I mean, I really don't like to curse too much.
I'm going to try to avoid it as much as I can.
But the way people be using these rankings, man, all carbon.
Hello, hello, hello.
This is the pop out and I am your host, Albert Shin.
I am very excited for today's episode.
We're going to be talking about college rankings.
It was one of my favorite topics, but specifically I'm going to talk about why they're pretty
much garbage, garbage, trash, useful in some very small ways.
And for the most part, teach to take it with a grain of salt.
And I'm going to do this in a real surgical way, which means we're going to be looking
at the actual methodology of one particular ranking that is used heavily across the United
States.
And that's the US news ranking.
And we're going to talk about exactly how they come up with these rankings and why I
think these rankings can often be quite misleading.
So here's the first thing I want to get out of the way.
OK.
There's no way that you could actually rank a college on some simple score that you place
one where you place one college over another.
Right.
And what I mean by that is there's no way to just get an overall score and think that
you have any understanding of what college is like the right college to kind of apply
to.
OK.
It's really what it does is it feeds into a kind of reputation that these colleges want
to build up.
Right.
And I think a lot of these universities feel by being higher up on the ranking.
OK.
It might actually improve their odds of garnering interest from students who are just looking
at these rankings and then using this as a guideline for which college is, quote unquote,
the better one.
Right.
But these rankings, they're not actually showing you what college is better or worse than the
other.
They're not.
They're giving you a kind of overall assessment of the college, attaching a score to it and
then putting it in a ranking because I don't know what the deal is.
Like, I don't know if there's like a U.S. thing or like just all over the world.
People just love rankings.
The rankings themselves tell you absolutely nothing except that maybe this college is
reputable.
Right.
That people look to this college, see the name of the college and they go, oh, yeah,
I know that one.
Oh, yeah, I know that one.
Oh, I know somebody who went there.
Right.
Like, maybe that's what it gives you.
OK.
And maybe the overall score reflects generally whether or not it is a quality college or
not.
Right.
But I think you don't need an actual ranking to do this.
You could do this in tiers.
Right.
And this is what I like about some of the other ranking systems, not U.S. News, but
some of the other ones that I could share with you in a link.
You know, tiers are more helpful because, you know, there might be certain schools that
are heads above all the others in terms of overall range of programs, opportunities,
alumni networking, offering of scholarships, the number of students in debt after, like,
let's say, five years out of college.
Right.
Like whatever metric you want to use that you think is a positive metric for evaluating
college, maybe the top tiers are the ones that kind of hit the nail on the head across
the board in all of these areas.
And then you get the maybe the second tiers where it's like they're pretty good in all
of these things, but not quite as good as the first tiers.
OK.
If we do this sort of tier system, what you'll realize is probably like the top 20, 30 universities
could be grouped into one tier.
Maybe the next like 40 can be grouped into the second tier.
I mean, like what I'm pointing out is like if we do this tier system, you'll realize
like there's not too significant difference between a lot of these colleges as the ranking
might suggest.
Right.
There's not a huge difference between the number one spot and the number like 15 spot
other than the pride of saying you're number one.
OK.
But I think more importantly, and this is really what I want to get into.
We need to think more carefully about how these rankings are made and whether or not
the ranking methodology maps on to what it is that a you care about.
OK.
And B, what matters in terms of the kinds of things that you actually care about in
terms of future prospects and things like that.
OK.
So I want to actually break it down because some of these factors might actually be important
for you to consider.
What I'm pointing out is that the overall rankings don't tell you shit.
It doesn't tell you shit about that.
OK.
So let's just get into it.
OK.
Here's the US News ranking.
I'm looking at the list right now.
Let's see.
I'm going to focus on just the national university ranking.
We could talk about liberal arts in a whole nother like episode and some of the other
breakdowns of some of the other listings here in another in another episode, because there's
just too much to talk about.
But let me let me just use the national university ranking as an example.
OK.
So this is as of this podcast, this is 2005, 2025.
My apologies.
2025 rankings.
We have Princeton at number one, MIT at number two, Harvard at number three, Stanford at
number four, the usual suspects, Caltech, Duke, John Hopkins, Northwestern, yada yada
yada, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera.
OK.
So if you were just blindly looking at the list and saying, I want to get into the best
college, you would just go down the list and say, I want to try to get into the one that's
ranked the highest.
OK.
But when you look into the methodology and I'm looking at the methodology list here,
I'm glad that they're being open about it.
This is not always necessarily the case.
They're honest about the kind of breakdown of the criteria.
Let's look at the different criteria as in weights they use to decide which of these
colleges are, quote unquote, better than the others.
OK.
So one, you got graduation rates.
They weighted at 16 percent of their overall score.
We'll talk.
Come back to that.
We got first year retention rates at five percent.
Graduation rate performance at 10 percent of the consideration.
Let's see.
Some of these considerations used to be a part of it, I think, in 2004, but not anymore.
Like first generation graduation rates, first generation being first generation college
students.
Right.
So like you don't have like parents or grandparents who went to college.
College grads earning more than a high school grad.
Five percent of the consideration.
