FOrgive me for asking this, but I never understood the consept of schools being catagorized by "tiers" I know many Ivy League schools are considered top tier, but what does it really mean? How does a school fit into a 1st tier compared to a 4th tier? Thoughts please....
Tiers are a fabrication of U.S. News & World Report. Unfortunately, they have been adopted by academia as the Gold Standard. Schools brag about moving up a tier (but, not surprisingly, about moving down a tier). It all seems rather silly to me, but then I've made my academic choices based on things other than "prestige." Tom Nixon
Re: Re: Top Tier Schools I've found "who'll have me" to be a prime criterion in most of my choices. Or, to rephrase the old joke, "I wouldn't want any school that would have me."
My view is that tiers has kind of become an attempt to better define the admittedly subjective ranking of schools based on their reputation. For example, one might try to explain that RA schools are generally ranked into tiers 1 through 4. DETC schools might be at tier 5. Tier six is an imaginary place to put unaccredited schools that will become accredited in the forseeable future. Tiers 7 through 18 are void and only meant to represent the huge gap between unaccredited and accredited *. Tier 19 is for unaccredited schools that offer degrees for less than the standard like Berne, Kennedy-Western. Tier 20 is for the flaming degree mills. Tier 21 is a DegreeInfo special bottom of the barrel tier for places like SRU and Knightsbridge University simply because I consider it amusing. *I've glossed over some exceptions to the rules. For example, some unaccredited schools are really ranked higher e.g., Bob Jones University would likely be in one of the top 4 tiers even though BJU may rot the attending student's brains. I had to add that last part so that this post can be more politically incorrect and infuriate even a wider audience.
Tiers are not very accurate as an overall gauge as to how a school is looked upon. For example, Suffolk University Law School is rated Tier 4, but it is actually quite well-regarded in the Boston area (not to the degree of Harvard, of course).
I think of it similar to designer clothing. Those with the most money wear the finest garb as established by some inner elite decision makers, or someone was kind enough to give them a hand out (hand me down), got to throw in some philanthopy crumbs along the way. But when the rankings come out, boy, don't schools crow to the sky about it.
http://www.oudaily.com/vnews/display.v/ART/2004/02/13/402c57339f98c?in_archive=1 Here is how one school views rankings.
Some genral information on the US News system can be found at Transitions Between Tiers in U.S. News and World Report Rankings of Colleges and Universities which does a good job in explaining the system from the view of academia. For the US NEws view see Why U.S. News ranks colleges . The Carnegie Classification of Institutions of Higher Education is another ranking, but it does not come out as often as the US News ranking. The Carnegie ranking is probably more comphresensive and more geared to academics.
The problems with rankings... especially with the US News rankings is how much the can be gamed and with how much they rely on academic impressions. As mentioned in the OU article the majority of the academics interviewed live on the east and west coast. This means the reviewers may not even be aware of the lesser known midwest schools and this may impact their review. It has been beaten to death how the schools manipulate applications, acceptances and admissions to improve their scores. Duke started rising in rank in conjuction with its basketball teams emergence as a NCAA powerhouse a fact which has nothing to do with the quality of a Duke education. Then, they started a nationwide advertising campaign to capitilize on their new fame. This increased applications, reduced acceptances and increased their US News score. The rise in ranking can then become self fulfilling as the increased applications further reduce the admission rate fueling an ever greater score. Other factors which have nothing to do with academics can come into play. Applications rose at SUNY-Buffalo after "Real World" was filmed on campus. I went to a visitation at Eastern Illinois University the week after they went top tier in the US News and they had twice the number of visitors than expected. I asked the dean of admissions how many had reservations and he told me not even half. The normal rate of those without reservations is about 10%-20%. Are these 2 schools any better after their publicity? No, but it does show what drives parents and students in selecting a college. (Not me, we had our reservations a month in advance). I am not saying here that there shouldn't be some kind of review of a schools quality. However, the US News system relies so much on inputs and impressions that they are subject to abuse.
