Baylor Trying to Game U.S. News Rankings by Paying Freshmen to Retake SATs?
Monday, October 20, 2008
The New York Times recently published a story about Baylor University paying incoming freshmen $300 to retake the SAT and awarding them a $1,000 merit scholarship if they raised their SAT score 50 points. Just to clarify, Baylor paid students who were already admitted to the school $300 to retake the SAT.
Why Was Baylor Paying Admitted Students to Retake the SAT?
While the university claimed that much of the motivation for letting incoming freshmen retake the SAT was to award additional merit aid (that is, the $1,000 merit scholarship if they raised their score 50 points), the tactics seem a little fishy. The initiative appears to be a veiled attempt to improve the school's standing in popular college ranking guides.
First, the offer was only open to incoming freshmen. No upperclassmen were offered the opportunity to do the same. Why is that significant? Well, because the test scores of upperclassmen have already been reported to organizations like U.S. News and World Report and Princeton Review in past years and won't have any affect on the school's current rankings.
Second, it was not as though they had pre-defined standards for merit aid and were encouraging students who fell just short of those standards to retake the SAT so they could qualify. That might seem compassionate, in some way, letting a kid who scored an 1220 on the SAT and fell just short of a 1250 cut-off for a scholarship give it another try. You could qualify for the merit aid whether you had a 1000 SAT score or a 1300 SAT score.
Finally, if it was mostly about giving out additional merit aid, aren't there better ways to give out scholarships rather than making a freshman retake the SAT? One quick idea could be to tie the merit scholarship to community service.
The Results of Paying Students and the Criticism that Followed
The program cost the school a reported $862,000, and the average SAT score of incoming freshmen climbed just 10 points from 1200 to 1210. When the news broke in the university's student newspaper, The Lariat, the school received criticism from all quarters of the university. The newspaper released a highly critical op-ed piece, the faculty senate condemned the practice, and many students on campus derided it as unfair and out of line with Baylor's institutional values. Criticism also came from the admission professionals around the country.
Baylor Stops the Program
In response to the mounting criticism, Baylor has stopped the program. It's unclear whether it was initially intended to be a one-year program or an ongoing offer to incoming freshmen.
The whole affair has stoked the fires for critics of published rankings and for critics of standardized tests.
Labels: admissions, college, SAT, U.S. News
2008 U.S News College Rankings: The Great Debate Rages On
Friday, November 9, 2007
A few months back, the 2008 U.S. News College Rankings were released. Princeton topped this year's list, edging out Harvard and Yale. As usual, the release of the U.S. News rankings sparked considerable debate about whether they help or hurt students' efforts to find colleges that are a good fit.
Some argue that high school seniors get caught up worrying about where a college is ranked rather than focusing on their own preferences and finding a college that matches these preferences.
Proponents counter that the U.S. News college rankings can be used as one of many tools to help high school seniors and their parents assess the quality of colleges.
How You Can Effectively Use College Rankings
We do not recommend basing your college decision solely on the U.S. News College Rankings or any other ranking system (unless you've devised your own personal ranking system). However, these rankings can often have significant value for you in your research. If you take some time to look beyond the actual ranking of a college and look into the underlying data, you can uncover some very useful information.
First, these rankings can often serve as a quick barometer for how competitive a college will be to get into. The top colleges on the list will generally be the most selective colleges in the U.S. Colleges further down are generally a little easier to get into. That can be a huge help as you start narrowing down the list of colleges you want to apply to. You should be thinking about whether a college is a reach, a good fit, or a safety school. You ideally want to have a school or two in each of these categories when you are applying to colleges.
Second, the U.S. News College Rankings, as well as other rankings, often provide quick snippets of data in a single location on a number of colleges. The U.S. News College Rankings can be a useful place to go to find SAT Scores for the 25th and 75th percentiles of the incoming freshman class. The Washington Monthly does their own college ranking, scoring colleges on what they are "doing for the country". These rankings provide interesting data for students who might be interested in ROTC or public service. You can find out which colleges have the most graduates go on to serve in the Peace Corps or which university work-study programs have the most money going to community-service efforts.
Finally, a major bi-product of rankings efforts is that they encourage colleges to share information. The Common Data Set, an effort to standardize data reporting and data sharing by colleges, was largely a result of the proliferation of college rankings. All college-bound students have benefited from this data being more readily available.
Create Your Own College Ranking System
We've created a tool that allows you to come up with your own college ranking system. Our College Scorecard lets you to decide what criteria are important to you and then allows you to rank up to 4 colleges using these criteria. You'll end up with your own personal college rankings... which are the best college rankings of all!
U.S. News College Rankings - Top 50 Colleges with Links to their College Profiles
1. Princeton University (Private)
2. Harvard University (Private)
3. Yale University (Private)
4. Stanford University (Private)
5. California Institute of Technology (Private)
5. University of Pennsylvania (Private)
7. Massachusetts Institute of Technology (Private)
8. Duke University (Private)
9. Columbia University (Private)
9. University of Chicago (Private)
11. Dartmouth College (Private)
12. Cornell University (Private)
12. Washington University in St. Louis (Private)
14. Brown University (Private)
14. Johns Hopkins University (Private)
14. Northwestern University (Private)
17. Emory University (Private)
17. Rice University (Private)
19. University of Notre Dame (Private)
19. Vanderbilt University (Private)
21. University of California-Berkeley (Public)
22. Carnegie Mellon University (Private)
23. Georgetown University (Private)
23. University of Virginia (Public)
25. University of California-Los Angeles (Public)
25. University of Michigan-Ann Arbor (Public)
27. University of Southern California (Private)
28. Tufts University (Private)
28. University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill (Public)
30. Wake Forest University (Private)
31. Brandeis University (Private)
31. Lehigh University (Private)
33. College of William and Mary (Public)
34. New York University (Private)
35. Boston College (Private)
35. Georgia Institute of Technology (Public)
35. University of Rochester (Private)
38. University of California-San Diego (Public)
38. University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (Public)
38. University of Wisconsin-Madison (Public)
41. Case Western Reserve University (Private)
42. University of California-Davis (Public)
42. University of Washington (Public)
44. Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute (Private)
44. University of California-Irvine (Public)
44. University of California-Santa Barbara (Public)
44. University of Texas-Austin (Public)
48. Pennsylvania State University-University Park (Public)
49. University of Florida (Public)
50. Syracuse University (Private)
50. Tulane University (Private)
Labels: admissions, college, college search, rankings, selective, U.S. News