Their debt, five percent of the consideration.
Peer assessment.
So this is like fellow peers judging at 20 percent.
Financial resources per student, eight percent.
Faculty salary at six percent.
First time faculty, two percent.
So yada yada.
Like, OK, so here's the first thing I'm going to point out.
OK.
Speaking strictly to the high school students who are applying directly to some of these
colleges.
OK.
You might not care about any of these things.
OK.
It depends on exactly what it is that you're interested in with regards to your time in
college.
OK.
It depends.
What are you trying to get out of your time in college?
OK.
Are you looking for a degree that will open up doors for you?
Then some of these factors will matter.
Are you looking for the ones with the best reputations?
Are you looking for the ones with the best connections?
Are you looking for the ones with the best programs for your tailored needs?
Right.
Tailored to your needs.
Are you looking for a certain kind of college experience?
OK.
These are all going to kind of change.
Right.
So like, first thing I want you to note is this.
The methodology has its own way of doing the ranking.
OK.
You yourself might have a different way to rank these schools in terms of your preferences
based off of the way that you might weight these different considerations.
OK.
Some of the considerations might not matter to you at all.
Right.
Let me give you one example.
Right.
You might wonder, right, like the first year.
Sorry, not the first year.
The weight that is now no longer given to the to the was it?
Sorry.
Hold on one second.
Oh, yeah.
The weight that was originally given to to the first generation graduate rates.
Right.
It might matter a little bit more to you if you are a first generation student.
Right.
It might matter a little bit more to you.
And why is that?
Because if the rankings actually cared about first generation graduate rates, what that
would probably reflect in the graduate rate performance, what that would reflect is probably
that the college is actually invested in whether or not somebody who doesn't have family members
and the social resources to help them through college, whether they are given the resources
in college to ensure that they succeed.
Right.
I mean, you wouldn't want to go to college and find out that, oh, yeah, the first generation
students all tend to just like drop out after the first year.
That would not be a good sign for the college versus a college where the first generation
grad students graduation is first generation college students tend to, for the most part,
be successful and make it all the way through their four years because they have programs
that are there to kind of support them along the way to fill in the gaps of the resources
that other students might receive elsewhere.
OK.
Does this make sense?
OK.
Debt might be a bigger concern for you.
I know it is for a lot of students nowadays, right, given the ballooning costs of college,
right?
The debt that you end with in college, right, might matter to you, for instance, if you
have no money and you're trying to enter a career and you know that entering into it
with a lot of debt is going to put you in a very tough spot.
Right.
So there are some careers that you might be pursuing where, you know, there's a high risk,
maybe not a particularly high reward.
So having a debt might not be the best situation for you going out of college.
OK.
Knowing that students leave a university with a significant amount of debt might be particularly
concerning for you, but it might not be concerning if you come from a wealthy family and they're
like, who cares?
Who cares how much debt you're in?
You got parents, grandparents, a trust fund, I don't know, something that is going to pay
whatever the cost is going to be of the college.
And so debt doesn't matter.
It's not going to apply to you.
OK.
Similarly, right, financial resources that students receive matters more for students
who might be struggling and will need that financial assistance, whether it's like people
in the middle class or lower class who are trying to avoid heavy borrowing, who don't
have the opportunity to borrow at good rates.
You know, the financial resource factor criteria might be more important to you.
OK.
Another factor, right, student faculty ratio, right?
Like it matters if you care about whether or not you have access to faculty, right?
If you there's less students in a class and you might have a better chance, assuming that
you actually make an effort to have more one on one time with the faculty member and to
have that more personalized, more tailored education for you might matter for you.
But it might not matter for somebody who is looking for like a big city experience where
they don't mind being in a classroom like a fly in the wall of a lecture hall with like
400 other students.
Again, the criteria and the way that it's given, it depends on your personal preferences,
desires, what you're looking for from the college.
OK.
So first thing I want you to kind of think about as you are figuring out your own personal
ranking and one of stresses your own personal ranking is what actually matters to you.
And I want you to think both short term and long term.
I want you to think both what I want my college experience to look like and what I want my
long term college life to look like after college.
Right.
What is it that I'm most interested in?
Right.
What is it I'm most interested in getting out of college?
And when you think about it, both in the short term and in the long term, OK, you'll realize
that you might weight some of these factors differently.
You might weight some of these very differently.
OK.
So we got a couple of things already on the table, right, which is there's probably not
a huge difference in the rankings, at least with regards to like, you know, five plus
or minus five, ten spots up and down these rankings.
It could be even more again, depending on the tier that we're talking about.
But second of all, your personal ranking of these colleges, your preferences could vary
significantly based off of the way that you value some of these factors that go into the
way that these schools are weighted.
Right.
OK.
Now, that said, right.
So I've so far I've talked about how the college rankings like the rankings in and of themselves
not particularly helpful.
I told you, you might want to look at the specific methodology used on any of these
rankings and then decide whether or not it maps on with your own personal interests.
OK.
And the way that you do you would do the rankings, you know, would be nice.
I wonder if somebody can tell me if this is a possible right.
