Wall Street Journal College Rankings: The Full List and Rating Criteria
For many years, the gospel of college rankings was the U.S. News and World Report's annual list. Yet in the past decade, the venerable magazine has faced some criticism for both its results and elusive rating formula. Some schools who had traditionally fared well on the list even boycotted the annual event, refusing to return surveys and requests for information.
In the wake of the U.S. News controversy, other media sources like Forbes Magazine and Newsweek began compiling their own lists. In 2010, the Wall Street Journal emerged with its own list of the nations top schools. The rankings focused on the best "feeder" schools, to reflect the belief that the top colleges and universities were those that would have the highest placement rates in prestigious graduate programs around the country.
The Wall Street Journal's list of feeder colleges covers a total of 50 colleges from around the country.
Wall Street Journal Ranking Criteria
In order to compile the list, the Wall Street Journal collected information on over 5,000 students starting at the nation's most prestigious graduate schools in business, medicine, and law programs. The data was collected through interviews with school personnel and examining school listings. The information was then analyzed and then subjected to a formula which would not penalize smaller institutions, in order figure out just which schools were seeing the best placement levels for students seeking graduate level education.
Pros and Cons
One of the best attributes of the Wall Street Journal's approach to the rankings is the fact that it gives recognition to many excellent smaller colleges that tend to be overlooked on the "big" sites like U.S. News. The omission of these smaller schools from the rankings has been one of the many criticisms of college rankings for years, and there is no denying the fact that smaller schools often reach the same quality standards as their larger peers. In addition, in today's job market, many students start out at a four-year school already knowing that they will be applying for a graduate degree rather than entering the workforce post-graduate.
However, the downside of staking the rankings solely on the discretion of the biggest and best graduate schools simply perpetuates some of elitism found in other ranking systems. Admissions counselors at prestigious graduate schools like Harvard and Yale are often more likely to admit those candidates from a similar alma mater. So in many cases, the feeder school designation does not actually reflect such criteria as quality of education, but potentially just the name recognition of the school within the admissions office.
Schools Providing Data
The following schools provided data regarding their admission demographics:
- Columbia (Medicine, Law)
- Harvard (Medicine, MBA, Law)
- Johns Hopkins (Medicine)
- University of California, San Francisco (Medicine)
- Yale (Medicine, Law)
- University of Chicago (MBA, Law)
- Dartmouth (Tuck School)
- MIT (Sloan School)
- Penn (Wharton School)
- University of Michigan (Law)
More on College Rankings
- Forbes 2012 College Rankings: Who Topped the List and Why?
Overview of the Forbes 2012 college rankings, including top schools, as well as explanation the criteria used to determine the rankings. - How Do the U.S. News College Rankings Compare to Other Best College Lists?
While the U.S. News and World Report has long been regarded as the best for college and university rankings, in recent years they have undergone a bit of criticism regarding both their criteria and results.
Wall Street Journal's Top 50 Feeder Schools
- Harvard University
- Yale University
- Princeton University
- Stanford University
- Williams College
- Duke University
- Dartmouth College
- Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT)
- Amherst College
- Swarthmore College
- Columbia University
- Brown University
- Pomona College
- University of Chicago
- Wellesley College
- University of Philadelphia
- Georgetown University
- Haverford College
- Bowdoin College
- Rice University
- Northwestern University
- Claremont McKenna College
- Middlebury College
- Johns Hopkins University
- Cornell University
- Bryn Mawr College
- Wesleyan University
- California Institute of Technology
- Morehouse College
- University of Michigan
- New College of Florida
- Vassar College
- University of Virginia
- United States Military Academy
- University of Notre Dame
- Emory University
- United States Naval Academy
- Macalester College
- Brandeis University
- Bates College
- University of California, Berkely
- Barnard College
- Trinity College
- Grinnell College
- Tufts University
- Colby College
- Washington University
- Washington and Lee
- Case Western Reserve University
- Reed College
Sources
http://www.wsjclassroomedition.com/college/feederschools.htm
http://www.inpathways.net/IPCNlibrary/ViewBiblio.aspx?aid=1577
Comments
Susie Watts from Denver, Colorado on January 02, 2013:
Don't you mean the University of Pennsylvania, not the University of Philadelphia?
College Direction
Denver, Colorado
http://www.collegedirection.org
Daniel on June 14, 2012:
Note that this data is is from 2003.
FloraBreenRobison on September 23, 2011:
We have a magazine that ranks the universities in Canada. the university I attended is ranked very high, despite it not being in a large city. The ranking system doesn't base criteria on living in Vancouver, Montreal, and Toronto vs. living everywhere else. In the US, you get the feeling that you have the Ivy League, then you have universities in major cities elsewhere, then you have everyone else, regardless of the quality of the institution.
Augustine A Zavala from Texas on September 22, 2011:
I have been saying the same thing about the college ranking system for years. I attended a state school with rigorous academic standards. It is never listed in the college ranking system, even though it is a good school. Thank you for sharing.
