2012 U.S. News Rankings - St. John's # 152

J

jerseyshorejohnny

Well-known member
 The 2012 U.S. News and World Report rankings for National Universities was released today.

St. John's was ranked # 152. Last year St. John's was ranked # 143. This year we are tied for # 152 with Adelphi

Others of note include: ND # 19, Georgetown # 22, Boston College # 31, NYU # 33, FORDHAM # 53, Marquette # 82, University of St. Louis # 90, San Diego (a Jesuit institution) # 97, Dayton # 101, SUNY Stony Brook and SUNY Buffalo tied at # 111, Hofstra # 128, DePaul #132, Seton Hall # 132, and SUNY Albany # 138.

Best Regional Universities in the North (in order): Villanova, Fairfield, Loyola (Maryland), and Providence


Top schools in order of ranking: Harvard, Princeton, YALE, Columbia, Cal Tech, MIT, Stanford, Chicago, PENN, DUKE, Dartmouth, Northwestern, Hopkins, Washington U. (St. Louis), BROWN, Cornell, Rice, Vandy, ND, Emory, Cal Berkely, Georgetown, Carnegie Mellon, USC, UCLA, UVa., Wake Forest, Michigan, Tufts, UNC. 

Stats for St. John's:

2010 Year:

Applications: 54,871
Female Apps: 32,962
Male Apps: 21,909
Apps Accepted : 24,993
Freshman enrolled 3,117
Fall 2010 Acceptance Rate : 46%

Freshman Retention: 78%

6 Yr. Grad Rate : 58%

4 Yr. Grad Rate : 36%

Fall 2010 High School GPA : 3.2

GPA Breakdown:

1.00-1.99 : About 2%
2.00-2.99 : About 19%
3.00-3.24 : About 16%
3.25-3.49 About 17%
3.50-3.74: About 14%
3.75-4.00: About 18%

SAT Scores:

SAT Critical Reading Average Score : 537

SAT Critical Reading Score Breakdown:

400-499: About 35% of entering class in 2010
500-599: About 43%
600-699: About 20%
700-800: About 2%

SAT MATH Average Score : 560

SAT MATH Score Breakdown:

400-499: About 25% of entering students
500-599: About 40%
600-699: About 23%
700-800: About 12%    

Freshman in top 10% of high school class : 20%
Freshman in top 25% of high school class : 35%

Alumni Giving Rate : 15%  

Average SAT scores for some of the aforementioned schools : Nova: just shy of 1300, Fordham: just shy of 1250, Seton Hall 1081, BC: 1340, Marquette: 1186, DePaul: 1153   
 
 my school was #2 in public colleges, #1 in up and coming and #8 in top northern universities ^-^ SUNY Geneseo. They list them as a northern regional school and not national.
 
Can't tell you specifically why we dropped but would think St. John's is in the right neighborhood when it comes to its standing among other national schools.

Factors that work against St. John's include: low freshman retention rate at under 80%, low alumni giving around 15%, relatively low 4 and 6 yr graduation rates and low SAT scores for a good chunk of the freshman class. Other factors include a low number of classes (30% of those offered) with under 20 students. 

By way of comparison, look at our stats vs, those of Fordham Rose Hill

Fordham:

High School Counselor Rank 4.1 out of 5 for Fordham (it was 3.3 for St. John's)

Alumni Giving Rate : 25% for Fordham vs. 15% for St. John's

6 yr graduation rate of 80% for Fordham. vs. 58% for St. John's

% of Classes with under 20 students: 50% for Fordham vs 30% for St. John's

Freshman in top 10% of high school for Fordham: 42% vs 20% for St. John's

Freshman in top 25% of high school class for Fordham is 80% vs. 35% for St. John's

SAT: 1250 for Fordham vs. about 1100 for St. John's

Retention rate: for Fordham 90% vs. a touch below 80% for St. John's 
 
St. John's ranking at #153 ties it with academic heavyweight Adelphi, but behind
-- St. John Fisher College (at #143)
-- SUNY Albany (at 138)
-- New Jersey Institute of Technology (at 138)
-- Oklahoma State University (at 132)
-- Hofstra University (at 128)

The Rev. Donald J. Harrington, C. M. has set low academic goals for St. John's University and he apparently has not met those low goals.
 
