Looking Ahead to 2024

[heffray]

Ugh. 42 minutes. You got a little more juicy ES than your single sentence intro here?

I honestly don’t remember (it was released in 2021). I’ll listen to it again now. I highly recommend any Revisionist History episode, fwiw. There are commercials, but otherwise it’s 40 minutes of your day very well spent.

[heffray]

Ugh. 42 minutes. You got a little more juicy ES than your single sentence intro here?

I honestly don’t remember (it was released in 2021). I’ll listen to it again now. I highly recommend any Revisionist History episode, fwiw. There are commercials, but otherwise it’s 40 minutes of your day very well spent.

After listening again, here’s my summary:

The calculation for US News college rankings includes many factors, but the heaviest weighted number in the overall ranking is a “reputation score” which is essentially a coaches poll of rankings. Meaningless. It’s a popularity contest, plain and simple.

Here’s a New Yorker article by Gladwell on the same topic from 10 years earlier: https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2...rder-of-things

[Hammerhead]

So it's like recruiting where a high school athlete is a 4-star recruit because enough people say he is a 4-star recruit.

After listening again, here’s my summary:

The calculation for US News college rankings includes many factors, but the heaviest weighted number in the overall ranking is a “reputation score” which is essentially a coaches poll of rankings. Meaningless. It’s a popularity contest, plain and simple.

Here’s a New Yorker article by Gladwell on the same topic from 10 years earlier: https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2...rder-of-things

[reformedUNDfan]

Meanwhile, contrary to your 'out of thin air' numbers and according to USN rankings St. Thomas falls tied for #163 in national US Universities while NDSU and UND come in at 249 and 236 respectively.
Acceptance rates: UST - 78%, NDSU - 96%, UND 83%
4yr Grad Rates: UST - 70%, NDSU - 43%, UND - 42%
ACT Range: UST - 21-28, NDSU - 19-25, UND 20-26
SAT Range: UST - 1120-1350, NDSU - 968-1216, UND - 1090-1280
Avg Alum Starting Salary: UST - $53,323, NDSU - $50,082, UND - $49,193

All data as of 2022.

https://www.usnews.com/best-colleges...walk_id=200280


Glorified CC indeed.

The usnrw rankings punish schools for having more students, among many other stupid things. Your defense of this school is pathetic.

[heffray]

So it's like recruiting where a high school athlete is a 4-star recruit because enough people say he is a 4-star recruit.

Yeah the logic seems similar.

[NI4NI]

The usnrw rankings punish schools for having more students, among many other stupid things. Your defense of this school is pathetic.

I hate it when someone doesn't like information offered so they attack the messenger.

[heffray]

The usnrw rankings punish schools for having more students, among many other stupid things. Your defense of this school is pathetic.

Here’s a transcript of the interview Malcom has with Robert Morse, the guy in charge of the US News rankings:

Gladwell: Describe again, how is the reputation score generated?
Morse: So we send out three surveys per school and then they respond. They rate the schools on a scale of five to one or no response.
Gladwell: So who are the three people at each school who are asked to fill out the survey?
Morse: The president, the provost, and the enrollment manager or the head of admissions.

Gladwell Narrating: The surveys arrive via email once a year to everyone who matters in American higher ed. If you're at a liberal arts college, you're given a list of all 222 other liberal arts colleges in your category. If you're part of a big university, you get a list of the 388 other big universities in the United States. Your job is to rank the schools on your list on a scale of one to five, five being amazing, one being there's a serious problem here.

Gladwell: And on what basis are people making those judgments?
Morse: Well, I mean, that's a good question. I mean, we asked them to base it on their view of the school's reputation for undergraduate academic quality.
Gladwell: But I mean, how would you know?
Morse: I mean, we believe that the aggregate sum of all the raters who are leaders in higher education, you know, they're presidents and provosts and mission deans, so they're not rookies. When you aggregate their views at any given time, they're representing where those schools stand in the marketplace.
Gladwell: I mean, so its an assessment of their feelings about other schools.
Morse: Well, they're leaders in higher education. So it's based on their knowledge of the other schools that they've gathered or through meetings or for exposure. Do they necessarily know a lot about all the schools they're rating? I don't know.
Gladwell: If I rate a restaurant on Yelp, it's because I've eaten there. Right?
Morse: Yes.
Gladwell: But here, when I rate a university on the US News Ranking, it's not because I've attended that university or taught there. It's just—
Morse: Well, you may have. We shouldn't say that you didn't. But if you're saying, have the people who rated the schools been on every campus or taught at that school or know in depth their course catalog? No. Do some of them have greater degrees of knowledge about the schools they're rating? Yes. Do some of them have lesser degrees of knowledge? Yes. So I think it varies from having substantial knowledge to far less knowledge.

