2014 US News Rankings released

[FroggieFever]

Seriously - ask him. He has seen both and knows the truth. TCU says it is rigor of curriculum because they aren't there yet on standardized scores - the way EVERYONE else measures student quality. Even Wake - who says they don't care about standardized scores anymore, still publish where they come out when Princeton Review asks them. The only thing you can really measure is percentage of your student body that is in the top ten percent of their HS class, or some sort of standardized test. I am not saying it is the only thing to look at with admissions decisions, its just the way you measure how you did when the dust settles.

I consider Wes a friend, no need for me to bother asking.

Being a friend of both SMU and TCU, let's shake hands and agree to disagree.

[gostangs]

i am a friend as well - we are lucky to have him. No need to have everyone agree - but you will know when TCU's student quality is really improving when they actually start talking about their standardized testing. I hope thats soon - since it actually helps when Universities are in a geographic area with other great universities. SMU needs TCU to step it up academically - it will help both of us.

[FroggieFever]

i am a friend as well - we are lucky to have him. No need to have everyone agree - but you will know when TCU's student quality is really improving when they actually start talking about their standardized testing. I hope thats soon - since it actually helps when Universities are in a geographic area with other great universities. SMU needs TCU to step it up academically - it will help both of us.

Meet you at happy hour tomorrow at 5.

[StallionsModelT]

TCU is improving, but is not close to SMU in regards to student quality. I'd say that TCU's most accurate comparison would be Tulsa. Both good schools but not in the same category as SMU.

[Mustangs_Maroons]

TCU's incoming students and current student body is nowhere near close to that of SMU. Not even close. We're close to Tulane, and TCU is as far behind Tulane, as we are to Rice. Those are the real comparisons. We're close to Tulane and aspire to be Rice. TCU is behind Baylor and aspiring to be Tulane (and SMU).

To say that they don't care about sat scores is poppycock. That's the excuse they of course will use when they are far behind. Oh, and Tulsa is probably the best national university in OK, and they are far ahead of TCU. Not even close. We can agree to disagree if that makes tcu feel better, but to even think the student bodies are closely comparable would be almost as disingenuous if we were to make a claim to compare ours to that of Rice.

To add some quantitative metrics to compare, using SAT scores, since that is the only thing we can actually compare across all students, SMU is about 110 points higher (on average and using last year's data, which probably increased over the last year) than tcu. Tulane is about 40-45 points higher than we are, and Rice is about 150 points higher than we are. In short, Rice > 150 higher than SMU and SMU > 110 points higher than TCU. Compared to Rice, tcu is light years behind. That's not even aspirational. Oh, and Tulsa's SAT scores are actually not far behind those of SMU. It's a very well respected school, and much better student body than OU, OSU, etc.

In short, the SMART rankings bare the differences out. I think tcu is borderline top 100 (as the SMART rankings reflect), which is still fantastic, but that's a long ways to go to catch up to being in consideration for top 50.

[StallionsModelT]

Great information. Thanks for posting.

I do think SMU, as an institution, needs to focus on growing its endowment and spending dollars towards research. Enough with the construction for the next decade or so.

[SMU Cyclist]

From a discussion with an admissions officer, from the new metrics US News uses, what caused us to drop a bit was the peer review from University presidents, which is one of the most contentious parts of the process. Wait till next year's results come in, this current incoming class was a step above all previous SMU admitted students, and next year is expected to be the same, this trend of higher test scores. TCU still has a way to go to even become a peer institution to SMU, the only real connection now is proximity and sports rivalry. TCU catching SMU is as probable as SMU catching Rice in the US News rankings. The disparity in the Forbes rankings, with SMU 81 and TCU 245, really shows the vast difference.

[gostangs]

Totally agree on the endowment. That is where our focus should be for the foreseeable future. Hopefully our bumped up campaign goal will be primarily in that area. We need to hit 2B to think about getting moved well up the rankings - and we are only 700M short of that.

We do have some awesome buildings about to come on line though....and I think from a prospective student standpoint SMU has never looked better.

[sponygirl]

These comparisons make my head ache and I'm not a huge fans of the ratings. With a kid in college, I've been through this process and I find the anaylsis flawed. For example, Oklahoma offers automatic full scholarships to National Merit Scholars. Tulane offers free application and scholarships to decent students. Does that make it a better school? The top 10% rule is also a joke if you went to a really competitive high school. I personally think that SMU has risen on its merits until this huge building scheme. My limited experience with the TCU campus and the Greek rate raise questions for me, but I don't yet have facts. On the other hand, I appreciate the insight into making college more accesible .

[sponygirl]

Totally agree on the endowment. That is where our focus should be for the foreseeable future. Hopefully our bumped up campaign goal will be primarily in that area. We need to hit 2B to think about getting moved well up the rankings - and we are only 700M short of that.

