131–140 of 348 posts
There's a very interesting article "How to Game the College Rankings" about how Northeastern University's president focused on improving the university's ranking. In 1996, it was a "third-tier, blue-collar, commuter-based university" rated #162. The new university president had a singleminded goal: to improve the ranking. He got the university into the top 100 in 2006 and into the top 50 by 2013. https://www.bostonma…
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I'd give Stanford a bit more credit than this, but people I know who were admitted to both all went to Harvard. Stanford is surely the most prestigious general-purpose university west of, well, Harvard.
> Stanford is surely the most prestigious general-purpose university west of, well, Harvard. Is that no longer Yale? From the perspective of someone who had a rather poor exposure to universities during my high school years—so, precisely what someone gets from pop-culture and osmosis without anyone in particular acting as a guide—my impression was that Harvard and Yale were unambiguously the Big Two, and everything e…
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I'd give Stanford a bit more credit than this, but people I know who were admitted to both all went to Harvard. Stanford is surely the most prestigious general-purpose university west of, well, Harvard.
> Stanford is surely the most prestigious general-purpose university west of, well, Harvard. Is that no longer Yale? From the perspective of someone who had a rather poor exposure to universities during my high school years—so, precisely what someone gets from pop-culture and osmosis without anyone in particular acting as a guide—my impression was that Harvard and Yale were unambiguously the Big Two, and everything e…
Per the article this came in response to questions raised by a Columbia faculty member critiquing the university's data. I thought that report[1] was actually more interesting than the original article. As per the quote at the top of the report: > Rankings create powerful incentives to manipulate data and distort institutional behavior for the sole or primary purpose of inflating one’s score... It would be shocking t…
I took an Econ class with northwestern’s president and he said that they straight up lie about their middle 50 gpa and standardized test scores. Can’t say I was super surprised. Every top 25 school is saying 25% of their students got a 35 or better on the ACT, the numbers just didn’t add up.
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> if someone gets into multiple, they probably won't pick based on position in some list Not trying to be contrarian, but I had two friends literally pick between Ivies based on this very list (in 2015). It’s generally accepted as “The List” by a lot of people. If you’re a parent with no other frame of reference, The List has a serious impact.
I’ll chime in with contrary anecdotal experience having gone to a high school with lots of selective college placements. I didn’t know anyone who chose between two elite schools based on their relative US News ranking.
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Encouraging people to apply is also a common tactic. You can't reject them if they don't apply!
Applications are also a revenue source.
Having pursued a PhD at Columbia and having taught classes there. I am surprised it took this long for someone to speak up. Also the fact that there are no checks in place to certify top ranking academic institutions is fascinating.
The influence of US News on colleges is wild. One absurd tidbit that I've heard: the rankings weigh freshman stats much more than transfer student stats, so a lot of competitive schools that won't let you in as a freshman if you would hurt their SAT/GPA/etc averages will happily let you in as a transfer because they'll make more revenue and your stats no longer hurt their rankings. * The ranking formula is also chang…
I wonder how much these measurements actually matter, for a place like Columbia. I mean, I can see why, like, people might want to look at the list and see "hey this school I've never heard of is actually OK." But like, people don't find out about Columbia from this list, right? It is, uh, older than the country "U.S. News" is named after and an Ivy League school. Not having them on the list just reflects poorly on t…
I absolutely know people who have had the choice of multiple top-tier schools and chose the one that ranked higher on U.S. News, so it definitely matters.
MIT vs Harvard vs Stanford are all amazing programs but are better for different types of people/interests/goals