[HN Gopher] Columbia whistleblower on exposing college rankings
___________________________________________________________________
Columbia whistleblower on exposing college rankings
Author : pseudolus
Score : 152 points
Date : 2022-09-16 13:46 UTC (9 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.theguardian.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.theguardian.com)
| insane_dreamer wrote:
| I would argue that the exact rankings are worthless, but the
| general tiers or positioning, is not. In other words, whether #1
| is Stanford or Harvard, or whether Columbia is #5 or #9 makes
| zero diff and shouldn't factor into anyone's decision. But
| whether your school is ranked 20 or 150 does make a big
| difference in terms of job perception once you leave school. It
| may be unfair, but if you apply for a job post-college with a CSE
| degree from CMU the hiring manager is going to look at it much
| differently than the applicant from LSU. But college probably
| won't matter between applicants from CMU and MIT, for example,
| regardless of those college's respective exact rankings.
| CobaltFire wrote:
| So maybe HN can help someone with a question related to this:
|
| I'm retiring from the military in the spring with a state college
| STEM BS (3.79 GPA; done on active duty) and a whole lot of
| experience. I was looking at ranking as a possible way to help
| decide where and if I would do a graduate degree; I want to
| further my education but am geographically limited.
|
| What other signals can I use that are relevant to the tech world?
| I'm still undecided on a STEM Masters vice something more like
| Liberal Arts or MBA and don't completely understand the signaling
| there in tech either, aside from the MBA pushing to management.
|
| I'm open to any advice either here or via my contact info in my
| profile. Really at a loss on how to proceed and hope someone
| around here might have good advice!
| debacle wrote:
| Graduate degrees are a different animal, but one thing you
| could do is look into who you might be under at the school, and
| what kind of work they're doing.
| bee_rider wrote:
| Are you looking to do a thesis? If so, I'd suggest that it is
| more important to find a professor who is well regarded and
| working on a problem that you care about.
| CobaltFire wrote:
| That's something I've been thinking about. Doing a degree on
| Active Duty means a lot of late nights and weekends and no
| real time to explore anything not directly related to the
| degree.
|
| Further, my son has cancer and autism and with the relative
| stability of my pension I have thought that I'd like to make
| the world a better place in some way that my experience can
| be leveraged.
|
| Unfortunately that combination leaves me with little hope of
| being admitted to a more classical MA or PhD because I just
| didn't do the coursework that is needed to apply and
| distinguish myself. Perhaps a terminal MA at a state school?
|
| I'm in CA and can move to any school in the state; I can't
| really leave the state for a few reasons to do with my sons
| care.
| bee_rider wrote:
| FWIW, I did a MS with a thesis, I really liked it.
| Currently I'm working on a PhD, and honestly -- I dunno,
| with the MS I was working on more of a little refinement to
| something that my professor had done, it was pretty cool.
| With the PhD, there's almost too much freedom and the
| expectations are much higher, haha.
|
| The MS felt more much more practical. Some of that could be
| related to the specifics of the projects, but... I dunno,
| there's something to be said for restricting scope.
| CobaltFire wrote:
| As a project/program manager I feel that last sentence in
| my bones.
| [deleted]
| influx wrote:
| What is your ultimate goal? To be employed in tech? If so, what
| type of positions? What is your MOS (or equivalent)?
| CobaltFire wrote:
| Like many people leaving the military I'm not 100% sure what
| I want to do, simple because I haven't been exposed to the
| breadth of what I have the options to do. I'm
| institutionalized, for lack of a better word. Tech is what
| I'm most familiar with, so that's what I default to. The more
| I think about it the less I care about making all the money
| and the more I want to do something that fulfills me and lets
| me make society a better place.
|
| I am an Aviation Electronics Technician, previously a Nuclear
| Reactor Operator. Also have experience with Lean Six-Sigma
| (Black Belt), physical and IT security, was an instructor,
| and lots of QA experience.
|
| It's been an interesting ride, and I took every opportunity
| afforded me.
| clusterhacks wrote:
| I applied to and got into a bunch of good universities to study
| for my MS in computer science.
|
| My biggest mistake, _BY FAR_ , was not visiting all those
| schools, talking with prospective advisors and current
| students, and using my gut instincts on those conversations to
| guide my decision.
|
| I picked the school that I felt was the best but wound up
| poorly matched with an advisor. I had been a very proactive and
| driven undergrad (returned to undergrad in my late 20s) but
| reverted to a passive approach in grad school - it was a
| terrible mistake. By the end of my first year, I was completely
| demotivated and very unhappy. I turned it around my second year
| by dropping my advisor and taking some control in the process
| back. But I also totally punted on a PhD and settled for a MS.
| But it left me very unsatisfied in the process and in a
| position of asking "what if" in many ways.
|
| One big part of why I was dissatisfied is that in hindsight,
| many of the professors I interacted with were simply not very
| friendly or considerate of students. Maybe they were used to
| being able to be more dismissive of undergrads coming straight
| to grad school, but as an adult I expected adult interactions.
| That experience was partly my fault - there are _always_ people
| who are prickly to deal with. I should have been a little more
| self-directed about making sure I was working with better
| people even if it meant maybe doing thesis or research work in
| an area that was slightly less interesting to me personally.
| CobaltFire wrote:
| Thanks for this. It's a stretch to hope any real grad degree
| will accept me, but I'm thinking all they can do is tell me
| no.
|
| The advice about advisors I keep hearing repeated, so I will
| have to listen (if I can get in anywhere).
| clusterhacks wrote:
| Your chances of admission are probably _significantly_
| better than you think.
|
| I did my BS in computer science at a mid-lower-tier state
| school - it wasn't like I was all-world Stanford/MIT/CMU or
| anything. I did a bunch of GRE practice tests and have
| always been a very strong standardized test-taker so I had
| that going for me.
|
| I also had cultivated strong references at my undergrad
| institution. My references were professors I had multiple
| classes under and that I had actually spent time with
| during office hours. You may have those sources available
| to you but I would guess that a decent fallback might be
| former commanding officers?
|
| The school where I got my MS also had stories about active
| duty Air Force students coming in full-time for a PhD,
| mowing through the check-lists of to-do work, and finishing
| their PhD in the three years the AF gave them to do it.
|
| Your military background may be a strong point in your
| favor. Also, I vaguely remember that military retirees
| often had some tuition assistance programs. Grad schools
| _LOVE_ students with external funding sources. Look into
| this.
|
| Lastly, it sounds like you have a good story to tell. Tell
| that story in your application letter!
