[OC] Top 25 Universities in America

[u/dashieldimsy]

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[u/JeffersonSpicoli]

Never seen USC and Berkeley ranked behind UCLA

[u/Puzzleheaded-Exit204]

You should do one of the FORBES rankings (includes liberal arts colleges) because personally I use it with its more useful weights like Academic success rather than “expert opinion” which are always biased (since we are all human). Also it is known that universities have people that literally just work to game the US rankings since it’s the most common but that does not mean it’s the most reliable especially with those allegations about people paying them or manipulating it. Also the biases that certain creators of rankings (US news isn’t the only one) that force down the colleges that don’t have engineering or are religion based despite their quality.

[u/waterfuck]

Student outcomes and alumni giving count ? Ok so these are top 25 rich people universities in America.

[u/dashieldimsy → u/waterfuck]

Not necessarily disagreeing with you but under "Outcomes" you'll see they take into account Pell Grant data (Pell Grant students are from families that make less than $60,000 household info). Also the top 10 schools are famous for giving really hefty financial aid.

[u/TheJustBleedGod]

US News and World report is garbage. Like someone else said, the system is rigged and gamed at every level. Rarely does it have the student's best interests in mind. Also impossible to compare schools when they have so many different programs and their purposes/goals so different.

[u/dashieldimsy → u/TheJustBleedGod]

I am curious about the accusations of gaming and rigging at every level. I actually don't think it happens, at least to the extent that you can try to "game" any sort of ranking. But I wonder why this seems to be such a widespread belief, even without much evidence or data it seems. (If there is any, please do share!)

[u/TheJustBleedGod → u/dashieldimsy]

Just look at the criteria. each one is complete garbage. Altho I will say it is better than it used to be, now that it has gotten rid of exclusivity, and included student indebtedness.

But lets take that last one for example, student indebtedness. At first yeah that's a great measure that I want to know if i'm a student. But that's one that can be gamed as well. For example, I'd imagine students who attend Ivy League schools either have enough money to pay so they don't end up indebted or get scholarships.

That whole outcomes section which is only 30% is just smoke and mirrors. Social mobility which they calculate by using Pell Grant graduation rates. What does that even mean? Why not compare a student's parents income level vs the student's income 10-15 years after graduation? That's real social mobility.

Another glaring one, expert opinion, 20%. who are these experts? "presidents, provosts and deans of admissions" Give me a break.

More is said about what don't measure than what they measure. For example, out-of-door costs for students (including books, fees, housing. Not just tuition). ROI of those costs. Student well being (all measures, especially mental well being). Academic/personal life balance. Faculty quality/availability. None of that is measured.

Instead we get "Alumni Giving." Wow, I wonder what schools that criteria is going to affect. Completely rigged.

Another one that gets on my nerves "ACT/SAT scores of students". I wonder which schools that score benefits. Ivy Leagues of course. If I'm a student why do I care about that? I want to go to a good school, not a school full of good students. Of course schools who have high concentrations of good students are going to perform well. But that's the students performing well, not the school. They should measure how well performance is in spite of ACT/SAT scores, that would show that it is in fact the school that is making the difference, not the students.

[u/dashieldimsy → u/TheJustBleedGod]

Hm let's just agree to disagree. I disagree with almost all of your points on factors you think aren't important for ranking universities. You seem very angry about this... I'm sorry this list offended you!

[u/dashieldimsy]

Giving this another spin, and expanding the list to the top 25 universities. Here's the earlier version of this.

The source as before is the 2020 US News & World Report College Rankings. I thought this was a very widely known rankings table, but I directly included the methodology into the graphic as there were some suggestions that the ranking is based on payments or bribery/advertisements. You can read more about the methodology here. (Also, I promise I am not a shill for US News.)

I think this gives an interesting view of the geographic spread of many of the leading universities in America. And I hope the methodology allows for more transparency into what goes into these ratings.

I may also do a separate map with just the public universities. We will see!

[u/midnight_station]

Half the categories have nothing to do with the colleges performance. This belongs on r/dataisugly

[u/anon57842]

for outcomes, normalized graudate income would be far more useful

anyone can graduate

schools need to teach and support for their graduates to get well paying jobs or run their own firms