Wednesday 25 September 2013

Look Beyond University Rankings

Originally Published in Hindustan Times Education

A few weeks ago US News and World Report released their college rankings for 2014. Most of the media coverage of this dubious event has concluded that not much has changed, especially among the top 10 colleges. This is important to Indian students for whom US News is sometimes treated as a sacred text. Indian applicants focus is so narrowed on the top 10 (maybe 20) ranked colleges that its almost impossible to convince them to consider applying anywhere else. This is often blamed on a ‘status conscious’ or ‘brand obsessed’ perspective. While this tendency is exaggerated, I offer some reasons why even more supposed practical reasons for sticking with the top 20 are unfounded.

The most obvious reason for strict adherence to college rankings is understandable – education abroad is expensive and families want a solid return on their investment. A student should attend a college where her earning potential after college is the highest. But when it comes to jobs, the top colleges are not necessarily the darlings of industry. In fact in a recent column by Alison Singh, a US based lawyer and writer, she cited a Wall Street Journal study in which recuriters were asked which colleges prepare students best for satisfying, well paid jobs with growth potential. Most of the colleges on the list were large public institutions and Cornell was the only US News top 20 college included (it should be noted that India’s favorite non-top 20 made it to the list – Carnegie Mellon).

Besides return on investment, Indian applicants also believe is important to study at top 20 ranked US News college because it will ease their way into top graduate programs such as Harvard Business School or Yale Law or Duke Medicine or Stanford Engineering. But widely available data for these graduate programs shows that they admit students with undergraduate degrees from a broad range of colleges. In fact if you compare rankings to rankings, Business Week’s top 20 MBA feeder school rankings and US New’s top 20 national universities have only 5 colleges in common (MIT, Penn, Wash U, Cornell, Notre Dame). It seems attending Boston College makes you more likely to end up in business school than if you go to Harvard (according to these rankings). That is, obviously not to say that you cannot go to business school if you attend Harvard, rather that you are just as likely to attend a great business school if you attend a lower ranked college.

Of course I’m being hard on the applicants that are stuck on the top 20. But I don’t mean to be, I mean to make the broader point that sticking to any list (even if it the top 100) is a mistake when it comes to applying to college, especially in the US. Every one of the 2000+ four year colleges in the US is unique and has a special ethos, culture and mission. I wish that each applicant would choose their college based on where these features fit into they want from their college experience, rather than what they think (based on rankings) the college will do for them.

I have seen students go to Ivy League colleges and get very little out of it as they pined for home and longed to once again be a big fish in a small pond. And I have seen students go to The University of Richmond and take advantage of every opportunity presented to them, build their resumes through service and extracurricular learning and take hold of opportunities they could have never imagined. At the end of four years, whose resume will impress a recruiter? It’s not what you get out of college that makes you who you are after four years, it’s what you put in.

7 comments:

  1. Congratulations, great article! I want to share a blog that will be useful http://uniwiser.blogspot.com/

    ReplyDelete
  2. Yes true.I also believe this we all should look beyond university rankings.Its a very useful site.Thanks for posting this site.Its good one.Great.

    ReplyDelete
  3. We additionally think this particular all of us ought to appear past college ratings. It's an extremely on this page. Many thanks with regard to publishing this website. It's great 1. Excellent.

    ReplyDelete
  4. I read a lot of formal letter so that I could know the main theme of writing a formal letter and here I get one of the best piece of the formal letter. good article that I love for the helpful information and its really amazing.

    ReplyDelete
  5. I asked sevaral time in my areas people for Beyond University Rankings but no one can give me a right idea that's why I am here to read your article. I just wanna say nice blog

    ReplyDelete
  6. Web assume huge part for human life in the event that we utilize it for individual advantages than web is revile for us yet in the event that we utilize it for service data and furthermore other sort of malady than web is useful for our life's.

    ReplyDelete
  7. Top 10 university ranking is perfect. Many people don't agree with it. but i accept it. Well, capstone ideas is needed in many projects. We have a bundle of ideas for the students. Look here https://www.capstonepaper.net

    ReplyDelete