| CobaltFire wrote:
| I've been hesitant to lean on my story, as it were, as it
| seems too close to the plot of a Lifetime movie.
|
| I'll have to get over that and leverage it I suppose.
|
| I have almost no contact with professors outside of class
| due to the nature of my degree taking a long time and it
| being online.
|
| I do have at least one CO who is a cheerleader for me and
| is the one who has told me to push higher. He is open to
| writing any and all letters I need. Most of the others
| I've lost contact with, and due to my situation my most
| recent ones hardly know me.
| clusterhacks wrote:
| You aren't leaning on your story so much as you are
| demonstrating successful experience navigating a world
| that isn't laid out in a way that made it easy.
|
| Retiring from the military? I expect you know _deeply_
| how to navigate a bureaucratic system with sometimes
| frustratingly weird rules. (translation - can work
| through grad school institutional requirements without
| hand holding)
|
| Possibly at least partially funded by outside sources?
| (translation - wait, I don't have to pay the full cost of
| the student? Has healthcare already? FREE FREE FREE labor
| to advisor)
|
| Earned undergrad degree while working full time and
| caring for a special-needs child? (translation - nothing
| here is going to knock this person off course)
|
| Truthfully speaking, almost everyone has a good story to
| tell. People are generally interesting to me and I think
| to others - especially the type of other people you would
| probably prefer to work with.
|
| Maybe I am being overly optimistic about it but maybe
| remember that grad school is not a magical place where
| only super-geniuses tread the halls (internal opinions on
| that may differ </slight sarcasm>).
| CobaltFire wrote:
| You gave me my first honest laugh of the day, thanks!
| It's a chemo week, so those are in short supply.
|
| As for the actual content of your comment... I can see
| all of those. Never having walked those halls it's very
| much blind to me and statements like yours help demystify
| what I'm looking at.
|
| Every statement you made there is true: I have stable
| income, I have paid for health care, I have the GI Bill
| if needed, I know bureaucratic systems, I'm excellent at
| project management, and I don't give up or derail easily.
|
| Maybe I have a shot. I'll have to sit down and work out
| exactly what I want to pursue; I don't have long left in
| the season for applications.
| codexjourneys wrote:
| +100 to visiting all the schools after you apply. I believe
| it signaled serious intent to the departments where I applied
| and gave me a chance to explain my non-traditional background
| in person.
|
| Ended up attending a school in a location that I wouldn't
| have ranked first on paper but ended up loving. And vice
| versa for a school in a location that didn't bother me on
| paper, but when I visited, I realized I couldn't spend years
| there.
| CobaltFire wrote:
| I hadn't considered doing this. It's a huge investment, but
| I suppose just by making that investment it's a signal to
| that department.
|
| Thanks!
| Calavar wrote:
| Rankings aren't a bad place to start, they just shouldn't be
| where you finish too. Keep in mind that there really isn't too
| much difference between the #2 versus the #10 school or the #30
| vs the #50. If two schools are in the same general neighborhood
| in ranking, that's when you should start putting more weight on
| the intangibles and how the school meets _your_ needs
| specifically as opposed to just generally having a good
| reputation.
| CobaltFire wrote:
| Thanks for this. I know there is a lot of compression in
| rankings, so it's kind of like IQ ratings: you can't tell the
| difference in normal day-to-day stuff until they get fairly
| large.
|
| It's also like them in that it's a less than rigorous ranking
| it seems!
| smogcutter wrote:
| As others have said, grad school is a very different animal
| from undergrad. People choose undergraduate schools for all
| kinds of reasons, but a graduate degree should be 100% focused
| on what's best for your career.
|
| I think you're looking at things from the wrong direction, and
| flipping it around will help a great deal. It seems like you're
| going from the idea that you want to further your education, to
| thinking about potential degrees, and only then what you might
| do with them. This is how you wind up in a masters program that
| turns out to go nowhere or be a bad fit. Instead, turn it
| around! Set a goal for yourself and plan backwards from there.
|
| What degree do you need? Do you need one at all? What kind of
| advisors and faculty should you be looking for? All questions
| that you can only answer sensibly with a goal in mind.
| CobaltFire wrote:
| In my case my career is done and it's time to find a new one.
| I have a decent amount of fixed income, and have been
| considering using my second career for something more
| fulfilling I suppose, hence the possibility of a degree that
| makes no financial sense but might make me happy or allow me
| to contribute to society in some way.
| josh_fyi wrote:
| In the US, if you can get accepted to a PhD, you get full
| scholarship, especially in STEM, but also in other fields. You
| can drop out in a year or two and get your masters. (I got my
| master's this way at Harvard, though I also finished the PhD.
| Nothing was required but the first year of course work and a
| language test.
|
| Far less expensive and possibly less work than going directly
| to masters.
|
| But if you do want to pay for a professional masters', then
| unlike undergrad, the specific program may be more important
| than the reputation of the university as a whole.
| etempleton wrote:
| Look at where you might want to end up and see if they have any
| connections to specific schools / programs in schools. Beyond
| the education and the prestige attached to a school / program,
| the big benefit of graduate school is making connections. This
| is not nearly as present in online programs, but it can still
| be there.
| CobaltFire wrote:
| This is another aspect of a school's program I hadn't
| considered, thanks!
| tristor wrote:
| My advice is that you get a civilian job /before/ you start
| your MS. There's a few reasons why:
|
| 1. Your employer may sponsor you and pay for some/all of the
| cost, or otherwise support you financially while attending.
|
| 2. #1 may be contingent on which school you attend.
|
| 3. Your coworkers who are mentors to you (at whatever level
| that may be) likely have connections and can steer you towards
| the right school to further your career.
|
| Ultimately, to a large degree, your career should decide if,
| when, and where you attend graduate studies if you aren't going
| to go into academia. A lot of people do Georgia Tech in the
| FAANG world and it's pretty great, but some companies have an
| internal (and often unspoken) preference for particular schools
| if you're trying to rise in the ranks.
| CobaltFire wrote:
| This is a path I'm pursuing as kind of a default, with
| graduate applications to a full time program being what I'm
| asking about here in particular.
|
| Georgia Tech or CMU are two I've been recommended if I go
| this route, so it's nice to hear that wasn't necessarily bad
| guidance!
| NelsonMinar wrote:
| Previously in US News and World Report malfeasance: "Students
| Find Glaring Discrepancy in US News Rankings". Specifically about
| how they rate Reed College, my alma mater and a school that has
| famously opted out of participating in the ranking system for
| years. It looks like the report artificially punished Reed for
| that giving them a lower rating than their statistical model
| would have. It's very similar to what Columbia is reporting.
