New U.S. News & World Report Top College rankings

The criticism, which is levied at these rankings a lot, is completely valid. They measure quality of student coming in, insofar as you can do so, and not quality of education once they are on campus. I'm not even sure how you would do that, though.

 

Not to sidetrack the thread too much, but have to disagree here. If you're deciding between Brooklyn Law School and Michigan, let's say, you should almost certainly go to Michigan because of rank no matter your personal preferences. If you're deciding between NYU and Michigan, you should not. The hiring differences are negligible enough*, I think, that you should go to Michigan if you want to be in a college town and go to NYU if you want to be in a city. It's too many years and too much money to be miserable (especially since quality of life is going to have an effect on your work-plenty of people that excel in law school manage to have a pretty good time, too).

* Probably only really matters if you 100% want to be in NYC, and even then probably only makes a difference at the margins. Top students are going to have tons of options at both schools; median students are probably in the same position. My guess would be the biggest impact is that NYU students with above-average, but not great, grades will probably end up with more options in NYC than someone from Michigan.

 

If the hiring differences are truly negligible, then we are in agreement.

I think a lot of it comes down to geography more than anything. Where do you want to work? The overall hiring numbers probably aren't worth as much as the local ones.

And that goes for undergrad schools, too. USC might be ranked higher than, say, UT. But tell an employer in Dallas that.

 

Fair enough. Really comes down to an empirical question that we don't have the data to answer. And even if we did it'd be hard to really draw too many conclusion-Berkeley probably doesn't place that many kids in NYC, for instance, but that likely has more to do with student preference than employer preference.

 

brooklyn law school rocks!!

 

Taken aback? I know, what are the odds of a good sportswriter going to a school besides the three aforementioned?

 

That's actually a great idea.

 

I wouldn't advise picking a college by its rankings. Things change. In my case (and I don't have a degree), the schools have become more prestigious over the decades, thus probably inflating the worth of a degree if I actually had one.

My first college is ranked Top 25 nationally among liberal arts schools. It was certainly rigorous, was a nationally elite school at the time, but now it is over-the-top difficult to get in and is maybe even being underrated a bit here. I got in early decision, with a huge (at the time) financial-aid package. No way the school would want me that bad, if at all, by today's standards. It rejects about 75 percent, and it's not the kind of place that people apply to if they have no shot.

Took some classes later on at one that's Top 40 in its region for universities and another that's just out of the Top 25 in national universities. The former was a bit of a joke when I went there (virtually anyone could get in) but has substantially increased its prestige. The latter was always tough -- although really well-regarded in the hard sciences and not so much in what I was taking just for fun (history, anthropology, literature). Good school then, good school now, but still far better for people studying physics.

 

But not a novel idea. Over 450 schools already participate in the Common App.

https://www.commonapp.org/CommonApp/Members.aspx

 

Well, I exaggerate. But only slightly, it feels like sometimes. I didn't go to any of those, for what it's worth. But I do think that people tend to look out for their own, so Mizzou grads hire Mizzou grads and Syracuse grads hire Syracuse grads. Kind of becomes self-perpetuating after a while.

 

I didn't have a journalism degree at all, because my small liberal arts college (Wesleyan) didn't have a journalism school. And I really don't see why news media would think journalism degrees help their job applicants unless it's simple (in every sense) professional snobbery. Now if you're talking the hands-on experience journalism students at many schools get through internships, work-study, etc., that's a different issue. That has obvious value.