*New 2017 US News Best College Ranks SJU number ..

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otis

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The new 2017 US News Best College Ranks are out and ranks St. John's university # 164 among National Universities in the United States.

Here is how the Big East schools fared:

#20 Georgetown
#50 Villanova (reclassified for the 1st time from Regional University category)
#86 Marquette
#118 Seton Hall
#124 DePaul
#164 St.John's
http://colleges.usnews.rankingsandreviews.com/best-colleges/rankings/national-universities
____________

#1 Regional University- North: Providence
http://colleges.usnews.rankingsandreviews.com/best-colleges/rankings/regional-universities-north
____________
#1 Regional University- Midwest: Creighton
#2 Regional University- Midwest: Butler
#4 Regional University- Midwest: Xavier
http://colleges.usnews.rankingsandreviews.com/best-colleges/rankings/regional-universities-midwest
 
It is sad to see. Honestly over the last 5 years there has been nothing positive on the rankings. At this point I wish we were 153rd.. I realize the difference between 164 and 153 is small but so is the difference from 153 to 143.. Just the fact that Seton Hall is 46 spots ahead and Lowville is only 7 behind us says it all! Something needs to be done.
 
It is sad to see. Honestly over the last 5 years there has been nothing positive on the rankings. At this point I wish we were 153rd.. I realize the difference between 164 and 153 is small but so is the difference from 153 to 143.. Just the fact that Seton Hall is 46 spots ahead and Lowville is only 7 behind us says it all! Something needs to be done.
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A couple of final fours would do wonders for the rankings.
 
The new 2017 US News Best College Ranks are out and ranks St. John's university # 164 among National Universities in the United States.

Here is how the Big East schools fared:

#20 Georgetown
#50 Villanova (reclassified for the 1st time from Regional University category)
#86 Marquette
#118 Seton Hall
#124 DePaul
#164 St.John's
http://colleges.usnews.rankingsandreviews.com/best-colleges/rankings/national-universities
____________

#1 Regional University- North: Providence
http://colleges.usnews.rankingsandreviews.com/best-colleges/rankings/regional-universities-north
____________
#1 Regional University- Midwest: Creighton
#2 Regional University- Midwest: Butler
#4 Regional University- Midwest: Xavier
http://colleges.usnews.rankingsandreviews.com/best-colleges/rankings/regional-universities-midwest
Click to expand...

Some notes: Villanova made a concerted effort over the past 4 years or so to be reclassified as a national university. They specifically feel they are a superior school to BC (I may agree with them), but have lost a lot of high performing students to BC because of the lack of a national ranking. They debut at 50 (I was thinking somewhere between 35 and 40) but the rankings are all quantitative based on formulas such as the number of doctoral candidates and other measurable numbers.

Northeastern, which historically was viewed as a far inferior school to Boston University made a huge effort to meet those numbers, and rose to the top 50 from the SJU doldrums of above 150. There have been articles written on how Northeastern gamed the system without radically improving the school. Of course, rise in the rankings and better students will come.

In black and white, SJU is the lowest ranked nationally ranked school in the Big East. It's not reasonable to expect they would become a Gtown or Villanova, but to ascend to Marquette's level of 85 (Jesuit school noted) could be a reasonable goal if Bobby G. and the board of trustees were so inclined.
 
The new 2017 US News Best College Ranks are out and ranks St. John's university # 164 among National Universities in the United States.

Here is how the Big East schools fared:

#20 Georgetown
#50 Villanova (reclassified for the 1st time from Regional University category)
#86 Marquette
#118 Seton Hall
#124 DePaul
#164 St.John's
http://colleges.usnews.rankingsandreviews.com/best-colleges/rankings/national-universities
____________

#1 Regional University- North: Providence
http://colleges.usnews.rankingsandreviews.com/best-colleges/rankings/regional-universities-north
____________
#1 Regional University- Midwest: Creighton
#2 Regional University- Midwest: Butler
#4 Regional University- Midwest: Xavier
http://colleges.usnews.rankingsandreviews.com/best-colleges/rankings/regional-universities-midwest
Click to expand...

