New US News ranking

[CrazyPaco]

Lowest for Pitt in 11 years (2004). 66th overall, 24th public

It is starting to look like it could be a trend with some consecutive drops instead of wobble. If anything, not moving up as we were for awhile. 58->58->62->62->66. In public rankings it goes 19->19->21->20->24.

Is the methodology flawed? Yes. Does it matter? Absolutely. It is the most influential thing out there as far as steering high school students to your school. Pitt's administration has to address this because it is losing the perception battle despite improving virtually all quantitative metrics.

In the meaningless category, the ACC has maintains the highest overall average and median rank among the power athletic conferences. There is natural wobble from year to year, and here is how the ACC schools fared.

8. Duke (even)
18. Notre Dame (down 2)
26. Virginia (down 3)
27. Wake Forest (even)
30. Boston College (up 1)
30. North Carolina (even)
36. Georgia Tech (down 1)
51. Miami (down 3)
61. Clemson (up 1)
61. Syracuse (down 3)
66. Pitt (down 4)
70. Virginia Tech (up 1)
89. NC State (up 6)
96. Florida State (down 1)
168. Louisville (down 7)

 

[bwh05]

I know you've explained it before, but why are we dropping

 

[CrazyPaco]

I know you've explained it before, but why are we dropping

Since I don't have full data on US News...since it is pay for the full thing, I don't really know for sure. I'm certainly not going to pay for that data. A large chunk is perception, peer rankings, which have always been Pitt's weaker part of these. Pitt also does very poorly in the new component, high school guidance counselor rankings which is an absolute joke to include (and is nothing more than a device to sell these rankings to those who might push them), but nonetheless, factors into this ranking now. I believe this downward trend might have begun when US News changed their methodology to include those. You have to consider other schools are passing Pitt. Other schools game the rankings, something Pitt has loathed to do. But it is only hurting itself.

Pitt also has ground to make up in graduate rate, which it has constantly improved on over the last 10 years. And there is the ever poor % of alumni that donate factor.

Pitt's admissions statistics are far better than where you'd expect based on these rankings. There is a disconnect with perception (perception being US News) there.

 

[rpost3]

Invalid methodology. Too little weight given to actual academics like gpa and SAT, too little given to faculty publications and awards, none given to how grads fare on the MCAT, GRE, GMAT, LSAT, etc.

Plenty of weight given to subjective opinions of high school guidence councelors and the percentage of alumni who donate. Not joking.

Schools should be attacking the rankings publicly.

 

[CrazyPaco]

Invalid methodology. Too little weight given to actual academics like gpa and SAT, too little given to faculty publications and awards, none given to how grads fare on the MCAT, GRE, GMAT, LSAT, etc.

Plenty of weight given to subjective opinions of high school guidence councelors and the percentage of alumni who donate. Not joking.

Schools should be attacking the rankings publicly.

Yeah, that's great, and I don't disagree. Unfortunately, it doesn't mean a damn thing. It's barking into storm. It's like complaining about college football rankings the past 100 years. US News rankings are the single most influential determinant of where students apply, and they aren't going away.

Taking some principled stance only knocks you further down the list.

BTW, this is all using 2014-15 numbers, so this could be considered the final rank under the prior administration, which btw, finishes at least up 24 slots from where it started (by public school ranking*), but down 5 from its peak.

*public school rankings through the top 50 are the only ones that were presented with an ordinal rank back to 1998 when Pitt first appeared at number 48.


I need to qualify how Pitt is down over consecutive years: 58->58->62->62->66. In public rankings it goes 19->19->21->20->24.

So it isn't quite as clean of a trend as I first made it out to be. I edited my original post above to reflect that better.

 

[rpost3]

Yeah, that's great, and I don't disagree. Unfortunately, it doesn't mean a damn thing. It's barking into storm. It's like complaining about college football rankings the past 100 years. US News rankings are the single most influential determinant of where students apply, and they aren't going away.

Taking some principled stance only knocks you further down the list.

BTW, this is all using 2014-15 numbers, so this could be considered the final rank under the prior administration, which btw, finishes at least up 24 slots from where it started (by public school ranking*), but down 5 from its peak.

*public school rankings through the top 50 are the only ones that were presented with an ordinal rank back to 1998 when Pitt first appeared at number 48.


I need to qualify how Pitt is down over consecutive years: 58->58->62->62->66. In public rankings it goes 19->19->21->20->24.

