Reply to Local implications for Chicago and WashU falling in 2024 college rankings

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]Chicago and W&M have a similar problem - kids don’t want rigorous academics without a big dose of fun. W&M is hampered by the VA rule that requires 2/3 of students cone from VA. W&M is more like a LAC and most of those schools have 2000 kids, not 6500. Trying to squeeze so many admits out of VA plays to the strengths of NOVA, which is wealthy and educated. Then, [b]W&M gets hit for insufficient Pell and first-gen, who if they’re going to go to college want STEM, which W&M partly has, but not engineering.[/b]

WUSTL is a a great school, but also a rich kid’s school. Not a lot of poors there. [/quote]

From the plans it would look like they are planning to start offering some engineering in a few years, though, no?  https://www.wm.edu/offices/facilities/departments-directors/fpdc/construction/currentprojects/isc4.php

I don't think it will ever become a big sports rah-rah school though and it is hard to imagine all FGLI are attracted to rah-rah by default.[/quote]

WM - and some other schools - don’t really fit on the national university list and it seems like WM should really be ranked with the liberal arts schools. They don’t really have many graduate programs, it’s basically an undergrad institution. That’s one of the many things about these rankings that are silly. You aren’t comparing apples to apples.

The new rankings have Tufts and a Rutgers tied. No question you can get a good education at Rutgers and the value for the money may make sense but I think it’s clear that the caliber of student at Tufts is a lot higher across the board. All else being equal I think Tufts is a better school. Now, in the real world, all else isn’t equal and I can certainly understand someone not wanting to pay for Tufts vs Rutgers but[b] I think the new methodology has deviated from assessing the schools based on the overall quality of the education.[/b] [/quote]

+1 I really think this is going to hurt the USNWR--people always complained about its lack of credibility, but the new methodology coming at a time when test optional is also shaking things up, just is a bridge too far.  I think it's going to be like GreatSchools rankings where a larger majority of people think they are crap.[/quote]
+1. US News is trying to get the tail to wag the dog. Not how it works. They've been slowly making changes for years, but such a large change in a single year will be the straw that breaks the camel's back.[/quote]

Yes. They really dropped the ball last year. All the things that people do care about - class size, professor's qualifications, years to graduate etc - were all dropped from their algorithm. Now it's all about Pell Grant and first generation students, which fine, but that isn't why people look at the US News list.

I suspect they were looking for a week long Twitter hit - and they got that. And they destroyed their credibility for the clicks.

I don't think anyone should be taking US News seriously as some kind of impartial measurement of academic quality.

Huge opening for another media organization [/quote]

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