Some notes: Villanova made a concerted effort over the past 4 years or so to be reclassified as a national university. They specifically feel they are a superior school to BC (I may agree with them), but have lost a lot of high performing students to BC because of the lack of a national ranking. They debut at 50 (I was thinking somewhere between 35 and 40) but the rankings are all quantitative based on formulas such as the number of doctoral candidates and other measurable numbers.

Northeastern, which historically was viewed as a far inferior school to Boston University made a huge effort to meet those numbers, and rose to the top 50 from the SJU doldrums of above 150. There have been articles written on how Northeastern gamed the system without radically improving the school. Of course, rise in the rankings and better students will come.

In black and white, SJU is the lowest ranked nationally ranked school in the Big East. It's not reasonable to expect they would become a Gtown or Villanova, but to ascend to Marquette's level of 85 (Jesuit school noted) could be a reasonable goal if Bobby G. and the board of trustees were so inclined.
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I would hope they would at least try to pass Seton Hall.
 
I would hope they would at least try to pass Seton Hall.
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Andrew.... as a short term objective St. John's at #164 should attempt to get some separation from fellow #164 prestigious Biola University, and catch up with 1970's women's basketball powerhouse Immaculate University at #152.

[Note to Frank... Your local St. John fisher College (which does not even want to be classified as a National University but for its PhD in Pharmacy) is 16 places above St. John's University.]
 
Lingering in the 150's for years, behind schools like Seton Hall, Albany and DePaul was bad enough. Now the morons running this university have let it slip 10 spots to 164. Nearing schools like Louisville and Pace.

Certain individuals within the university need to be contacted by alumni and let our displeasure with the poor rankings be known.
Multiple consecutive years at this level will seriously damage the university in ways that athletics success wont be able to counter or compensate for.

Perhaps hire some of the transformative leadership away from Northeastern. STJ could definitely use some of their strategic vision.
 
Lingering in the 150's for years, behind schools like Seton Hall, Albany and DePaul was bad enough. Now the morons running this university have let it slip 10 spots to 164. Nearing schools like Louisville and Pace.

Certain individuals within the university need to be contacted by alumni and let our displeasure with the poor rankings be known.
Multiple consecutive years at this level will seriously damage the university in ways that athletics success wont be able to counter or compensate for.

Perhaps hire some of the transformative leadership away from Northeastern. STJ could definitely use some of their strategic vision.
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Northeastern literally gamed the system by focusing on only improving the metrics that are part of the rankings algorithm. Any school reasonably could do the same without radically improving the school. I guess when you do that, in effect you improve the school after the fact by attracting better students and in many cases more alumni donations. In our case, I'm not sure that the 96% of alumni who don't support the school's endowment would suddenly donate because we rose in the rankings.
 
Here is the article entitled "How to Game the College Rankings" which I posted several years ago on this forum detailing how Northeastern "gamed" the system.

Here are the 1st 4 paragraphs of the article- hit the link for the rest of the article:
http://www.bostonmagazine.com/news/...gamed-the-college-rankings/print/#gallery-1-1

In 1996, Richard Freeland looked across the sea of crumbling parking lots that was Northeastern University and saw an opportunity few others could. As the school’s new president, he had inherited a third-tier, blue-collar, commuter-based university whose defining campus feature was a collection of modest utilitarian buildings south of Huntington Avenue, with a sprinkling of newly planted trees.

The university had been a victim of many things, most notably federal cutbacks—rolled out in the mid-’80s—that had left many colleges scrambling for money to close their budget gaps. These cutbacks, combined with dwindling enrollment, had forced Northeastern’s previous president, Jack Curry, to slash the budget and cut 875 jobs in the early 1990s. When he announced the layoffs to his staff, Curry burst into tears. “To say it was an institution in turmoil would be an understatement,” says a vice provost from that time.

But Freeland, the man who had helped successfully launch UMass Boston over the previous two decades, had a plan. Freeland believed that if Northeastern could justify its increased costs to students and parents, it could be saved. And one gauge consistently determined a college’s value: its position on the U.S. News & World Report “Best Colleges” rankings. Freeland observed how schools ranked highly received increased visibility and prestige, stronger applicants, more alumni giving, and, most important, greater revenue potential. A low rank left a university scrambling for money. This single list, Freeland determined, had the power to make or break a school.

