Reply to What’s wrong with William & Mary?

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]^^^ If the former could be accurately assessed, sure. But US News attempts to do so via a peer assessment survey. Ask yourself how much someone from one school knows about what goes on in the classroom at all the others. Now look at that list. Do you really think that the quality of undergraduate teaching at Elon or Belmont is miles better than at Caltech, Duke, Vandy, or MIT. You may but I don’t. I think it’s laughable. All rankings are goofy on some level but this one  particularly so.

I agree that this thread is silly. There’s nothing “wrong” with W&M. The better question is why does the ranking continue to fall. [/quote]

The main ranking also has peer assessments.   Rankings should just be one of many factors kids and families should consider.  No single one should  .  You are singling out of couple of schools you might consider anomalies and don't belong, and that is fair, but if you look at the lists as a whole, you see it is not random and most of the schools likely have relatively strong commitments to undergraduate education (and I would assert that many schools do not have a strong undergraduate commitment).  You also use exaggeration to discredit the  W&M is consistently high in these categories (teaching quality, undergraduate research, senior capstone, first year experience, etc.)  Relatively few do.

I believe W&M's recent drop in USNWR National University ranking is largely because of the changes in metrics.  The counselor assessment was dropped, and the Pell Grant metrics (mobility) were added.  W&M actually has one of the top Pell Grant recipient graduation rates among public schools (I believe it is 2nd), but a relatively low overall percentage compare to many schools, particularly those like the UC system where Pell Grants recipients can be 4X the percentage at W&M and UVA.

Although it doesn't seem relevant to undergraduate education, over the long term, W&M has been hurt in USNWR ranking for not having a medical school.  Medical schools and divisions bring in a huge amount of federal money and fund a lot of staff, and they impact the resources that USNWR gets from IPEDS data.  Again, I don't think this is relevant to undergraduate education.  There are some highly ranked exceptions (Princeton, Notre Dame, etc.), but most of the top ranked undergraduate schools do have medical schools, and the exceptions are usually extremely well endowed private schools.  If you compare W&M and Wake Forest, for instance, this is probably the biggest factor in how they are ranked.[/quote]

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