|
| https://www.reed.edu/reed-magazine/articles/2019/usnews-disc...
| fullshark wrote:
| If the primary (not sole) purpose of college is to land a premium
| entry level job that sets you on a significant wealth acquisition
| trajectory as a laborer then they are not worthless at all and
| may be the primary thing you care about.
|
| Everyone knows this in these institutions but the kayfabe is that
| this is not the primary purpose of college, despite it so clearly
| being the case for the vast majority of students.
| snowwrestler wrote:
| > If the primary (not sole) purpose of college is to land a
| premium entry level job that sets you on a significant wealth
| acquisition trajectory
|
| College will look like a huge waste of time and money measured
| against such a short-term goal.
|
| The primary purpose of college is to get an education, which
| confers life-long benefits (financial and otherwise).
| fullshark wrote:
| That's a purpose but not primary, if that were the case the
| hyper competitive college admissions process would cease to
| exist, as there's plenty of reasonable substitutes in terms
| of education provided, in some ways these less prestigous
| places even offer better educations than the places with the
| top published professors.
|
| It's primarily about acquiring economic opportunity, full
| stop.
| snowwrestler wrote:
| The vast, vast majority of college students do not attend
| hyper-competitive institutions, but receive lifelong
| benefits nevertheless.
| wyre wrote:
| In what way is it a waste? When I graduated HS 15 years ago
| the statistic was the average college grad made a million
| dollars more than the average HS grad over their lifetime.
| dgfitz wrote:
| The primary purpose of a college education is to network.
|
| Have you ever seen Good Will Hunting?
| Workaccount2 wrote:
| It's odd how as information has become more widespread and
| accessible than ever before, the cost of obtaining
| information through conventional means has skyrocketed.
|
| Something is clearly not right.
| snowwrestler wrote:
| Information and education are not the same thing.
| Ozzie_osman wrote:
| Couldn't help but draw parallels to startups with "fake it till
| you make it" mentality. If you're Columbia, you might start off
| gaming a few metrics, hoping that as you rise in the rankings you
| attract better students, better instructors, more funding,
| thereby fulfilling the prophecy. Many startups do the same
| (pretend to have success with the hope that that will attract
| talent, funding, customers which then does lead to success).
|
| Of course there's never an excuse for misleading people via
| outright fraud.
| toss1 wrote:
| >>Of course there's never an excuse for misleading people via
| outright fraud.
|
| Pretty fine and yet hazy line you're drawing there...
|
| If you are having to fudge numbers, you are doing it wrong. You
| are playing with the symptoms and ignoring the causes of
| success. Get the fundamentals right - the a product, a product-
| market-fit, and then build. If you have to fake it, you are
| very unlikely to actually make it, at least honestly. (and yes,
| you can point to fakers who have even had a successful IPO, but
| I still don't consider the likes of Uber to have made it -
| $$billions of investment and still searching for a profitable
| model - a massive waste of capital and talent, and we still
| don't have our flying cars)
| Dowwie wrote:
| > We now have about 4,500 administrators on the main campus,
| about three times the number of faculty, and that's a new
| development over the past 20 years
| kevin_thibedeau wrote:
| If only US News would rank by Admin/faculty ratio. They could
| single-handedly fix this nonsense.
| mazelife wrote:
| > [he] described an expanding and self-replicating bureaucracy
| that is growing ever more expensive to maintain
|
| This seems to me a key piece of the problem. Rises in tuition
| have massively out-paced inflation while salaries for tenured
| professors have not seen anything even close to that kind of
| growth in the same time period. In fact most institutions
| actually employ fewer full-time faculty than they did 20 or 30
| years ago. The answer to the question "where is all this money
| going?" doesn't have a mono-causal explanation, but an ever-
| expanding self-perpetuating bureaucracy is a significant
| factor. And it's not just academia; I've heard similar concerns
| from physician-acquaintances about healthcare. The astonishing
| growth of middle and executive managers at Johns Hopkins has
| been an ongoing topic of discussion with department-chair
| friend of mine for years.
|
| I think we've barely begun to reckon with the costs the MBA-
| ification of major institutions has had on the overall welfare
| of the US public.
| ParksNet wrote:
| Defund Universities: pull Government-backed student loans. Let
| people pay out of their own pocket if they find it valuable.
| debacle wrote:
| They're not worthless, but they're certainly not objective.
|
| My son missed an Ivy because of an admissions deadline SNAFU. It
| was his top choice in schools, and he was pretty upset about it.
|
| Two family members employed at the school told us it was the best
| thing that could have happened to him. They didn't allow their
| children to apply there, because they see what is happening at
| the school.
|
| This mirrors the trajectory of a local university, once a pretty
| prestigious school (circa 1980s/90s), now near last in enrollment
| and falling fast. If you were older and didn't have school age
| children (or weren't school age yourself), you would never know.
|
| Schools' prestige has a lot of momentum behind it, and it could
| take 20 years before a once prominent school tanking becomes
| common knowledge.
| foobarian wrote:
| Would love to hear any details you can share (without
| potentially identifying bits) about the issues.
| debacle wrote:
| Nothing scandalous: - Severe GPA inflation
| - Not being able to compete with nearby state schools for all
| but two programs, while being much more expensive -
| Elitism that comes with being an Ivy - Students are
| in many ways competing against each other (in certain
| programs)
| screye wrote:
| > nearby state schools
|
| Are Ivies near any of the generally top tier state schools
| ? My intuition was that the best state schools were near
| Chicago and in California. I do feel like state schools do
| outcompete nearby 'prestige' private schools in those two
| regions.
|
| UPenn -> Maryland
|
| Cornell -> Buffalo
|
| Harvard, Dartmouth -> UMass
|
| Yale, Brown -> UConn
|
| Columbia -> SUNY Stony brook
|
| Princeton -> Rutgers
|
| ________
|
| I know UMass, Rutgers and UMaryland have strong CS &
| Engineering programs. Dunno much about the other schools or
| other programs though.
| pclmulqdq wrote:
| If you're studying a technical field, an Ivy is probably not a
| great decision, but if you're going for a liberal art or if you
| are looking for a prestige signal, they are unparalleled.
| valarauko wrote:
| > If you're studying a technical field, an Ivy is probably
| not a great decision
|
| Sadly that's not really the case in the biological sciences,
| especially when you're looking for a tenure track job. If you
| look at people who enter tenure track jobs at even state
| schools, they invariably have pedigrees from Ivy schools,
| including postdocs.
