Rising University Cities: Top 100 University Rankings Change (2014 > 2022) (high school, wealthy)

[OyCrumbler]

Originally Posted by GeoffD

The California state schools benefit from the mass Asian/Indian immigration to California. Those cultures tend to stress academics and the US News metrics heavily weight racial diversity and admission of "socioeconomically challenged" students.


You have to take the US News rankings with a grain of salt since they don't weight academics nearly hard enough and skew heavily towards social justice warrior metrics. A school that mostly caters to upper middle class white kids with good academics gets hammered despite graduating far more qualified students than many higher ranking schools. The poster child for it is the University of Vermont. 60% out of state students paying expensive out of state tuition that props up the school. If you look at SAT scores, class rank to get admitted, and the quality of the academics, it should rank around #60. As US News changed their metrics, it slipped out of the top-100 and is #117 now. State school in a relatively poor rural state that's the whitest place in the country. No endowment fund to speak of because it's a state school. They have no choice but to finance the university on the backs of upper middle class students from affluent Northeast Corridor suburbia who pay full tuition. The University of Maine and the University of New Hampshire don't have quite that level of academics but they're also weighted well below where they should be based on the US News SJW metrics.

I don't think the diversity parts really factors a lot in their methodology: https://www.usnews.com/education/bes...ia-and-weights

At best there's the social mobility factor with Pell Grants, but that's a pretty small proportion of the score and not directly tied to race. As stated before, the financial resources and alumni giving bit probably hits public universities pretty hard and were formerly not a part of or as large a part of the methodology. Class sizes at the undergraduate level for public universities can also lean pretty large due to some of the lecturer classes being pretty massive. When you say California state schools do well on these rankings, you're thinking specifically about the UC system, but that doesn't get nearly as many people as the less prestigious California State system (which also has several totally fine schools). The UCs have in recent years had massive national and international draw so their pool of applicants is far larger and with a much larger upper-tier than most other public schools and it also let's them gain a lot of financial resources to boot.


I think the very large draw of California itself and buttressed by the draw of the University of California is interesting as it's a bit akin to the UC system having successfully branded and franchised itself while keeping up quality control like a good fast casual restaurant. The large demand compared to the small number of seats made it so there was a good amount of overflow of fairly talented students as the UC system expanded who were happy to at least go into a UC even if it wasn't one of the traditionally more prestigious ones. It's probably the most successful university system as a whole to do that, and I think part of it is essentially having the much larger California State University system as their sort of budget brand.

[Fisherman99]

Originally Posted by OyCrumbler

I don't think the diversity parts really factors a lot in their methodology: https://www.usnews.com/education/bes...ia-and-weights

At best there's the social mobility factor with Pell Grants, but that's a pretty small proportion of the score and not directly tied to race. As stated before, the financial resources and alumni giving bit probably hits public universities pretty hard and were formerly not a part of or as large a part of the methodology. Class sizes at the undergraduate level for public universities can also lean pretty large due to some of the lecturer classes being pretty massive. When you say California state schools do well on these rankings, you're thinking specifically about the UC system, but that doesn't get nearly as many people as the less prestigious California State system (which also has several totally fine schools). The UCs have in recent years had massive national and international draw so their pool of applicants is far larger and with a much larger upper-tier than most other public schools and it also let's them gain a lot of financial resources to boot.


I think the very large draw of California itself and buttressed by the draw of the University of California is interesting as it's a bit akin to the UC system having successfully branded and franchised itself while keeping up quality control like a good fast casual restaurant. The large demand compared to the small number of seats made it so there was a good amount of overflow of fairly talented students as the UC system expanded who were happy to at least go into a UC even if it wasn't one of the traditionally more prestigious ones. It's probably the most successful university system as a whole to do that, and I think part of it is essentially having the much larger California State University system as their sort of budget brand.

Agree with what you said above...I was happy to attend any UC...UC Riverside in my case. The University of California System (10 locations) speaks for itself. The 23 California State Universities may be a bit lower on US News rank, yet they are very good public schools and much more affordable than UC's for California Residents.
https://www.universityofcalifornia.e...rsity-rankings

[Jbraybarten65]

It seems like the original list notes universities within a metro (but not necessarily the core city) for some, and just the city for others...?

