OT: US News College Rankings

I see there is a new "America's Best College" ranking out. But in the Associated Press article, there is no mention of Cornell. If I go to the US News website, all of the rankings info is "premium content".

Anyone know how Cornell did?

looks like cornell tied for 14th with johns hopkins

[www.charlotte.com]

It looks like Stanford isn't happy at No. 5 !!

[news-service.stanford.edu]

Why doesn't Consumer Reports rank the schools?

The Princeton Review just came out with some rankings that, at a glance, look more respectable - Yale and Princeton are First, but Harvard is nowhere to be seen on the Academic Rankings. Don't know where Cornell is ranked there since they only have the top five.

Hasn't Cornell's position always been that ranking "the best schools" in order is silly anyway?



Post Edited (08-25-03 12:30)

John T. Whelan '91 wrote:

Hasn't Cornell's position always been that ranking "the best schools" in order is silly anyway?

That's certainly a legitimate position to take. Attempting to calculate such a ranking from statistical factors like class size, faculty salaries, graduation rates, selectivity, yield, etc., is folly, no matter to how many significant digits the result is calculated--especially since schools have begun to "manage" those numbers in order to boost their rankings.

In my view, the most valid factor used by USNWR in their formula is the apparently purely subjective "academic reputation."



Post Edited (08-25-03 13:33)

I agree with Al. The most valid part of the ranking is the reputation factor. US News' polling process may do a fairly good job of identifying how schools' reputations are perceived, or at least from the perspective of the people they ask (other academic institutions). Reputation is one of the concrete advantages of going to a "name" school, so this perceptual information is useful if not necessarily important.

The other factors considered may be important factors in educational quality but estimating their true value quantitatively is difficult if not impossible. The effects are most certainly non-linear. So while the data may be useful it's kind of pointless to try to cimbine them into a final rating.

Really should get back to work...

Even the "reputation" rankings might not be that reliable. If you look at the return rate for their surveys, I think it is less than 50%, a rate that would never hold up well in the scientific world.

Cornell will always suffer in the US News rankings because the state colleges accept a somewhat higher percentage of applicants (I think they are also required to maintain a certain percentage from NY). Our size also keeps acceptance rates relatively high.

Cornell's greatest asset -- it's ability to do so many things so well -- doesn't really get factored into the rankings. We may not have the best program in most subjects, but we probably have a top 20 program in just about every subject there is. How that doesn't add up to being a better *college* than a school that only does one thing well (i.e., Caltech) is beyond me.

You folks are concerned about nothing. RPI seems thrilled about being #29: [www.rpi.edu] . I don't know if this is the same list.

Graham Meli '02 wrote:
Cornell's greatest asset -- it's ability to do so many things so well -- doesn't really get factored into the rankings. We may not have the best program in most subjects, but we probably have a top 20 program in just about every subject there is.

Graham's right on in everything he says.

The other issue is attempting to give an overall ranking to an institution that is in reality a collection of nearly autonomous fiefdoms.. A Yale or a Harvard may have certain liberal arts or social science departments that are stronger than Cornell's, but Cornell surely has a more highly-regarded engineering school. So to publish an overall ranking may be good for attracting publicity in order to sell magazines, but it doesn't help the kid trying to figure out the best place to go for what he/she intends to study.

Al DeFlorio wrote:

So to publish an overall ranking may be good for attracting publicity in order to sell magazines, but it doesn't help the kid trying to figure out the best place to go for what he/she intends to study.

True. But other organizations (and maybe USNWR too) rank the best schools for engineering, the best for pre-med, the best for political science, etc., so one would hope that prospective students would seek out those lists. I remember when I was thinking of pursuing computer science as a major (that was a looooooooong time ago), Cornell was ranked #3 on some organization's CS list under MIT and Carnegie Mellon.

<-- University!

--> Institute!

<-- University!

--> Institute!

sorry couldn't help it

So did anyone buy the issue? Where does Cornell rank in the various engineering disciplines? We (I'm not an engineer, but I say "we" for Cornell hockey and I can't skate) only made one top three - for materials.

Jeff Puchalski '02 '03 wrote:

<-- University!

--> Institute!

<-- University!

--> Institute!

sorry couldn't help it

Or as the athletic department prefers we can use the "Rensselaer Tech" label:

[cornellbigred.ocsn.com]

That is the same page that has St. Lawrence moved to Potsdam from Canton for the upcoming season.

perhaps some of you know this already, but i find the following paper by one of our own profs fascinating...

[www.ilr.cornell.edu]