US News & World Report College Rankings - SJU moved up

RedStormNC

RedStormNC

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[URL][URL]https://www.usnews.com/best-colleges[/URL][/URL]

St. John's moved up 21 spots....

Came in tied for 152 in National Universities tier.

Good to see they reversed the trend, and I believe some of the changes in criteria and weightings helped especially with more focus on outputs tied to social mobility of low income students, eliminating acceptance rate, reducing SAT score and peer opinion survey weight etc.

Methodology here

[URL][URL]https://www.usnews.com/ed.../articles/how-us-news-calculated-the-rankings[/URL][/URL]
 
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To my knowledge, under Gempeshaw leadership, for the first time sju has made a significant and serious attempt to upgrade the school academically. Overall we are attracting better students, and he has hired some top notch academic leadership. Are you aware that last year alone Chaminade sent more than 20 grads to st John's, the 3rd most of any school. Just a few years ago the number was just a couple per year. This is not luck, but the result of serious efforts to attract better students. We already know that SAT scores of pharmacy students has gone through the roof.

There are many things Bobby has straightened out here and with maybe 3 or 4 years left in his tenure, his overall impact on the school will be viewed favorably.
 
Beast - Do you think Gemp will definitely be gone after his current contract ?
 
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[quote="RedStormNC" post=294947]Beast - Do you think Gemp will definitely be gone after his current contract ?[/quote]

I wouldn't phrase it like that. I believe he is 68 and can only reason that he wouldn't want to go beyond 72. He would not have been my choice but must admit that he has done a very good job as an agent for positive change.

It appears to me and I could be wrong, that our board of trustees, a collection of people who have had enormous career success have a much stronger say in running the school with a lay president in place.
 
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[quote="Beast of the East" post=294696]To my knowledge, under Gempeshaw leadership, for the first time sju has made a significant and serious attempt to upgrade the school academically. Overall we are attracting better students, and he has hired some top notch academic leadership. Are you aware that last year alone Chaminade sent more than 20 grads to st John's, the 3rd most of any school. Just a few years ago the number was just a couple per year. This is not luck, but the result of serious efforts to attract better students. We already know that SAT scores of pharmacy students has gone through the roof.

There are many things Bobby has straightened out here and with maybe 3 or 4 years left in his tenure, his overall impact on the school will be viewed favorably.[/quote]

I don't know if I should laugh or cry at your assessment that "for the first time sju has made a significant and serious attempt to upgrade the school academically".
Your statement implies that St. John's leadership has willfully and knowingly chosen to remain academically mediocre, even under this current president because we are still dead last of the Big East schools in national rankings. We are next to last in New York state in national rankings and we can't even blame past Vincentian leadership since DePaul has consistently ranked higher (119 in the current poll).
When we are ranked higher than Adelphi, Hofstra and not tied with St. John Fisher I will be impressed because the reality, in comparison to our competition, we basically haven't moved the dial one bit. That it took President Conrado to restore us where we were half a dozen years ago is not improvement vis-a-vis other regional national universities that have stayed considerably above us.
Nice to be positive but saying we are improving academically is rather relative to the improvement of our neighbor institutions that continue to outrank us.
 
[hide][/hide][quote="Class of 72" post=294954]......... we are ..... tied with St. John Fisher ......[/quote]

The irony is that St. John Fisher College does not claim to be a National University and it would be pleased to be ranked in the US News rankings as a Regional University. After Fisher added a Doctorate of Pharmacy Degree** it became ranked as a National University in the US News rankings. During the past 20 years Fisher has been the beneficiary of strong institutional leadership which has included the influence of St.John’s University (“SJU”) alum Dr. Bill O’Connor who held a senior leadership post at Fisher before moving onto the US Naval Academy. Bill is a proud SJU grad who played on the SJU baseball team and his mother worked for many years at SJU. Fisher has a strong balance sheet for a school its needs.

Improvement in a school’s academic footprint and reputation takes more than hope; it takes money. SJU’s financial plan is overly dependent on tuition and has a very poor business model which President Bobby G inherited. Bobby G is playing the hand that was dealt him by “Suits” Harrington. This is not an excuse but rather an explanation. Anyone who believes that substantial improvement without adequate financial resources is naive at best.
- - - -
** Fisher’s School of Pharmacy was funded by the Wegmans Family owners of the privately owned Wegmans Grocery stores. Wegmans will be opening a Westchester and Brooklyn stores during the next 18 months. The Wegmans are great operators.
 
