Colorado State - #134 to #121
Mississippi State - #160 to #142
San Diego State - #165 to #152
Northern Illinois - #189 to #177
East Carolina - #199 to #181

(09-10-2013 10:18 AM)bigblueblindness Wrote:  Colorado State - #134 to #121
Mississippi State - #160 to #142
San Diego State - #165 to #152
Northern Illinois - #189 to #177
East Carolina - #199 to #181

Is that compared to last year, or further back? It would be nice to have a wider view.

Well they reduced the emphasis on HS rank and increased the emphasis on graduation rate. So you really can't compare.

(09-10-2013 10:45 AM)bullet Wrote:  Well they reduced the emphasis on HS rank and increased the emphasis on graduation rate.

Why? Did someone at US News decide they wanted to push Caltech and MIT a bit farther down their list?

Are they still using the university presidents peer review as a category?

http://www.gainesville.com/assets/pdf/GS17003616.PDF

Dr. Mecham did not think very higly of any other school in Florida that year

(09-10-2013 10:54 AM)Wedge Wrote:  

(09-10-2013 10:45 AM)bullet Wrote:  Well they reduced the emphasis on HS rank and increased the emphasis on graduation rate.

Why? Did someone at US News decide they wanted to push Caltech and MIT a bit farther down their list?

They probably wanted to shake up the rankings a little to increase magazine sales.

(09-10-2013 10:56 AM)Minutemen429 Wrote:  Are they still using the university presidents peer review as a category?

http://www.gainesville.com/assets/pdf/GS17003616.PDF

Dr. Mecham did not think very higly of any other school in Florida that year

He didn't think much of most universities. I wonder why Madison Wisconsin evaded his wrath. You're right though, he really let the Florida schools have it. Of course that was back in 2009. They may not even use the peer assessment any more.

(09-10-2013 10:35 AM)nuftw Wrote:  

(09-10-2013 10:18 AM)bigblueblindness Wrote:  Colorado State - #134 to #121
Mississippi State - #160 to #142
San Diego State - #165 to #152
Northern Illinois - #189 to #177
East Carolina - #199 to #181

Is that compared to last year, or further back? It would be nice to have a wider view.

This is just 2012 compared to 2013. I just scanned through the top 200 and compared. There really wasn't much movement overall; most schools were within a few spots of last year. If someone wants to get more thorough, go for it. Just a barometer.

Peer Assessment (the biggest joke ever as proved by UF's president) is still worth a full 22.5% of your ranking for National Schools according to their methodology.

If they want to keep this part of the rankings then every ballot should be made public.

(09-10-2013 11:14 AM)10thMountain Wrote:  If they want to keep this part of the rankings then every ballot should be made public.

Yep.

(09-10-2013 11:14 AM)10thMountain Wrote:  Peer Assessment (the biggest joke ever as proved by UF's president) is still worth a full 22.5% of your ranking for National Schools according to their methodology.

If they want to keep this part of the rankings then every ballot should be made public.

Somebody should use FOIA to get the US News survey responses from every public school president/chancellor/administrator.

The problem is the students themselves have their own internal rankings as shown by cross admit stats. It doesn't matter how many ranks Princeton is above Harvard, Harvard will win the cross admits. That means that even if you rank Princeton #1 and Harvard #23, students who get admitted to both schools are still going to overwhelmingly choose Harvard. The reason undergrad rankings criteria sometimes seem so arbitrary is because they need to make sure that the end result does not deviate too much from what students choose in the real world. The goal is to make the rankings interesting, but not to make them too different from real world results of student choices. A few spots here or there is fine and works as a conversation starter. If you stray too far from real world results, people just end up discounting your whole ranking system. If I saw a ranking that put UCSD over Cal, I would just discount it as some lame attempt to be controversial. That's why they need to add things like peer assessment.

(09-10-2013 11:38 AM)TomThumb Wrote:  The problem is the students themselves have their own internal rankings as shown by cross admit stats. It doesn't matter how many ranks Princeton is above Harvard, Harvard will win the cross admits. That means that even if you rank Princeton #1 and Harvard #23, students who get admitted to both schools are still going to overwhelmingly choose Harvard. The reason undergrad rankings criteria sometimes seem so arbitrary is because they need to make sure that the end result does not deviate too much from what students choose in the real world. The goal is to make the rankings interesting, but not to make them too different from real world results of student choices. A few spots here or there is fine and works as a conversation starter. If you stray too far from real world results, people just end up discounting your whole ranking system. If I saw a ranking that put UCSD over Cal, I would just discount it as some lame attempt to be controversial. That's why they need to add things like peer assessment.

That would be Washington Monthly's ranking:

Quote:1- University of California - San Diego
2- University of California - River Side
3- Texas A&M University
4- Case Western Reserve University
5- University of California - Berkeley

Their criteria isn't really controversial, just different. Instead of the traditional "ranking schools according how closely they resemble Harvard and Yale" their ranking is purely about outcomes:

Quote: We rate schools based on their contribution to the public good in three broad categories: Social Mobility (recruiting and graduating low-income students), Research (producing cutting-edge scholarship and PhDs), and Service (encouraging students to give something back to their country).

Hey moving on up. I would've liked to move into the 170's but 18 spots in a year isn't too shabby.

(09-10-2013 11:50 AM)10thMountain Wrote:  Their criteria isn't really controversial, just different. Instead of the traditional "ranking schools according how closely they resemble Harvard and Yale" their ranking is purely about outcomes:

OK, controversial was probably the wrong word. If it's not trying to be a "traditional" ranking of the best schools yada yada then it's not really fair for me to ding them for having a weird ranking.

There are several non-traditional rankings out there and they all try to show different things in different ways.

However, if anyone does attempt to make an overall "best schools" ranking like US News, then too much deviation from student preferences calls its credibility into question.