| kevinventullo wrote:
| Highly depends on the field. Among the top mathematicians who
| attended undergrad in the US, a large proportion went to
| Harvard.
| colinmhayes wrote:
| The main value add of undergrad is networking and prestige, not
| education. That's why Ivys are still an unparalleled value
| proposition, even if their education is similar to the rest of
| the top 50 schools.
| ISL wrote:
| There is also utility in having the faculty in every single
| department of a school be above average in quality. It makes
| exploration and collaboration _much_ more rewarding.
|
| There are non-Ivies like that, too, but by and large, the
| Ivies are all pretty good at every subject.
|
| (I don't want to take away from the networking/peer-
| capability point, which really matters, but rather add
| another reason to consider the fancy schools.)
| screye wrote:
| Ivies have pretty tiny STEM departments for the most part.
|
| Massive state schools like UMich, UWisc, UW, GATech have a
| much larger faculty and tend to be better for exploration.
| radicaldreamer wrote:
| Exactly! It's not about the academics (not to say the
| academics are bad at most Ivy's), it's about meeting and
| interacting with your peer set.
| debacle wrote:
| "The main value add of undergrad is networking and prestige,
| not education."
|
| I think this might be true in software engineering and maybe
| law, but it's certainly not true in the medical field,
| engineering, etc.
| atdrummond wrote:
| It's true for US medical students, since the MD is gated to
| four year degrees that are mostly orthogonal other than the
| few required science courses.
| bredren wrote:
| > "It means that our educational programmes have to be run to
| some degree as money-making ventures. That is the secret that
| can't be openly acknowledged," he said.
|
| Was this really a secret?
|
| Also, this truth can't be told without also discussing student
| loans, which schools have departments designed to help students
| enroll in.
| jstrieb wrote:
| When I was picking colleges a few years ago, I made my own
| rankings. At the time, I knew more about what I didn't want than
| what I did want, and none of the tools I found supported
| searching that way.
|
| The US department of education collects extremely comprehensive
| data on colleges every year, and makes the data public. I loaded
| these CSVs into SQLite and made a bunch of queries to filter
| schools out, then dumped the rest to a spreadsheet. In the
| spreadsheet I weighted each column and sorted the rows. The
| weights were tunable so I could emphasize different factors in
| the sorting. The process was successful in that it turned up some
| surprising results I wouldn't have otherwise considered!
|
| I've wanted to write a post on my website about this process for
| a while, but haven't gotten around to it. In the meantime, for
| anyone looking to do something similar, the data is here:
|
| https://collegescorecard.ed.gov/data
| geoelectric wrote:
| I'm certainly very curious about your surprising results. I
| hope you write the post (and I somehow find it again when you
| do!)
| nyokodo wrote:
| > it turned up some surprising results
|
| > I've wanted to write a post ...but haven't gotten around to
| it
|
| Now you have to write that post ASAP because you can't leave us
| hanging like this.
| seti0Cha wrote:
| They aren't worthless, they're a measure of prestige, which is
| what students are largely paying those huge fees for.
| DalekBaldwin wrote:
| Prestige is informal and unmeasurable. Columbia's prestige will
| remain high even if the quality of its education declines. But
| people expect the top-ranked schools to be roughly the same as
| the top-prestige schools, which is one of the reasons for these
| kinds of shenanigans.
|
| The rankings are probably more meaningful at the bottom of the
| list than the top.
| bigbacaloa wrote:
| Get an engineering or science degree - wherever - it beats
| prestige in terms of earning power.
| gersh wrote:
| Can Columbia students sue the school for being defrauded on what
| they were buying?
| [deleted]
| woodruffw wrote:
| I think this would be difficult, since it would require
| students to claim (or admit) to buying prestige rather than
| paying for an education.
|
| In other words: Columbia can (and probably still does) provide
| an excellent education, even if their ratings are rightfully
| lower.
| LatteLazy wrote:
| If you cannot define something, you cannot measure it.
|
| Since there is no one universal definition of a good university,
| how can there be a measure?
|
| So anyone offering a measurement (Columbia is 9.4, Harvard is
| 9.25 etc) is by definition lying.
|
| The core issue here is that people really want a simple universal
| scale. The fact that doesn't exist doesn't stop them wanting it.
| And instead of accepting that it makes them MORE ready to grab
| whatever rating sounds good based on some repetitional BS around
| the person offering it.
| musicale wrote:
| > "It's clear that the growth of university bureaucracies and
| administration has been a major driver of the cost of higher
| education growing much, much faster than inflation. We now have
| about 4,500 administrators on the main campus, about three times
| the number of faculty, and that's a new development over the past
| 20 years," he said.
|
| This has been going on for decades at many universities. As he
| notes, administrative organizations are primarily expanding for
| their own sake, at the expense of students.
| jeremysalwen wrote:
| Professor Thaddeus was the best math professor I had at Columbia,
| glad to see him popping off like this :)
| lo_zamoyski wrote:
| Like many "metrics", college rankings appeal to people because
| all you have to consider is a single number. One result is that
| it eliminates the anxiety associated with having to make a
| choice. You have a single axis and you just aim for the top
| without having to go through some process of research and
| prudential evaluation or worrying that you will regret your
| decision later (you might end up hating your school, but you can
| rationalize your bad experience by appealing to your school's
| rank to soothe the pain). Rankings also appeal to people who are
| excessively concerned with prestige, and these rankings,
| interestingly enough, generate and reinforce that prestige. The
| more people believe the ranking, the more it reinforces the
| perceived prestige. Above all, rankings appeal to human pride
| because they give us a tool by which to say "I am better than
| you" in an unambiguous manner, regardless of whether it is true.
|
| When people apply to graduate school, the situation is a bit
| different. You typically apply based on the people in the
| department you're interested in or the faculty member you want as
| an advisor. People aren't so concerned about rankings here as
| they are when applying to undergraduate programs.
|
| I am not denying quality is variable across schools. It is.
| Student bodies can also vary, and rankings can concentrate people
| of a certain mindset (for better or for worse) in one place. But
| rankings are not as meaningful as the numbers would seem to
| indicate. At the very least, the precision is far too high and
| too reductive (what's the difference between a school of rank 4
| and 5? of 4 and 10?). The methodologies used also don't
| necessarily indicate what you think they do. There's a game these
| schools play, as this article touches on, to increase and
| maintain rank.
|
| My general feeling is that college education, and education in
| general, isn't that great, generally speaking, and the costs are
| preposterously high. There's too much of Dewey's influence.
