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Comment by clusterhacks | Hacker News Reader

FTA "... all university rankings are essentially worthless. They’re based on data that have very little to do with the academic merit of an institution . . . "

While I strongly believe that a motivated university student can maximize their ROI at any institution, it would also be nice if there was an easier way for prospective students to identify schools that would offer the best opportunity for students. But campus visits don't tell you much about actual classroom teaching experiences from the learner perspective.

Any ideas out there?

When I talk to high-achieving parents of kids picking schools, the parents seem to say that choosing a school was mostly a matter of coming up with some arbitrary evaluation function (eg, "wanted a small school with a few hours of home", "interested in a big flagship state university", "wanted an Ivy", etc).

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The high-achieving parents aren't wrong to do this because the value a student gets from a school is largely self-directed and based on the people they meet there. It makes more sense to evaluate based on the student than the school.

Is your kid vulnerable to social anxiety and mental pressure? They would be better off being a bigger fish in a smaller state pond than developing suicidal ideation at a big name institution. You can come up with solid criteria based on knowledge of the world and intuition.

None of the criteria you cite are truly that arbitrary if you inspect them a bit more closely.

> the value a student gets from a school is largely self-directed and based on the people they meet there.

For this reason, rankings (unfortunately) have more value that OP suggests. The "best" students will cluster around the "best" institutions. Does the average student differ muchst between #1 and #5? Probably not much. But the difference between 10 and 100 does, by a lot, and the difference between "unranked LAC" and "top 50 CS" is difficult to overstate.

If you're measuring is "how good is my peer group", rankings are often a bit of a self-fulfilling prophecy. Not so much at fine granularity, but more so if you measure in terms of "20-50 position overlap equivalence classes". This is particularly true in fields like CS, where there are huge differences in curriculum between the top schools and the not-so-top schools.

I'm not convinced on this - with a large enough student base (e.g. most state schools), I think it's possible to find peers that would have excelled even at top 5 universities. Similarly, at top tier colleges, you can find people who don't really perform to the expected level and coast along.

You stand out by being a top performer, and will attract other top performers as long as you search them out. Also, in those scenarios, professors will give you more attention, because you are a better student and more enthusiastic than most of your peers.

Perhaps if you are a true prodigy, you might need a top-tier program to reach your full potential... at that point your peers are the professors and high-performing graduate students, but for most students, I think there are pros and cons for being in a top 5 vs a top 50 program.

> I'm not convinced on this... I think there are pros and cons for being in a top 5 vs a top 50 program.

Yes. That's why I used the top 50 CS programs as an equivalence class in my post:

>> the difference between "unranked LAC" and "top 50 CS" is difficult to overstate.

The US has 5,000 colleges and universities. Not 500. 5,000.

You are absolutely not going to find more than one top performer every half decade or two at a small non-selective LAC or the branch campus of a university system. If ever. I spoke with on faculty member at a branch campus who said that he's never had a single student who is as good as the average undergrad he taught at <top 5 program>. He's been teaching for 20 years. Those types of institutions comprise the vast majority of US colleges and universities.

I think the "rankings are just noise" attitude is mostly held by people who don't even think about the existence of 90% of US colleges and universities. If you consider Stevens Institute of Technology a "backup" as opposed to a "reach", then I guess the attitude has merit. But if you're one of the 50% of college students who get rejected from Stevens -- or the even larger percentage who don't even apply because they know they can't get in -- then the world looks different.

Said teacher likely has a reason to further the myth that "top tier schools" have "top tier students." Academia is largely nothing but group think and elitism these days.

He's a professor who has spent his entire career at one low-ranked institution. If he has a reason for being down on his own employer, where he's tenured, I'm not sure what it could be...

(Also, he didn't state this as a negative or a positive. Just as a fact. "Different institutions serve different clientelle". You don't have to be a hotel snob to say that the Holiday Inn you manage isn't as nice as the Ritz, or a elitist that the youth swim team you coach has nothing on the US olympic program... some people -- particularly educators -- aren't obsessed with being "the best".)

The key concept here is that there are some truly no-name schools out there. Many of them in fact.

This is entirely compatible with the idea that top tier schools are overselling the quality of their students.

At my high school the "target" schools for the top performers in the class were usually some kind of high ranked school or ivy for this reason. I don't remember any of my classmates (myself included) really factoring in specific details of the institution itself for whether we preferred one over the other, rather we just looked at the top 20 list and applied to the ones we liked. The logic being that if we landed somewhere we could basically be pretty successful in whatever field we ended up choosing. So, often that looked like apply to all ivies + a safety or two.