But it would be cool if you could play around with the rankings.
I mean, like the weight of the different criteria and then come and then there's like a program
that will just automatically generate a new list that is personalized to you.
That would be that would be pretty amazing.
If we had that, I would be so excited because that would probably be a lot more useful.
OK.
So, however, I say this and I want to stress there are some criteria here that I think
high school students might not be thinking about that it's actually going to be important
for you to consider in the long term.
OK.
So I want to break down which of these criteria's might matter for what specific purpose.
And that way, I'm hoping that you will have more targeted questions when you're visiting
the different colleges you're considering.
Right.
So if you're going to different colleges and you're like, OK, I'm more interested in this.
I'm more interested in this.
Right.
If you could generate the kinds of questions that could elicit more details about what
the colleges will offer you specifically for the things that you're looking for, you're
going to make a much better, much more informed decision about what college is a better fit
for you.
OK.
So we do need to talk about some of these criteria because some of these criteria's
do matter in ways that I think a lot of people don't think about.
OK.
All right.
So first off, peer assessment.
OK.
Peer assessment is one that I have a love-hate relationship with.
OK.
Peer assessment is an evaluation of the university based off of peers.
And this is not talking about fellow undergraduate students.
Right.
So if you're looking at the U.S. Newsroom, here's what they describe the peer assessment
to be.
Academic reputation matters because it factors things that cannot easily be captured elsewhere.
For example, an institution known for innovative approaches to teaching may perform especially
well in this indicator, whereas a school struggling to keep its accreditation will likely perform
poorly.
Right.
So who is actually the ones rating it?
Each year, top academics, presidents, provosts and deans of admissions rate the academic
quality of peer institutions.
OK.
Here we go.
We need to pause and stop here for a lot of different reasons.
All right.
So peer assessment by labeling a peer assessment is not particularly helpful.
Why?
Because who are the quote unquote peers that are doing the evaluating?
It's going to be presidents, provosts, deans of admission.
I have an issue with that.
OK.
I have an issue with that for the for one.
It feels like if you want to do a complete peer assessment, you'll also want undergraduates
in this discussion.
You want faculty in this discussion.
You'll want tenured and non tenured lecturers, right?
Contract workers in this discussion as well in terms of the talk about the academic quality
or teaching quality of any of these universities.
Right.
So the peer assessment that I would personally want would include more voices.
That's just me.
In part because presidents, provosts, deans of admissions is a very selective group and
you have no idea what kind of biases exist within this group.
OK.
Here's the other issue I have with it.
Right.
A lot of these are based off of reputation, not so much whether these schools actually
perform well on any metric.
Does that make sense?
Like look, let me be honest with you.
As a president of a university, I probably would not know how well like 90 percent of
the universities across the country are being run.
I would be terrible at it in part because that's just a lot of things that I would need
to like if I was going to make an informed decision, I would have to visit these schools.
I would have to learn more about what they're doing, about like how the faculty are performing,
what kind of things are publishing, et cetera, et cetera.
OK.
So this assessment gets 20 percent and it is nothing more than just a lot of people,
not completely, but in a large part basing their judgment off of reputation, which comes
down to name.
And here's one of the things that happens, right?
It's like a self-fulfilling sort of prophecy, right?
If you have a better reputation because you have a big name and you're higher up on the
ranking, you might tend to get a better assessment from fellow peers just because they're not
actually digging in through data in some detailed way.
OK.
Which means I don't know exactly how helpful this peer assessment is, and yet it gets 20
percent, 20 percent of the weight.
That's a huge chunk of the overall ranking.
Right.
At the same time, this is why I say it's a love-hate relationship.
At the same time, the academic reputation to some degree matters if you care about what
might open doors for you after college.
Right.
Because I'm not going to lie, a lot of people that in the workforce, right, the people who
are hiring might look at a college, look at a resume and then see that you graduated from
a big name university and they associate that with having this reputation and then associate
it with being a good university and therefore will look positively upon you as opposed to
your coming out of a school that is very small, doesn't have big name recognition.
And so as a result, might not have the kind of reputation that one of these big schools
do.
In which case you're at a slight disadvantage.
Now it's not a be all end all, but it does mean they might be asking you like, wait,
what college is this?
Like, is this something they might have to look it up?
Right.
Not that it's going to necessarily, you know, leave you out of opportunities, but it might
it could serve as a hindrance.
Right.
I personally, ideally, I would want the reputation to matter less.
Right.
The school name to matter less.
I generally would like it to matter less.
This is part of my love, hate relationship with rankings of any kind.
Right.
What matters, what should matter in my opinion, right.
This is just my opinion, is that it is a accredited university that has a reputation for not cheating
at students and actually doing some work in preparing students for life, for learning,
for a range of different things that I personally care about.
OK.
That's where to actually reflect.
The reputation to actually reflect what the college does.
That's what I would honestly prefer.
But it does not always the case.
OK.
But unfortunately, we live in a world where reputation does make a difference.
It does make a difference.
OK.
It'll make a difference.
It made a difference for me when I was trying to look for some just summer work teaching
SATs at these summer academies.
Right.