[norcal2k19]

Originally Posted by TheseGoTo11

Good point. Arizona and Arizona State benefit from this while some of the higher ranked UC-Exit Ramp schools are often barely known east of the Colorado River.

Also, growing up in New England, many people who got into lower Ivies would also consider smaller liberal arts schools like Williams and Amherst which US News ranks separately from "National Universities".

As a NESCAC grad, many of us didn't consider the Ivies at all. It's kinda of expected though to consider the Ivies or top private/publics for graduate school in the NESCAC not undergrad. For undergraduate education (not social life lol), the NESCAC is pound for pound the best offering - tiny undergraduate focused schools with a ton of resources and long histories (Amherst, Williams, Bowdoin, Middlebury, Hamilton, Wesleyan, Colby, Trinity, Conn. Coll, Bates). Outside the NESCAC, my favorite LAC is Pomona (LA Metro Area) - an amazing and super diverse school with very high standards.

[TheseGoTo11]

Originally Posted by norcal2k19

Outside the NESCAC, my favorite LAC is Pomona (LA Metro Area) - an amazing and super diverse school with very high standards.

Yeah, the Claremont colleges are all good. Pomona was the first one to be founded, and was started by New England Congregationalists, like many of the elite schools back east. Interestingly, NE Congregationalists also founded the College of California, which became UC Berkeley, and the top two liberal arts schools in the Midwest - Carleton and Grinnell. Leland Stanford was also a big time Yankee from near Albany, NY.

Non-Congregationalist Calvinists also founded Bowdoin and Princeton.

Calvinism placed a high emphasis on education, and was behind the founding of so many elite schools. One reason why the US now has so many elite schools compared to Anglican England, as well as Canada and Australia, was the lack of non-Presbyterian Calvinism in those countries. In the US, Columbia and William & Mary were the only Anglican/Episcopalian schools founded during Colonial times and the first Catholic university, Georgetown, was founded after the revolution.

[rranger]

Originally Posted by 18Montclair

Here is the original US News College Ranking from 1983:
1 Stanford
2 Harvard
3 Yale
4 Princeton
5 UC Berkeley
6 U of Chicago
7 Michigan
8 Cornell
9 U Illinois
10 Dartmouth
11 MIT
12 Cal Tech
13 Carnegie-Mellon
14 Wisconsin

Honorable Mention:
Brown
Columbia
Indiana
UNC Chapel Hill
Rice

It was a survey taken by university presidents. They were asked to rank the Top 5 schools in the country, and above was the result. From what I understand, public juggernauts Berkeley and Michigan being so highly regarded did not sit will with many elite privates so they lobbied hard to have criteria like student-to-teacher ratio and alumni giving included, which permanently shut out public universities from the top 20.

Also, keep in mind this is also an undergrad, domestic ranking. As far as grad school rankings, the list is completely different as those elite publics really shine.

Now THIS is fascinating, and really a reflection of just what BS the rankings have become. That list, with the possible exception of Dartmouth, is really a reflection of some of the best research universities in the country. The rankings have been so manipulated over time as to become virtually useless, except of course to the upper-middle class crawlers and their kids who seem to think the the world will end tomorrow if the kid doesn't get into an Ivy League school. Nowadays, the annual ranking of the top 10 schools is like musical chairs, LOL.

How did you come across that list from almost 40 years ago?

[masssachoicetts]

Originally Posted by rranger

Now THIS is fascinating, and really a reflection of just what BS the rankings have become. That list, with the possible exception of Dartmouth, is really a reflection of some of the best research universities in the country. The rankings have been so manipulated over time as to become virtually useless, except of course to the upper-middle class crawlers and their kids who seem to think the the world will end tomorrow if the kid doesn't get into an Ivy League school. Nowadays, the annual ranking of the top 10 schools is like musical chairs, LOL.

How did you come across that list from almost 40 years ago?

Because times change and things evolve. Northeastern was not great 40 years ago and now it is a prominent university in a world class alpha level city. Shall it not rank higher from 1983 because you liked how things were?

[Country Roads]

I'm surprised Alabama wasn't on there, always thought of it as the Harvard of the South.

[norcal2k19]

This list doesn't even include many excellent liberal arts colleges, which are world class for an undergraduate focused education.

[Landolakes90]

Originally Posted by Country Roads

I'm surprised Alabama wasn't on there, always thought of it as the Harvard of the South.

Alabama isn't even the Harvard of the SEC.