| Classically, universities were not meant to be job training
| centers and glorified trade schools (we can debate how good they
| even are as job training centers). The reigning paradigm is being
| challenged, however, especially with rising tuition and
| conspicuous ideological presence on campus.
| macspoofing wrote:
| I think 'worthless' is too strong a statement. The rankings are a
| subjective score, but it does correlate to some measure of merit.
| A school ranked in the top-20, will probably be a 'better' school
| than one ranked in the bottom-20 spots.
|
| For undergrad, the reality is that you can get a good(enough)
| education from almost any accredited university in the country.
| For degrees fields like CS, or Engineering, it almost doesn't
| matter. You will get a quality education from most institutions.
| GavinMcG wrote:
| But they do start to create a feedback loop. Even if the
| underlying data is _completely_ made up, as long as the "best"
| students are going to an institution, there's at least some value
| to future students to be associated with them.
| amilios wrote:
| For anyone looking for schools for CS, https://csrankings.org/ is
| an excellent site that gives you an overview of departments'
| research output, filterable by subfield, geographic location etc.
| A very nice system if you're intending to get involved in
| research in your undergrad, but especially good if you plan on
| continuing to a Master's or PhD in CS.
| pastor_bob wrote:
| I think Columbia is a bit of an anomaly.
|
| As someone who knew a lot of people who went to grad school and
| considered it myself, Columbia grad programs were known as a
| notorious money-pit/cash grabs unlike any other school in its
| range. I was always confused how they got away with it.
|
| The only other school in NYC that competed with it in this regard
| was the New School, which is ranked all the way at 127.
| barry-cotter wrote:
| Come now, taught Master's are always cash cows. They exist to
| allow the university to cash in on the prestige of its
| undergraduate or professional programmes. Just as true at
| Oxford or the LSE as at Columbia or Chicago.
| sparc24 wrote:
| Precisely. There is big difference between undergrad and
| masters at Columbia. For CS MS was a cashcow - extract money
| from international students. It's actually a great deal for
| both parties.
| clusterhacks wrote:
| FTA "... all university rankings are essentially worthless.
| They're based on data that have very little to do with the
| academic merit of an institution . . . "
|
| While I strongly believe that a motivated university student can
| maximize their ROI at any institution, it would also be nice if
| there was an easier way for prospective students to identify
| schools that would offer the best opportunity for students. But
| campus visits don't tell you much about actual classroom teaching
| experiences from the learner perspective.
|
| Any ideas out there?
|
| When I talk to high-achieving parents of kids picking schools,
| the parents seem to say that choosing a school was mostly a
| matter of coming up with some arbitrary evaluation function (eg,
| "wanted a small school with a few hours of home", "interested in
| a big flagship state university", "wanted an Ivy", etc).
| insane_dreamer wrote:
| Whether rankings matter, I think depends a lot on what your
| goal (as a student) is for going to college. Off the top of my
| head:
|
| 1- get a good-paying job post-graduation? : you want a school
| with a good reputation within your target industry (and here's
| where rankings play a big part)
|
| 2- actually get a good education? I'd look at the professors,
| curriculum, what student-learning opportunities are offered,
| etc.
|
| 3- enjoy the college experience as a young person? That will
| depend a lot on what appeals to you personally (i.e., big state
| school vs LAC)
|
| 4- study abroad / other opportunities?
|
| 5- an affordable option that doesn't put you in debt? This
| There's usually a trade-off there even if you get accepted into
| the school of your choice.
|
| 6- close to home (usually goes with affordability / i.e., you
| might be able to keep living at home)
|
| I'd imagine that for most people it's ideally a combination of
| these, but knowing which is the highest priority for you
| personally is very important. And rankings don't really play a
| part in any of those except maybe for #1 -- and even then it's
| hard to know. Example, my D went to what might be a "tier 2"
| ranked U (top 50, but not top 20) which most people have never
| heard of but was well respected among employers in certain
| industries (engineering in this case), so your target major is
| a big factor with that. Also, she turned down a top-20 U
| because it would have put her into debt; often lower ranked
| U's, i.e., the next tier down, will provide more scholarship
| money to attract top students (based on SAT/GPA) away from the
| very top-ranked colleges.
| ggordbegli wrote:
| I created a crude site that ranks universities & departments
| based on professor review data.
|
| https://www.bananacharts.com/rank.html
| dieselgate wrote:
| Not sure I have an answer to your question but the most
| ridiculous thing is the dichotomy between undergrad and
| postgrad educations. Most schools iirc are ranked based on
| their grad school programs with is totally different than an
| undergrad education. And what about institutions that don't
| offer postgrad programs..? If possible it seems the most
| appropriate for parents to talk to recent grads of the
| institution they're considering.
| Bakary wrote:
| The high-achieving parents aren't wrong to do this because the
| value a student gets from a school is largely self-directed and
| based on the people they meet there. It makes more sense to
| evaluate based on the student than the school.
|
| Is your kid vulnerable to social anxiety and mental pressure?
| They would be better off being a bigger fish in a smaller state
| pond than developing suicidal ideation at a big name
| institution. You can come up with solid criteria based on
| knowledge of the world and intuition.
|
| None of the criteria you cite are truly that arbitrary if you
| inspect them a bit more closely.
| collegecomments wrote:
| _> the value a student gets from a school is largely self-
| directed and based on the people they meet there._
|
| For this reason, rankings (unfortunately) have more value
| that OP suggests. The "best" students will cluster around the
| "best" institutions. Does the average student differ muchst
| between #1 and #5? Probably not much. But the difference
| between 10 and 100 does, by a lot, and the difference between
| "unranked LAC" and "top 50 CS" is difficult to overstate.
|
| If you're measuring is "how good is my peer group", rankings
| are often a bit of a self-fulfilling prophecy. Not so much at
| fine granularity, but more so if you measure in terms of
| "20-50 position overlap equivalence classes". This is
| particularly true in fields like CS, where there are _huge_
| differences in curriculum between the top schools and the
| not-so-top schools.
| bjourne wrote:
| I don't think this is completely true. Brand name
| universities might impress some people, just like brand
| name clothes does, but that doesn't mean the education is
| qualitatively better. Nowadays MIT puts its materials
| online so you can see for yourself what the fuzz is all
| about. And roughly the same material with the same
| "difficulty" was used by the professors at my university.
| Though, they are more "shy" (we in Europe are more modest)
| so they don't put their content online so I can't prove it.
| I think this whole "weak and strong universities" is mostly
| a US only thing.
