Your Thoughts—and Our Responses—on College Rankings Changes

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You can probably get cross-admit numbers from places like http://mathacle.blogspot.com/2010/05/hypsm-cross-admit-raw-data.html and http://college.mychances.net/college-rankings.php

Observer of MA 7:37PM July 19, 2010

High school consulars? lol! this is being totally unfair.
Well, i think private universities should go up!! due to the budget cut issues. friends of mine can not even get into class at UCLA! and they're already behind of 1 year...do you think, this is still a great school? in my opinion, not at all. Why would i go to school where i will be staying 1 more year just to finish up my B.S.
Plus, public schools like CAL & UCLA! you're just a number, they don't care about you unlike USC where they're small classes, you can communicate with the teachers easier & they want you to success by any way.

sam of CA 1:33PM July 16, 2010

It is clear what US News intends to do from these methodology changes: make them much more arbitrary so that they change considerably from year to year to spark a lot of hype. Which, of course, has the obvious consequence that US News can sell more magazines.
Robert Morse is clearly lying right to our faces by saying that he doesn't think that institutions will emphasize ED to increase yield and subsequently their ranking. Anyone with a half a brain can realize that it is in the interest of any institution to do this. Not to mention that the truly high-quality institutions don't have high yields since they are perceived to be difficult (e.g., Chicago, Caltech). But the fact that US News believes prestige to be a more valuable metric than academic quality is indicated through every single one of the newly implemented statistics.
This post is merely a feeble excuse for implementing your clearly flawed policies. I don't even think this is denial - it is flat-out dishonesty, and as a result of this dishonesty, the college admissions process will become much more hectic for high school students. But apparently, US News cares very little for students. After all, when money is at stake, everything is fair game, right, Robert Morse?

Jonathan of IN 6:50PM July 05, 2010

Through the College Board, USNews should be able to develop a serviceable "cross-admit" ranking of top colleges.
Cross-admit numbers are much more difficult to fudge or manipulate than yield rate numbers, and give us an excellent idea which schools to students select when a choice is open to them.

Observer of MA 1:36PM July 01, 2010

As long as U.S. News utilizes peer assessment as a factor I have read weighted up to 25% of their rating formula their ratings will be biased to some extent. I would suggest also looking at stateuniversity.com (which does not utilize peer reviews in their formula) and collegeboard.com as other sources of ratings.

Mike of NY 4:19PM June 30, 2010

1 and 2:
High School counselors, by and large, haven't the slightest clue about colleges (though, to be fair, many deans don't either) and their inclusion would dramatically pollute your data set. As it stands, the 25% weight given to peer score is far too high, and should be reduced to 15%. It should function as a stabilizer, but in the lower tiers, it leads to all kinds of nonsense. For example, Arizona State is ranked MUCH higher than it should be as an academic institution, simply because it's inclusion in the Pac10 increase its notoriety, and so it receives an undeserved peer score - or look at the difference in objective stats between rivals USC, UCLA, and CAL, where USC is beating the UC's in almost objective stat, but is still ranked lower simply because of peer score. In many cases, then, peer score leads to an inaccurate ranking. Adding highschool counselors will only further muddy an already unclear and overemphasized data point.
3. Numerically ranking the third tier is a fantastic improvement.
4. You are kidding yourself if you think schools aren't going to game the rankings using early action to manipulate yield, and thus improve their ranking. The only way to stop it is to disallow data from early admits to be counted, but that might punish students who use early decision to improve their chances of obtaining admission to their dream school. You have a responsibility to leave yield off of the criteria.
5. Health and Wellness is far too subjective to include in the rankings
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Suggestions:
1. Standardize scores to either SAT/ACT. Schools reporting ACT are gaming the system.
2. It would be nice if you would create a separate ranking for "most selective universities" that allowed you to choose display based on SAT or SAT/GPA combo (using a 60% SAT weight and 40% GPA weight) - which would help to overcome some of the misleading ranking outcomes that happen as a result of the very high peer score.
3. Create a minimum donation amount for alumni donation, so schools can't collect $1 to boost this percentage. Make it something like $25 or more, and that will help sort out the riff raff.

WCW of CA 11:36PM June 25, 2010

"However, U.S. News believes that colleges change the parameters of their various early-decision or early-action programs for enrollment management reasons, not to improve in the U.S. News rankings."
Bob, this isn't really the issue, is it? It may be that schools aren't adjusting their early programs to affect their rankings but the fact remains that yields aren't comparable among schools because of these differences. If there is a school that decides to use Early Decision to fill 100% of its class, will you credit that school with 100% yield? Quite a coup for them! This seems absurd without some way of adjusting your formula for differences in these admission policies.

GJohn of MA 6:16PM June 24, 2010

1. If the admit yield becomes a factor, these schools could be in trouble regarding their top ten rankings: Duke University, University of Chicago and the University of Pennsylvania. These 3 schools have lower admit yields than all their top ten counterparts.
2. Counselors view? My high school counselor is a complete idiot. He is not really that smart and trust me he would rate The Ivies as the best, not looking at other schools like MIT, Duke, Stanford, Caltech and the University of Chicago which are all top ten schools
3. US News should also take into consideration, The Wall Street Journal rankings of feeder institutions considering the colleges and universities that enroll students in the top 5 business, medical and law schools.
4. Why can’t US News also consider student happiness and social life? It should be 5% of a university’s whole overall score.
5. I do believe US News should eliminate the idea of top tier and should also rank schools by state separately.

tj of CA 1:45AM June 24, 2010

I think counselors are a great way to incorporate educated opinions into the rankings. Peer review while valuable has been criticized for manipulation. Counselors, when their opinions are aggregated, know a good amount about what colleges offer and what students they take in. However, counselors do not have strong inherent interests to play up or down certain universities like university presidents and deans who are in the business would have. While an individual counselor's opinion might reflect knowledge of a few universities only, getting a broad spectrum of counselors brings a holistic perspective, free from serious bias and incentive problems.
Adding yield to the mix is a great way to incorporate student preferences, however universities might reinforce their practice of yield protection. As a suggestion: perhaps you should increase the weight of acceptance rate. It always baffles me how little emphasis this is given (1.5% weight), and how well low acceptance rates correlate to desirable and top institutions. With universities in the US hardly scanning for SAT scores any more and looking more at candidates holistically and qualitatively, acceptance rate seems a better proxy of selectivity than SAT scores and high school rank (this usually applies to less than 50% of an entering class and is easier to manipulate)
My ultimate suggestion is to have peer review count for 10%, counselor review count for 10% and yield count for 5% and acceptance rate count for 5% decreasing the weight on sat scores and student rank.

Moni of TX 1:29AM June 18, 2010

Forgive me if I lack knowledge of the reasoning, but why does U.S. News not rank Schools of Communication?
It seems like a common school for students to apply to and would be of interest to many prospective students who debate between schools who claim to have the best ones.
The way to rank them would be difficult considering there is no standardized test like for medical or law or education or business. But employment rates, technology and professors degree status could be factored in.
Either way I think it is a mistake not to rank these schools that colleges put just as much effort into improving as any other.

jared Silverman of NY 6:44PM June 17, 2010