I was rank 8/432 and applied to: Harvard, Princeton, Yale, Columbia, Stanford, Pomona, Rice, and UW. Got rejected from everywhere except UW so that's where I ended up going. I think only one other person in the top 10 went to UW with me, and he had plans to be a CS major. Funnily enough over 50% of my graduating class just went to UW because it was: good enough, close to home, and relatively affordable.

I don't think this is completely true. Brand name universities might impress some people, just like brand name clothes does, but that doesn't mean the education is qualitatively better. Nowadays MIT puts its materials online so you can see for yourself what the fuzz is all about. And roughly the same material with the same "difficulty" was used by the professors at my university. Though, they are more "shy" (we in Europe are more modest) so they don't put their content online so I can't prove it. I think this whole "weak and strong universities" is mostly a US only thing.

Whether rankings matter, I think depends a lot on what your goal (as a student) is for going to college. Off the top of my head:

1- get a good-paying job post-graduation? : you want a school with a good reputation within your target industry (and here's where rankings play a big part)

2- actually get a good education? I'd look at the professors, curriculum, what student-learning opportunities are offered, etc.

3- enjoy the college experience as a young person? That will depend a lot on what appeals to you personally (i.e., big state school vs LAC)

4- study abroad / other opportunities?

5- an affordable option that doesn't put you in debt? This There's usually a trade-off there even if you get accepted into the school of your choice.

6- close to home (usually goes with affordability / i.e., you might be able to keep living at home)

I'd imagine that for most people it's ideally a combination of these, but knowing which is the highest priority for you personally is very important. And rankings don't really play a part in any of those except maybe for #1 -- and even then it's hard to know. Example, my D went to what might be a "tier 2" ranked U (top 50, but not top 20) which most people have never heard of but was well respected among employers in certain industries (engineering in this case), so your target major is a big factor with that. Also, she turned down a top-20 U because it would have put her into debt; often lower ranked U's, i.e., the next tier down, will provide more scholarship money to attract top students (based on SAT/GPA) away from the very top-ranked colleges.

First we need to accept the nobody is ready competing on academic strength and quality of teaching. College is 80-90% about signaling and then the other 10-20 is the basic skills to ensure students don’t damage the brand

are you suggested that you wouldn't be able to spot an ivy league school if you saw one?

seems like it would be useful to have available a "nutrition" label for colleges, which has to be based on facts.

By quality of education no. As a method of pre-filtering candidates sure it’s pretty obviously when someone comes from an extremely privileged background.

Also there isn’t really much difference between Cornell, brown, or pen graduates from Any of the decent state schools. Except they are full of themselves more.

Honestly the graduates from 2nd tier state schools seem to have gotten the best education but they had adverse selection coming in because their more competitive peers went to higher ranked/named schools.

I like this education label idea. I further suggest a couple of columns of numbers based on the outcomes for several socioeconomic groups. Most people can read the side of a cereal box.

There are institutions that compete on the basis of teaching quality. Often private, sometimes public. They emphasize small class sizes, do not stress research productivity in hiring or promotion, etc.

Some of those institutions also signal (e.g., Williams, Harvey-Mudd, etc.) but most of them are relatively unknown and really do just compete on educational quality.

(Some) community colleges are competing on academic strength and quality of teaching. Transfer rate, and graduation rate (and/or graduation time) from the subsequent institutions are easily measured proxy metrics for academic quality (up to you to decide if they're compelling proxy metrics).

Class size is also a proxy metric for quality of teaching. If all your classes are auditorium lectures vs 20 student groups, it makes a difference. Of course, small classes with terrible instructors and awful lesson plans aren't better than competent lectures.

Of course, community colleges fill a lot of roles, and aren't just for transfer students, and they need to compete on those other things too.

A degree from MIT is exactly the same as one from the University of Phoenix?

Successfully graduating from u of phoenix I heard was no easy feat. They didn’t teach much or at all and failed most of their students. To actually graduate from there required a great deal of drive and determination. The program was designed to fall so to succeed against that is a undervalued accomplishment. It was completely worthless for signaling though.

The caliber of student going into MIT is a lot different than UOP but the net ADD from MIT is probably not as big as you expect especially compared to any other accredited institution which UOP was not.

> It was completely worthless for signaling though.

Everyone I know who was going through their program had a structured pay scale where a graduate degree got them more money regardless of the degree. It was effective for signalling you wanted to get more money without learning much.