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[quote="otis" post=294958][quote="Class of 72" post=294954]......... we are ..... tied with St. John Fisher ......[/quote]

The irony is that St. John Fisher College does not claim to be a National University and it would be pleased to be ranked in the US News rankings as a Regional University. After Fisher added a Doctorate of Pharmacy Degree** it became ranked as a National University in the US News rankings. During the past 20 years Fisher has been the beneficiary of strong institutional leadership which has included the influence of St.John’s University (“SJU”) alum Dr. Bill O’Connor who held a senior leadership post at Fisher before moving onto the US Naval Academy. Bill is a proud SJU grad who played on the SJU baseball team and his mother worked for many years at SJU. Fisher has a strong balance sheet for a school its needs.

Improvement in a school’s academic footprint and reputation takes more than hope; it takes money. SJU’s financial plan is overly dependent on tuition and has a very poor business model which President Bobby G inherited. Bobby G is playing the hand that was dealt him by “Suits” Harrington. This is not an excuse but rather an explanation. Anyone who believes that substantial improvement without adequate financial resources is naive at best.
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** Fisher’s School of Pharmacy was funded by the Wegmans Family owners of the privately owned Wegmans Grocery stores. Wegmans will be opening a Westchester and Brooklyn stores during the next 18 months. The Wegmans are great operators.[/quote]

OTIS, I didn’t intend to diminish Fisher as it is a great school. A good friend graduated from there. My point was to show how little SJ has grown in academic reputation especially in the New York metropolitan area where we still are behind schools that also rely heavily on tuition like Hofstra, Seton Hall and Adelphi. A family friend has a budgetary role at Hofstra and there are many similarities with St. John's. Our endowment is actually larger. Over the years that we chose to remain "average" they have added a medical school and built a new basketball arena. That we are ranked lower than most local area schools lIke Fordham, Seton Hall, Hofstra, Adelphi, Stony Brook, and Marist is not a compliment to the current president as Beast implied. He was, and is not, the academic leader we needed. The problem is that the same folks who hired him have been hiring our basketball coaches.
 
I know I've stated it before, but it's important to stress these rankings are all a function of the methodology (criteria and weightings).

We went up primarily as a result of the tweaks to criteria weighting on adding social mobility, removing acceptance rate etc. Conversely, Fordham dropped quite a bit. I believe may have been 48 last year, and now 70.

Did either school really get that much better or worse in 12 months? Doubtful.


Heck...I read UC Riverside had biggest jump of 35 spots. And UCLA surpassed Berkeley all because of the criteria


St. John's is partially handicapped by the mission and history to served the underprivileged and the less than desirable metrics it affords to the ranking criteria like graduation rates, donations, peer assessments etc.

It US news continues to give extra weighting to Pell Grant award rates, or diversity %, we could move up more. Similarly, we could play the game harder and not omit students with lower SAT scores, but there we'd nor have enough tuition in short time.

I'm sure Gemp, like almost every other school president tries to play the game. Some do it better than others. The school's at the top are likely not going to get worse.

As much as I like reading about this topic to educate mydelf as my daughter approaches college choices over next few years, I still think it's crazy to try to compare a huge public metropolis like UCF or Texas A&M with 60K+ students to a small private school like Seton Hall, Adelphi or even a mid size like SJU.
 
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Anybody noticed that SJU students have become wealthier than before? SJU Use to be known for social mobility but now a majority of these students make over 110,000 dollars a year ( according to us bureau) I noticed the students that rely on financial aid dropped from 44 percent to currently 28 now. I know it currently ranks first in social mobility amongst catholic universities ( 14th overall) but how long can you call your school a “vehicle of social mobility” when you keep on attracting wealthier students.

Just for example

School one#1
[img ]https://i.imgur.com/MAtPk1V.png[/img]

School two#2
[img ]https://i.imgur.com/nTLhlPT.png[/img]

Both schools financial aid rate is in the 20’s

One of these schools is St. John’s and the other is literally known as the University of Spoiled Children (USC).