So it isn't quite as clean of a trend as I first made it out to be. I edited my original post above to reflect that better.

Well I'm not advocating schools refuse participation in the rankings, just ask fair questions like "Why is this variable included when this one is not?" There should be zero opinion polls in rankings like these...not even a peer ranking.
Any idea which variables hurt Pitt the most? I highly suspect that guidance councilor ranking and the donation ranking aren't helping.

 

[HailtoPitt]

Have you ever considered that Pitt has the ranking it deserves?

 

[rpost3]

Have you ever considered that Pitt has the ranking it deserves?

I didn't say it doesn't. I said the rankings as a whole are invalid.
An alma mater of mine sits in the Top 5 every year (I believe Paco shares the same). We're not questioning anything over sour grapes.

 

[pitt-girl]

Have you ever considered that Pitt has the ranking it deserves?

Perhaps, but how do you explain the rise of median SAT scores? If incoming classes continue to ascend, why would rankings drop?

 

[pitt-girl]

Lowest for Pitt in 11 years (2004). 66th overall, 24th public

It is starting to look like it could be a trend with some consecutive drops instead of wobble. If anything, not moving up as we were for awhile. 58->58->62->62->66. In public rankings it goes 19->19->21->20->24.

Is the methodology flawed? Yes. Does it matter? Absolutely. It is the most influential thing out there as far as steering high school students to your school. Pitt's administration has to address this because it is losing the perception battle despite improving virtually all quantitative metrics.

In the meaningless category, the ACC has maintains the highest overall average and median rank among the power athletic conferences. There is natural wobble from year to year, and here is how the ACC schools fared.

8. Duke (even)
18. Notre Dame (down 2)
26. Virginia (down 3)
27. Wake Forest (even)
30. Boston College (up 1)
30. North Carolina (even)
36. Georgia Tech (down 1)
51. Miami (down 3)
61. Clemson (up 1)
61. Syracuse (down 3)
66. Pitt (down 4)
70. Virginia Tech (up 1)
89. NC State (up 6)
96. Florida State (down 1)
168. Louisville (down 7)

Someone posted the Business Insider public school rankings recently (I'm assuming different methodology - in fact I think that is just number-based), but I continue to be surprised at how low V Tech is ranked. I always thought it was one of the better schools in the ACC.

 

[HailtoPitt]

Perhaps, but how do you explain the rise of median SAT scores? If incoming classes continue to ascend, why would rankings drop?

Because student selectivity is only 12.5% of the overall ranking. Alumni giving rate is only 5% of the ranking, so while Pitt is behind in alumni giving, it minimally hurts its US News ranking.

The biggest factors are:

Undergraduate academic reputation (22.5 percent)
Retention (22.5 percent)
Faculty resources (20 percent)

How does Pitt rank in each of these categories?

I also wouldn't discount the opinions of guidance counselors. If they didn't give Pitt a good rating, then there is a reason. Perhaps Pitt needs to do a better job marketing itself to those councelors.

As far as where US News gets most of it's data...

"Most of the data come from the colleges. This year, 92.7 percent of the 1,376 ranked colleges and universities we surveyed returned their statistical information during our spring and summer 2015 data collection window. "​

Of course, I would just be creative with the numbers. I'm sure there are various definitions for "retention" and "faculty". If college and the real world has taught us sports fans anything, it is that bending the rules usually pays off and the punishment is rarely anything close to proportionate. Patriots. OSU. USC. etc. etc. etc. etc. etc. etc. etc.

 

[pitt-girl]

What does "undergraduate academic reputation" actually mean? It seems very arbitrary. Does it mean that HR departments are sharing data of new hires? And using that example, what does THAT even mean? A company could naturally have more students from a particular school because that school is much bigger. Or is it based on who has greater success while an employee? Makes my head spin. Seems to me these lists should be purely numbers-based, period.

 

[HailtoPitt]

What does "undergraduate academic reputation" actually mean? It seems very arbitrary. Does it mean that HR departments are sharing data of new hires? And using that example, what does THAT even mean? A company could naturally have more students from a particular school because that school is much bigger. Or is it based on who has greater success while an employee? Makes my head spin. Seems to me these lists should be purely numbers-based, period.

Fro the US News website. I'm thinking that Yinzerism hurts Pitt here.

Undergraduate academic reputation (22.5 percent): The U.S. News ranking formula gives significant weight to the opinions of those in a position to judge a school's undergraduate academic excellence. The academic peer assessment survey allows top academics – presidents, provosts and deans of admissions – to account for intangibles at peer institutions, such as faculty dedication to teaching.

