As much as we pay attention to BC sports, there are others within the BC community who follow the U.S. News and World Report rankings with the same sort of intensity. The magazine published their 2012 rankings and
BC retained its position at No. 31. There is a lot of bottlenecking in the Top 25 and from what I understand, BC will always have a bit of an uphill climb due to lack of Engineering and Medical schools. Sports indirectly influences the metrics in a positive manner. Sports helps drive applications which in turn makes BC more selective. If BC is more selective, the rankings improve. If a National Championship in Football guaranteed we'd move into the Top 25 of the World News rankings, I think Leahy and Co would be willing to bring on Nick Saban!
Lost amid the Rogers news was confirmation that CJ Jones is done for the year. He is hoping to get a medical redshirt. Fortunately Donnie Fletcher is healthy enough to provide us with some quality in the defensive backfield.
The UMass game will have a 1 PM kickoff. ESPN3.com will carry the broadcast live.
The ACC honored field hockey back Jacqui Moorfield with its player of the week honors.
Texas to the ACC is in play but contingent upon a lot of issues I don't see working themselves out.
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24 comments:
Don't think the lack of a graduate medical school would hurt our undergrad rankings, but the lack of an engineering undergrad definitely would.
Also hurting is the completely mediocre research published by our faculty outside of the Irish Studies and Theology departments.
The massive research grants, research faculty, and facilities that come with graduate oriented programs are indirectly accounted for in the undergrad rankings. It goes to faculty resources, dollars per student, and they can use a bunch of graduate-school only professors (who never teach an undergrad class) to boost the student/faculty ratio, and rep of the faculty that deal with undergrads.
Miami went to 38. Is that a big jump?
Mod - yeah it is. That is a huge jump. I thought they were in the 50's last year.
Yuk! I hate to see the U climb so fast and now so close to BC. Yeesch. Something is wrong.
From U news:
The University of Miami has climbed to number 38 in the 2012 edition of U.S. News & World Report’s annual “Best Colleges” rankings, continuing a meteoric ascent that has seen the institution move up 29 slots in the last ten years.
UM, which ranked No. 47 on last year’s list, remains the highest-ranked school in Florida and is also one of the fastest-rising institutions among national universities in recent times.
“We are absolutely delighted that U.S. News & World Report has moved the University of Miami from 47 to 38. We were a top-50 school last year and we’re a top 40 this year,” said UM President Donna E. Shalala. “All the credit goes to our incredible trustees, faculty, student body, staff, alumni, parents, and all our supporters over the years. This has truly been a climb to excellence. The road to excellence means investments in our students, in our faculty, in our facilities. But more than anything else, it’s a tribute to all of those who believe in the University of Miami, who believe in quality education. This is a success story not just for the University but our entire South Florida community.”
UM is the only school currently in the top 50 to move up nine spots in one year and 29 spots in the past ten years. UM’s remarkable ascent in the rankings can be attributed to its marked improvement in key areas such as the six-year graduation rate, freshman-retention rate, average SAT score of its incoming freshmen, and percentage of freshmen who were in the top 10 percent of their high school graduation class.
At last week's faculty convocation, Bert Garza, the Provost, actually predicted that BC would fall slightly in the USN&WR rankings this year. This prediction was due largely to a change in the way in which BC reported its full-time equivalent faculty and graduate/doctoral students. Given that, I would say that retaining our ranking slot is a win for us.
I also think these rankings are a terrible measure of student success and satisfaction. The Forbes rankings do a much better job of accounting for this, and I am not just saying that because our ranking is much better there.
GDF loves 1:00 kickoffs. I hate them. 10 AM tailgate is awkward, it's a little too late for breakfast stuff, but you get it anyway and it mostly goes uneaten. And then by the time you want to start serving lunch stuff about noon, the police are doig their shakedown with lights flashing in your face.
I wish he'd choose 2:00-4:00 range starts when TV isn't dictating.