| maltyr wrote:
| I'm not convinced on this - with a large enough student
| base (e.g. most state schools), I think it's possible to
| find peers that would have excelled even at top 5
| universities. Similarly, at top tier colleges, you can find
| people who don't really perform to the expected level and
| coast along.
|
| You stand out by being a top performer, and will attract
| other top performers as long as you search them out. Also,
| in those scenarios, professors will give you more
| attention, because you are a better student and more
| enthusiastic than most of your peers.
|
| Perhaps if you are a true prodigy, you might need a top-
| tier program to reach your full potential... at that point
| your peers are the professors and high-performing graduate
| students, but for most students, I think there are pros and
| cons for being in a top 5 vs a top 50 program.
| collegecomments wrote:
| _> I 'm not convinced on this... I think there are pros
| and cons for being in a top 5 vs a top 50 program._
|
| Yes. That's why I used the top 50 CS programs as an
| equivalence class in my post:
|
| _> > the difference between "unranked LAC" and "top 50
| CS" is difficult to overstate._
|
| The US has 5,000 colleges and universities. Not 500.
| 5,000.
|
| You are absolutely not going to find more than one top
| performer every half decade or two at a small non-
| selective LAC or the branch campus of a university
| system. If ever. I spoke with on faculty member at a
| branch campus who said that he's _never_ had a single
| student who is as good as the average undergrad he taught
| at <top 5 program>. He's been teaching for 20 years.
| Those types of institutions comprise the vast majority of
| US colleges and universities.
|
| I think the "rankings are just noise" attitude is mostly
| held by people who don't even think about the existence
| of 90% of US colleges and universities. If you consider
| Stevens Institute of Technology a "backup" as opposed to
| a "reach", then I guess the attitude has merit. But if
| you're one of the 50% of college students who get
| rejected from Stevens -- or the even larger percentage
| who don't even apply because they know they can't get in
| -- then the world looks different.
| shiftpgdn wrote:
| Said teacher likely has a reason to further the myth that
| "top tier schools" have "top tier students." Academia is
| largely nothing but group think and elitism these days.
| collegecomments wrote:
| He's a professor who has spent his entire career at one
| low-ranked institution. If he has a reason for being down
| on his own employer, where he's tenured, I'm not sure
| what it could be...
|
| (Also, he didn't state this as a negative or a positive.
| Just as a fact. "Different institutions serve different
| clientelle". You don't have to be a hotel snob to say
| that the Holiday Inn you manage isn't as nice as the
| Ritz, or a elitist that the youth swim team you coach has
| nothing on the US olympic program... some people --
| particularly educators -- aren't obsessed with being "the
| best".)
| stanford_labrat wrote:
| At my high school the "target" schools for the top
| performers in the class were usually some kind of high
| ranked school or ivy for this reason. I don't remember any
| of my classmates (myself included) really factoring in
| specific details of the institution itself for whether we
| preferred one over the other, rather we just looked at the
| top 20 list and applied to the ones we liked. The logic
| being that if we landed somewhere we could basically be
| pretty successful in whatever field we ended up choosing.
| So, often that looked like apply to all ivies + a safety or
| two.
|
| I was rank 8/432 and applied to: Harvard, Princeton, Yale,
| Columbia, Stanford, Pomona, Rice, and UW. Got rejected from
| everywhere except UW so that's where I ended up going. I
| think only one other person in the top 10 went to UW with
| me, and he had plans to be a CS major. Funnily enough over
| 50% of my graduating class just went to UW because it was:
| good enough, close to home, and relatively affordable.
| vouaobrasil wrote:
| The best idea I've found is actually visiting the university
| web pages of the faculty in the department you'll be studying
| in. Often the more amiable professors will have better web
| pages with information like mentoring students, possible
| projects, other outreach activities, etc.
| jkingsbery wrote:
| I only did this for one school, but at the college I went to I
| was able to sit in on a class or two when I was visiting it
| before attending. You might need to ask for permission, but I'd
| imagine most professors/teachers would be happy to have people
| listen in. And more schools are recording classes and making
| them available on YouTube, so you can get a sense of the
| teacher's style.
|
| Another thing one can do is, instead of picking a _school_ ,
| pick professors. Consider what majors the student might study,
| look at what professors are there, and look at things like what
| books they've written, have they written any interesting blog
| posts about their teaching, and that sort of thing.
|
| Both of these approaches take more time than scanning a
| rankings, but it actually resembles much more closely how other
| decisions we make in life operate.
|
| > some arbitrary evaluation function...
|
| I think "wanting an Ivy" is a bit arbitrary, but wanting a
| small vs. a large school, or a school a certain distance from
| home, can lead to a very different experience over the course
| of 4 years.
| Tenoke wrote:
| >look at what professors are there, and look at things like
| what books they've written, have they written any interesting
| blog posts about their teaching, and that sort of thing.
|
| I wish I did this. I basically applied to Universities ranked
| highly for my degree at the city I wanted to be in (London)
| before realizing these rankings are near arbitrary. It was
| only in my first or second year as I read more papers that I
| realized I should look into what Professors there publish and
| was largely unimpressed or didn't care for their subfields
| but it was too late by then.
| GeneT45 wrote:
| "... all university rankings are essentially worthless. They're
| based on data that have very little to do with the academic
| merit of an institution . . . "
|
| So much this. The biggest value of a prestigious university is
| the name, not the education. Prestigious universities crank out
| top-notch graduates (and the occasional complete incompetent)
| because they accept only top-tier students (and the occasional
| complete incompetent).
|
| As a parent, know that if you get your child into a 'good'
| school you've probably done all you can. The outcome has more
| to do with your child than the stultifying, enervating,
| curriculum to which they'll be subjected.
|
| Education from -1 to 24 is horribly broken (at least in the
| U.S.).
| CharlieDigital wrote:
| > Any ideas out there?
|
| For undergrad, this might be a good place to start:
| https://www.ratemyprofessors.com/ How good are the staff at
| actually teaching the subjects of interest?
| Loughla wrote:
| Having had a prior career in college teaching, rate my
| professor ratings are tied, almost directly, to how friendly
| you are as a faculty. For institutional "data" that is tied
| to whether or not a student got what they wanted. Note: Not
| what they needed.
|
| Yes it asks about quality, but if faculty are friendly and
| funny, students will score you high. If you are quality but
| not friendly, students will score you low. It's a popularity
| contest for college faculty, not exactly a great way to make
| a decision about your college choice.
|
| If a student doesn't get what they want, even if they get
| what they need, they will score low. For example: the
| institution I am currently working with is scored pretty low.
