Reply to Which universities have gone DOWN in stature over the years?

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[quote=Anonymous][quote]  While I agree with most of your premise, the bolded above is incorrect. Williams snd Rice are both 9% acceptance rates and USC is 12%. Williams is still
superior to both as reflected in their higher average GPAs and test scores of accepted students.[/quote]

Thanks for catching - i think i was going off outdated data.
The current USNWR says the acceptance rate at Williams is 15% compared to 11% at Rice and 11% at Tulane (swapping out for USC).   Rice and Tulane are excellent schools, but i'd agree at the undergraduate level Williams is probably superior, as reflected not just in higher average GPAs and test scores for accepted students as you note, but also in the 'Peer Assessment' section of the USNWR ranking where US News polls other university administrators what they think (the 'expert opinion':  for Williams, 4.7 of 5; for Rice, 4.1; for Tulane, 3.6).  And yet, Rice and Tulane now attract a greater number of applicants relative to available spaces than Williams (or Amherst -- peer assessment of 4.6) does - which I think reinforces the notion that the biases of USNWR's university-centric methodology, compounded over the past four decades, have created and perpetuated market failures in higher education admissions.

And the ones who are being harmed by these market failures aren't the schools themselves but the applicants.  Whose families, either because of poor information or the effects of the DCUM echo chamber and others like it, have a misguided sense that USNWR's ranking = educational quality.  (If anything, the peer assessment and alumni income - which cut across USNWR's artificial distinctions between "universities" and "colleges" and "national" vs "regional" -- are probably the more reliable measures.)   How have educators been complicit in allowing such a flawed USNWR system come to play such a disproportionate role in college admissions?  
 
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