Reply to With US News Being Challenged by Top Schools, Does it Make More Sense to Combine Rankings?

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]There’s a certain amount of privilege that comes from being able to spend the equivalent of a new home for each child on college tuition and honestly say that you don’t care about rankings or the perceived status of a school and can solely pick a school based on perfect fit for a child (as you’ve had the resources to personally visit all of these schools). More power to you if you’re at that point.

My sprinkler box broke yesterday. In a quick Google search, I pulled up at least a half-dozen rankings of different sprinkler boxes ranging in cost from $100-$200.

So, it’s sort of wacky to me that the colleges themselves just want to wish away the large demand for college rankings when people are spending *hundreds* of thousands of dollars over the course of 4 years.

I’m not saying that the US News rankings or other ranking systems like them are accurate, infallible or should be taken as gospel. There are a lot of flaws with them. However, this notion that all people should be above these rankings and they’re worthless is, as I’ve noted above, a super-privileged position. This is the single largest financial decision most people will have outside of their house (and maybe even more than their house). When there is demand for multiple rankings for $100-$200 sprinkler boxes, it’s perfectly reasonable that there’s going to be a ton of demand for colleges that cost upwards of $90,000 per year. If the US News rankings aren’t there, then someone else will fill that void. [/quote]

PP said start with a vetted list (such as the guides published by Princeton Review). From those few hundred schools, do the research to find what is best for your child. Mine, for example, did not want a large school, or a religious school or an urban school. She limited her search to the East Coast. She wanted to study STEM and was not drawn to Greek life or a big party scene.

Not really privileged. It just takes time and knowing your child. [/quote]

PP here. That’s perfectly fine about researching the atmospheric factors of large vs. small, urban vs. college town, Greek-heavy vs. little Greek life, etc.

However, to deny that people aren’t going to want to know whether a school is perceived to be highly-ranked on academic prestige (however it’s defined) when they’re spending so much money on a college education is putting the proverbial head in the sand.

What I’m seeing is that college administrators want for everyone to focus on the atmospheric factors that you’ve pointed out. And, to be clear, all of that is very important.

However, it’s disingenuous for those same colleges to get bothered when they’re being measured on academic prestige even though (a) these are academic institutions, (b) they’re charging so much tuition money, and (c ) the top schools are essentially lottery systems of exclusivity when it comes to admissions. They’re all perpetuating elite status in their admissions processes, yet then complain when other parties (like the US News) start ranking them on elite status relative to each other. I have little sympathy for that stance.

If schools wouldn’t have such opaque admissions processes along with being much more transparent about graduate outcomes, maybe people wouldn’t turn to rankings systems as much. However, nature abhors a vacuum.[/quote]

This. Beautifully said.

FWIW, the schools who complain about USNWR are the ones trying to sell themselves as more prestigious than they are.  USNWR cuts through the colleges' sales bs ("An Ivy is an Ivy!") and gives consumers the real scoop on prestige.

No one is saying people shouldn't look at campus size, location, and other factors as well.

[/quote]

US News isn't a measure of prestige though. It measures whatever it's supposed to measure. If it was a measure of prestige, Harvard would be #1 every year. Remember before the scandal, Columbia was #2 and Stanford was #6, neither of which are believable.[/quote]

HYPSM are top 5, as it should be. Stanford is number 3.

Columbia poured a ton of resources into committing fraud and was caught. They were caught using publicly available resources. Now they’re number 18, where they belong. 
[/quote]

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