| They're a science and technology focused institution with a
| niche related to electrical and mechanical engineering. The
| first year is general education, then you get into your
| specific major.
|
| The scores are low, because the schools inside the university
| are VERY selective. There are a large number of freshmen who
| do not get into their first choice major their sophomore
| year. This is because they don't have the necessary
| achievement to be competitive, not because the school sucks.
|
| But, if you look at the rating on rate my professor, the
| school looks like it's full of sociopaths bent on destroying
| children's futures.
| insane_dreamer wrote:
| This is why you should generally always try to get
| admission directly into your major rather than later, or
| you wind up studying something else at a college you don't
| necessarily want to be. For example, it's MUCH harder to
| get directly admitted into the engineering school at most
| colleges than general admission (undergrad), and then
| equally hard to switch to engineering from another school
| in the college after you're already there.
| toast0 wrote:
| > The scores are low, because the schools inside the
| university are VERY selective. There are a large number of
| freshmen who do not get into their first choice major their
| sophomore year. This is because they don't have the
| necessary achievement to be competitive, not because the
| school sucks.
|
| I'm going to pile on here and agree that while the school
| may not suck academically, this is a pretty shitty academic
| plan for students who may not have realised they might need
| to make a choice of taking a major they don't want or
| leaving to another institution to study what they want.
| Transfering between institutions is possible, but it comes
| with a lot of barriers --- transfer admission is usually
| secondary to direct admission; credits may not transfer
| well, especially between quarter and semester systems;
| sequencing differences may make scheduling difficult, etc.
| It's unusual to get a 4 year degree in 4 years total when
| transferring, unless there's a specific transfer program
| between the two institutions; if, after one year spent
| working towards their chosen degree, your students are told
| they can't get it there and they would have to spend four
| years somewhere else to do it, it looks like a wasted year.
|
| Of course, maybe your institution does accept some students
| directly into their major and counsels the rest that most
| of them won't get their choice and they still accept your
| bargain. And it doesn't sound like a terrible place for an
| undesigned engineering and technology major, who would
| presumably be wooed into whatever specific major would
| accept them after the first year.
|
| EDIT to add: from my experience as a student at an
| engineering school, almost all the students capable of
| succeeding in one engineering major would have been able to
| succeed in the others too, with the exception of biomedical
| engineering --- you needed to have a hell of a lot more
| drive to succeed in that. There was a popular belief that
| mechanical engineering was easier, but I don't think it
| really was; just it was a lot easier to get excited about
| it and being excited about your major is an important
| factor.
| verall wrote:
| > The scores are low, because the schools inside the
| university are VERY selective. There are a large number of
| freshmen who do not get into their first choice major their
| sophomore year. This is because they don't have the
| necessary achievement to be competitive, not because the
| school sucks.
|
| I wholly disagree. Sounds like the school sucks to me. If I
| had a choice between entrance into my chosen major at a
| different institution, and your school, I would choose my
| major. As students are often applying for 5+ schools, they
| may not understand the nuances of each schools admissions
| process, and the admissions departments may intentionally
| obscure unpleasant details like this.
|
| If this practice is bad enough to drag down scores across
| the whole institution on RMP, it sounds like a lot of kids
| are getting suckered into thinking they got into a great
| engineering program, but then get shoveled into whatever
| department needs them to fill their quota.
|
| It's _hard_ for undergraduates to transfer schools after
| freshman year, at least in USA.
| clusterhacks wrote:
| I don't have any experience with universities that have
| such a competitive aspect to entry into specific fields of
| study for students.
|
| My gut is that is may be very good for the university
| reputation if the university is already pretty selective on
| admissions. But pretty bad for even a better than average,
| but not top %, student who has their heart set on a
| specific major.
|
| I have taught as an adjunct and was impressed by the
| average undergraduate at a large state school. As a person
| who very much doesn't like an entirely "winner takes all"
| mindset in life, I'm curious about in the extra pressure of
| getting into your preferred program.
|
| Mind sharing your thoughts on how that extra internal
| selectivity works out for students? I mean, clearly
| students complain about the process if it doesn't work for
| them individually, but what do those students mostly do?
| "Settle" for another program? Transfer?
| insane_dreamer wrote:
| I would take it as only one factor, since it's more about
| whether the students like the professor (and how strict
| he/she is), which is different than whether they're good at
| teaching.
| williamtrask wrote:
| LinkedIn knows. LinkedIn + Glassdoor really knows.
| Aperocky wrote:
| Just go to the library.
|
| Library was my favorite place at college, probably the most
| important place too since I tended to skip class and learn the
| material myself. A good library should be comfy and have ample
| working space.
|
| It's also mostly free access to the public.
| godelski wrote:
| Rankings matter because rankings matter to people. If we lived
| in a purely meritocratic world I would agree with you that for
| a lot of degrees it wouldn't matter where you go. But the
| rankings are confounder for two important aspects: money and
| network reach. Money means bigger and more advanced labs
| (comparatively. I've been to big school labs and small school
| labs. Both are hacked together but there's sure a difference).
| Networking helps you get more papers published, more
| prestigious internships (i.e. more on job training), more
| internships in general (lots of students get denied in tighter
| job markets where it is easy for top tier uni students despite
| similar skill levels at Freshman and Sophomore years. But
| internships beget internships), and the networking gets you
| into the door when you graduate.
|
| I strongly agree that it doesn't matter much where you go to
| get your education if your goal is to get educated. But if in
| addition to that education you want a promising career,
| rankings do matter.
| devwastaken wrote:
| Look at clubs and student jobs on campus in relation to lab
| work/research. For example if you have a compsci school without
| active students doing things like robotics, that's because the
| admins and professors don't want to do it.
| xani_ wrote:
| Having all 1xx courses on youtube would give a glimpse
| yamtaddle wrote:
| I've watched some courses from Yale for an area I received
| instruction in at a state school that's just about entirely
| unknown once you get about 150 miles away from it. So, a 2nd
| or 3rd tier state school. One of the former "Normal Schools"
| that Fussell complains about diluting the meaning of higher
| education when they hastily converted to general colleges or
| universities to soak up demand driven by the GI Bill.
|
| As far as I could tell the content was basically identical &
| the exercises or papers weren't that different, but two
| things stood out:
|
| 1) The students at Yale were _way_ more engaged, and
|
| 2) They had more guest lecturers or speakers, and it was
| always someone really important & impressive.