During his tenure, Curry had made improvements at Northeastern, but none of these changes could budge the school’s U.S. News ranking. Working with the mantra “Smaller but better,” Curry reduced class sizes and clamped down on admissions. He also tried to attract students from beyond Boston by creating a more welcoming campus, replacing some of the crumbling blacktops with new buildings, including a library and a recreation center. From the U.S. News perspective, these changes did little to influence the school’s reputation, the most statistically important metric in the ranking system. Curry left the school in 1996 at number 162.
 
Lingering in the 150's for years, behind schools like Seton Hall, Albany and DePaul was bad enough. Now the morons running this university have let it slip 10 spots to 164. Nearing schools like Louisville and Pace.

Certain individuals within the university need to be contacted by alumni and let our displeasure with the poor rankings be known.
Multiple consecutive years at this level will seriously damage the university in ways that athletics success wont be able to counter or compensate for.

Perhaps hire some of the transformative leadership away from Northeastern. STJ could definitely use some of their strategic vision.
Click to expand...

Northeastern literally gamed the system by focusing on only improving the metrics that are part of the rankings algorithm. Any school reasonably could do the same without radically improving the school. I guess when you do that, in effect you improve the school after the fact by attracting better students and in many cases more alumni donations. In our case, I'm not sure that the 96% of alumni who don't support the school's endowment would suddenly donate because we rose in the rankings.
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They would if it rose by 80 spots over the next 2 decades and the alumni giving the donations were of an increasingly more talented and higher performing student.

Don't be mislead by the phrase "gaming the system" used by some to describe Northeasterns ascent. It wasn't just some shallow set of US News metrics that improved while the actual quality of the university remained static. Many of the metrics are themselves substantive measures of quality that reasonably reflect the quality of a universitys learning environment and performance. The actual quality of that university and caliber of students has improved significantly and it is in a VERY different place right now than it would be were it still a 3rd tier school. Because of the vision of that schools former and current president, it has a level of prestige and is attracting a caliber of student that places it in a totally different realm than what it would otherwise occupy currently.
 
Lingering in the 150's for years, behind schools like Seton Hall, Albany and DePaul was bad enough. Now the morons running this university have let it slip 10 spots to 164. Nearing schools like Louisville and Pace.

Certain individuals within the university need to be contacted by alumni and let our displeasure with the poor rankings be known.
Multiple consecutive years at this level will seriously damage the university in ways that athletics success wont be able to counter or compensate for.

Perhaps hire some of the transformative leadership away from Northeastern. STJ could definitely use some of their strategic vision.
Click to expand...

Northeastern literally gamed the system by focusing on only improving the metrics that are part of the rankings algorithm. Any school reasonably could do the same without radically improving the school. I guess when you do that, in effect you improve the school after the fact by attracting better students and in many cases more alumni donations. In our case, I'm not sure that the 96% of alumni who don't support the school's endowment would suddenly donate because we rose in the rankings.
Click to expand...


They would if it rose by 80 spots over the next 2 decades and the alumni giving the donations were of an increasingly more talented and higher performing student.

Don't be mislead by the phrase "gaming the system" used by some to describe Northeasterns ascent. It wasn't just some shallow set of US News metrics that improved while the actual quality of the university remained static. Many of the metrics are themselves substantive measures of quality that reasonably reflect the quality of a universitys learning environment and performance. The actual quality of that university and caliber of students has improved significantly and it is in a VERY different place right now than it would be were it still a 3rd tier school. Because of the vision of that schools former and current president, it has a level of prestige and is attracting a caliber of student that places it in a totally different realm than what it would otherwise occupy currently.
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Here is the full article. By focusing solely on criteria, such as the number of classes with 20 or fewer students for example, they rose in the rankings. By attracting more students to apply, they could turn away more students, which made them appear more selective (some schools do this by offering superior students waived application fees). Then there is the peer assessment criteria, which is the subjective ranking done by 3 key individuals at all ranked schools. NU's leadership made a concerted effort to develop relationships with the 300 voting members of the 100 top schools, and that impacted peer assessment. Other schools have admitted purposely trashing competing schools in peer assessment to lower those school's rankings.

Once the College rankings system went into place, some schools focused on the criteria to get favorable results. Not all resulted in a marked improvement in the school.

