| Topic Name: |
Wesleyan--the "little three" nobody talks about |
| Message Name: |
Partial explanation re: US News |
| Date Posted: |
10/19/2001 |
| In Reply To: |
Yield is nice, but those statistics are not kept by US news (at least on their rankings website), which is rather telling.
Perhaps it is prudent to assume those values are integrated into the acceptance rate figures because it is impossible to turn away people if people don't apply in the first place.
This is all useless rhetoric anyways because the point of this thread is argue the lack of attention Wesleyan recieves. It is a phenomenal school with much better resources than it is actually given credit for. In addition, many people who are in the college application process feel the same way-otherwise the school wouldn't be able to turn so many away.
The question is why doesn't Wesleyan recieve the same acclaim as its fellow schools??
Especially on the US News rankings?? I find it hard to believe Carleton is much better than Wesleyan to tell you the truth. |
| Message: |
Ok, well, let me first start out by saying that US News rankings are hardly gospel in terms of evaluating schools. They have to change their rankings every year just in order to sell more magazines. I remember one year davidson went from 22 to 11. Now realistically, how much could a school possibly change in one year?
I think Wesleyan gets a bum rap from US News because of a few things:
1)alumni giving. Wesleyan alums don't tend to give a whole lot of money. I think this is largely because so many alums go into public service-type jobs, which really don't pay well enough to enable the alums to give huge donations.
2)US News stopped using student evaluations and quality of teaching as ranking criteria a few years ago. When those were criteria Wesleyan was consistently in the top 5.
3)smaller per-student endowment. When Wesleyan co-educated, the "old boy" alums told the school they would withhold their alumni giving if freshman space were given to women instead of men. The school responded by doubling the class size. So, the old boys gave their money, but it had to be stretched farther.
At any rate, it boils down to the fact that US news places a greater value on money than student happiness, quality of teaching, or any other qualitative criteria.
|
|