| rdtwo wrote:
| First we need to accept the nobody is ready competing on
| academic strength and quality of teaching. College is 80-90%
| about signaling and then the other 10-20 is the basic skills to
| ensure students don't damage the brand
| toast0 wrote:
| (Some) community colleges _are_ competing on academic
| strength and quality of teaching. Transfer rate, and
| graduation rate (and /or graduation time) from the subsequent
| institutions are easily measured proxy metrics for academic
| quality (up to you to decide if they're compelling proxy
| metrics).
|
| Class size is also a proxy metric for quality of teaching. If
| all your classes are auditorium lectures vs 20 student
| groups, it makes a difference. Of course, small classes with
| terrible instructors and awful lesson plans aren't better
| than competent lectures.
|
| Of course, community colleges fill a lot of roles, and aren't
| just for transfer students, and they need to compete on those
| other things too.
| collegecomments wrote:
| There are institutions that compete on the basis of teaching
| quality. Often private, sometimes public. They emphasize
| small class sizes, do not stress research productivity in
| hiring or promotion, etc.
|
| Some of those institutions also signal (e.g., Williams,
| Harvey-Mudd, etc.) but most of them are relatively unknown
| and really do just compete on educational quality.
| waynesonfire wrote:
| are you suggested that you wouldn't be able to spot an ivy
| league school if you saw one?
|
| seems like it would be useful to have available a "nutrition"
| label for colleges, which has to be based on facts.
| RhysU wrote:
| I like this education label idea. I further suggest a
| couple of columns of numbers based on the outcomes for
| several socioeconomic groups. Most people can read the side
| of a cereal box.
| rdtwo wrote:
| By quality of education no. As a method of pre-filtering
| candidates sure it's pretty obviously when someone comes
| from an extremely privileged background.
|
| Also there isn't really much difference between Cornell,
| brown, or pen graduates from Any of the decent state
| schools. Except they are full of themselves more.
|
| Honestly the graduates from 2nd tier state schools seem to
| have gotten the best education but they had adverse
| selection coming in because their more competitive peers
| went to higher ranked/named schools.
| mcguire wrote:
| A degree from MIT is exactly the same as one from the
| University of Phoenix?
| rdtwo wrote:
| Successfully graduating from u of phoenix I heard was no
| easy feat. They didn't teach much or at all and failed most
| of their students. To actually graduate from there required
| a great deal of drive and determination. The program was
| designed to fall so to succeed against that is a
| undervalued accomplishment. It was completely worthless for
| signaling though.
|
| The caliber of student going into MIT is a lot different
| than UOP but the net ADD from MIT is probably not as big as
| you expect especially compared to any other accredited
| institution which UOP was not.
| [deleted]
| Frotag wrote:
| Find old syllabi and assignments online or ask the prof / a
| subreddit for some. Shittier schools to tend to have easier and
| more boring assignments and projects (eg "build a calculator",
| "list facts about X").
| lobstersammich wrote:
| I like to use OpenSyllabus to investigate which textbooks,
| papers, etc. are used to teach courses:
| https://opensyllabus.org/
| prottog wrote:
| As they say, hedge funds with a degree-granting school attached.
| immigrantheart wrote:
| Anecdata, I've some students from Columbia in my circles. While
| they aren't the brightest of the bunch they certainly are some of
| the wealthy ones. One student actually admitted that she chose
| Columbia just for the prestige, even when she has to pay $200k.
|
| Maybe that's the goal? Then the system is working as intended.
| game_the0ry wrote:
| Nowadays college is less about high quality education and more
| social signaling of prestige among peers. From that
| perspective, your student who is paying $200k is making a
| rational decision in her mind.
|
| When she graduates, she may get a prestigious high paying job
| (investment banking or management consulting) and that will
| validate her decision. If instead she gets an "ok" job and most
| of her peers are form lower-ranked colleges, she will feel like
| she is top of the social / prestige hierarchy, thus validating
| her decision, bc social prestige has its own unquantifiable
| value.
| strikelaserclaw wrote:
| Really depends on the field. If you are a law firm, then they
| want as many ivy league graduates as possible because that is
| attractive to prospective clients (regardless of the
| individual merits of people working at said law firm) but if
| you are google, it makes no economic sense to pick person A
| from Harvard when person B from community college is much
| better. I look at my own company (in a "hard" field like
| google), we got our fair share of top college grad's at all
| levels but there isn't a large correlation between position
| and where someone went to school. Our interview process for
| engineering is 100% technical and people who pass can join
| regardless of things like education background. As for social
| heiarchy, people at my company demonstrate their worth by
| delivering things (that is how the status at my company is
| determined, what did you do?), you'd get laughed out of the
| room if you wanted respect because you went to some
| prestigious school.
| game_the0ry wrote:
| Agreed - certain prestige-driven fields highly desire high-
| ranked academic pedigree, but not all fields. I'm just
| saying people are willing to borrow the amount equal to
| like half the median home price for that prestige.
| g9yuayon wrote:
| Many parents seem have forgotten that kids are supposed to get
| top education instead of getting into "top" schools. As a
| results, we see kids take 15+ APs in high school, even though
| they leetcode into a FAANG after graduation (yes, I'm talking
| about your kids, parents in the bay area). Or worse, the kids
| burn out in high school. We see kids build novel clubs to "be a
| world leader" in high school and only abandon the idea once
| getting admitted. We see parents focus so much on rankings
| without thinking twice what exact a highly ranked university
| would offer to their kids. On the other hand, we see universities
| game the ranking systems. We see universities inflate their GPA
| scores. We see universities try every shady way to lower their
| admission rate.
|
| I'm still hopeful, though. Eventually good education wins. Life
| is a marathon, not a 100m dash. Getting into college or not is
| merely the beginning of one's adult life. In larger scheme of
| things, which college one goes to or how many APs one takes
| hardly matters.
| 2b3a51 wrote:
| The UK is big on league tables. Hospitals, schools, universities,
| police, ambulance and fire services and so on.
|
| The paper below explores some of the statistical questions that
| ranking organisations on outcome measures of some kind raises.
|
| https://www.bristol.ac.uk/media-library/sites/cmm/migrated/d...
|
| I'm working my way through Dr Thaddeus's paper now to see if it
| fits with or dis-confirms the framework of Goldstein and
| Spiegelhalter.
| [deleted]
| sjkoelle wrote:
| 1) prof thaddeus is the man 2) here is a good paper on something
| similar https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/sciadv.1400005
| jimt1234 wrote:
| The most shocking thing to me here is that "US News & World
| Report" still exists. Do they offer anything other than the phony
| college rankings? I'm being serious. I was interested in "US News
| & World Report" back in the early-90s when I was shopping law
| schools, and haven't thought about them since. Not once.
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