Some painfully obvious hurdles for St. John's to overcome:

1) Retention Rate, IMO is a function of the fact that a fair # of kids should not be going to St. John's in the first place because they simply don't have the financial means. I would think quite a few leave because they don't have the $$$ to continue. I believe that at least a third of the kids enrolled come from families with an AGI of below $50K.

Obviously this will have an negative impact on the 4yr and 6 yr graduation rates.

2) The bottom third of the kids who attend St. John's had very low SAT scores which does not help our ranking. I would very much like to know what the average SAT score is for each of the individual "schools" at St. John's. Got to believe you could drive a truck between the SAT scores for the kids in the College of Pharmacy and those enrolled in CPS.

3) The alumni giving rate needs to improve, but that doesn't appear to be in the cards, at least near term. Perhaps success on the basketball court will help to increase the # of alumni who write checks, but the jury is still out on this one.

4) The large size of the student population works against us in the ranking. If we had a freshman class of 2,000 instead of 3,000 plus, the rank would leap.


 
 
St. John's ranking at #153 ties it with academic heavyweight Adelphi, but behind
-- St. John Fisher College (at #143)
-- SUNY Albany (at 138)
-- New Jersey Institute of Technology (at 138)
-- Oklahoma State University (at 132)
-- Hofstra University (at 128)

The Rev. Donald J. Harrington, C. M. has set low academic goals for St. John's University and he apparently has not met those low goals.
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The Rev. Donald J. Harrington, C. M. has set low academic goals for St. John's University.
r u serious?
 
Some painfully obvious hurdles for St. John's to overcome:

1) Retention Rate, IMO is a function of the fact that a fair # of kids should not be going to St. John's in the first place because they simply don't have the financial means. I would think quite a few leave because they don't have the $$$ to continue. I believe that at least a third of the kids enrolled come from families with an AGI of below $50K.

Obviously this will have an negative impact on the 4yr and 6 yr graduation rates.

2) The bottom third of the kids who attend St. John's had very low SAT scores which does not help our ranking. I would very much like to know what the average SAT score is for each of the individual "schools" at St. John's. Got to believe you could drive a truck between the SAT scores for the kids in the College of Pharmacy and those enrolled in CPS.

3) The alumni giving rate needs to improve, but that doesn't appear to be in the cards, at least near term. Perhaps success on the basketball court will help to increase the # of alumni who write checks, but the jury is still out on this one.

4) The large size of the student population works against us in the ranking. If we had a freshman class of 2,000 instead of 3,000 plus, the rank would leap.

It would leap, but would really hurt the diversity of the school.
You want Providence or vanillanova, then drop the class size.
I love the fact that STJ scored higher than both these schools in the survey that was judged on giving back and financial aid.
This is an inner city Catholic school, much like DePaul.
Blue collar kids, first generation collegians, that's what the school is/ should always be about.
Hopefully I wasn't the only manager who leaned towards these kids in the interviewing process.
And they all were great hires.


 
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Hello TIS,

In spirit I would agree with you. My only concern is that a fair number of these kids are leaving St. John's (either with or without a diploma) with a ton of debt and limited good paying job prospects. I struggle with whether or not this is something St. John's should to continue to encourage.

Is it ethical to encourage kids who come from financially challenged families to go into major debt?

Should a "Catholic" university knowingly help put kids in a financial position that will not serve the majority of them well? Is that the "right" thing to do?

That said, one has to wonder the impact of the ratings on a young man/woman who is a good (lets define it as someone with a 3.0 GPA in high school and a 1050-1100 on the SAT's) but not necessarily a great student.

These are the kids who make up the core of the university.

Do these rankings have a meaningful impact in the decision making process if a kid is trying to decide between St. John's, Marist, PC, Fairfield, or Loyola of Maryland, to name a few ??

I don't know the answer. I don't know if there is an answer.

Would very much like to "hear" from current St. John's students and recent grads on their point of view.  
 
Some painfully obvious hurdles for St. John's to overcome:

1) Retention Rate, IMO is a function of the fact that a fair # of kids should not be going to St. John's in the first place because they simply don't have the financial means. I would think quite a few leave because they don't have the $$$ to continue. I believe that at least a third of the kids enrolled come from families with an AGI of below $50K.

