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U.S. News pulls Columbia University from its 2022 rankings

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Re: U.S. News pulls Columbia University from its 2022 rankings

#291

Post by brewdad »

hardtke wrote: post #89
t_mann wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think it's easy to underestimate the impact of rankings. Just from your description, it seems that one of the most important overall decision factors for you seems to have been some sort of vague personal sense of how you'd rank them. That subjective ranking is probably influenced by a lot of factors, including many rankings that you consciously claim to disregard.

My personal opinion is that students are highly influenced by where the best students in the grades above them chose to apply, where they got in, and where they eventually chose to go. The software the students use also ranks how likely they are to get into each college/university based on the past performance of students at their high school with similar grades and test scores.

That might be the one thing I would do over again. Move to a "better" HS for my kid, especially since he missed out on 1.5 years due to Covid anyway. His HS ranks top 15 in our state in college readiness scores but falls out of the top 50 overall since there are also a lot of poor students who are lucky to have parent at home at all and often are the surrogate parent for their single mom or dad. Basically, the top students are about as strong as any school in the area but the reputation gets dragged down by the kids who were never on the college track due to life circumstances and a limited support network.

As a result, if you have your sights set on anything other than the two in-state schools or BYU (strong Mormon influence here) the counselors don't know what to do with you and you are on your own.

It worked out and I have no doubt my kid will have strong opportunities post-college but he missed out on any chance at the truly life-changing schools, which I have no doubt he would have succeeded at had he gotten in.

Re: U.S. News pulls Columbia University from its 2022 rankings

#292

Post by brewdad »

xanaxagoras wrote: post #153
uptownfunk wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wow fascinating - so US News is now a rankings company.

If you think of clickbait as a crowdsourced ranking of emotionally manipulative hyperbole, that could be said of any corporate press rag.

US News was a clickbait company before there were clicks to bait.

Re: U.S. News pulls Columbia University from its 2022 rankings

#293

Post by Spivak »

simonh wrote: post #281
DenisM wrote: post #253

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It's basically saying "other people seem to think this college is good, so we'll nudge them up a few points" So does page rank or citation index - popularity begets visibility, begets popularity.

The difference is that applicants by definition don’t have personal experience of how good the school is, it’s all perception. With page rank and citations the expectation is those linking to or citing something have read it and have reason to value it.

Same with students applying. They’re betting that students aren’t applying completely randomly to schools and that the research they do beforehand isn’t entirely noise and has some signal that will show up in the average.

I mean it’s a pretty darn conservative proposition to say “we think that averaged over the entire population of applicants that the schools that students spend their time applying to will trend, however small, to better schools.

Where the flip side of “it’s all noise and it’s impossible to evaluate a school better than flipping a coin without actually attending” is an incredibly strong assertion.

Re: U.S. News pulls Columbia University from its 2022 rankings

#294

Post by mypalmike »

colinmhayes wrote: post #113
buzzy_hacker wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I find this hard to believe. Obviously everyone had more important considerations, but I know a few people that got full rides to a few top schools and absolutely chose based off rankings.

Call me crazy but... Perhaps there are people who did, and others who did not.

Re: U.S. News pulls Columbia University from its 2022 rankings

#295

Post by raldi »

lofatdairy wrote: post #59

If I'm not mistaken the news that Columbia "won't participate" in the rankings came a bit sooner[^1], but if anything that struck me as a "you can't fire me, I quit" sort of preempting of what was inevitable. Honestly though, college rankings are toxic, as is this whole prestige economy we've built around them. I don't even really care about colleges faking numbers, so much as other shady practices like sending stude…

Columbia announced they wont participate in next year’s rankings. The delisting was for this year’s report.

Re: U.S. News pulls Columbia University from its 2022 rankings

#296

Post by brewdad »

cuteboy19 wrote: post #146
sam-2727 wrote: post #94

The beginning of the conclusion of the original study [1] is worth repeating: No one should try to reform or rehabilitate the ranking. It is irredeemable. In Colin Diver’s memorable formulation, “Trying to rank institutions of higher education is a little like trying to rank religions or philosophies. The entire enterprise is flawed, not only in detail but also in conception.” Students are poorly served by rankings.…

This is just the wrong way to look at it. Clearly, there is real demand for rankings by students. No one is stupid enough to think that there is some real difference between #47 and #48. But obviously #47 is very different from #26. Just because you can't get an exact measurement does not mean that a metric does not exist or is not useful.

I would argue that the difference between 47 and 26 comes down largely to field of study or cost of attendance.

The top 10-15 offer an almost indisputable advantage with the top 5 or so being a tier unto itself. Anything outside of those groups is largely "it depends" and 50-100 forms another tier where total cost of attendance largely dictates whether one school is "better" than another.

Re: U.S. News pulls Columbia University from its 2022 rankings

#297

Post by brewdad »

mlinsey wrote: post #221
ketzo wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But it’s a prisoner’s dilemma situation, right? If none of the Ivy’s are on US News, well, it’s probably a shitty ranking. But if e.g. just Penn falls off the list… most people are just gonna assume that Penn got worse.

This is why it is really just Harvard (likely Stanford, Yale, and Princeton too, but definitely Harvard) that can make a statement boycotting the list, just like a billionaire can get away with wearing a plastic $10 watch but mere millionaires feel the need to wear a Rolex to show off their money. In fact, it wouldn't surprise me if Harvard did the least to game the US News metrics of any top 25 university, because t…

Harvard doesn't need to game the rankings because Harvard grads own the friggin' board. The rankings will fall in line accordingly.

Re: U.S. News pulls Columbia University from its 2022 rankings

#298

Post by brewdad »

ketzo wrote: post #27
bee_rider wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah they should stick all the ivies, MIT, etc... in a top "non-rankable" rank. Like realistically a student will be happy to go to whichever one they get into, and if someone gets into multiple, they probably won't pick based on position in some list.

> 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.

If you get to the point where you are choosing between Harvard, Yale, and Princeton, you may as well choose based on the color of the curtains in your dormitory because it really isn't going to matter.

Re: U.S. News pulls Columbia University from its 2022 rankings

#300

Post by chimeracoder »

pyuser583 wrote: post #263
cozos wrote: post #243

Earlier quoted context omitted.

bit OT but I'm curious what a college that ONLY selects extracurricular leaders would look like. This is coming from a software job where career advancement depends on being the lead in projects. IME people are mostly chill and happy to do the "grunt" work, but what if EVERYBODY wanted to be "team lead"?

West Point, Naval Academy, etc have a reputation for recruiting extra curricular leaders. And have good graduation rates.

> West Point, Naval Academy, etc have a reputation for recruiting extra curricular leaders.

Those are officer training schools, so it makes sense they're ostensibly selecting for leadership skills, because they'll be overseeing enlisted recruits.

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