Combining Multiple Undergrad Rankings To Get One! Interesting Results

[Anonymous]

Georgetown's consistency here is underrated too. Most rankings have them pretty up there - not a top 10 school but definitely a clear-cut top 20 school

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Is US News on UChicago’s payroll? Essentially every other rankings has them doing way worse. Same with Hopkins.

Chicago is pretty well known to stay within "allowable lines" (not like Columbia) but do everything possible to game the USNWR system (since honestly, the USNWR ranking should probably be weighted as 80-90% of any combined ranking based on its compare significance). Chicago is also not nearly as transparent about some of their data, which does make a lot of people wonder. It has worked very well over 20 years and Chicago really is thought of as a very top school right now (it was always good reputation wise and has always had a few amazing departments, don't get me wrong). It seems like half the kids from DC's elite private schools are there now after so many have applied ED2 over the last 2 years!

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Is US News on UChicago’s payroll? Essentially every other rankings has them doing way worse. Same with Hopkins.

Chicago is pretty well known to stay within "allowable lines" (not like Columbia) but do everything possible to game the USNWR system (since honestly, the USNWR ranking should probably be weighted as 80-90% of any combined ranking based on its compare significance). Chicago is also not nearly as transparent about some of their data, which does make a lot of people wonder. It has worked very well over 20 years and Chicago really is thought of as a very top school right now (it was always good reputation wise and has always had a few amazing departments, don't get me wrong). It seems like half the kids from DC's elite private schools are there now after so many have applied ED2 over the last 2 years!

That's fair. It feels really disingenuous though when it's clear every ranking system they didn't purposely try to game has them much lower, whereas the other top schools stay at the top in the other rankings as well. But I have to give credit to UChicago for putting their eggs in the right basket because I agree US News is the most influential. After that the closest are probably Wall Street Journal and Forbes, and to an extent Niche. That's quite unfortunate for Duke because their literal worst ranking out of all the publications was from US News, so unless US News has something against Duke they will probably go up to reflect their reality in the near future. Same with Columbia - it's clear that putting them at 18 was an overstep, realistically they should be on the edge of the top 10 or in the top 10.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Georgetown's consistency here is underrated too. Most rankings have them pretty up there - not a top 10 school but definitely a clear-cut top 20 school

IMHO Georgetown has been held back by a truly old school admissions department and philosophy. Their small endowment is also a problem but their lack of change over time in how they approach admissions has been head scratching (lack of the Common App and ED I or 2 programs is surprising) . This is especially true since some of their grad schools, the law school in particular, has been progressive change wise compared with peers.

Georgetown's yield would shoot way up with ED, and ED2 would be an amazing way to get top kids who barely missed out on a Harvard or Stanford and want to lock in a great alternative to Chicago, WashU, or Emory (who all use ED2 effectively to get committed high-end students who are struggling after a rejection or deferral). Their application numbers would also instantly rise just by accepting the Common App. Taking the Common App would also help make things easier and more accessible for all candidates.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:UNC is really good, I don’t get why more people on here don’t mention it. This kind of confirms it’s perhaps been overlooked! Easily a top 5 public IMO.

Because they accept almost no one from out of state...

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:UNC is really good, I don’t get why more people on here don’t mention it. This kind of confirms it’s perhaps been overlooked! Easily a top 5 public IMO.

UNC's out of state acceptance rate is very low. If there are fewer out of staters then fewer people might leave after college then there is just less contact with alumni and fewer alumni to boost it on DCUM.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:UNC is really good, I don’t get why more people on here don’t mention it. This kind of confirms it’s perhaps been overlooked! Easily a top 5 public IMO.

UNC's out of state acceptance rate is very low. If there are fewer out of staters then fewer people might leave after college then there is just less contact with alumni and fewer alumni to boost it on DCUM.

Lol UNC doesn't need boosting. It got boosted for 30 years when Michael Jordan went to the Bulls.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Georgetown's consistency here is underrated too. Most rankings have them pretty up there - not a top 10 school but definitely a clear-cut top 20 school

IMHO Georgetown has been held back by a truly old school admissions department and philosophy. Their small endowment is also a problem but their lack of change over time in how they approach admissions has been head scratching (lack of the Common App and ED I or 2 programs is surprising) . This is especially true since some of their grad schools, the law school in particular, has been progressive change wise compared with peers.

