What May Change in Upcoming College Rankings

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I agree Hs counsulors are usless and I attend a private school I did all the work she did nothing infact she said she never heard of some of the schools I was applying to.reasurring huh? I had no guidance at all.My parents and I did it all.what these peopl are getting paid for I don't know all she ever says when I ask a question is I don't know let me find out and I never hear from her again.shameful.my two sisters in a differance school had the same thing everyone I know says the same thing about the advisors.it's disgusting across the board.they need a masters degree for that?

cha of NY 9:42PM October 30, 2010

I don't think that yield should be considered into the creation of the list for a few reasons.
1. Colleges with a lower yield know this and thus must accept more raising their acceptance rate. Yield has a direct effect on the acceptance rate of the school which is already in.
2. Furthermore, yield is reflective of student interests beyond school value. An example would be religion. A catholic school would attract more catholic applicants and attendants. Also many schools are cross applicants of very equal level schools. An example would be BYU which has a very high yield, but mostly due to the interest of Latter Day Saints. Other schools such as Northwestern, WUSTL, JHU, and Rice all have equal applicants and the accepted are usually split between these schools. Just because the school has a lower yield does not mean that it has a lower attraction, but an equal attraction to other schools of the same caliber.

Guy Jones of WA 4:38PM August 16, 2010

From my experience, high school counselors don't tend to be very knowledgeable people. In fact, my guess is the vast majority of them in this survey would have basically no idea what they're doing. And shouldn't these rankings be assessing how good the schools are, not how good people think they are?

Sven of PA 10:11AM July 20, 2010

I echo Nathan's suggestion regarding customization. The rankings become more relevant if an individual can customize the weights for factors that are important to his/her requirements (in the online version). One shoe does not fit all!!

KB of MI 11:03AM July 14, 2010

I think you need to really think about how you could fairly factor in high school counselor's college perceptions. Less than 1 percent of high school graduates attend private prep schools that have significant numbers of students who end up attending colleges across a wider geographic region than your typical public high school. Whereas a college professor, and administrators are people who have a wider geographic perspective about colleges than the local public high school counselor. By combining the two perspectives is adding apples and oranges together to get a faulty indication of college reputation. I can tell you that at my daughters former high school, the counselors would have given the UC colleges higher reputation over any and all out of state colleges. And you ask why? Because they are state employees, and they place a HUGH tuition cost bias on college decisions versus anything else. While a private prep school school counselor has almost no "low cost" tuition bias in selecting colleges. When college students graduate from their selected college, they will need to be ready to compete with college graduates from a number of colleges and not just the ones within a 20-mile drive of where they attended high school. Given I don't have a clue how you would deal with the "my state" bias of a majority of public high school counselors, I think including this perspective would lead to an inaccurate contribution of ranking universities.
I agree with a prior comment that some colleges recruit across the globe, the nation, within a region, within a state, or region within a state. Ranking within those categories would be more helpful than getting a given state public high school counselors perspective on attending an global student draw school like Middlebury, Swarthmore, or Harvard. If I am more interested in finding the best college for my son or daughter , it's going to be along the lines of in-state publics, versus privates, and then which college offers the best financial package. People need to realize that attending a college like Yale is a significantly different experience than going to the lower cost state university and you pay for it. Those are the facts, no matter how highly a public high school counselor thinks of Berkeley or UCLA. If you ones son or daughter is thinking about getting into certain professions, and certain graduate schools, you better focus on what people in those professions think versus what a high school counselor thinks. I would submit, that graduating from Princeton with a strong academic record is going to carry more weight on a PhD application to Johns Hopkins than one from your local public state university. This issue is self selection, and top tier colleges attract academically better qualified students. If you make that cut, then you have demonstrated something over a state school that takes "C or B average" students. Sorry, but that's life and it's not fair, but it's reality.

Rancher of CA 6:09PM July 12, 2010

The acceptance rate dictates supply/demand and is a critical factor in determining the student view of the school. Also, it is, indirectly, a selectivity measure. I would urge this metric to be reconsidered as valuable attribute in your rating approach. Clearly, the selectivity of acceptance is important and I would be hard pressed to find justification of not giving any weight to this statistic.

KLytel of CA 10:35AM July 01, 2010

Please don't add yield back into your ranking system. When yield was last used, I know one student who was rejected by all the colleges (maybe a half dozen) that he applied to because he didn't tell them that they were his number one choice. (Finances were not in issue in this case.) Later he graduated from Cornell U, but getting there was harder than it had to be. Yield just adds stress to the college application process.

K Glenchur of CA 4:50AM June 22, 2010

It would be interesting if users could decide which criteria were important to them in rankings. This would increase the customization, relevance, and value of the information. (perhaps something along the lines of PHDs.org, but with the criteria you already use).
So for instance, I don't really care what the perception of high school counselors is of a school. Zero. Zilch. Nada. The ability to decide which factors were important to you (in the online version) would be incredibly helpful.
Just a thought.

Nathan K of TN 2:53PM June 17, 2010

Like a previous commenter, I'm curious to know how you will deal with the differences in early acceptance programs (as well as non-need-based merit aid and athletic scholarships) should you decide to reintroduce yield as a factor in the calculations. All three of these have a very strong effect on yield and are totally in the control of each university. Given that yield is so easily manipulated it seems as though it can't reliably serve as a basis for comparison among schools unless you utilize a formula that discounts yield percentages for schools using any of these yield-boosting techniques. Wasn't manipulation through these techniques the reason you had stated previously for dropping yield from the formula?
I'm also curious to know why you would not consider using quality of undergraduate teaching as one of your criteria since this is a separate ranking that you have published previously.
Finally, wouldn't the inclusion of faculty honors and membership in leading academic societies be a better proxy for faculty quality than just salaries? You might also include undergraduate prizes and honors adjusted for school size and averaged over a number of years.
While I might quibble with your ranking methodology, I still appreciate having a single source for many of the statistics you publish.

GJohn of MA 9:59AM June 09, 2010

In your "schools that do their best at teaching undergrads", US News curiously leaves out Masters universities. Aren't these the schools that typically do their best at teaching undergrads? Will they be included in the next rankings?

jack of CA 4:50PM June 08, 2010