And it mattered what school you went to, because for some reason, parents felt a certain way
about getting, you know, some kind of teaching from somebody who went to like a second tier
university.
For some reason, they think that it matters a whole lot.
We'll talk about it in the future in more detail.
It honestly does not matter.
But people think it does.
And it's like a self-fulfilling prophecy.
Right.
So people think that it matters.
And so it matters for actual real world consequences.
And so then people care about the reputation, which means that people who like this, this
whole this whole system, I just absolutely frustrating.
But unfortunately, it is a part of it.
OK.
All right.
Other considerations on this criteria list.
OK.
All right.
Student faculty ratio.
I want to couple up with publication.
OK.
Those of you who are interested in going into research, into professional schools, into
doing more cutting edge stuff as an undergrad, it might not matter at all.
But if you are open to, interested in, have some inclination, maybe want to leave the
door open to getting a Ph.D. or getting an MBA or getting a law degree or getting going
into med school or things like that.
OK.
What actually matters for these areas is that you are going to a university that is known
for research.
This is why the publication part is important.
Right.
Is the work being is a work that is being generated at that school?
One that is on the cutting edge of things.
Is it something that people actually read and is respected?
This is why citations per publications, full weighted citation impact, publication share
in the top five percent of journals by site score.
These factors should have some weight for you if you are interested in seeking education
after a bachelor's degree.
Right.
If you're going to stop at a bachelor's degree, none of this matters.
If you're not planning on doing any research for yourself, right, like you want to you
don't want to do any research projects.
You're not interested in any of that.
Like that side of academics like just does not interest you at all.
This should not matter to you at all.
Right.
If you want quality teaching, you're not necessarily interested in the research side of things,
but you want just quality teaching.
The research criteria's are not going to be particularly helpful for you.
OK.
But if you are, this does matter.
And this matters coupled with other criteria.
So a lot of these criteria's kind of you should think of it in tandem with one another.
OK.
Student faculty ratio matters if you are interested in seeking a further degree later on.
Why?
Because the name of the specific faculty faculty members who will be writing your letters of
rec will matter if you're trying to get into a much more specialized school.
It matters a lot.
OK.
It matters a lot.
OK.
I got a PhD in philosophy.
The letters of recommendation that I receive, if they were from a big name hotshot professor
that is really well known in the research circles, it's going to help me get into a
PhD program if it's a positive.
It's a really good positive letter of recommendation.
Why?
Because a letter from somebody who's well known at all of these other research institutions,
which is what you'll be doing essentially if you're going for a PhD, they care about
the research side of it, your potential for research.
You know, name from a fellow peer faculty member who knows you really well, but is also
really well respected.
That's going to hold a lot more weight than a letter of recommendation from somebody who,
you know, they just never even heard of.
No matter how great a teacher they are, they just don't really know very well.
OK.
And the student faculty ratio matters in part because if you are in smaller classes and
you're more intimate settings, you have a much better chance of getting connected with
faculty members and developing a relationship with them.
And those relationships, a deeper relationship will help you get a much better letter of
recommendation.
By the way, this also goes hand in hand with the full time faculty, right?
So a lot of students don't know this, but a lot of the classes you'll be taking in college,
they're not going to be taught by full time faculty members.
They might be taught by contract lecturers who are there for a year, maybe just for that
semester, maybe just for that class.
Right.
So there are some universities that are now using adjuncts, which are part time workers
to teach some of their classes.
If you have more full time faculty members at a research institution, there's a greater
chance that those full time faculty members are the ones that are, you know, doing the
citations or getting the start publishing those things that are getting cited.
Right.
They're right.
These are all kind of, again, these criteria might be connected in an important way.
And so if you have more of these full time faculty there and the student faculty ratio
is good, then coupled together, your chances of getting in contact with a full time faculty
member that is more likely to have name recognition in the smaller circle for things like law
school or med school and things like that, your chances will be a little bit better.
Now, no guarantee, but your chances might be a little bit better.
OK, it matters for that purpose.
OK.
So what I'm pointing out is this, right, as you start going through the criteria, you'll
realize that there's a lot of these criteria's might not necessarily be significant for you,
whereas others might be more significant.
OK, now I can break it down, you know, maybe in another podcast with or in a live stream.
If you're curious about why these criteria is even considered, like, for instance, like
standardized tests, right?
You might be asking, like, why are we done with like SAT and ACT scores?
You know, who cares about standardized tests?
Why should one test matter?
It matters for a lot of reasons, because standardized tests do indicate to some degree there's some
correlation between standardized test scores and your first semester, I think, if not your
first year success at a college.
And so it is to some small degree useful, might not be as useful as a GPA.
Usually standardized tests coupled with GPA are a good indicator.
And that's because standardized tests in some some in some ways control for great inflation.
So if your GPA is extremely high, but you didn't really learn all the basics, standardized
tests could indicate kind of like an offset between those two.
So if you have a low standardized test score, but then you have high GPA, that might indicate
that your GPA is not worth as much as you might think it is compared to the same GPA
from a student with from a different school.
OK, so, you know, we could talk about how I go through all of these different criteria.