I never really thought grad students knew much more than under grad they were just willing to grind for longer. There are exceptions in some fields where undergrad programs are really weak but that master’s is simply a signal that You will continue to grind hard

> The caliber of student going into MIT is a lot different than UOP but the net ADD from MIT is probably not as big as you expect

the net add of being surrounded by high caliber students is immeasurable in a positive way. The professors are experts, if the students can handle it, the professors deliver more material, faster. It's a huge add, there is no substitute for it.

I only did this for one school, but at the college I went to I was able to sit in on a class or two when I was visiting it before attending. You might need to ask for permission, but I'd imagine most professors/teachers would be happy to have people listen in. And more schools are recording classes and making them available on YouTube, so you can get a sense of the teacher's style.

Another thing one can do is, instead of picking a school, pick professors. Consider what majors the student might study, look at what professors are there, and look at things like what books they've written, have they written any interesting blog posts about their teaching, and that sort of thing.

Both of these approaches take more time than scanning a rankings, but it actually resembles much more closely how other decisions we make in life operate.

> some arbitrary evaluation function...

I think "wanting an Ivy" is a bit arbitrary, but wanting a small vs. a large school, or a school a certain distance from home, can lead to a very different experience over the course of 4 years.

>look at what professors are there, and look at things like what books they've written, have they written any interesting blog posts about their teaching, and that sort of thing.

I wish I did this. I basically applied to Universities ranked highly for my degree at the city I wanted to be in (London) before realizing these rankings are near arbitrary. It was only in my first or second year as I read more papers that I realized I should look into what Professors there publish and was largely unimpressed or didn't care for their subfields but it was too late by then.

"... all university rankings are essentially worthless. They’re based on data that have very little to do with the academic merit of an institution . . . "

So much this. The biggest value of a prestigious university is the name, not the education. Prestigious universities crank out top-notch graduates (and the occasional complete incompetent) because they accept only top-tier students (and the occasional complete incompetent).

As a parent, know that if you get your child into a 'good' school you've probably done all you can. The outcome has more to do with your child than the stultifying, enervating, curriculum to which they'll be subjected.

Education from -1 to 24 is horribly broken (at least in the U.S.).

Find old syllabi and assignments online or ask the prof / a subreddit for some. Shittier schools to tend to have easier and more boring assignments and projects (eg "build a calculator", "list facts about X").

I like to use OpenSyllabus to investigate which textbooks, papers, etc. are used to teach courses: https://opensyllabus.org/

Rankings matter because rankings matter to people. If we lived in a purely meritocratic world I would agree with you that for a lot of degrees it wouldn't matter where you go. But the rankings are confounder for two important aspects: money and network reach. Money means bigger and more advanced labs (comparatively. I've been to big school labs and small school labs. Both are hacked together but there's sure a difference). Networking helps you get more papers published, more prestigious internships (i.e. more on job training), more internships in general (lots of students get denied in tighter job markets where it is easy for top tier uni students despite similar skill levels at Freshman and Sophomore years. But internships beget internships), and the networking gets you into the door when you graduate.

I strongly agree that it doesn't matter much where you go to get your education if your goal is to get educated. But if in addition to that education you want a promising career, rankings do matter.

The best idea I've found is actually visiting the university web pages of the faculty in the department you'll be studying in. Often the more amiable professors will have better web pages with information like mentoring students, possible projects, other outreach activities, etc.

> Any ideas out there?

For undergrad, this might be a good place to start: https://www.ratemyprofessors.com/ How good are the staff at actually teaching the subjects of interest?

Having had a prior career in college teaching, rate my professor ratings are tied, almost directly, to how friendly you are as a faculty. For institutional "data" that is tied to whether or not a student got what they wanted. Note: Not what they needed.

Yes it asks about quality, but if faculty are friendly and funny, students will score you high. If you are quality but not friendly, students will score you low. It's a popularity contest for college faculty, not exactly a great way to make a decision about your college choice.

If a student doesn't get what they want, even if they get what they need, they will score low. For example: the institution I am currently working with is scored pretty low. They're a science and technology focused institution with a niche related to electrical and mechanical engineering. The first year is general education, then you get into your specific major.

The scores are low, because the schools inside the university are VERY selective. There are a large number of freshmen who do not get into their first choice major their sophomore year. This is because they don't have the necessary achievement to be competitive, not because the school sucks.

But, if you look at the rating on rate my professor, the school looks like it's full of sociopaths bent on destroying children's futures.

