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Meeting and Working With NAGAP
Tweet Share on Facebook January 29, 2008 Comment (5)I just returned from the National Association of Graduate Admissions Professionals' (NAGAP) Winter Institute for Advanced Graduate Admissions Professionals, held in San Juan, Puerto Rico.
I gave a presentation titled "America's Best Graduate Schools Rankings: How They Are Done and What's New." My talk covered the methodology and processes used in the medical, law, engineering, business, education, Ph.D., and the other graduate rankings done annually by U.S. News. The new graduate school rankings will be published at the end of March.
Attending these professional conferences is very important because we get feedback—both positive and negative—about the rankings. Being at these meetings also enables us to learn more about what is going on in higher ed from those who work directly in those fields and provides us with an opportunity to explain how and why we do the rankings. One idea that came out of the meeting was that NAGAP is considering creating an advisory committee to work with U.S. News on the various grad school rankings. NAGAP's members are uniquely qualified to play such a role, since they work in admissions in all the disciplines that U.S. News ranks. We welcome the creation of such a committee by NAGAP and look forward to working with its members in the future.
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Getting Some Guidance From Counselors
Tweet Share on Facebook January 23, 2008 Comment (2)Editors from U.S. News met today with a cross section of high school counselors to get their input on various education issues. We found this meeting highly beneficial and heard many new ideas that we are studying.
The high school counselors who attended were:
- Shirley Bloomquist, Great Falls, Va.
- Jayne Fonash, Academy of Science, Sterling, Va.
- Marjorie Jacobs, SAR Academy, Riverdale, N.Y.
- Jim Jump, St. Christopher's School, Richmond, Va.
- Annalee Nissenholtz, Ladue Horton Watkins High School, St. Louis
- Susan Rexford, West Springfield High School, Springfield, Va.
- Missy Sanchez, Woodward Academy, Atlanta
- Brian K. Smith, Baylor School, Chattanooga, Tenn.
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About That Article on Washington and Jefferson College...
Tweet Share on Facebook January 17, 2008 Comment (5)I've got a few corrections I think I should make regarding Inside Higher Ed's thesis in its "Potemkin Rankings" article. That story argues that recent changes in Washington and Jefferson College's academic data should have resulted in the school rising in the U.S. News America's Best Colleges rankings instead of falling slightly as it did (from 91st in the 2004 edition to 106th in the 2008 edition in the liberal arts colleges category).
Washington and Jefferson raised its tuition significantly from $23,260 in 2003-2004 to $29,532 in 2007-2008, an increase of 27 percent. The college also showed gains in its admissions data, including its acceptance rate and SAT scores as well as a small rise in faculty resources. All of these factors are input measures into the college process.
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In Defense of College Rankings
Tweet Share on Facebook January 16, 2008 Comment (2)Kevin Carey, research and policy manager at Education Sector, a Washington, D.C., education policy think tank, has now become an advocate of college rankings, based on his recently published In Defense of College Rankings. Carey has been both a critic of the U.S. News college rankings and author of Washington Monthly's best community colleges rankings, which are based on the Community College Survey of Student Engagement (CCSSE).
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What Secretary Spellings Thinks of the College Rankings
Tweet Share on Facebook January 9, 2008 Comment (6)U.S. News and U.S. Secretary of Education Margaret Spellings share an important goal. We both believe that there should be considerably more transparency at colleges and universities so prospective students and their parents can be informed about the costly and very important decision of which college to attend. In fact, U.S. News has been a leader in the drive for increased accountability among higher education institutions, and our rankings have been one of the factors that have pushed schools to publish more evaluative and consumer-friendly information about themselves.
Spelling cited the success of the U.S. News America's Best Colleges rankings in a December 2007 speech to a group of higher education accrediting officials as evidence of the public desire for meaningful information on how to choose and pay for college. She said:
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Responses to More Questions on the 2008 America's Best High Schools Rankings
Tweet Share on Facebook January 3, 2008 Comment (34)These are some of the questions that have been posted on my blog recently. If you have other queries about the 2008 America's Best High Schools rankings, please continue to post them in the comments part of this blog, and I will try to answer them.
I was fortunate enough to have taught in both International Baccalaureate and AP mathematics programs over a nine-year period. While I absolutely love the AP Calculus AB syllabus, I have never seen anything that prepares students to think critically like the IB program...Will IB be included in the rankings next time?
U.S. News has been in contact with some of the top officials who run the IB program in the United States, and we plan to meet with them in early 2008. Our goal continues to be that we will work with IB officials so that we will be able to factor in IB statistics on participation as well as some indicator of IB success in the next America's Best High Schools rankings.
