Reply to The Absurdity of U.S. News College Rankings

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]It's strange that a bankrupt magzine has so much sway on the  higher-education systems.

That US NEWS ranking University of Florida much higher than Univ of Washington should make people think twice. Instead, people just take the ranking as if god-given. [/quote]

Those are the obvious ones but other than those, the rankings are pretty solid relative to their actual prestige. [/quote]
Don't act like you would've heard of Chicago, Vanderbilt, Rice, Washington University, Northwestern, or even Duke and Hopkins outside of the DC Area had it not been for US News.

The top 10 of USNews is a strong indicator of national and worldwide prestige. The ranking after 10 becomes 
useless as a measure of prestige excluding the Ivies which will always hold sway due to being Ivies, not being ranked between 10-20.

The fact that Chicago went from >15 to top 3 (or where ever it is now) within 20 years shows how idiotic the rankings are even for prestige - schools don't rise in prestige so quickly at the top because prestige is entrenched.  U. Chicago has always had strong graduate departments but that its often ranked ahead of Yale, Caltech, etc. or ranked alongside Harvard today is simply a result of  ranking manipulation.[/quote]

All the schools you named have <15% acceptance rate and average SATs of above 1450 so Id say there prestige is through the roof among prospective students. [/quote]
Certainly, and look at their acceptance rates and scores 20 years ago. The ranking provides a self-reinforcing cycle where schools ranked higher receive more applications, higher scores, etc.

That does not mean that the schools ranked higher are necessarily more prestigious nationally though, excluding the top 10 w/o Chicago.

Schools like Duke, Hopkins, Vanderbilt, Northwestern, Rice, Chicago, Washington University were, in the 1990's and early 2000s, respected regional universities that attracted great students from their respective regions. If they were renowned nationally, they were so in a few specific fields - Hopkins for medicine, Chicago for Economics, Duke for Divinity (no joke), etc.

These schools were not nationally prestigious universities as they are today, and certainly not globally renowned, which they still largely aren't today

So the people acting like Northwestern, Chicago, Rice, Vanderbilt, etc. were simply destined to be top national universities or already were largely considered prestigious nationally prior to the domination of these rankings is flat out lying. Had it not been for the rankings, they wouldn't have even heard of these universities. The rankings have provided a self-perpetuating cycle that has brought these universities to their current level of national prestige in recent years. [/quote]

You sound extremely salty.

Also, some of these schools have been nationally relevant for a long, long time - namely, Duke, Hopkins, Northwestern, and Chicago. While your assessment may be true of some schools, it's simply not true for all. And in any case, even if your assessment were broadly true, these are trends that have been happening for about 4 decades now. You may as well rail against the Ivy League, which in my opinion is a significantly more nonsensical grouping of universities.[/quote]

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