Obviously this will have an negative impact on the 4yr and 6 yr graduation rates.

2) The bottom third of the kids who attend St. John's had very low SAT scores which does not help our ranking. I would very much like to know what the average SAT score is for each of the individual "schools" at St. John's. Got to believe you could drive a truck between the SAT scores for the kids in the College of Pharmacy and those enrolled in CPS.

3) The alumni giving rate needs to improve, but that doesn't appear to be in the cards, at least near term. Perhaps success on the basketball court will help to increase the # of alumni who write checks, but the jury is still out on this one.

4) The large size of the student population works against us in the ranking. If we had a freshman class of 2,000 instead of 3,000 plus, the rank would leap.


 
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U R correct on the bottom 3rd. That group accounts for the largest dropout rate and has the biggest impact on the rankings. Students that I have known that attended "other" colleges in the past few years indicated that attending classes with very low level academic fellow students was THE BIGGEST reason for NOT attending St. John's. The university needs to take a long hard look at its admissions goals and make strategic changes asap! The Vincentian mission seems to be the biggest roadblocks here at SJ but DePaul has made better admissions decisions in the past ten years than SJ.
 
The bottom line is that The U.S. News rankings are not a high priority at St. John's and that isn't going to change.

At Fordham it is one of their major goals to "crack" the top 50 and by the looks of things, they are well on their way.

Different schools, different missions..
 
Tom,

The tuition at St. John's University is $33,875. Despite the generous financial assistance offered by the school average indebtedness of each graduate of St. John's University is $32,886.  The aforementioned indebtedness does not include any loans or advances the StJ's grad has obtained from his/ her family.

Now compare the St.John's tuition and grad debt load to the tuition of any of the CUNY or SUNY schools. system. As a sampling:

(i) the tuition at Brooklyn College is $5,584 with average indebtedness at graduation of $9,500

(ii) he tuition at Stony Brook is $6,994 with average indebtedness at graduation of $19,770.

St. John's broad mission to educate the poor was created at a time when the SUNY and CUNY systems did not even exist. In 1870 when St. John's was founded the poor had few alternatives to receive a quality education. The public college systems in New York however now exist and provide quality education to St. John's historical applicant pool at a fraction of the cost and a fraction of the debt load.

As the St.john's tuition has escalated over the years the Rev. Donald J. Harrington, C.M. has stuck to the business model that is funded by filling nearly 16,000 undergrad seats each year despite and the fact that less expensive alternatives to educate the financially less able now exist and without regard to the fact that many St.John's grads (particularly) with liberal arts degrees are burdened with substantial debt upon graduation.

Please understand that my above statements are not an attack on the education which any of us received at St.John's decades ago but represents a belief that as the decades have rolled forward the St.John's business model should have been refined so as not to compete with the publics colleges and saddling our grads with large debt loads. I would prefer a smaller undergrad school that solicits enrollment from the underrepresented groups with large financial aid.

Tom, please explain how a graduate of St. John's with a degree in liberal arts (ie. an English major) with $34,000 in debt is positioned better than a CUNY or SUNY grad with substantially less debt.

Thanks. 
 
The main factor working against us having a higher ranking is the students that have been identified as being in the lower 1/3 of the incoming class. St. John's has made an effort to enroll these kids, knowing that their SAT scores and GPAs in HS  are lower than the norm.

St. John's is providing a college education opportunity for so many of these students.

The school is also doing more in regards to enroll students with higher SATs and other metrics.

What does get me is the relatively low % of alumni that contribute back to their collge. Boo on them! Every dollar here helps!
 
The bottom line is that The U.S. News rankings are not a high priority at St. John's and that isn't going to change.

At Fordham it is one of their major goals to "crack" the top 50 and by the looks of things, they are well on their way.

Different schools, different missions..
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As I traveled the country during my business years, I always loved telling people how NYC was the only city in the country that had 3 colleges consistently ranked in the top 50.
Crazy that Fordham is so close to making it 4.
When I grew up there, the best thing about it was it's proximity to White Castle.
 
