2021 US News & World Report Best Colleges

Auggie

Auggie

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U.S. News & World Report today unveiled their list for best colleges: https://www.usnews.com/best-colleges

Top 5 National Universities:
1) Princeton
2) Harvard
3) Columbia
4) MIT
5) Yale

Top 5 National Liberal Arts Colleges
1) Williams
2) Amherst
3) Swathmore
4) Pomona
5) Wellesley

Top 5 Public Universities
1) UCLA
2) Cal-Berkley
3) Michigan
4) UVA
5) UNC
 
 
The rise of UCLA is kind of astounding. 30 Years ago this was a good but not great commuter school that offered someone a chance to go to school in a nice LA community, Berkley is where the brainiacs in Cali went to public college. Then somewhere along the way it picked up steam and I guess many decided Westwood was a great alternative to the radical liberalism of Berkley. In general US News loves the Cali system and gives many of their schools high grades. Also shooting up the list is the University of Florida, now a top 30 school and only behind private Vanderbilt as the flagship SEC academic institution.
 
Respect for Florida, the state must subsidize the hell out of their schools to keep tuition that low.

The generally high ratings for any public Cal... there's maybe a bias in their favor? My undergrad tied with Ohio St? eh, ok that makes sense. :D How to they do these? Purdue doesn't have a med or law school. How are they compared with a full comprehensive like Ohio St?

My grad alma sitting at 8 and uh.... no. Good school but they choose to be selective and small. Let 20% enter and grad over 80% and you're rising in the rankings. Lop off the lower 20,000 of any B10 school and have a do-over.
 
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eastisbest said:
Respect for Florida, the state must subsidize the hell out of their schools to keep tuition that low.

The generally high ratings for any public Cal... there's maybe a bias in their favor? My undergrad tied with Ohio St? eh, ok that makes sense. :D How to they do these? Purdue doesn't have a med or law school. How are they compared with a full comprehensive like Ohio St?

My grad alma sitting at 8 and uh.... no. Good school but they choose to be selective and small. Let 20% enter and grad over 80% and you're rising in the rankings. Lop off the lower 20,000 of any B10 school and have a do-over.
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There are a group of metrics listed on the homepage and while many deal with objective metrics like average SAT, acceptance rate, etc... they also deal with subjective things like social mobility upon graduation and guidance counselor perception. I also think this only deals with undergrad and is weighted so that all disciplines are equal so hot STEM schools don't dominate the list. Washington University famously has bended their admission process so that they would move up in these rankings; Washington, Emory, Carnegie-Mellon, & Case Western Reserve are all basically the same kind of school yet Washington toots the US News & World ranking very hard when recruiting new students.
 
Which brings me back to Purdue and G-Tech. They are the "hot STEM schools" with nowhere near the offerings of a Big10, yet they're high on the list. Purdue I'll grant working on equal enrollment footing but G-Tech is a small school that if they chose, could easily enroll Purdue's size. Larger state population in an exciting area.

Washington, Emory, Carnegie-Mellon, & Case Western Reserve: that's a hot set of schools. But push comes to shove, at Purdue when Indiana kids talked about hardest Engineering school, they're all about Rose-Hulman.
 
Auggie said:
There are a group of metrics listed on the homepage and while many deal with objective metrics like average SAT, acceptance rate, etc... they also deal with subjective things like social mobility upon graduation and guidance counselor perception. I also think this only deals with undergrad and is weighted so that all disciplines are equal so hot STEM schools don't dominate the list. Washington University famously has bended their admission process so that they would move up in these rankings; Washington, Emory, Carnegie-Mellon, & Case Western Reserve are all basically the same kind of school yet Washington toots the US News & World ranking very hard when recruiting new students.
Click to expand...

Ultimately, that's the problems with rankings like this, and most attempts to rank anything, the final results are always skewed by what data you choose and how you weigh it.

The high school rankings by the same source have been shown to basically reflect how rich and not diverse a school district is.

Lots of this ranking are just highly rating schools that super expensive, so either you have a leg up in life because you can already afford to go their or you are superior student who would succeed anywhere.

It raises the question, are these institutions actually that much better or since they have the ranking and traditional clout are they much better at attracting money and the best possible students.
 
Tardis said:
Ultimately, that's the problems with rankings like this, and most attempts to rank anything, the final results are always skewed by what data you choose and how you weigh it.

The high school rankings by the same source have been shown to basically reflect how rich and not diverse a school district is.

Lots of this ranking are just highly rating schools that super expensive, so either you have a leg up in life because you can already afford to go their or you are superior student who would succeed anywhere.

It raises the question, are these institutions actually that much better or since they have the ranking and traditional clout are they much better at attracting money and the best possible students.
Click to expand...
The latter. They are much better at raising money which leads to getting the best possible students.
 
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