…it goes on from there. But I think you get the gist.

[GreenfieldBison]

Here’s a transcript of the interview Malcom has with Robert Morse, the guy in charge of the US News rankings:

Gladwell: Describe again, how is the reputation score generated?
Morse: So we send out three surveys per school and then they respond. They rate the schools on a scale of five to one or no response.
Gladwell: So who are the three people at each school who are asked to fill out the survey?
Morse: The president, the provost, and the enrollment manager or the head of admissions.

Gladwell Narrating: The surveys arrive via email once a year to everyone who matters in American higher ed. If you're at a liberal arts college, you're given a list of all 222 other liberal arts colleges in your category. If you're part of a big university, you get a list of the 388 other big universities in the United States. Your job is to rank the schools on your list on a scale of one to five, five being amazing, one being there's a serious problem here.

Gladwell: And on what basis are people making those judgments?
Morse: Well, I mean, that's a good question. I mean, we asked them to base it on their view of the school's reputation for undergraduate academic quality.
Gladwell: But I mean, how would you know?
Morse: I mean, we believe that the aggregate sum of all the raters who are leaders in higher education, you know, they're presidents and provosts and mission deans, so they're not rookies. When you aggregate their views at any given time, they're representing where those schools stand in the marketplace.
Gladwell: I mean, so its an assessment of their feelings about other schools.
Morse: Well, they're leaders in higher education. So it's based on their knowledge of the other schools that they've gathered or through meetings or for exposure. Do they necessarily know a lot about all the schools they're rating? I don't know.
Gladwell: If I rate a restaurant on Yelp, it's because I've eaten there. Right?
Morse: Yes.
Gladwell: But here, when I rate a university on the US News Ranking, it's not because I've attended that university or taught there. It's just—
Morse: Well, you may have. We shouldn't say that you didn't. But if you're saying, have the people who rated the schools been on every campus or taught at that school or know in depth their course catalog? No. Do some of them have greater degrees of knowledge about the schools they're rating? Yes. Do some of them have lesser degrees of knowledge? Yes. So I think it varies from having substantial knowledge to far less knowledge.

…it goes on from there. But I think you get the gist.

Yep. Much appreciated.

[GreenfieldBison]

The usnrw rankings punish schools for having more students, among many other stupid things. Your defense of this school is pathetic.

Really I don't see my posts as "defending" St. Thomas as much as trying to illuminate for the uninformed that in my opinion there is a budding force there. That's all. You impugned the school and I offered some data as a retort. You don't like the USN "ratings"? Fine. But the rest of post #56 was just objective and presumably verifiable data, aggregation of same, or rudimentary statistical average of same. No subjectivity there.

Regardless whether you consider my message as pathetic or not you can bank on it continuing. For the record I have no affiliation with the school, have never attended a class there, have never been the beneficiary of any product or service that they offer, have no inside knowledge of any kind, etc. etc. I have worked with a number of their graduates both undergrad and beyond. I see what I see from afar and what I see suggests to me as I have posted here already that they are going to be a competitive force in the near future if they choose to be. To my eye it appears that they will choose to be. Time will tell. Bookmark the post.

[heffray]

Really I don't see my posts as "defending" St. Thomas as much as trying to illuminate for the uninformed that in my opinion there is a budding force there. That's all. You impugned the school and I offered some data as a retort. You don't like the USN "ratings"? Fine. But the rest of post #56 was just objective and presumably verifiable data, aggregation of same, or rudimentary statistical average of same. No subjectivity there.

Regardless whether you consider my message as pathetic or not you can bank on it continuing. For the record I have no affiliation with the school, have never attended a class there, have never been the beneficiary of any product or service that they offer, have no inside knowledge of any kind, etc. etc. I have worked with a number of their graduates both undergrad and beyond. I see what I see from afar and what I see suggests to me as I have posted here already that they are going to be a competitive force in the near future if they choose to be. To my eye it appears that they will choose to be. Time will tell. Bookmark the post.

I know very little about the St Thomas but I know their alumni are loyal and wealthy.