Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Ok, folks. Enough of this "everyone cheats, so what" argument. No one buys that. Only some colleges are prone to cheating. The "ranking climbers at any cost", schools with not much stuff inside and want to hide that fact, etc.

Columbia and NEU fall into all these buckets. Columbia is basically a large university that is understaffed (large classes, fewer faculty), under financed (the administration is always out to make a buck), and in a relatively unsafe location relative to its Ivy peers.

I can't imagine the student-centered Ivies like Princeton, Brown, and Dartmouth that don't care much about rankings cheat. Harvard and Yale wouldn't cheat either because their reputations are not made by US News.

Uh no, Northeastern was never accused of cheating and even got kicked out like Berkeley, Emory, Columbia, etc.
After digging and digging, they could only claim that it gamed which suggests it played by the rules fairly unlike those cheating schools.
Northeastern in fact has one of the highest retention rates which suggests it's a student-centered school unlike your imagination.

Emory wasn't actually punished like the other two, probably because they didn't do much wrong.

Anonymous wrote:Ok, folks. Enough of this "everyone cheats, so what" argument. No one buys that. Only some colleges are prone to cheating. The "ranking climbers at any cost", schools with not much stuff inside and want to hide that fact, etc.

Columbia and NEU fall into all these buckets. Columbia is basically a large university that is understaffed (large classes, fewer faculty), under financed (the administration is always out to make a buck), and in a relatively unsafe location relative to its Ivy peers.

I can't imagine the student-centered Ivies like Princeton, Brown, and Dartmouth that don't care much about rankings cheat. Harvard and Yale wouldn't cheat either because their reputations are not made by US News.

Uh no, Northeastern was never accused of cheating and even got kicked out like Berkeley, Emory, Columbia, etc.
After digging and digging, they could only claim that it gamed which suggests it played by the rules fairly unlike those cheating schools.
Northeastern in fact has one of the highest retention rates which suggests it's a student-centered school unlike your imagination.

Rankings are just one of the references and factors to consider especially when coming up with an initial list.
It's helpful for the purpose.

Ranking obsessed people want to see it go away.

Rankings are important because it reveals things of this nature. If they didn't exist Columbia would always get the benefit of the doubt because it's any ivy dispite the declining education and nonselective admissions at some of it's colleges.

Columbia alum and parent hopping in - Submitting suspect data to USNWR to climb in the rankings is flat out unacceptable. It doesn't matter that college rankings are ridiculous. Providing seemingly unrealistic numbers on class sizes and that 100% of instructors/faculty have PhDs seems like deceiving potential students/families to me. Back in my day, almost all Literature Humanities and Contemporary Civilization classes (the Core seminars that are at the heart of the Columbia experience) were taught by permanent faculty. For my DC, almost half of those classes are taught by adjuncts. This is a direct consequence of growing the student body without growing the humanities faculty headcount. It's not an accident that both the College dean and the University president are retiring and the next leaders are stuck with fixing the problem.

I don't think there's a silver lining to this scandal, but I don't think it is entirely a bad thing if Columbia becomes a little less attractive. Columbia is unmatched for students who really want to be in New York City, think learning the Western canon is a necessary part of criticizing it, and are motivated by the scholarship of the exceptional professors. Students who just want to attend an Ivy (it's only an athletic conference) should just apply to the others. Future M&A bankers, big law partners, and McKinsey consultants have plenty of other colleges to punch their tickets.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:The rest will follow Columbia 's lead and decline USNews. Columbia has the clout.

Uh this is not something new at all.
It has happened in the past repeatedly.
Some got lucky and not caught yet.

Berkeley
https://www.berkeleyside.org/2019/07/28/uc-berkeley-kicked-off-the-u-s-news-world-report-rankings-of-best-u-s-colleges

Emory
https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2012/08/20/emory-misreported-admissions-data-more-decade

Funny that these elite schools cheat, but people always pick on schools like Tulane Northeastern for 'gaming' LOL

People who allegedly don’t care about the ranking system are awfully concerned about who’s gaming the rankings
(BYU is ranked as a T80 national university by the way)

Rankings are nonsense and have had a terrible impact on parent and student attitudes toward admission. I wish they would disappear.

They can’t handle the competition

I went to Columbia ~12 years ago. The academics are stellar and the campus is beautiful. But I don’t recommend it to people because the administration is so terrible and money hungry. Worst of all Columbia STILL has the same President (Bollinger) who is only in it for the money and does not care one lick about students.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:They haven't made their Common Data Set public for years, maybe ever? Makes one wonder what others--like the University of Chicago and Johns Hopkins--who won't make their data public are hiding.

The CDS is an useless piece of aggregated nonsense. What you really need is the govt to compel universities to submit disaggregated data on applicants, admitted, scores, ratings etc by interest group: legacy, athletes, by race, by gender, by geography and by citizenship.
Without Govt compulsion the universities will never reveal this because it will show the kind of shenanigans going on in admissions at almost every school

Why do you refer to “shenanigans”? Most of these schools are private institutions that can put classes together in any way they want.

They might be private but they also get a lot of federal money and huge tax breaks. They are mega landowners who pay no real estate taxes. I’m fine with them doing what they want as long as they pay their fair share of taxes

I assume you feel the same way about country clubs? And churches? And every non-profit on the planet?

Anonymous wrote:I would love to see the rankings go away

+1 Good for the. Stop playing the game. There is no reason whey USNWR should have so much control over every school's admissions process.

Anonymous wrote:The ivy worship on this site is funny. Finally an elite school punished for misdeeds.

University of Chicago is the WORST offender at manipulating their stats.

When I applied, U of C was struggling to fill its classes. The place gamed the system and is now a top-ranked school, with absolutely no change in anything except a huge marketing plan that includes inviting just about anyone to apply. It's a sick organization, even if it's a great school.

Anonymous wrote:I would love to see the rankings go away

+ a billion

eff the rankings!!!!

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:They shouldn't have cheated. Their true ranking is probably closer to 15 like it is on WSJ.

WSJ ranking fluctuate a lot. Going back 1-2 years, Columbia was at 2 or 3.

It's likely a function of how much advertising they buy.

Then UChicago should be #1 in every rankings out there.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:They shouldn't have cheated. Their true ranking is probably closer to 15 like it is on WSJ.

WSJ ranking fluctuate a lot. Going back 1-2 years, Columbia was at 2 or 3.

It's likely a function of how much advertising they buy.