Waco TX University of Dallas Irving TX The University of Tennessee Knoxville TN Austin College Sherman TX South Dakota School of Mines and Technology Rapid City SD Belmont University Nashville TN Texas A & M University-College Station College Station TX Texas Christian University Fort Worth TX University of Vermont Burlington VT Seattle University Seattle WA University of Washington-Seattle Campus Seattle WA Gonzaga University Spokane WA University of Dayton Dayton OH Cedarville University Cedarville OH Hofstra University Hempstead NY Elmira College Elmira NY Albany College of Pharmacy and Health Sciences Albany NY University of South Carolina-Columbia Columbia SC Wofford College Spartanburg SC Rhode Island School of Design Providence RI Ohio Northern University Ada OH Miami University-Oxford Oxford OH The College of Wooster Wooster OH Drexel University Philadelphia PA University of Tulsa Tulsa OK University of California-Santa Barbara Santa Barbara CA Auburn University Auburn University AL Chapman University Orange CA Mills College Oakland CA Loyola Marymount University Los Angeles CA University of Colorado Boulder Boulder CO Mercer University Macon GA DePauw University Greencastle IN Earlham College Richmond IN Illinois Institute of Technology Chicago IL University of Florida Gainesville FL Rollins College Winter Park FL University of Delaware Newark DE University of Central Florida Orlando FL Creighton University Omaha NE The College of New Jersey Ewing NJ Kettering University Flint MI Hope College Holland MI Transylvania University Lexington KY University of Massachusetts Amherst Amherst MA University of Maryland-Baltimore County Baltimore MD St Mary's College of Maryland St. Mary's City MD Coe College Cedar Rapids IA Luther College Decorah IA Indiana University-Bloomington Bloomington IN The King’s College New York NY New Saint Andrews College Moscow ID |
Anonymous
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Forbes' ranking by academics (a real ranking): http://www.forbes.com/top-colleges/list/#page:1_sort:0_direction:asc_search:_filter:All%20state
Buzzfeed's mashup of the Forbes ranking and DateMySchool's hotness index for a ranking of smartest & sexiest colleges in the country (YMMV): http://www.buzzfeed.com/annanorth/the-sexiest-smartest-colleges-in-the-country |