Tom,

The tuition at St. John's University is $33,875. Despite the generous financial assistance offered by the school average indebtedness of each graduate of St. John's University is $32,886.  The aforementioned indebtedness does not include any loans or advances the StJ's grad has obtained from his/ her family.

Now compare the St.John's tuition and grad debt load to the tuition of any of the CUNY or SUNY schools. system. As a sampling:

(i) the tuition at Brooklyn College is $5,584 with average indebtedness at graduation of $9,500

(ii) he tuition at Stony Brook is $6,994 with average indebtedness at graduation of $19,770.

St. John's broad mission to educate the poor was created at a time when the SUNY and CUNY systems did not even exist. In 1870 when St. John's was founded the poor had few alternatives to receive a quality education. The public college systems in New York however now exist and provide quality education to St. John's historical applicant pool at a fraction of the cost and a fraction of the debt load.

As the St.john's tuition has escalated over the years the Rev. Donald J. Harrington, C.M. has stuck to the business model that is funded by filling nearly 16,000 undergrad seats each year despite and the fact that less expensive alternatives to educate the financially less able now exist and without regard to the fact that many St.John's grads (particularly) with liberal arts degrees are burdened with substantial debt upon graduation.

Please understand that my above statements are not an attack on the education which any of us received at St.John's decades ago but represents a belief that as the decades have rolled forward the St.John's business model should have been refined so as not to compete with the publics colleges and saddling our grads with large debt loads. I would prefer a smaller undergrad school that solicits enrollment from the underrepresented groups with large financial aid.

Tom, please explain how a graduate of St. John's with a degree in liberal arts (ie. an English major) with $34,000 in debt is positioned better than a CUNY or SUNY grad with substantially less debt.

Thanks. 
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We'll agree to disagree.
 
 The truth of the matter is that very bright high school students are elitist and prefer to associate and attend classes with similar students and students from their same socio-economic background. Those schools that attract those students keep their admissions selectiveness at a higher level to accommodate that class of student. Here in NYC the best example is Fordham. It is not a great research institution, has a small urban campus like St. John's and does not have a medical school. For the most part the two schools are identical EXCEPT Fordham, like Villanova and BC, have made it their core mission to accept the brightest white Catholic students in the northeast. As for Fordham, there is very little that they can offer that St. John's cannot match EXCEPT being a very selective college attracting mostly white middle and upper middle class students. Those students do not want to attend a college made up of close to 40% minority students with whom they have very little in common except hip-hop music. Fordham has risen in the national rankings not because they can offer a high school kid from New Jersey a better campus life at Rose Hill than SJ can offer at Hillcrest but because they can exclude the type of student that attends SJ. With some minor admissions adjustments (exclude more bottom third admissions) SJ is as good as Fordham. Most of the true top 50 universities are mega-research schools with top medical and law schools that boost their overall reps. Other than their Law schools, Fordham and even Vanillanova for that matter, do not fit that elite mold.
 
Hello Class of 1972!

Thought your brutally honest comments were right on target. I personally know of some parents who have crossed St. John's off the list because it is a little "too diverse" .

According to the Princeton Review 361 Best Colleges, the breakdown at St. John's is as follows:

African-American 18%
Asian 18%
Hispanic 16%
Caucasian 37%
International 4%

And yes, I realize it doesn't add to 100%, but those are the % figures that were cited.

Regarding Fordham, you are correct. At the risk of being self serving, I do a bit of volunteer work at Cardinal Hayes which for those who are not aware is located on the Grand Concourse in the Bronx, quite close to Rose Hill. That said, Fordham has not admitted a young man from Hayes in several years. It's hard to take advantage of an opportunity when no one gives you one.   

This is even more amazing when one considers the fact that there are no less than 17 Hayesmen at Boston College this year and that the Fordham president McShane is a BC alumnus. Go figure !! What does BC know that Fordham doesn't?? Makes you wonder!
 