(09-10-2013 11:38 AM)TomThumb Wrote:  The problem is the students themselves have their own internal rankings as shown by cross admit stats. It doesn't matter how many ranks Princeton is above Harvard, Harvard will win the cross admits. That means that even if you rank Princeton #1 and Harvard #23, students who get admitted to both schools are still going to overwhelmingly choose Harvard. The reason undergrad rankings criteria sometimes seem so arbitrary is because they need to make sure that the end result does not deviate too much from what students choose in the real world. The goal is to make the rankings interesting, but not to make them too different from real world results of student choices. A few spots here or there is fine and works as a conversation starter. If you stray too far from real world results, people just end up discounting your whole ranking system. If I saw a ranking that put UCSD over Cal, I would just discount it as some lame attempt to be controversial. That's why they need to add things like peer assessment.

This is true and the inclusion of subjective methodology explains much of why the US News rankings still dominate the public's perception of colleges: overall, they make "sense" based on where top students choose to go. It's sort of the like the computer rankings in the BCS formula - people *say* they want objective criteria, but if that objective criteria spits out a result that doesn't jive with what they believe is true based on real world observations, then they ignore that ranking altogether. I actually think that the US News rankings reflect the "real world" rankings that high school seniors applying to schools have pretty well, which is why they are used so heavily by that the best performing students in that group. Believe me - if you're a top 20% or so student in a competitive high school that's about to apply to college, chances are extremely high that you're poring over the US News rankings as opposed to any other ranking being put out there. Comparing the US News rankings to any other ranking is like comparing the AP poll to the various computer rankings for college football - the latter might be more "objective", but the former is the one that people care about.

(09-10-2013 12:07 PM)Frank the Tank Wrote:  

(09-10-2013 11:38 AM)TomThumb Wrote:  The problem is the students themselves have their own internal rankings as shown by cross admit stats. It doesn't matter how many ranks Princeton is above Harvard, Harvard will win the cross admits. That means that even if you rank Princeton #1 and Harvard #23, students who get admitted to both schools are still going to overwhelmingly choose Harvard. The reason undergrad rankings criteria sometimes seem so arbitrary is because they need to make sure that the end result does not deviate too much from what students choose in the real world. The goal is to make the rankings interesting, but not to make them too different from real world results of student choices. A few spots here or there is fine and works as a conversation starter. If you stray too far from real world results, people just end up discounting your whole ranking system. If I saw a ranking that put UCSD over Cal, I would just discount it as some lame attempt to be controversial. That's why they need to add things like peer assessment.

This is true and the inclusion of subjective methodology explains much of why the US News rankings still dominate the public's perception of colleges: overall, they make "sense" based on where top students choose to go. It's sort of the like the computer rankings in the BCS formula - people *say* they want objective criteria, but if that objective criteria spits out a result that doesn't jive with what they believe is true based on real world observations, then they ignore that ranking altogether. I actually think that the US News rankings reflect the "real world" rankings that high school seniors applying to schools have pretty well, which is why they are used so heavily by that the best performing students in that group. Believe me - if you're a top 20% or so student in a competitive high school that's about to apply to college, chances are extremely high that you're poring over the US News rankings as opposed to any other ranking being put out there. Comparing the US News rankings to any other ranking is like comparing the AP poll to the various computer rankings for college football - the latter might be more "objective", but the former is the one that people care about.

I'll second this. Both of my kids graduated from a top twenty USNews high school in the last few years. The only ranking those kids and their friends were aware of was US News. I had to lead them to other rankings and ways of looking at the world. But they both ended up at schools high up in the US News lst.

(09-10-2013 11:51 AM)ncbeta Wrote:  Hey moving on up. I would've liked to move into the 170's but 18 spots in a year isn't too shabby.

Yeah it's very nice to see ECU moving up in these rankings. I'd love within the next 5-10 years to see ECU in the top 150 overall and the top 80 public universities (currently 101). As much as I'd love to pretend these rankings don't matter they do.

ACC
7 Duke
18 Notre Dame
23 Virginia
23 Wake Forest
30 North Carolina
31 Boston College
36 Georgia Tech
47 Miami
62 Clemson
62 Syracuse
62 Pittsburgh
69 Virginia Tech
91 Florida State
101 NC State
161 Louisville
Average: 54.9

Big 10
12 Northwestern
28 Michigan
37 Penn State
41 Illinois
41 Wisconsin
52 Ohio State
62 Maryland
68 Purdue
69 Rutgers
69 Minnesota
73 Michigan State
73 Iowa
75 Indiana
101 Nebraska
Average 57.2

Pac 12
5 Stanford
20 Cal
23 UCLA
23 USC
52 Washington
86 Colorado
109 Oregon
119 Arizona
121 Utah
128 Washington State
142 Arizona State
142 Oregon State
Average: 80.8

SEC
17 Vanderbilt
49 Florida
60 Georgia
69 Texas A&M
86 Alabama
91 Auburn
97 Missouri
101 Tennessee
112 South Carolina
119 Kentucky
128 Arkansas
135 Louisiana State
142 Mississippi State
150 Mississippi
Average: 96.9

Big 12
52 Texas
75 Baylor
82 TCU
101 Iowa State
101 Kansas
101 Oklahoma
135 Kansas State
142 Oklahoma State
161 Texas Tech
170 WVU
Average: 112

American
52 Tulane
57 UConn
60 SMU
86 Tulsa
121 Temple
135 Cincinnati
170 UCF
170 USF
181 ECU
190 Houston
(207-261) Memphis
(12 Nat Lib Arts) Navy
Avg of those ranked: 122.2

I'll let someone else do the rest...

It is official, USF and UCF are now exactly the same school. They should just build a giant breezeway from Orlando to Tampa.