Georgetown's yield would shoot way up with ED, and ED2 would be an amazing way to get top kids who barely missed out on a Harvard or Stanford and want to lock in a great alternative to Chicago, WashU, or Emory (who all use ED2 effectively to get committed high-end students who are struggling after a rejection or deferral). Their application numbers would also instantly rise just by accepting the Common App. Taking the Common App would also help make things easier and more accessible for all candidates.

Georgetown and Notre Dame both make me head scratch with their refusal to do ED. The only thing I can think of is they're both officially Catholic institutions, I'm not sure why that would have any impact on their early admissions policy, but it's an interesting similarity.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:UNC is really good, I don’t get why more people on here don’t mention it. This kind of confirms it’s perhaps been overlooked! Easily a top 5 public IMO.

Because they accept almost no one from out of state...

If they do accept OOS students, a lot of times it comes with a hefty aid package

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Saw this and thought it was interesting. Basically someone took the average ranking of each college from these sources and created a composite rank for each school relative to all the other schools. It was noted schools like Georgetown and Duke were underranked by US News and schools like UChicago and JHU were overranked. Some of these rankings included focus more on academics and some more on ROI, so with a composite I believe the idea was to see which schools excel in all the important metrics for undergrad.

It’s nice to have an actual table for this instead of just links directing to other places, thanks for sharing!

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Georgetown's consistency here is underrated too. Most rankings have them pretty up there - not a top 10 school but definitely a clear-cut top 20 school

IMHO Georgetown has been held back by a truly old school admissions department and philosophy. Their small endowment is also a problem but their lack of change over time in how they approach admissions has been head scratching (lack of the Common App and ED I or 2 programs is surprising) . This is especially true since some of their grad schools, the law school in particular, has been progressive change wise compared with peers.

Georgetown's yield would shoot way up with ED, and ED2 would be an amazing way to get top kids who barely missed out on a Harvard or Stanford and want to lock in a great alternative to Chicago, WashU, or Emory (who all use ED2 effectively to get committed high-end students who are struggling after a rejection or deferral). Their application numbers would also instantly rise just by accepting the Common App. Taking the Common App would also help make things easier and more accessible for all candidates.

Georgetown and Notre Dame both make me head scratch with their refusal to do ED. The only thing I can think of is they're both officially Catholic institutions, I'm not sure why that would have any impact on their early admissions policy, but it's an interesting similarity.

ED discriminated against students with lower incomes. They cannot compare FA and merit offers.

[Anonymous]

U Chicago ranking in this table is extremely low.
U Chicago offers very strong undergraduate and postgraduate
and advance degrees.
it does not care about legacy and some other hooks as much
but
they do care if you are full pay and went to a prep school.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Is US News on UChicago’s payroll? Essentially every other rankings has them doing way worse. Same with Hopkins.

Chicago is pretty well known to stay within "allowable lines" (not like Columbia) but do everything possible to game the USNWR system (since honestly, the USNWR ranking should probably be weighted as 80-90% of any combined ranking based on its compare significance). Chicago is also not nearly as transparent about some of their data, which does make a lot of people wonder. It has worked very well over 20 years and Chicago really is thought of as a very top school right now (it was always good reputation wise and has always had a few amazing departments, don't get me wrong). It seems like half the kids from DC's elite private schools are there now after so many have applied ED2 over the last 2 years!

Because Chicago takes very average students (B students) from elite private schools because it is desperate to increase its endowment.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:UNC is really good, I don’t get why more people on here don’t mention it. This kind of confirms it’s perhaps been overlooked! Easily a top 5 public IMO.

Easily top 5 publics. It's so hard to get into OOS (last year OOS 8% accepetance rate), that not many students from the DMV even have the option of going there.

[Anonymous]

Most kids that attend U Chicago from DC private schools are a A students and few of them cum laude.