To get another set of important opinions on National Universities and National Liberal Arts Colleges, we also surveyed 2,200 counselors at public high schools, each of which was a gold, silver or bronze medal winner in a recent edition of the U.S. News Best High Schools rankings, as well as 400 college counselors at the largest independent schools. The counselors represent nearly every state and the District of Columbia.

Each academic and counselor surveyed was asked to rate schools' academic programs on a scale from 1 (marginal) to 5 (distinguished). Those who didn't know enough about a school to evaluate it fairly were asked to mark "don't know."

The score used in the rankings is the average score of those who rated the school on the 5-point scale; "don't knows" are not counted as part of the average. In order to reduce the impact of strategic voting by respondents, we eliminated the two highest and two lowest scores each school received before calculating the average score.

The academic peer assessment score in this year's rankings is based on the results from surveys in spring 2014 and spring 2015. Previously, only the most recent year's results were used.


Both the Regional Universities and Regional Colleges rankings rely on one assessment score, by the academic peer group, for this measure in the rankings formula. In the case of National Universities and National Liberal Arts Colleges, the academic peer assessment accounts for 15 percentage points of the weighting in the ranking methodology, and 7.5 percentage points go to the high school counselors' ratings.

The results from the three most recent years of counselor surveys, from spring 2013, spring 2014 and spring 2015, were averaged to compute the high school counselor reputation score. This was done to increase the number of ratings each college received from the high school counselors and to reduce the year-to-year volatility in the average counselor score.

Ipsos Public Affairs collected the data in spring 2015. Of the 4,530 academics who were sent questionnaires, 40 percent responded. This response rate is down very slightly from the 42 percent response rate to the surveys conducted in spring 2014 and spring 2013. The counselors' one-year response rate was 7 percent for the spring 2015 surveys.

 

[Panther Parrothead]

This is just my opinion, but as crazy as this sounds, I'd bet that if the football team did better - improving Pitt's visibility and social prominence - that Pitt's overall rating would go up.

 

[pitt-girl]

Fro the US News website. I'm thinking that Yinzerism hurts Pitt here.

Undergraduate academic reputation (22.5 percent): The U.S. News ranking formula gives significant weight to the opinions of those in a position to judge a school's undergraduate academic excellence. The academic peer assessment survey allows top academics – presidents, provosts and deans of admissions – to account for intangibles at peer institutions, such as faculty dedication to teaching.

To get another set of important opinions on National Universities and National Liberal Arts Colleges, we also surveyed 2,200 counselors at public high schools, each of which was a gold, silver or bronze medal winner in a recent edition of the U.S. News Best High Schools rankings, as well as 400 college counselors at the largest independent schools. The counselors represent nearly every state and the District of Columbia.

Each academic and counselor surveyed was asked to rate schools' academic programs on a scale from 1 (marginal) to 5 (distinguished). Those who didn't know enough about a school to evaluate it fairly were asked to mark "don't know."

The score used in the rankings is the average score of those who rated the school on the 5-point scale; "don't knows" are not counted as part of the average. In order to reduce the impact of strategic voting by respondents, we eliminated the two highest and two lowest scores each school received before calculating the average score.

The academic peer assessment score in this year's rankings is based on the results from surveys in spring 2014 and spring 2015. Previously, only the most recent year's results were used.


Both the Regional Universities and Regional Colleges rankings rely on one assessment score, by the academic peer group, for this measure in the rankings formula. In the case of National Universities and National Liberal Arts Colleges, the academic peer assessment accounts for 15 percentage points of the weighting in the ranking methodology, and 7.5 percentage points go to the high school counselors' ratings.

The results from the three most recent years of counselor surveys, from spring 2013, spring 2014 and spring 2015, were averaged to compute the high school counselor reputation score. This was done to increase the number of ratings each college received from the high school counselors and to reduce the year-to-year volatility in the average counselor score.

Ipsos Public Affairs collected the data in spring 2015. Of the 4,530 academics who were sent questionnaires, 40 percent responded. This response rate is down very slightly from the 42 percent response rate to the surveys conducted in spring 2014 and spring 2013. The counselors' one-year response rate was 7 percent for the spring 2015 surveys.