 The truth of the matter is that very bright high school students are elitist and prefer to associate and attend classes with similar students and students from their same socio-economic background. Those schools that attract those students keep their admissions selectiveness at a higher level to accommodate that class of student. Here in NYC the best example is Fordham. It is not a great research institution, has a small urban campus like St. John's and does not have a medical school. For the most part the two schools are identical EXCEPT Fordham, like Villanova and BC, have made it their core mission to accept the brightest white Catholic students in the northeast. As for Fordham, there is very little that they can offer that St. John's cannot match EXCEPT being a very selective college attracting mostly white middle and upper middle class students. Those students do not want to attend a college made up of close to 40% minority students with whom they have very little in common except hip-hop music. Fordham has risen in the national rankings not because they can offer a high school kid from New Jersey a better campus life at Rose Hill than SJ can offer at Hillcrest but because they can exclude the type of student that attends SJ. With some minor admissions adjustments (exclude more bottom third admissions) SJ is as good as Fordham. Most of the true top 50 universities are mega-research schools with top medical and law schools that boost their overall reps. Other than their Law schools, Fordham and even Vanillanova for that matter, do not fit that elite mold.
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Thank you.
 
The main factor working against us having a higher ranking is the students that have been identified as being in the lower 1/3 of the incoming class. St. John's has made an effort to enroll these kids, knowing that their SAT scores and GPAs in HS  are lower than the norm.

St. John's is providing a college education opportunity for so many of these students.

The school is also doing more in regards to enroll students with higher SATs and other metrics.

What does get me is the relatively low % of alumni that contribute back to their collge. Boo on them! Every dollar here helps!
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My big issue is NOT with enrolling kids with low SAT's and GPA's, it IS with enrolling kids from financially challenging households who take on outsized student loan debt.

Do these kids and their families have any idea of the enormous financial hole they are digging for themselves?

In many cases I think it is a deafening NO.

Regarding Alumni contributions, it is my belief that most St. John's grads are somewhat apathetic about their alma mater. That is not exactly a "shock".

As we all know, as a commuter school, did not deliver a full college experience for many. Students went to school, went to work, went home and repeated the cycle the next day.

In many ways, it was a glorified high school. That's neither good nor bad, but that was the way it was for most of us.

Without that resident experience many grads did not form a strong attachment to the university. Perhaps over time (a long time at that) this will change.

Another reason for the low alumni giving rate is that St. John's has a relatively low # of grads who have sons and/or daughters who are graduates or current St. John's students. There is an absence of a bond from generation to generation.

Arguably, many grads want their kids to go to Nova, BC, Fordham, etc. They want their kids to do "better" than they did. As a result a fair number of them will shift their allegiance to their son or daughters college.

Also it's not as if St. John's is a very selective school and that one needs to contribute in order to put an offspring's application in the best possible light before the admission committee. 
 
 The truth of the matter is that very bright high school students ..... do not want to attend a college made up of close to 40% minority students with whom they have very little in common except hip-hop music.
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Class of '72:

Your suggestion that race is a defense to St. John's mediocre undergrad academic recognition is not correct.

Below is a list of only some of the colleges that have substantial undergrad minority enrollments and which rank ahead of St.John's in the US News rankings including the below listed schools. (Note the percentage indicated the percent of students in the frosh 2010 class that were classified as "white".).

U Illinois- Chicago... 37%
South Carolina State University... 1%
U Texas- Dallas... 43%
Rutgers- Newark... 29%
New York Poly ... 32%
New Jersey Tech... 25%
Stony Brook ... 37%
University of the Pacific ... 38%
UC Riverside ... 13%
Binghamton ... 51%
UC Santa Cruz ... 39%
rutgers ... 46%
UC Irvine ... 20%
UC Santa Barbara ... 44%
UMiami ... 52%
San Diego ... 23%
New York University ... 44%
UCLA ... 25%
USC ... 41%
Cal ... 28%
Emory ... 38%
Rice ... 40%
UPenn ... 49%
UChicago ... 49%
Stanford ... 32%
Cal Tech ... 33%
Princeton ... 50%
Yale ... 49%
Harvard ... 44%
Cornell ... 46%
Brown ... 44%
Columbia University ... 33%

There is no way to spin the facts that (i) St. John's has a disturbing high attrition rate (nearly one of four students that enroll as a frosh quits or transfers- 22%), (ii) those that do graduate incur a heavy debt load (average debt $32,886), and (iii) the school that has a mediocre academic reputation (#152 National University).

The school's alums should demand that Rev. Donald J. Harrington, C.M. remedy these deficiencies much like they demanded that he right the men's basketball program.
 
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