Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Some colleges "lie", but what many do is manipulate it within the rules. An example of this is Northeaster, which accepts less qualified students for spring entry (putting them on one of their cooperative education internships to start). They have had approval from USNews to omit these students (as well as international students who do not have to submit SAT/ACT). In this way, they raised their standardized scores significantly.

Another example is the programs schools have put in place to increase the number of applications, even if the students aren't actually qualified.

The schools that manipulated acceptance rate got burned when US News changed the methodology. At this moment, schools are plotting ways to get more Pell Grants recipients on board.

Stanford, which I think had the lowest acceptance rate, recently announced it wouldn't report it any more. When the rate is getting down to 4% or so, it really does get to be ridiculous. There was a joke going around that Stanford acceptance rate had reached the inevitable zero. Removing the acceptance rate from criteria may get selective colleges to expand their class size some.

Virginia schools (at least UVA, W&M, VT, and JMU) have historically had very low rates of Pell grant recipients compared to the University of California, for instance, which has 3-4X more on a percentage basis. This probably explains how those schools went up. UCLA is now the #1 public. While it is a very good school, I'd never rate it above Berkeley, and would probably rather have a kid go to UVA or W&M all things being equal. I lived nearby and it never seemed to be very undergraduate oriented in my experience. UCLA has massive exposure, though. They now get something like 115K applicants, and if you visit the campus, you will see it is swamped by sightseers from Asia, where it is very well known.

Anonymous wrote:Some colleges "lie", but what many do is manipulate it within the rules. An example of this is Northeaster, which accepts less qualified students for spring entry (putting them on one of their cooperative education internships to start). They have had approval from USNews to omit these students (as well as international students who do not have to submit SAT/ACT). In this way, they raised their standardized scores significantly.

Another example is the programs schools have put in place to increase the number of applications, even if the students aren't actually qualified.

The schools that manipulated acceptance rate got burned when US News changed the methodology. At this moment, schools are plotting ways to get more Pell Grants recipients on board.

Anonymous wrote:US News uses the same data that colleges are also required to report to the federal govt for various reasons. It’s easy to double check and that’s what US News does.

Even the federal government data can be "massaged". The IPEDS database is self-reported data and there is some freedom in how spending is reported. For instance, Yale has about 2X the "instruction" spend as Harvard or Princeton in that database. I could be wrong, but doubt that that is the case in reality.

Some colleges "lie", but what many do is manipulate it within the rules. An example of this is Northeaster, which accepts less qualified students for spring entry (putting them on one of their cooperative education internships to start). They have had approval from USNews to omit these students (as well as international students who do not have to submit SAT/ACT). In this way, they raised their standardized scores significantly.

Another example is the programs schools have put in place to increase the number of applications, even if the students aren't actually qualified.

Anonymous wrote:This came up in one of the UVA threads. People are saying colleges fake their statistics. If the colleges are lying and the rankings are mostly based on that fake data, it would be really silly to care about ranking, right? Furthermore, if colleges are dishonest institutions, you wouldn’t want your child to be part of them, right?

Just trying to understand where the people who think colleges are lying to them are coming from.

Mating.

Lies, Damn Lies and Statistics

The ratings are only as good as the methodology and underlying data. If there is room to manipulate the data within the methodology by, for example, waiving an application fee and essays to get more applications, colleges will. A college that does this my tick up a spot, but has done nothing to improve undergrad education.

Anonymous wrote:No one thinks the colleges actually lie but not listing a couple dozen students who didn't tell them they are withdrawing so that a 96% retention rate becomes 97% and UVa is one point ahead of Michigan, yeah, that kind of stuff happens. It's no different than what you see on pretty much every ad on TV.

Stop...you are just making up stuff. UVa is unethical but Michigan is??? Come on...

No one thinks the colleges actually lie but not listing a couple dozen students who didn't tell them they are withdrawing so that a 96% retention rate becomes 97% and UVa is one point ahead of Michigan, yeah, that kind of stuff happens. It's no different than what you see on pretty much every ad on TV.

US News uses the same data that colleges are also required to report to the federal govt for various reasons. It’s easy to double check and that’s what US News does.

Because the hierarchy is *generally* accurate-enough to be a starting point for one to do their own research.

I commented on that thread. And I don’t think colleges are exactly lying about data. I think they are doing everything in their power to make their data spit out a better US News number. And a lot of that effort does not help the students of a college. U Chicago getting every high school student in America to appply so they have a low admit rate helps their ranking, but does not actually make the school better.

Another example, “Superscoring” and only looking at highest of each section. I think there is an argument it hurts them, because there is so much of junior and senior year are spent taking and retaking and prepping and prepping for tests, and taking SATs and ACTs. And all that test taking does little to benefit future students and makes admissions that much more stressful.

Similarly, test optional can find kids who are a great fit but don’t test well. But IRL, that’s not how it works.

Freshmen retention and 4/6 year graduation rates may pressure a school to dumb down the curriculum and retain kids who aren’t succeeding.

I think USNWR is real news, but encourages colleges to make decisions that don’t help and might hurt their student body. Negative incentives.

But I also don’t put a lot of stock in ratings. I think they are a snapshot of what the general public thinks of schools. But your kid, their needs, their interests, their strengths might be much better served by #45 than #12. And I would send a kid to Michigan or GA Tech or even Purdue or VT for most Engineering programs before I would send them to Duke. Mindlessly applying to the top 20 school is pointless.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:This came up in one of the UVA threads. People are saying colleges fake their statistics. If the colleges are lying and the rankings are mostly based on that fake data, it would be really silly to care about ranking, right? Furthermore, if colleges are dishonest institutions, you wouldn’t want your child to be part of them, right?

Just trying to understand where the people who think colleges are lying to them are coming from.

It's fake news supplied by the failing colleges.

Haha. Love it.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:This came up in one of the UVA threads. People are saying colleges fake their statistics. If the colleges are lying and the rankings are mostly based on that fake data, it would be really silly to care about ranking, right? Furthermore, if colleges are dishonest institutions, you wouldn’t want your child to be part of them, right?

Just trying to understand where the people who think colleges are lying to them are coming from.

It's fake news supplied by the failing colleges.

Sounds familiar....

Anonymous wrote:This came up in one of the UVA threads. People are saying colleges fake their statistics. If the colleges are lying and the rankings are mostly based on that fake data, it would be really silly to care about ranking, right? Furthermore, if colleges are dishonest institutions, you wouldn’t want your child to be part of them, right?

Just trying to understand where the people who think colleges are lying to them are coming from.

It's fake news supplied by the failing colleges.

This came up in one of the UVA threads. People are saying colleges fake their statistics. If the colleges are lying and the rankings are mostly based on that fake data, it would be really silly to care about ranking, right? Furthermore, if colleges are dishonest institutions, you wouldn’t want your child to be part of them, right?

Just trying to understand where the people who think colleges are lying to them are coming from.