Thanks for posting this. WAY WAY too reliant on personal opinion and again I think it would be influenced by size of school (except for the highest rep "small" private schools). To be perfectly honest we met with my son's assigned guidance counselor once when he was a junior and although she was very nice and meant well, her information was very limited and recommendations were way off. No offense to any guidance counselor's out there, but our experience was NOT good.

 

[bwh05]

My high school guidance counselor was a moron, and I dealt with them in my job for several years and my opinion of them didn't get any better. Most of them don't know any more about colleges than the kids. I'm not sure what they do all day, but it's definitely not researching colleges and I'd be willing to bet that most of them think Pitt is still like IUP academically like it's 1988

 

[thebadby2]

Lowest for Pitt in 11 years (2004). 66th overall, 24th public

It is starting to look like it could be a trend with some consecutive drops instead of wobble. If anything, not moving up as we were for awhile. 58->58->62->62->66. In public rankings it goes 19->19->21->20->24.

Is the methodology flawed? Yes. Does it matter? Absolutely. It is the most influential thing out there as far as steering high school students to your school. Pitt's administration has to address this because it is losing the perception battle despite improving virtually all quantitative metrics.

In the meaningless category, the ACC has maintains the highest overall average and median rank among the power athletic conferences. There is natural wobble from year to year, and here is how the ACC schools fared.

8. Duke (even)
18. Notre Dame (down 2)
26. Virginia (down 3)
27. Wake Forest (even)
30. Boston College (up 1)
30. North Carolina (even)
36. Georgia Tech (down 1)
51. Miami (down 3)
61. Clemson (up 1)
61. Syracuse (down 3)
66. Pitt (down 4)
70. Virginia Tech (up 1)
89. NC State (up 6)
96. Florida State (down 1)
168. Louisville (down 7)

Only one public U in the top 20 (Berkeley at #20) and only 4 in the top 30--that doesn't seem quite right. Since when are Berkeley, Michigan and UVA not top 10 schools regardless of category?

 

[Panther Parrothead]

My high school guidance counselor was a moron, and I dealt with them in my job for several years and my opinion of them didn't get any better. Most of them don't know any more about colleges than the kids. I'm not sure what they do all day, but it's definitely not researching colleges and I'd be willing to bet that most of them think Pitt is still like IUP academically like it's 1988

My high school guidance counsellor told a friend of mine that he'd never get into college. Five years later, he had an engineering degree.....from Cornell. (True story)

 

[MartyInLawrenceville]

Since nobody's asked, I'll bite...where did Ped State rank?

 

[geeman2001]

This is just my opinion, but as crazy as this sounds, I'd bet that if the football team did better - improving Pitt's visibility and social prominence - that Pitt's overall rating would go up.

You could just be baiting the likes of me who scream this all the time ... if so, congrats, I bit ... but fact is, you would be right on. It's why having good sports matters.

 

[geeman2001]

My high school guidance counselor was a moron, and I dealt with them in my job for several years and my opinion of them didn't get any better. Most of them don't know any more about colleges than the kids. I'm not sure what they do all day, but it's definitely not researching colleges and I'd be willing to bet that most of them think Pitt is still like IUP academically like it's 1988

My counselor told everyone to go to "the Rock" because he went there. Including to our valedictorian that went to Harvard.

 

[Panther Parrothead]

You could just be baiting the likes of me who scream this all the time ... if so, congrats, I bit ... but fact is, you would be right on. It's why having good sports matters.

No baiting intended. I do know that whenever a college team (in basketball or football) does well, the number of applications to that school seems to increase dramatically. With that comes the odds of attracting better students. It's the added publicity for that school - and seeing the students celebrating makes for a healthy image of a happy student body.

It was either our new Chancellor or our new AD who recently said (in reference to the importance of sports): (paraphrasing) if a university is a house, the sports programs are the front porch - what people often see first.

 

[recruitsreadtheseboards]

My high school guidance counselor was a moron, and I dealt with them in my job for several years and my opinion of them didn't get any better. Most of them don't know any more about colleges than the kids. I'm not sure what they do all day, but it's definitely not researching colleges and I'd be willing to bet that most of them think Pitt is still like IUP academically like it's 1988

High School Guidance Counselor. The single best take on this:

 

[geeman2001]

No baiting intended. I do know that whenever a college team (in basketball or football) does well, the number of applications to that school seems to increase dramatically. With that comes the odds of attracting better students. It's the added publicity for that school - and seeing the students celebrating makes for a healthy image of a happy student body.

