Reply to List your top 50 universities/LACs

Forum Index » College and University Discussion

Reply to "List your top 50 universities/LACs"

Subject:

Emoticons





More smilies

Text Color: Font: Close Marks

[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]This debate was basically ended through that popular Reddit post where someone took all the popular ranking systems and averaged each top school's ranks to find the best overall schools: https://www.reddit.com/r/ApplyingToCollege/comments/xc0v5x/the_2023_supreme_t75_college_ranking_aggregating/

My breakdown would be:
1A) MIT, Stanford, Princeton, Harvard, Duke, Yale
1B) Penn, Caltech, Columbia, Northwestern

2A) Vanderbilt, Rice, Dartmouth, Brown, UChicago, Cornell, Williams, Amherst, Pomona
2B) UMich, Johns Hopkins, WashU, Notre Dame, Georgetown, UCLA, Berkeley, Swarthmore, Bowdoin, Claremont McKenna

3A) UVA, UNC, CMU, UF, Emory, USC, Georgia Tech, Wellesley, Barnard, Carleton, Middlebury
3B) UCSD, BC, UT Austin, W&M, UIUC, W&L, Vassar, Davidson, Hamilton, Haverford[/quote]

If I encountered a UCLA grad (2B) and W&L grad (3B), there is no way I would assume on average the UCLA grade is going to be smarter, better educated, or more capable, so this makes no sense to me.  I might have other preconceptions about the graduates of those two schools (background, geography, wealth, etc.), but that is another point.  This is but one example.  [/quote]

I think that's fair but there will be some difference [i]on average[/i]. UCLA is one of the top handful of public schools if not the top one, and they get the most applications of any school in the country. Their student body especially over the past decade has become extremely strong, so I think on average their students are likely a bit better than the average W&L student. Not that it makes a meaningful difference though. I would say that between schools with just 1 grouping of separation between them (i.e. 1A vs 1B or 1B vs 2A), there won't be a noticeable difference on average. The typical Duke or Yale student won't really be "better" than the typical Penn or Columbia student, you could probably swap the student bodies and have them perform very similarly. I think if you go 2 or more groupings of separation, then you might notice a bit of a difference. The average MIT student is probably better than the average Vanderbilt student, although both schools are of course great.[/quote]

For UC applicants, you can just check a box to apply to a campus.  It is a big factor in driving up the number of applicants.

UCLA's tail is going to be weaker, and I think that may increase now that they don't take standardized tests.  If you compare 2020-21 CDS, W&L is 60 points higher at the 25th percentile on the SAT and 3 points higher on the ACT at the 25th percentile.

But here's the rub.  If you take a popular area like pre-med, UCLA (the top public in USNEWS), UCLA's pre-med acceptance rate has ranged from a reported high of 51% to a low of 45% (45% is close to the national average).  W&L reports 91%.  That is a big difference for schools that may have somewhat similar stats.

[/quote]

Options

	Disable HTML in this message
	Disable BB Code in this message
	Disable smilies in this message

Review message

Search Recent Topics Hottest Topics