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US News 2024 Rankings (Wake #47)

Louis Gossett Jr said:
It’s not the same data set, you sound like someone that graduates from a legitimately ranked 47th school.
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It’s the same data set they are using for every other school, don’t make shit up for your stupid insult.
 
I graduated over a decade ago, Biff, it’s a little late for the ticky tack butthurt defensiveness. I’ve got plenty invested in Wake Forest and my Wake degree. I’ll criticize the school if I feel it’s warranted, and right now we are talking about metrics of a worthless ranking system, so relax.
 
Louis Gossett Jr said:
Data comparing outcomes that doesn’t take into account the same percentage of the student population is a poor apples to apples comparison especially as a sample size decreases.
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and like I said, it’s a completely arbitrary distinction for Vandy to decide that their number of students with federal aid is too small a sample size. It’s the same thing dumb people say when they don’t agree with the results of a political poll, “They only
polled 500 people!”.
 
myDeaconmyhand said:
I graduated over a decade ago, Biff, it’s a little late for the ticky tack butthurt defensiveness. I’ve got plenty invested in Wake Forest and my Wake degree. I’ll criticize the school if I feel it’s warranted, and right now we are talking about metrics of a worthless ranking system, so relax.
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So is it worthless or is it worth defending ?
 
No it’s like a political poll that you have a small sample size and then you also have 70% Republican participation. Here you already are being judged based off of having a small sample size, then you take what has already been judged inadequate and double down by judging off something that’s already been deemed a negative.

Everyone is correct it’s just completely arbitrary made up bullshit but previously the metrics more closely aligned with what most would agree is quality of undergraduate education. People look at the historical nature of the rankings and assume it means the same thing, where it doesn’t mean that at all any longer.
 
Louis Gossett Jr said:
No it’s like a political poll that you have a small sample size and then you also have 70% Republican participation. Here you already are being judged based off of having a small sample size, then you take what has already been judged inadequate and double down by judging off something that’s already been deemed a negative.
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Yours is a bad analogy. The results from every school are limited to students on federal aid, Vandy (and Wake) just have less of those students. Vandy complaining that those students outcomes aren’t representative of their whole student body is completely arbitrary, they presented no data to defend that opinion, and no data to show why those students are accurately representative at other larger public schools.
 
Also, if the outcomes of students receiving federal financial aid aren’t representative of the whole student body, that’s damning in itself, and they should be ashamed to be admitting that as some sort of defense.
 
myDeaconmyhand said:
Also, if the outcomes of students receiving federal financial aid aren’t representative of the whole student body, that’s damning in itself, and they should be ashamed to be admitting that as some sort of defense.
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Vandy be like "DON'T JUDGE US BY OUR POORS!!!"
 
myDeaconmyhand said:
Yours is a bad analogy. The results from every school are limited to students on federal aid, Vandy (and Wake) just have less of those students. Vandy complaining that those students outcomes aren’t representative of their whole student body is completely arbitrary, they presented no data to defend that opinion, and no data to show why those students are accurately representative at other larger public schools.
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Okay, but if you exclude kids from wealthier families from the data set aren’t you ranking the best schools for kids that are not from wealthier families?

And I wholeheartedly agree that the lack of data is damning for those schools that don’t have it because they lack socioeconomic diversity. And it should be an area of emphasis.

But it’s not really an objective evaluation of the best schools. You can’t say that any study of best schools that uses outcomes as an analytic and excludes certain data points based on affluence is an objective review of the “best”. Can you?

If Charlotte were going to produce a list of the “best schools” do you exclude private schools with limited to no scholarships?

Im not arguing Wake doesn’t have significant areas to improve. I was embarrassed to learn we no longer have need blind admissions and think it’s an overt repudiation of the Pro Hunanitate mantra. But data is data.

As my HS football coach / AP Statistics teacher taught me. There are three types of lies: lies, damn lies, and statistics.
 
Well if you only have 10 poors and one of them fails you now only have 90% USNWR bucks but if you have 100 poors and one of them fails you still have 99% USNWR bucks
 
Louis Gossett Jr said:
Well if you only have 10 poors and one of them fails you now only have 90% USNWR bucks but if you have 100 poors and one of them fails you still have 99% USNWR bucks
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Yeah. Pretty much. That's how percentages work.
 
Btw, or you ask what the best public schools in Charlotte are, everybody knows that the ones with the best results are the ones with the highest SES.
 
It's also worth noting that the pool includes Pell Grant recipients AND recipients of federal student loans. Vandy has a VERY robust aid system (look up Opportunity Vanderbilt), the goal of which is to avoid any student graduating with debt. With a sliding scale for aid, a huge portion of their low income students are fully funded by the university.

A big part of Vandy's point isn't "hey, you're only judging us on the poorest 33% of the student pop", it's that they have data to show how much funding they direct to lower income students so they don't graduate with debt and if this metric is designed to measure economic mobility it's ironic that these students are being excluded.

At any rate, these are all arbitrary metrics, but Vandy is arguing that the limiting of the sample size is arbitrary to the point that it's actually misrepresenting what it's supposed to be. In the case of their student population I think they're right. I do not feel comfortable saying Wake is harmed by this, though.
 
It doesn’t really make sense to rank schools based on social mobility when people looking at the rankings perceive them as ranking schools based on the quality of education they provide. Wake is a school for the rich now. I happen to think that’s quite bad. But I also don’t think it has very much to do with how good of an education you can get if you can afford to go there.
 
Right or wrong, the USNews list has become accepted as the de facto ranking of "best" schools in the country. Everyone refers to it. Football announcers have mentioned our unique combination of small size, high USNews ranking, and Power 5 football. HS counselors all over America use it as a tool to advise their students on identifying the "best" school they can get into, given their record. And on and on.

Any such list that drops a school like Wake 20 spots from one year to the next, or moves another school up 20 spots for that matter, should lose all credibility as a ranking of the best schools. Schools don't change that much over a year. But it won't. It will still be the de facto standard and Wake's reputation will suffer needlessly.
 
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