It was either our new Chancellor or our new AD who recently said (in reference to the importance of sports): (paraphrasing) if a university is a house, the sports programs are the front porch - what people often see first.

Not that I personally think it's right, but it's true. Sadly, Pitt is still known to many because of sports exposure. Yknow what though, for other, perhaps legitimately "better" schools like Duke, that's true too. It may be more of a shame (if indeed one thinks it is) in their case, then. But they sure as hell don't shy away from greatness in basketball in shame, as it appears Pitt does at times. Not that it was the only factor, but certainly, the fact that many Pitt faculty and admin were unhappy with football's attention in the late 70's and early 80's led to deemphasis. Some will leap in here to note that school rep and rankings improved even as football disintegrated. True enough. I think it's preposterous to think it was BECAUSE Pitt deemphasized football ... if anything, it kept it from improving FASTER and to a more pronounced degree.

However, if indeed some are convinced that there is a reverse correlation (great sports hinders academic integrity), why doesn't Pitt just get out of the filthy business all together? The way that they run sports now, it's barely profitable, if at all. It certainly isn't inspiring major donations. Big corporations aren't inspired to do really lucrative deals with Pitt (Nike needs 3 years to make us a freakin script uniform, when they have their slave labor camps in 'Nam cranking a new one out at will for successful programs). The guy in front of me at the game Saturday who had come from across state was literally disgusted at the lack of new gear in the stadium shop nearest our section. He noted that they had the exact same Dinocat/torch cut "Pittsburgh" caps in the same shelf that they have had since Heinz opened. This could be an exaggeration. ... but some of that crap IS pretty damn old in there.

And in being a little bit pregnant as we are, we get the detrimental effects of occasional busts (Boyd, Blair, et al) without any of the benefits of glorious championships.

Any wonder these rankings slip, then?

 

[ratking17]

I hate thinking about how funny Kevin Smith once was.

 

[CrazyPaco]

No baiting intended. I do know that whenever a college team (in basketball or football) does well, the number of applications to that school seems to increase dramatically. With that comes the odds of attracting better students. It's the added publicity for that school - and seeing the students celebrating makes for a healthy image of a happy student body.

It was either our new Chancellor or our new AD who recently said (in reference to the importance of sports): (paraphrasing) if a university is a house, the sports programs are the front porch - what people often see first.

Absolutely true, and in fact it has been relayed to me previously by Pitt's admission staff.

However, the increase in applicants doesn't necessarily equate into a greater pool of students to choose from.

However, it is true for a school like Pitt that has marginal to little name recognition in the general public, that athletic success can make a difference. For a school like Harvard or Stanford, it hardly would make a difference.

 

[CrazyPaco]

My high school guidance counsellor told a friend of mine that he'd never get into college. Five years later, he had an engineering degree.....from Cornell. (True story)

And this is essentially the issue with the ranking. Guidance Counselors, as well intentioned as they may be, are among the least qualified to compare schools or match students to academic programs. Even if they weren't complete homers for their respective alma maters, they have limited, or more likely, zero experience at different institutions in different regions or with different academic programs than the one school they attended and majored in for the undergraduate degree.

That is how you have Pitt end up at 85th in Guidance Counselor rankings, behind such schools as Marquette, Auburn, George Mason...tied with Seton Hall and Rutgers-Newark. Heck Yeshiva is ranked #175 tied with New Mexico State. That's a joke to anyone that has any knowledge of academia.

Counselor opinion alone is 7.6% of a school's total ranking. That's a lot actually.

No one with any legitimate experience in academia would think it a good idea to use guidance counselor opinions in any ranking, so why do you think they introduced them as a criteria in US News? Who do you think has major influence over their primary market they're trying to sell magazines to?

 

[noelr]

Being behind clemson is a concern.

Need chancellor needs to address as perception is reality.

 

[CrazyPaco]

Not that I personally think it's right, but it's true. Sadly, Pitt is still known to many because of sports exposure. Yknow what though, for other, perhaps legitimately "better" schools like Duke, that's true too. It may be more of a shame (if indeed one thinks it is) in their case, then. But they sure as hell don't shy away from greatness in basketball in shame, as it appears Pitt does at times. Not that it was the only factor, but certainly, the fact that many Pitt faculty and admin were unhappy with football's attention in the late 70's and early 80's led to deemphasis. Some will leap in here to note that school rep and rankings improved even as football disintegrated. True enough. I think it's preposterous to think it was BECAUSE Pitt deemphasized football ... if anything, it kept it from improving FASTER and to a more pronounced degree.

