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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]I'd argue that[b] people whose understanding of the rankings is superficial enough that it affects whether or not they would apply to Chicago aren't actually smart enough to go there[/b]. Chicago as an academic institution is an absolute powerhouse, and I wouldn't blink an eye at any student who would choose it over HYP.

That said, one of the problems with college rankings is that they attempt to quantify an experience that cannot be completely quantified by applying a one-size-fits-all metric to schools that can't all be measured by that standard. Take, for example, the alumni giving rate that U.S. News used to include as part of its formula. It is a good measure of comparison with respect to the wealthiest private colleges and universities: it has never been any surprise that top-ranked liberal arts colleges and the Ivies with comparatively few graduate programs have high giving rates year after year while Harvard, which caters to its grad programs, never has a giving rate above 35% for its Harvard College alums. But this factor is fairly meaningless when used as an indication of alum satisfaction amongst graduates of public colleges and universities for the simple reason that these schools are perceived as being taxpayer-funded and for this reason do not inspire the kinds of donations that private schools do.

Or consider rankings based upon ROI. Traditionally, Chicago has attracted intensely academic students who then earn PhDs and go into academia. Consequently, because academics as a group make way less money than engineers or hedge fund employees, Chicago's ROI has been lower than those of peer schools whose alums disproportionately work on Wall St. Similarly, women's colleges have lower ROIs than those of coed peer schools. But the reason for this disparity has nothing to do with the quality of education at the schools themselves. Anyone with half a brain (which unfortunately is not most people, including many of those on this board) would know that several factors, including the fact that it's 2023 and women still do a disproportionate amount of hand-on parenting, affect whether women go into the highest-paid and most time-consuming professions. But the alums of women's colleges who do go into these professions have a very high success rate: most of the highest ranking women on Wall St. are Wellesley alums.

And yet, paradoxically, one of the benefits of college rankings is that they can introduce students and their families to great schools they might not have otherwise considered. A student from, say, NJ who is familiar only with schools on the East Coast might well become int'd in applying to Pomona after seeing that students there are competitive with those at, say, Williams.

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You are the one who's clueless. Your perception of U Chicago is outdated at best. The "intellectual powerhouse" where most students go onto PhDs was 30 years (maybe when you went to college). Today, it's more common that U Chicago students gun for investment banking on Wall St. The school caters to B+ students from elite private schools (if you ED). U Chicago is accepting 10-15+ kids every year from these tiny private schools. This image of U Chicago being for "quirky intellectual" kids is so outdated. Out of the 7 kids I know that went there, not a single one fit that mold. In fact, I would say 6 out of the 7 were partiers (still solid academic students but definitely not serious intellectuals). [/quote]

Yes, there are now more "mainstream" students at Chicago than there were 30 years ago. But it's still amongst the most intellectually-minded schools in the U.S. Notably, Chicago was the only R1 category top 10 PhD producer by institutional yield in *both* S & E (science & engineering) and non-S & E fields between 2010-2020 (see https://ncses.nsf.gov/pubs/nsf22321).

Also, Chicago still has the Core which is arguably more rigorous than the gen. ed requirements at just about any other school. So partiers or not (and btw, MIT, which has frats, certainly has its share, so being a partier and being an intellectual aren't mutually exclusive), the kids you know at Chicago must be somewhat academically-minded.

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