As to your comment about improved ranking increasing donations, I'd have to see it to believe it.

http://www.bostonmagazine.com/news/article/2014/08/26/how-northeastern-gamed-the-college-rankings/
 
Tobin... As we all know the US News rankings are calculated by a number of factors, but IMO the SAT scores are the biggest factor, thereby making it a "chicken, or the egg" situation..... the better the SATs the better ranking which then improves the quality of the applicant pool...... moving Northeastern from it's 1996 position of #162 to top 50 was done incrementally.... as Northeastern moved to the top 120's the quality of it's applicants improved as they again improved as the Northeastern moved into the top 100, top 80, etc.....

IMO the business model which Harrington and his associates established for St. John's of attempting to educate the masses thereby competing with the SUNYs and CUNYs leaves many of its undergrads with a mediocre education and 40K+/- in debt is outdated. Yeah, educating the masses is a noble goal which was more practical in 1950 before the SUNY and CUNY systems developed or matured, but today the St.John's buz model buries many kids in debt. My hope is that Bobby G modifies that business model by:

(i) instituting an Honors College (see: "Richmond Scholars" and honors programs at other schools to attract top studends by offering perks),

(ii) strengthens the Buz program (adopt a catchy slogan "St.John's Means Business in New York"),

(iii) bolster the internship program by working with alums to place top students.

(iv) reduce overall undergrad enrollment at the to raise the SAT and quality of accepted students.

(v) sells off some/ all of its satellite campuses. If a campus is not financially self supporting then close it down. (query: if Harvard can get by with just 1 campus then why does St.Johns need to support campuses in Staten Island, Long Island, Paris, and Rome?)

Thoughts?
 
Tobin... As we all know the US News rankings are calculated by a number of factors, but IMO the SAT scores are the biggest factor, thereby making it a "chicken, or the egg" situation..... the better the SATs the better ranking which then improves the quality of the applicant pool...... moving Northeastern from it's 1996 position of #162 to top 50 was done incrementally.... as Northeastern moved to the top 120's the quality of it's applicants improved as they again improved as the Northeastern moved into the top 100, top 80, etc.....

IMO the business model which Harrington and his associates established for St. John's of attempting to educate the masses thereby competing with the SUNYs and CUNYs leaves many of its undergrads with a mediocre education and 40K+/- in debt is outdated. Yeah, educating the masses is a noble goal which was more practical in 1950 before the SUNY and CUNY systems developed or matured, but today the St.John's buz model buries many kids in debt. My hope is that Bobby G modifies that business model by:

(i) instituting an Honors College (see: "Richmond Scholars" and honors programs at other schools to attract top studends by offering perks),

(ii) strengthens the Buz program (adopt a catchy slogan "St.John's Means Business in New York"),

(iii) bolster the internship program by working with alums to place top students.

(iv) reduce overall undergrad enrollment at the to raise the SAT and quality of accepted students.

(v) sells off some/ all of its satellite campuses. If a campus is not financially self supporting then close it down. (query: if Harvard can get by with just 1 campus then why does St.Johns need to support campuses in Staten Island, Long Island, Paris, and Rome?)

Thoughts?
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Yeah, educating the masses doesn't make much sense when you are several times more expensive than comparable public SUNYs. If that were the actual goal, the cost would be much less. The current ranking is simply due to incompetence and lack of vision.

A couple of articles highlighting Northeastern strategies over the past decade. One from 2014 and one from 2004 shortly before they cracked the top 100:

http://archive.boston.com/news/loca...ortheastern_allots_75m_to_add_100_professors/

http://www.bdcnetwork.com/science-e...ound-northeastern-university-campus-slideshow
 
Villanova:

http://www.villanovan.com/news/view.php/1023790/Tolentine-remodeled-in-10-years-What-thi

Umass:

http://www.umass.edu/newsoffice/article/umass-amherst-continues-advance-us-news

Even F**king Seton Hall:

http://www.shu.edu/news/seton-hall-continues-rise-in-us-news-rankings.cfm
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Do you remember the ad where SJU boasted about some ranking of being one of the top 365 or so colleges in the US?
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No, but im guessing it was for the Princeton Review rankings
 
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