However, if indeed some are convinced that there is a reverse correlation (great sports hinders academic integrity), why doesn't Pitt just get out of the filthy business all together? The way that they run sports now, it's barely profitable, if at all. It certainly isn't inspiring major donations. Big corporations aren't inspired to do really lucrative deals with Pitt (Nike needs 3 years to make us a freakin script uniform, when they have their slave labor camps in 'Nam cranking a new one out at will for successful programs). The guy in front of me at the game Saturday who had come from across state was literally disgusted at the lack of new gear in the stadium shop nearest our section. He noted that they had the exact same Dinocat/torch cut "Pittsburgh" caps in the same shelf that they have had since Heinz opened. This could be an exaggeration. ... but some of that crap IS pretty damn old in there.

And in being a little bit pregnant as we are, we get the detrimental effects of occasional busts (Boyd, Blair, et al) without any of the benefits of glorious championships.

Any wonder these rankings slip, then?

Here's what I've found and I've been following this closely for years: academic rankings have almost nothing to do with athletic success, failure, or scandal. Sure, there are exceptions. Notre Dame would not be the school it is today without 100 years of major football notability. Duke would be a good school, but not as nationally recognized without 30 years of Coach K. But athletics don't help the Stanfords or Berkeleys at all. A National Championship at FSU didn't move the needle in academic perception as measured by these types of rankings. Neither did scandal at UNC or PSU. Athletic success hasn't budged Louisville or WVU, nor is conference affiliation helping Nebraska, Louisville, Colorado, or Rutgers one iota. Some of the biggest risers in these rankings, like BU, Northeastern, and Cal-Santa Barbara...really any Cal-X...have almost nothing invested in athletics compared to Power conference schools.

There are always exceptions, but for the most part, athletics don't have that much impact on the perception of a school's academics. There is no quick or easy way to build up your school through athletics. And it certainly would be a less certain and more expensive path even if there was.

Now, that said, there is zero reason why you should strive for excellence in athletics. It is the front porch of the university. And I do believe for a school like Pitt, it can bring much need exposure, so good athletics may indeed help a medium sized, non-flagship, urban school much more than it would help a large state-named, flag-ship school. But good athletics isn't going to carry anything just on its own.

 

[CrazyPaco]

Being behind clemson is a concern.

Need chancellor needs to address as perception is reality.

Clemson has been moving up for a while and been tied with Pitt the last two years. It has now passed Pitt, a school with little to no professional graduate programs, at least not of any caliber of Pitt, which also speaks to the faculty quality.

But consider Pitt's average SAT scores and where other such scores are found and it would be easily in the top 50....somewhere around 40 to 45th. US News ranking methodology is ranking undergrad education, and Pitt is pulling in a student class that would suggest it is in the mid-40s. Pitt is also one of the few schools with such highly (top 20) ranked medical/health sciences that place outside the US News top 30-40 for undergrad. It certainly isn't reflective of research endeavors that are top 10-15 considering the other schools up around there. There is a major disconnect.

This is a perception game, where the perception is your ranking. Pitt is losing the perception game and it has to ask why.

I will tell you this, there is apparently a recognition of the perception of Pitt not matching reality among the faculty and administration. I heard it specifically addressed at a streamed town hall meeting between the provost and faculty. They also stated Pitt's aspirational peers are UNC and Michigan, so the aim should be to get into the 30s. That is easier said than done, but they're going to have to address these rankings, because like it or not, they are hugely influential.

 

[pitt-girl]

My high school guidance counsellor told a friend of mine that he'd never get into college. Five years later, he had an engineering degree.....from Cornell. (True story)

Yeah - our son's GC at NA suggested WVU - when he had a 1380 M&CR SAT score. My mouth literally dropped open. Then I looked on her wall and saw......you guessed it......the WVU diploma. Unfortunately these GC's can play a big role for schools that require a completed questionnaire about the student. Dumb when at least at NA they have like 5 GC's for 600 students.

 

[CrazyPaco]

Yeah - our son's GC at NA suggested WVU - when he had a 1380 M&CR SAT score. My mouth literally dropped open. Then I looked on her wall and saw......you guessed it......the WVU diploma. Unfortunately these GC's can play a big role for schools that require a completed questionnaire about the student. Dumb when at least at NA they have like 5 GC's for 600 students.