We do have some awesome buildings about to come on line though....and I think from a prospective student standpoint SMU has never looked better.

But, is SMU only about buildings? Is it not about the students that we have?

I've seen that the students feel differently. They think they've been shafted with higher tuition/fees(yes, we are reeling from that) and some controversiesabout the campus changes. They have no voice, however, which is unfortunate. Sigh, can we forget about ratings and concentrate on the student experience. Seems to me that the ratings will follow.

[blackoutpony]

I've seen that the students feel differently. They think they've been shafted with higher tuition/fees(yes, we are reeling from that) and some controversiesabout the campus changes. They have no voice, however, which is unfortunate. Sigh, can we forget about ratings and concentrate on the student experience. Seems to me that the ratings will follow.

+2 Billion

Couldn't agree more

[East Coast Mustang]

Top 25 in everything we do

[FroggieFever]

TCU's incoming students and current student body is nowhere near close to that of SMU. Not even close. We're close to Tulane, and TCU is as far behind Tulane, as we are to Rice. Those are the real comparisons. We're close to Tulane and aspire to be Rice. TCU is behind Baylor and aspiring to be Tulane (and SMU).

To say that they don't care about sat scores is poppycock.

For what it's worth, drop out Tulane. Tulane is a mess and has been ever since Hurricane Katrina. Just ask any admissions officer or university administrator at any highly-selective institution, they'll confirm Tulane's woes. Shoot, ask an admissions officer AT Tulane.

I will add that I never suggested TCU "doesn't care about test scores," I did however mention that TCU places emphasis elsewhere: TCU places emphasis on the rigor of curriculum and SMU places emphasis on test scores. Test scores alone are not indicative of an applicant's or student's measurable quality. Data reflects this.

You're assessing the quality of a student on one measure: test scores. That's hardly a data sampling. To suggest that there's a measurable distinction, as a whole, in the quality of the student at SMU vs TCU is ... silly.

[East Coast Mustang]

I'll concede that a student with high test scores and a bad GPA at a school with a weak curriculum might not be the strongest of applicants, but how exactly do you measure "rigor of curriculum?" AP classes? High school reputation? Based solely off the info that we have, do incoming TCU students have a higher "rigor of curriculum" than SMU students, or students at other schools ranked above them? Not a rhetorical question and I'm not trying to bash, I'm generally curious. You all seem to know a lot more than me about college admissions in 2013.

This is solely a personal anecdote, but most, if not all of the people I knew when I was at SMU came from highly selective private high schools or well regarded public schools like Highland Park or comparable public institutions elsewhere.

[Mustangs_Maroons]

TCU's incoming students and current student body is nowhere near close to that of SMU. Not even close. We're close to Tulane, and TCU is as far behind Tulane, as we are to Rice. Those are the real comparisons. We're close to Tulane and aspire to be Rice. TCU is behind Baylor and aspiring to be Tulane (and SMU).

To say that they don't care about sat scores is poppycock.

For what it's worth, drop out Tulane. Tulane is a mess and has been ever since Hurricane Katrina. Just ask any admissions officer or university administrator at any highly-selective institution, they'll confirm Tulane's woes. Shoot, ask an admissions officer AT Tulane.

I will add that I never suggested TCU "doesn't care about test scores," I did however mention that TCU places emphasis elsewhere: TCU places emphasis on the rigor of curriculum and SMU places emphasis on test scores. Test scores alone are not indicative of an applicant's or student's measurable quality. Data reflects this.

You're assessing the quality of a student on one measure: test scores. That's hardly a data sampling. To suggest that there's a measurable distinction, as a whole, in the quality of the student at SMU vs TCU is ... silly.

I'm afraid you're drinking the purple kool-aid if you really think the student bodies aren't substantially different. It may make you feel better, but it just "ain't so". I used the one factor that is common across most applicants, regardless of the school, etc. I also used a metric that is by and large directly correlated to the strength of the school. Don't you think there is a direct correlation? Why are Harvard, Upenn, Stanford, Yale, Princiton, MIT and Uchicago with average SAT scores of 1480-1520? Is it because they decided to place more emphasis on that while tcu prefers the rigor of the curriculum, whatever that means. Also, tcu is more texas based than smu, and that is a big difference. Kids that are already top 10% get admitted to UT-Austin, and there is no way tcu is better than UT-Austin in anything academic (except perhaps nursing?). Anyways, this is silly as it's obvious what the differences have been and continue to be.

My original point was there USNews generally does a very good job of ranking schools, but I think in certain cases (which I mentioned) there are some things that just are better reflected in other areas. I think the smart ranking captures a good subset of this. Forbes also did a ranking and tcu was #245, which I think is something that should make it pretty clear where it may actually stand...

http://www.forbes.com/top-colleges/#pag ... lter:Texas