I think most parents of the last 6 years still operate on old rankings. The last three rankings have been total garbage. No one believes UC Irvine should be ranked so high and that Wake should be ranked so low.

Anonymous wrote:when Rutgers is now ranked higher than Tulane, CWRU, Miami, Wake, etc. after being perennially ranked in the 70s?

The whole concept of college rankings is silly and meant to sell magazines (now online subscriptions). I prefer the descriptions from the Fiske Guide or the Princeton Review. I don’t love ratings, but I’ll take those over rankings.

None of those middling privates are ranked highly by any ranking…not USNews, Forbes, WSJ, world rankings…none.

Strange that USNews’ rankings are crap yet they rank those schools higher than anyone else.

Imagine going to Amazon and the products had no reviews. I think it’s silly to “make your own ranking” but I love the idea of setting your own variables across a common data set.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I grew up in NJ, which has some great public schools, and our valedictorian and lots of other top kids went to Rutgers. The main campus is a flagship state school in a state with lots of jobs (corporate HQs) and access to major cities.

+ 1. I’m a NYer and Rutgers always had a great name.

I went to Stony Brook and I think that Rutgers is a great school. But I don't pretend that either my school or Rutgers are the equal of CWRU, Rochester, Lehigh for undergrad because they aren't. For grad school I'm willing to entertain the discussion depending on the department.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:It’s about Pell grants. How important are Pell grants to you in terms of ranking a college or university?

Next year all these type of things are going away. So I guess the ranking will radically change again.

It’s only 11% of the methodology and it is more focused on Pell grant recipient performance than just the number of recipients. This has always been overstated on DCUM.

Except for a few schools, the bigger impact was the stuff that got dropped, some of which made sense (alumni giving) and some of which didn’t (faculty with terminal degrees).

They reduced the weight of incoming class stats, class size, and replaced good factors with pell grant and other meaningless measures like citations

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:The controversy over the US News rankings comes from how they weight different factors.

What's unfortunate is that US News could easily allow people to construct their own weights and generate new rankings based on them.

Say, if you think graduation rates are really important, increase their weight. Or if you care most about academic reputation? Give that more weight. All of this would be simple to do, but it would show how much the Top 20 (or whatever) colleges would change based on reasonable differences about what's most important. But it would make the rankings much more useful to actualy people!

But how am I supposed to look down on other people’s kids if we’re using different ranking systems?

I need a single objective system for determining how superior my child is to yours.

(/s —because around here you can never be certain!)

We already have the superiority part down; rankings are a post hoc rationalization. And now that we have to find another one, we are very put out.

Anonymous wrote:It’s about Pell grants. How important are Pell grants to you in terms of ranking a college or university?

Next year all these type of things are going away. So I guess the ranking will radically change again.

That is why I don't really care about most rankings. Glad schools support Pell grants and all, but it doesn't impact the quality of education for my student. If anything, I care about class sizes and that is normally smaller in private U, which went down in rankings.

Then again, I'm smart enough to recognize this and don't really give a Sh$t about the rankings.
Similarly, I'm smart enough to know that the USNWR engineering rankings is just a ranking by other universities, so no strong data points, and obviously MIT/CalTech will do well---eveyrone had heard about them. and yes the smaller lesser known great STEM schools might not be ranked at all by someone who has not heard of them. Doesn't make them any less of a school

Anonymous wrote:I grew up in NJ, which has some great public schools, and our valedictorian and lots of other top kids went to Rutgers. The main campus is a flagship state school in a state with lots of jobs (corporate HQs) and access to major cities.

+ 1. I’m a NYer and Rutgers always had a great name.

Anonymous wrote:Their liberal arts college list is pretty boring. It's basically just a wealthiest colleges list, but doesn't demonstrate why Williams is actually the best liberal arts college for decades over and over.

Likewise, does anyone really believe Princeton is #1 year in and year out? Does anyone really believe Princeton is the top school in the United States, ever?

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:It’s about Pell grants. How important are Pell grants to you in terms of ranking a college or university?

Next year all these type of things are going away. So I guess the ranking will radically change again.

It’s only 11% of the methodology and it is more focused on Pell grant recipient performance than just the number of recipients. This has always been overstated on DCUM.

Except for a few schools, the bigger impact was the stuff that got dropped, some of which made sense (alumni giving) and some of which didn’t (faculty with terminal degrees).

It's the insecure white guys on DCUM trying to blame the USNWR rankings on "DEI."

Can't have too many schools with low income or brown people high in the rankings. But vapid party schools like Tulane? Great!

Yes, the pell grant and low income crap ruined any and all credibility the college and k-12 rankings ever had. DEI ruins everything it infects.

Ok Tucker Musk.

Anonymous wrote:The controversy over the US News rankings comes from how they weight different factors.

What's unfortunate is that US News could easily allow people to construct their own weights and generate new rankings based on them.

Say, if you think graduation rates are really important, increase their weight. Or if you care most about academic reputation? Give that more weight. All of this would be simple to do, but it would show how much the Top 20 (or whatever) colleges would change based on reasonable differences about what's most important. But it would make the rankings much more useful to actualy people!

But how am I supposed to look down on other people’s kids if we’re using different ranking systems?

I need a single objective system for determining how superior my child is to yours.

(/s —because around here you can never be certain!)

Their liberal arts college list is pretty boring. It's basically just a wealthiest colleges list, but doesn't demonstrate why Williams is actually the best liberal arts college for decades over and over.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:It’s about Pell grants. How important are Pell grants to you in terms of ranking a college or university?

Next year all these type of things are going away. So I guess the ranking will radically change again.

It’s only 11% of the methodology and it is more focused on Pell grant recipient performance than just the number of recipients. This has always been overstated on DCUM.

Except for a few schools, the bigger impact was the stuff that got dropped, some of which made sense (alumni giving) and some of which didn’t (faculty with terminal degrees).

It's the insecure white guys on DCUM trying to blame the USNWR rankings on "DEI."

Can't have too many schools with low income or brown people high in the rankings. But vapid party schools like Tulane? Great!

Yes, the pell grant and low income crap ruined any and all credibility the college and k-12 rankings ever had. DEI ruins everything it infects.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:It’s about Pell grants. How important are Pell grants to you in terms of ranking a college or university?

Next year all these type of things are going away. So I guess the ranking will radically change again.

It’s only 11% of the methodology and it is more focused on Pell grant recipient performance than just the number of recipients. This has always been overstated on DCUM.

Except for a few schools, the bigger impact was the stuff that got dropped, some of which made sense (alumni giving) and some of which didn’t (faculty with terminal degrees).

It's the insecure white guys on DCUM trying to blame the USNWR rankings on "DEI."

Can't have too many schools with low income or brown people high in the rankings. But vapid party schools like Tulane? Great!