But I also want to point out one additional thing, which is there might be criteria here
that isn't included in this particular list for the U.S. news, but might matter for you
personally.
OK, considerations like location, considerations like specific types of internship programs,
considerations like the specific program you're interested in.
And this is especially true.
And this is part of the reason that U.S. news probably did a separate list for things like
engineering and some of these other more specific specialized programs.
For instance, if you're into fine arts, right, the U.S. news overall news ranking is not
the overall ranking is not going to be particularly helpful.
What you need is to know specifically for art, right, which one's going to be better.
Right.
Similarly, when it comes to things like acting, right, like being in a specific city will
matter for your opportunities to get your feet wet when it comes to acting or music.
Right.
Some of these bigger cities might offer more opportunities than you might get at a small
college out in the middle of nowhere, no matter how good the reputation is.
OK.
So the the culture at the college might matter a lot to you.
It might.
You might not like a particular quote unquote scene.
Right.
A lot of colleges will have, you know, variation.
So especially with the larger universities, you might be able to find your own pocket.
But you know, certain colleges have an overall kind of culture that you might not be particularly
excited about, like a sports culture.
Or maybe there's certain things that you are excited about.
Right.
Like you have a lot of people coming out of a university that are encouraged to do creative
things outside of the classroom.
Right.
Because colleges, I'll be honest with you, it's not just about your time in the classroom.
It's about things that you want to accomplish outside of it.
And so you might not like location might matter.
Look, whether I hate to say it, but whether it might matter for a lot of you.
Right.
There are students I know that suffer from, you know, seasonal affect disorder.
As a result, being in like rainy weather, like, you know, nine months out of the year
will impact their ability to succeed.
It will actually impact their ability to succeed because they're going to have to really battle
through whatever, you know, they're going through personally because they're surrounded
by a particular weather.
OK.
It might sound, you might not think, you might think, you might think like it's not a big
deal.
It's a big deal for some.
Right.
And that's what I'm saying.
For you, you need to figure out what matters for you.
And then you need to go with that as your guide for figuring out exactly which of these
criteria should be primary consideration.
And then here's what you can do.
It requires a little bit more work.
But what you can do is you can do a little research on some of the universities that
so so let's let's bring it down one step at a time.
Right.
So you want to go to a university that has some name recognition, unfortunately, because
graduating with a degree from a college and no one's ever heard of is not going to be
particularly helpful if you're thinking about like opportunities after after college.
OK.
So yes, reputation matters to some degree.
So you want to at least find college that has some name recognition.
Now, I want to point out, like probably the top 100 universities in the United States
all have this more or less.
OK.
Even the state colleges have this.
Right.
So, you know, it's not a big like it's not like a crazy standard.
Right.
So we're not already applying to like the top 20.
Any of these are going to be fine.
Beyond that, you need to figure out what works best for you, like what it is that you really
want.
And again, you'll want to take kind of like a poll for yourself of the things that matter
and in the order that it matters.
Once you have that, you can actually do much more detailed research on those specific criteria.
Right.
And that's in part because a lot of these universities will try to sell themselves with
regards to some of these criteria that they feel they're better at or worse.
They'll try to avoid talking about the ones that are worse.
But the ones that they're better at, they're going to try to talk about it.
OK.
Like I said, the top tier universities, most likely not all, but most likely they're going
to hit most, if not all the criteria, at least within the academic and research sphere sphere.
OK.
So the top like 20 to 30 universities, they're just big enough universities with enough resources,
you know, with enough faculty that it probably hits many, if not most of these, the ones
that you particularly might care about within the classroom and in terms of opportunities
outside.
OK.
But again, the specific college you might be interested in and the specific ranking
you have for yourself should vary.
You should not be relying on the list that's given by US News.
The way that you should be using the US News ranking, honestly, should be, hey, which schools
are recognized nationally?
Maybe you might not care.
Right.
The regional universities are not a bad option.
If you're thinking specifically about, hey, I want to stay in this region for the rest
of my life, I'm not interested in moving to, you know, or have looking for opportunities
across the country.
I want to stay in X, Y and Z.
OK.
Then you might not care about reputation outside of that regional area.
If that's the case, then usually a regional university might be sufficient and you might
be looking at a different list and you might be looking at what opportunities available
on the regional college list.
OK.
One thing I do want to add about the regional universities, regional colleges, is that they
tend to be smaller and so they're able to give a lot more attention to individual students
in ways that I think larger universities are not able to.
OK.
So this is the one thing that's actually quite nice about the regional colleges.
If you know that you work best in smaller group settings, if you learn best when you
are able to have engaging conversations where you're able to have that discourse with faculty
members, then this might actually be a better option for you.
You might get a lot more out of your education, more bang for your buck than some of the larger
universities.
So again, the point here is that the goal of college is of applying to college anyways
is to find the right fit, it's not necessarily to go to the one that has the best reputation,
which essentially these rankings are trying to get really maybe intentionally or not gets
you to focus on.
Right.
So I want I want to focus on the rankings to kind of stop for this reason, because you
could go to the highest ranked university you get into, but you might absolutely be
miserable there because it doesn't fit you.