Admittedly, 1 is probably good for players since they don't have to wait around and it probably helps the other team get home that night.
I have not posted much lately, but then I read another of Erik's fascinating daily missives.
Thanks Erik for sharing what's on your tiny mind. Yakking on about little breakfast items, how so much of the breakfast items go to waste, your angst at having 1 pm kick offs, and serving lunch at noon makes for a really boring post.
Thanks Erik. Have a great day.
(ps: In case you are interested, today, I had a health smoothy - strawberries, flax oil, etc. - for breakfast, with some granola on the side. For lunch, I am having left over Indian food -- I think it is tikki marsala. )
Posts like Erik's actually make me feel sorry for GDF because it drives home the point that no matter what he does, someone will criticize him for it.
While I never minded 10am tailgating (love breakfast beers), is it really that irritating of a post? Chill out Jimbo.
Galvin-O, it was.
Oh I guess I stand corrected. C'mon Jim-Bag, O'Galvin is a much more creative comeback. There's no flow in Galvin-O.
O'Galvin, So how about some Irish for you: Faigh Cough
You make me sad. So be it.
Jimmy the Geek (or Dude/Guy/Boss/Ace/Chief/Kid),
Nothing makes you look cooler than overreacting to short post on a free college sports blog's comments section, and internet bullying.
Don't bother replying to this, you won't get under anyone's skin. Your donkeyness will only provide me with entertainment (probably not your goal) and reaffirm to everyone there are some major toolbags in this world.
Enjoy the weekend and God Bless.
Erik, but I am already under your boring skin. By responding, not to mention name calling: you lost. Try to be less dull, predictable and plodding. We are playing Duke in 3 days so let's not be dull.
And o'Galvin, for the love of Pete, get some humor going man.
What? My last post was from Monty Python - Holy Grail. Black Knight and all that, you stupid bastard. 'Tis but a scratch!
Gotta admit that I think the US News and World report is flat out bad for society and I wish it or it's ilk had never been invented.
I sincerely doubt that a jump in a school's rankings has enough truly positive ramifications for a student body (other than bragging rights, maybe) to justify the investments and decisions that are often made by administrations in order to cater to rankings.
This is particularly odious at professional graduate schools, where a school is essentially forced into taking high GPA /high test score people instead of taking people who may actually be a good lawyer/doctor etc. The admissions criteria end up skewed to meet a magazine article instead of attempting to build the best student / alumni body possible.
I fundamentally disagree that US News does have, or will ever have, the proper evaluation formula by which to judge schools, because the only truly important comparison between schools is when a student is deciding where to go -- otherwise they're just for show. No two schools are "alike" yet the USN report does it's best to homogenize them down to best/worst.
Andrew-
I agree. What troubles me most is how the colleges themselves feed this monster by providing data and touting their rankings on their websites. Imagine if the Ivy League schools, and ideally some other elite schools, refused to provide data to U.S. News. The whole thing would fall. Who would ever take seriously a list of rankings that didn't include Harvard, Yale, Penn, Columbia, etc. and/or Duke, Chicago, Stanford, BC, Georgetown, Notre Dame, etc.?
Absolutely agree on the schools feeding into this process. I used to summer temp in Harvard Law's admin office, they were pretty crazy about the US News rankings. It was always a rush to supply data that was most beneficial. They placed a lot of emphasis on this ranking particularly.
o'galvin. Is your agreement with the prior posts really "absolute" or are you from NJ?
(the reflexive misuse of 'absoultely' is a feature of Jersey speak... snooki-esque)
Haha I am from NJ!
Some time ago, I met a guy on a plane who graduated Miami. I was surprised to find out that the "U" was a private school and he raved about it. Donna Shalala evidently has done a great job and that is why the current scandal was swept under the rug. I was very surprised that BC does not have a medical or engineering school. Obviously, I am very impressed with the fact that without these two entities that BC still ranks #31. They must be doing something very right with the rest of the benchmarks. Now, about football....!
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