I’m not comparing them academically of course, but when your student body looks close to USC’s (wealth wise) you really shouldn’t call your school a vehicle of mobility.

My sister currently attends (BA/MA) and I give her money to enjoy of course, but even she’s in awe of the amount of BMW’s that occupy the schools parking lot.
 
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I love our place in the education universe, that we give opportunities to first generation college families, lower income families on average, and that we are very racially and ethnically diverse.
I’m proud of that.
 
[quote="Sju grad 13" post=294975]Anybody noticed that SJU students have become wealthier than before? SJU Use to be known for social mobility but now a majority of these students make over 110,000 dollars a year ( according to us bureau) I noticed the students that rely on financial aid dropped from 44 percent to currently 28 now. I know it currently ranks first in social mobility amongst catholic universities ( 14th overall) but how long can you call your school a “vehicle of social mobility” when you keep on attracting wealthier students.

Just for example

School one#1
[img ]https://i.imgur.com/MAtPk1V.png[/img]

School two#2
[img ]https://i.imgur.com/nTLhlPT.png[/img]

Both schools financial aid rate is in the 20’s

One of these schools is St. John’s and the other is literally known as the University of Spoiled Children (USC).

I’m not comparing them academically of course, but when your student body looks close to USC’s (wealth wise) you really shouldn’t call your school a vehicle of mobility.

My sister currently attends (BA/MA) and I give her money to enjoy of course, but even she’s in awe of the amount of BMW’s that occupy the schools parking lot.[/quote] How times have changed. Back in 88-92 every kids from queens had a mustang gt bought by their parents.

I had to buy my own car so I went from 1972 Chevy Impala freshman year ( that was given to me by my parents. Affectionately known as the Battle Barge ) and then I went full on wanna be guido with a toyota corolla with dark tints and gold chain license plate ( affectionately known as the Freshmobile ). lol
 
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[quote="Chicago Days" post=294998]I love our place in the education universe, that we give opportunities to first generation college families, lower income families on average, and that we are very racially and ethnically diverse.
I’m proud of that.[/quote]

Many of us were first generation and children of immigrants that attended St. John's. Back then they were Irish, Italian and many Jewish kids. Now they are Latino, Asian and Afro-Carib. We owe this new generation of students the very best education for thier money. That is why improving academics should be a higher priority. CUNY and SUNY schools attract the same category of students for a fraction of the cost. We need to stand out academically to attract the very best of these first generation college students.
I'm proud of the many success stories of our graduates who didn't have the upper middle class and wealthy parents to give them the best prep school education in well-to-do suburban neighborhoods who make up the majority of students at Georgetown and Villanova.
 
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[quote="otis" post=294958][quote="Class of 72" post=294954]......... we are ..... tied with St. John Fisher ......[/quote]

The irony is that St. John Fisher College does not claim to be a National University and it would be pleased to be ranked in the US News rankings as a Regional University. After Fisher added a Doctorate of Pharmacy Degree** it became ranked as a National University in the US News rankings. During the past 20 years Fisher has been the beneficiary of strong institutional leadership which has included the influence of St.John’s University (“SJU”) alum Dr. Bill O’Connor who held a senior leadership post at Fisher before moving onto the US Naval Academy. Bill is a proud SJU grad who played on the SJU baseball team and his mother worked for many years at SJU. Fisher has a strong balance sheet for a school its needs.

Improvement in a school’s academic footprint and reputation takes more than hope; it takes money. SJU’s financial plan is overly dependent on tuition and has a very poor business model which President Bobby G inherited. Bobby G is playing the hand that was dealt him by “Suits” Harrington. This is not an excuse but rather an explanation. Anyone who believes that substantial improvement without adequate financial resources is naive at best.
- - - -
** Fisher’s School of Pharmacy was funded by the Wegmans Family owners of the privately owned Wegmans Grocery stores. Wegmans will be opening a Westchester and Brooklyn stores during the next 18 months. The Wegmans are great operators.[/quote]

I believe bill O'Connor has a brother joe who is on our board of trustees . Can anyone verify?
 
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