OK.
I'm going to pause real quick because I want to shift a little bit to quickly mention.
Something that I think needs mentioning that is not discussed enough, and that is the HBCUs,
the historically black colleges and universities.
OK.
There's a couple of misconceptions that I've heard, seen out there, and I wanted to kind
of just stop because it's just it's just lies.
It's just not true.
OK.
All right.
So first thing anybody can apply to HBCUs.
OK.
You do not need to be a black American to apply to HBCUs.
It's not an exclusive thing.
No, that's not exactly that's not what it is at all.
OK.
These are universities and colleges that people apply to like any other.
OK.
Like any other.
All right.
The demographics of the student body might differ at these universities.
Right.
But that might actually be a big benefit, depending on your personal circumstance, situation,
needs, etc, etc.
OK.
So first things first, anybody can apply.
OK.
And so I want to encourage everybody to look at them as options.
If you feel like it is a good fit for you.
OK.
All right.
The second thing, and this is actually the thing that bothers me the most.
HBCUs, you know, I know that U.S. News has a separate ranking list on, you know, on their
website.
OK.
They're not somehow worse or second class to all the other national and regional universities
and colleges.
OK.
These are, in fact, the the top notch HBCUs are among the best.
Right.
They're in the same category as all the others that are, you know, doing all kinds of research
and publishing and teaching really well.
And, you know, there's they're good on a lot of metrics.
Some of them are actually great on other metrics.
Right.
So I just want to say, like, look, whether you're a student, whether you are a parent
or whether you are somebody in the workforce that are hiring people out of college.
OK.
I do not want you to look down or treat HBCUs as somehow less than because they're not.
OK.
They are quality, in some cases, extremely competitive universities and colleges and
should be given due respect.
OK.
They're doing a lot of great things.
So again, the rankings, I think, often get us to focus on some of these like top, like
top 10, top 15, top 20 schools, when the reality is that there's actually hundreds of great
schools and some of them may or may not be a good fit for you.
And that question will be boiled down to something that has nothing to do with the rankings.
Right.
Which is why I find the rankings to be utterly useless.
Right.
It seems to be honestly personal opinion seems like a bunch of, you know, jockeying for ego
right among these universities, and it just is I don't know what other purpose is actually
serving because it's not very informative.
It's not.
It really isn't.
OK.
But I say all of this because I do know and I encounter a lot of students along my work
where it's like HBCUs would be a really good fit and you would get a great education and
you're going to encounter a lot of great people and create great networks.
If you just gave it a shot, but a lot of people tend to not give HBCUs consideration because
of some implicit bias about that.
It's not as good.
It's not as respected.
It's not going to help me get a job or all this other crap.
That's a separate issue with society in the United States culture generally and what goes
on outside of the colleges themselves.
OK.
All right.
Unpause.
I just wanted to make sure that we that I got to that.
But I want to shift gears in a different direction now and then talk a little bit about Ivy League
specifically, but also these Ivy League, what is it?
What they call Ivy League Plus or whatever the other like, you know, the Stanford's and
the, you know, the ones that are not technically in the Ivy League, but is treated as such.
OK.
These universities.
OK.
If we're judging a college by its merits and you care about what the college actually adds
on to the students, their experiences, their opportunities and so on.
OK.
The reason the the reason the rankings are a little bit muddied and there's a reason
that you're seeing all the same universities that usually end up in the top, you know,
top 20, top 30 list.
OK.
There's a reason for it.
OK.
It's not.
I'm going to stress this is not because the students are somehow better of higher quality.
I want to stress that first because I'm going to tell you from my experience, I've taught
at a lot of different universities.
Well, I should say a lot of different years.
I've taught at three different universities, but I've also encountered and tutored and
worked in the Previdensary with students from many other universities.
Right.
And here's what I learned.
Right.
And I think the data actually bears it out.
I'll have to take a look again.
But you'll get maybe some of the more exceptional students that, you know, are in a it's a completely
different league.
This is very small percentage.
Right.
I mean, I don't I don't know the actual number, but it's probably close to like single digits.
Right.
It's not going to be very many students who are in a very different league of their own.
And you're going to get maybe a small, small number more of these students at some of these
top ranked universities than others.
Right.
But there's kind of like it's not like because the university did anything.
It's just because the university attracted those particular students because they either
offered something more or, you know, they I'm not sure what like, right.
Like they were attracted by the rankings.
I'm not sure.
But what ends up happening is that there's a lot of these students who have who are in
this category that end up more of the top ranked universities.
Right.
However, and this is the important part, a majority of the students are more or less
the same.
OK.
Like if you take a look at the data on things like SATs and their predictable, how good
they are at predicting success for students, it only usually only applies to like the first
year in college where you might see a significant better performance from students who did better
on the SATs.
OK.
Which makes sense because they were a little bit more prepared if they're able to, let's
say, have a better grasp of grammar or writing skills or some reading skill and so on.
OK.
But the learning curve is sharp.