Seriously, that is just incompetent. I understand throwing the name into the ring from the angle of its "my alma mater," but the fact that some of these people are actually giving serious advice like that is just sad.

Any guidance counselor that doesn't recommend a Pitt for any Pennsylvania student interested in anything health sciences/bio/pre-med is completely incompetent. My personal experience is that Pitt is the best in the state for these fields, and one of the best on the east coast, particularly for the price. Yet, there are a plethora out there who flat out would not do it, or simply don't know anything about health science fields.

 

[VincePITT]

Sad that this does matter. The last time I checked (2005) the U.S. Department of Education had the list of 4 year colleges/universities at 2500. So any school ranked in the Top 250 (10%) would be in excellent company! Pitt being in the Top 125 is the 5% and 66 is very close to Top 62.5 which would put Pitt in the 2.5% club!

 

[pitt-girl]

Seriously, that is just incompetent. I understand throwing the name into the ring from the angle of its "my alma mater," but the fact that some of these people are actually giving serious advice like that is just sad.

Any guidance counselor that doesn't recommend a Pitt for any Pennsylvania student interested in anything health sciences/bio/pre-med is completely incompetent. My personal experience is that Pitt is the best in the state for these fields, and one of the best on the east coast, particularly for the price. Yet, there are a plethora out there who flat out would not do it, or simply don't know anything about health science fields.

As I said she is a nice person but we realized very quickly that she was totally clueless. And this was after he told her he was leaning towards Engineering. WVU. Can't make that stuff up.

 

[Joe the Panther Fan]

Who do you think has major influence over their primary market they're trying to sell magazines to?

To pick a nit, US News & World Report hasn't tried to sell actual magazines to anyone for a long time.

 

[recruitsreadtheseboards]

I hate thinking about how funny Kevin Smith once was.

It was to the point that my boss told me if I watched Clerks and Office Space in the same weekend I was not allowed to come to work on Monday because my sarcasm would make me insufferable.

 

[CrazyPaco]

To pick a nit, US News & World Report hasn't tried to sell actual magazines to anyone for a long time.

Their #1 source of revenue is their college rankings, and their college ranking guide book is still found on physical shelves every fall.

 

[Joe the Panther Fan]

Their #1 source of revenue is their college rankings, and their college ranking guide book is still found on physical shelves every fall.

True, but it's not a magazine and it hasn't been for five or six years. They stopped publishing a weekly magazine probably at least 15 years ago (I happened to be a subscriber at the time) and a monthly magazine sometime around 2010. The only things they actually physically publish any more are the guidebooks, colleges and hospitals and the like.

 

[CrazyPaco]

True, but it's not a magazine and it hasn't been for five or six years. They stopped publishing a weekly magazine probably at least 15 years ago (I happened to be a subscriber at the time) and a monthly magazine sometime around 2010. The only things they actually physically publish any more are the guidebooks, colleges and hospitals and the like.

Yes, I am well aware. It was 2008 when they went to monthly, and you are right that it was 2010 when they stopped distributing regular periodicals in print format and went all-digital for their regular news. The "guidebooks" are annuals distributed in printed magazine format. The point is that the college ranking issue was their number one seller in the later years of when they were still distributing traditional magazines, and it is still their #1 product, both in print and their online access to the full report. The college ranking issue is essentially the only reason US News still exists. They have an extreme vested interest in keeping their cash cow at the forefront of ranking mindshare, and one obvious strategy to help achieve this is to help keep it considered as legitimate and prominent in the eyes of guidance counselors who in turn push it on students and their parents.

 

[pitt-girl]

Yes, I am well aware. It was 2008 when they went to monthly, and you are right that it was 2010 when they stopped distributing regular periodicals in print format and went all-digital for their regular news. The "guidebooks" are annuals distributed in printed magazine format. The point is that the college ranking issue was their number one seller in the later years of when they were still distributing traditional magazines, and it is still their #1 product, both in print and their online access to the full report. The college ranking issue is essentially the only reason US News still exists. They have an extreme vested interest in keeping their cash cow at the forefront of ranking mindshare, and one obvious strategy to help achieve this is to help keep it considered as legitimate and prominent in the eyes of guidance counselors who in turn push it on students and their parents.

Pitt has to go full throttle on this in some way, because kids/parents use these rankings ALL the time, fair or not. Shoot - we did the same. That's not to say we didn't exercise due diligence beyond that, but many use this as a way of coming up with a list.