I don't have any experience with universities that have such a competitive aspect to entry into specific fields of study for students.

My gut is that is may be very good for the university reputation if the university is already pretty selective on admissions. But pretty bad for even a better than average, but not top %, student who has their heart set on a specific major.

I have taught as an adjunct and was impressed by the average undergraduate at a large state school. As a person who very much doesn't like an entirely "winner takes all" mindset in life, I'm curious about in the extra pressure of getting into your preferred program.

Mind sharing your thoughts on how that extra internal selectivity works out for students? I mean, clearly students complain about the process if it doesn't work for them individually, but what do those students mostly do? "Settle" for another program? Transfer?

> The scores are low, because the schools inside the university are VERY selective. There are a large number of freshmen who do not get into their first choice major their sophomore year. This is because they don't have the necessary achievement to be competitive, not because the school sucks.

I wholly disagree. Sounds like the school sucks to me. If I had a choice between entrance into my chosen major at a different institution, and your school, I would choose my major. As students are often applying for 5+ schools, they may not understand the nuances of each schools admissions process, and the admissions departments may intentionally obscure unpleasant details like this.

If this practice is bad enough to drag down scores across the whole institution on RMP, it sounds like a lot of kids are getting suckered into thinking they got into a great engineering program, but then get shoveled into whatever department needs them to fill their quota.

It's _hard_ for undergraduates to transfer schools after freshman year, at least in USA.

This is why you should generally always try to get admission directly into your major rather than later, or you wind up studying something else at a college you don't necessarily want to be. For example, it's MUCH harder to get directly admitted into the engineering school at most colleges than general admission (undergrad), and then equally hard to switch to engineering from another school in the college after you're already there.

I'm going to pile on here and agree that while the school may not suck academically, this is a pretty shitty academic plan for students who may not have realised they might need to make a choice of taking a major they don't want or leaving to another institution to study what they want. Transfering between institutions is possible, but it comes with a lot of barriers --- transfer admission is usually secondary to direct admission; credits may not transfer well, especially between quarter and semester systems; sequencing differences may make scheduling difficult, etc. It's unusual to get a 4 year degree in 4 years total when transferring, unless there's a specific transfer program between the two institutions; if, after one year spent working towards their chosen degree, your students are told they can't get it there and they would have to spend four years somewhere else to do it, it looks like a wasted year.

Of course, maybe your institution does accept some students directly into their major and counsels the rest that most of them won't get their choice and they still accept your bargain. And it doesn't sound like a terrible place for an undesigned engineering and technology major, who would presumably be wooed into whatever specific major would accept them after the first year.

EDIT to add: from my experience as a student at an engineering school, almost all the students capable of succeeding in one engineering major would have been able to succeed in the others too, with the exception of biomedical engineering --- you needed to have a hell of a lot more drive to succeed in that. There was a popular belief that mechanical engineering was easier, but I don't think it really was; just it was a lot easier to get excited about it and being excited about your major is an important factor.

I would take it as only one factor, since it's more about whether the students like the professor (and how strict he/she is), which is different than whether they're good at teaching.

Look at clubs and student jobs on campus in relation to lab work/research. For example if you have a compsci school without active students doing things like robotics, that's because the admins and professors don't want to do it.

Not sure I have an answer to your question but the most ridiculous thing is the dichotomy between undergrad and postgrad educations. Most schools iirc are ranked based on their grad school programs with is totally different than an undergrad education. And what about institutions that don’t offer postgrad programs..? If possible it seems the most appropriate for parents to talk to recent grads of the institution they’re considering.

I created a crude site that ranks universities & departments based on professor review data.

https://www.bananacharts.com/rank.html

Just go to the library.

Library was my favorite place at college, probably the most important place too since I tended to skip class and learn the material myself. A good library should be comfy and have ample working space.

It's also mostly free access to the public.

Having all 1xx courses on youtube would give a glimpse

I've watched some courses from Yale for an area I received instruction in at a state school that's just about entirely unknown once you get about 150 miles away from it. So, a 2nd or 3rd tier state school. One of the former "Normal Schools" that Fussell complains about diluting the meaning of higher education when they hastily converted to general colleges or universities to soak up demand driven by the GI Bill.

As far as I could tell the content was basically identical & the exercises or papers weren't that different, but two things stood out:

1) The students at Yale were way more engaged, and

2) They had more guest lecturers or speakers, and it was always someone really important & impressive.

LinkedIn knows. LinkedIn + Glassdoor really knows.

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