And especially for those students who might feel like, oh, you know, I'm not competing
with the best of them at the university got into like what you'll find is after the first
year, it all kind of evens out.
Right.
It all evens out.
The learning curve is sharp and then everyone kind of sort of evens out from there on.
OK.
So what I'm pointing out is as a following, right, just because a college is more competitive
doesn't mean that it has better students.
Right.
From my experience, an 18 year old is an 18 year old.
It doesn't matter whether you're going to Harvard or Stanford or Cal State Fullerton
or you're going to a University of Texas or it doesn't matter.
It doesn't matter.
An 18 year old is an 18 year old.
They're going to do 18 year old shit.
OK.
Which means, you know, what do 18 year olds do?
They're going to make bad decisions sometimes, right?
They're not I mean, prefrontal cortex isn't fully developed.
You know, some of them not going to lie seem like complete sociopaths to me.
Personal opinion.
Don't hate me for it.
OK.
But look, this is just the reality.
Right.
When you get a bunch of 18 to 21, 22 year olds together, they're going to do 18 to 22
year old shit.
Right.
Like that's the reality.
And it doesn't matter what college you go to.
OK.
You'll find that some students, right, might have done extremely well in high school and
just do terrible in college.
And that's because, again, for a lot of different reasons, it could be because of their own
personal demons they're struggling with.
You know, things like alcoholism is a serious concern with I think with college students
or lack of motivation.
First time having freedom, learning to adjust to college life, learning to adjust to be
on their own.
You know, relationship issues, family issues like who knows.
OK.
Whatever it is, people are going to have, you know, like people are people.
OK.
So I say this because one of the things I actually despise seeing is, you know, when
people hear, oh, you're going to this college.
Oh, I feel like you must be like so smart and yada yada.
It's like, OK.
To each their own.
Right.
Like you can say whatever you want, you can think whatever you want.
But I'm going to tell you this.
Right.
It's not very accurate.
In fact, most of the time, they're going to be on par with one another.
Right.
They're going to be on par with them.
There's not going to be a significant difference.
OK.
There'll be some significant difference with the tier that I talked about.
It's very small subset of students.
Right.
But for the majority of students, there's not going to be much of a difference at all.
Right.
If I'm teaching philosophy at a UC, like, say, UC Irvine versus like, you know, at Harvard,
you know, the class size might be the only thing that's different.
The content is going to be more or less the same.
The expectations on the papers are going to be the same.
There's not going to be a big difference, if any, at all.
OK.
Now, faculty might tell me at these different universities might tell me otherwise.
You know, if you disagree, come talk to me.
We can have a conversation about it.
But I think if you actually have to go around teaching at a lot of these universities, what
you'll find is that the student body is more or less outside of that first year.
Like I said, it's going to be more or less going to be the same in terms of quality of
students.
So what that means is that if you're thinking about what it is that the university is adding
to the value of your degree, right, there's a lot of noise in all this data that you're
getting about how successful students are after college and what kind of jobs they end
up getting and how much money they end up making and yada yada and so on and so forth.
OK.
I think nowadays a lot of people kind of think of colleges in a consumer mentality.
They're like, OK, it's an investment and how much return will I get?
Yada yada.
The way I've heard a lot of students kind of talk about it in more recent years, a lot
more anyways.
OK, here's the thing.
OK, you probably I mean, again, the exceptions will always be kind of exceptions to this,
right?
But the general rule of thumb is that, right, I think most of these colleges, like I said,
especially in the top 50 research universities, are going to provide and the larger ones are
going to provide more or less the same things, similar types of opportunities.
It just might be different with different companies, let's say, or with different specifics
of a program.
But they provide more or less similar opportunities.
And if you don't have the opportunities readily available, you could often create those opportunities
for yourself wherever it is you go.
OK, so what exactly is the value that's being added?
I'm going to point something out that I think a lot of people know that they don't maybe
want to say, right, which is the reputation.
And again, it's like some self-fulfilling prophecy, right?
The reputation will help carry, you know, added added weight to your degree, even though
it's not reflective of you having learned more or having gone through a more rigorous
process to get the grade you wanted in college.
It doesn't mean you were exposed to better teachers.
It doesn't mean that you, you know, took advantage of the research opportunities that were available.
It doesn't mean that the researchers in the particular field that you specialized in were
particularly better.
Right.
Because here's the truth.
There are universities where, you know, the university is really, really good at a particular
department.
But because the university doesn't carry the same reputation, it doesn't really translate
when you go out into the workforce.
Right.
Which is, like I said, absolutely unfortunate.
Right.
The reality is this, right, one of the primary things that happens in college is you develop
a certain reputation because of the name that you're associated with.
Okay.
You also are connected to an alumni network that sometimes are kind of helping each other
out.
Right.
So these are, like I said, kind of like a self-fulfilling prophecy.
Right.
It's not that they're necessarily doing anything to make sure that the students are of higher
quality when they graduate.
It's just more that, you know, there's all this extra stuff that comes in to kind of
boost you up if you happen to go to a particular university.
Right.
This is the alumni network.
This is the social networking.
