Do you think that there is a BIAS in how colleges are ranked?

Question

I have noticed that every field in arts and sciences are dominated by the same universities; (The Ivy League brothers; Harvard, Yale, Brown, Princeston, and etc)

Is this some kind of damm CONSPIRACY!!!!!! Some of our brightest minds in America came from the big state institutions or lesser "prestigious" private university.

Martin Luther King, Boston University, Morehouse

Paul Tillich, University of Chicago

Oprah, Condi and etc.

Bush went to an ivy league but he is not that bright of a guy.

So why are the Ivy brothers dominating every field? Inquiring minds want to know!

Answer 1

All eight of the Ivies are quite small. They each have only about 1500 kids in the Freshman class. So all eight together include only about 12,000 students coming in as Freshmen. But there are way more than a million Freshmen entering US colleges each year. So, do you think that there are only 12,000 bright ones! Of course not. So many thousands of terrific students attend other schools.

No one at the Ivies ever claimed that the Ivies had a monopoly on great students. What they do have is excellent facilities, excellent faculty, small classes and tight-knit communities of students where nearly every student is really smart, well prepared, ambitious and hard working.

That is a winning formula for producing successful alumni who are almost always leaders in their communities and workplaces.

Answer 2

There are a lot of reasons why Ivy League schools are ranked as high as they are. They do offer a great academic experience, for sure. However, many major college rankings take things into account such as faculty-student ratios, class sizes, and alumni-donations, none of which big state schools can even come close to competing in. For example, this is why schools like UC Berkeley, UCLA and the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor are consistently ranked lower than the Ivy's, but offer degrees which are almost just as respected as the Ivy's are. This is also why a lot of relatively weaker private universities outrank these three "public ivy's". US News' rankings in particular are often criticized for this reason.

There are other ranking systems out there which distribute the universities differently.

Answer 3

It's because the top ranked school have the most money. It's true - it's not that they're bribing their way to the top, it's that money is needed to dominate the catagories used for ranking - catagories like class size (more professors = smaller classes), academic reputation (hiring the brightest in the fields and paying for their research), scholarships given, alumni giving rate, etc. But that also means that the richest schools will be the best - because they can hire the best.

Also, keep in mind that the Ivy League is a football league. It doesn't mean much beyond that, really. Brown and University of Chicago are very well-respected, high-ranked schools as well.

Answer 4

No, just because some of the brightest people you've heard of graduated from non-Ivy league schools doesn't put those schools in the same league as the Ivies and other Most Competitive schools. Also, you might want to check the US News and World report rankings for the 25 universities that they consider "new Ivies." The rankings are done based on what is required to get into the university, not what you do with your degree when you're done.

Answer 5

There's no conspiracy, Andre...it's just a matter of tradition and reputation.

Here's my take: Ever since I can remember, Ivy League schools have always produced outstanding graduates in the fields of arts, sciences, engineering, business, politics and yeah, sports too....and it's not just a handful that would be successful but class after class after class of graduates would consistently make it big in their respective areas. This didn't happen by accident; instead there is a deliberate and conscious effort by the adminstration to ensure that their graduates uphold the established tradition and their impeccable reputation; hence, the very strict rigid admission process.

Okay, so Bush is not that bright of a guy...I agree! But he's still the president of the most powerful country of the world! That's leadership at its pinnacle and a testament to his Ivy League education.

Okay, there are some very outstanding people from non-Ivy League schools....I agree! But look at it this way --- take any college, take 5,000 random students...most likely, 10% of those would become top-notch in their fields. Now take any Ivy League school, take the same number of students - 5,000 random...I bet you data would support that well over 50% of them will become top-notch in their fields.

It's not a conspiracy thing.......it is a matter of fact!

Answer 6

If you look at the rankings, they are based largely on financial factors, the degrees of the teachers, the performance of the incoming class in high school, and graduation rates. The only truly objective way to accurately rank colleges is to send someone to every course at every school on the list. That isn't really practtical. Being a Morehouse man myself means I am biased in favor of small schools, but in the real world there is no accurate way to say that the education at school A is better than school B, so you have to look at factors like how much the two schools spend on education per student. The rankings are admittedly very subjective, but they publish how they came up with their rankings. Use the info as you see fit, or save yourself a whole lot of time and trouble and send your son to Morehouse - the Harvard of the south.