Here's one thing that I think a lot of people already know, right, which is a lot of the
top-notch universities, the most competitive ones, right, tend to have more students that
are wealthier.
And that shouldn't be a surprise.
If you come from a family that has all the means to provide you all the support you need
to help you get the best essay writers to help you with your personal statement, to
cater your high school career and send you to schools where there's the proper amount
of great inflation.
I mean, a lot of students, like a lot of my friends didn't know this.
I've known this for a while, but there are feeder schools to Harvard, right?
I mean, we're talking like these expensive boarding schools that a very select number
of students can actually attend, right?
Out in Massachusetts, out in, you know, New York, really, really expensive.
And they have a disproportionate number of students who get into places like Ivy Leagues.
And that's not by accident, right?
Money breeds, right, opportunity.
That's what it does.
Right.
And then what this means is that when you get to college, right, like what exactly is
the thing that's helping you get a better job?
Is it because you got a better education?
Probably not.
From my experience, most of the time you get jobs because of connections.
Right.
That's the reality.
All these people who are talking about merit and I deserve to get that job, that's bullshit.
Okay.
That doesn't that's not how the job market works.
Okay.
Doors open for you, not because you worked hard.
Okay.
The reality is that doors open for you because you know the right people, right?
Now hard work is necessary to maintain a lot of this.
And it's hard work is required to actually get into connection with the right kind of
people.
But it's not the hard work and the skills that are really doing it, like giving you
these opportunities.
It's a lot of the work is being done by social network, right?
And going to a big name university gives you some of that social network you get in connection
with richer people, come from a lot of money.
If you could schmooze with them, they like you, maybe some opportunities will open up.
I don't know.
What I do know is that a lot of the data you see that feed into the rankings, it's not
because of anything that the college is doing that is deserving of a higher ranking, I think.
Right.
And so we do need to be very, very careful when we're looking at the rankings.
We can't treat it as some sort of sacred text for figuring out what's a good college to
go to.
I suggested all along that the primary thing that you should be concerned with is fit.
And the reason the fit part is important is the following, okay?
Students who tend to be happy and love where they're at, who feel like it's a good fit,
they tend to make the most of their opportunities.
And when you make the most of your opportunities, then those, right, that investment there,
that's what's going to carry through after you graduate college, right?
If you're thinking about being innovative or having a vision for your own future, how
you conduct yourself in the workplace, how you start up new ideas and who you get into
connections with and how you build those connections, those business relationships or networks.
All right.
All those happen, you know, best when you are motivated to do those things, because
it's going to require you to get yourself out there and to take advantage of these opportunities.
But you're only willing to do that if you find yourself in a place where you're not
miserable, okay?
Where you're not absolutely miserable.
Okay.
Now you might just grit your teeth and then push your way through it, but it won't be
a particularly pleasant experience.
And on top of that, it's going to, it's in some sense you're cheating yourself of the
most that you could get from a college because college is not strictly about what you get
in the classroom.
It's actually all these other stuff.
That's actually why colleges are so expensive is because they provide services outside of
just teaching, right?
They invest a lot of money in the administrative side, okay?
So look, if you find the right fit, I guarantee you will never regret going to that university.
You will never feel like less than for going to that university.
You would have gotten all the opportunities you need to, okay?
And again, it depends heavily on what direction you want to take your personal life.
So take any ranking you see with a grain of salt, with a grain of salt, okay?
With that said, let's stop, let's stop with this narrative that somehow these colleges
are better, the students are better, the faculty are better at the top ranked universities
as opposed to the others.
I can tell you from experience and from just looking at the actual data, there's not a
huge significant difference in them.
And majority of us are going to be, actually all of us are going to be more than fine getting
into any reputable university, getting a degree, and then kind of finding our own path in life,
okay?
What matters here is that life is a marathon.
It's a journey and college is just one part of it.
It's one small experience within the larger scope that is life.
And if we start overvaluing colleges, then you're just setting yourself up.
It's almost like you're scamming yourself by thinking something that just is not true,
it just is not true.
And I hope that this also gives some assurance to students who go to, let's say like a state
university, right?
Like Penn State, Cal State, you know, a lot of these students think like, oh, I didn't
go to one of the more competitive universities, my degree is worth less.
I think we need to stop that narrative as well, okay?
These universities, if you don't know, a lot of these universities have some of the best
teaching and you're going to gain a lot of great teaching, you're going to get to experience
a lot of great teaching in these kind of circles in ways that you might not at a research university.
So you actually bring value to the table in ways that students who went to the top ranked
universities just did not, okay?
And that does not make you better, doesn't make you worse, it just means it's different.
And we need to all kind of honor and respect the fact that there are these different experiences
and we're all going to be contributing to the larger community just in different ways,
right?
But it doesn't mean that the education should in any way be valued less.
So I hope you could carry that with you.
And for those of you who get into some of the more competitive universities, don't be
a jackass, okay?
You're not better than anyone else, all right?
You just have a degree like anyone else.
So don't buy into, especially if other people are kind of feeding you this shit, don't buy
into it, all right?
For my sake, because it's going to piss the shit out of me.
All right.
I'll see you next time.