US News 2017 rankings are out....

As a 2023 grad and now current grad student the answer is simple. The tuition attracts rich kids that want to party hard (and somewhat study). I only went to UMiami because of a merit-scholarship I received, otherwise I would be in TrailerHassee or Gainesville. The school would rather accept the rich kid with no chance of a scholarship or international student (cannot receive aid) over a hardworking student imo -- and even still because of the school's location, the acceptance rate is HILARIOUSLY low for being #67th.
It was 19% this class.
 
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frenk sucks, however, the metrics have been gotten worse under him in the other rankings as well not just the US News one. theyre gonna need Saudi money soon if they want to continue charging what they do for what is now a lower ranked school when it shouldn't ever be that low. the system is gamed but thats on frenk as president to do so. whether or not we like the rankings and their criteria, its a metric a lot of HS and parents use when determingin where to send their kid. the education is still better than FSU and I believe on par with UF but at that price tag, its not that much better.
US News and World Report changed the metrics about 8 years ago. I know there was internal discussion on whether the university should chase the metrics.

I can tell you for a fact the state schools and that includes Florida are doing a bunch of on line class work. Way too much but they are overpopulated.

Miami had over 49k applications this past year so admissions is not hurting.

I do know Miami is exploring opportunities to expand its endowment and attract students who cannot afford the university.
 
US News and World Report changed the metrics about 8 years ago. I know there was internal discussion on whether the university should chase the metrics.

I can tell you for a fact the state schools and that includes Florida are doing a bunch of on line class work. Way too much but they are overpopulated.

Miami had over 49k applications this past year so admissions is not hurting.

I do know Miami is exploring opportunities to expand its endowment and attract students who cannot afford the university.
UF has been doing online classes forever, but UM offers that now so its going the same way as the big public schools but not to that extent.
 
I disagree. As an alum from Sun Tan U, it was those titles that got the notice and it was not necessary to put them on the resume. That is the exact point. The [[__]] said it all. The constant ridiculous increases in the amount of money the government allows on student loan has more to do with high priced colleges increased enrollment than Donna. Her claim to fame was acquisitions of hospitals. I started doing M&A for a living in 1977 and now do it one of 15 largest companies in the world. The prices she paid for the beds she bought were beyond any reasonable ratios and could well be the financial ruin of Miami.

You have a point of view that what goes in matters the most. So "elite" applicants are heavily waited in your opinion. That is the basis of an elitist mindset. I put weight on what comes out, the results matter. Therefore I judge the value of my degree by the reaction of the people is come across. I work in results world where elitist do not care to enter. In your world Donna might have increased the value of your degree. In my world she lowered it.
they go hand in hand. schools exp a huge application boost when the schools athletics does well.
 
UM should also be ranked much higher…and be the the #1 ranked school in Florida.
even before the metrics changed, UM was always behind UF outside of a single year or two under Donna. i do think UF is on par/maybe slightly better than UM academically but not by much. i also think the gap between UM/UF and say FSU, UCF (major dependent) isnt that large anymore.
 
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Our fans don’t realize that the USNWR rankings are easily gamed and the criteria has directly affected private schools like Miami. When affordability is a consideration for an academic ranking, that’s all you need to know.

Don’t get me wrong, Dr. Frenk is a mediocre leader and should be gone ASAP, but this ranking isn’t the end all be all our fans think it is. There’s no way Miami dropped that far in less than 8 years. Something more is at play.
US News and other college rankings are not a very accurate judge of academic standing. A lot of controversy that recently came out starts to pull the curtain back. Columbia got al the way up to #2 based on lies and cheating used to manipulate their score.

“I’ve long believed that all university rankings are essentially worthless. They’re based on data that have very little to do with the academic merit of an institution and that the data might not be accurate in the first place,”

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Y'all can cope all you want but the quality of education is second to generating money at the U. When I graduated I had classes half full of Chinese kids who couldn't even speak English. Programs outside of Frost, UHealth, and Marine Sciences are a joke and severely under financed for a school that costs so much. Law school is one of the worst in FL. Anyone who thinks otherwise is either far removed from attending the school or delusional.
 
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Ok, so fair warning this is gonna be a bit of a rant. But all 100% accurate. Bottom line is this was an all out assault on schools like the U by US News. The methodology had been fairly consistent for decades, with tweaks here and there of course, but usually signaled well in advance and usually small. Until today, when the unveiled mass changes. There is a fairly clear pattern with a lions share of those changes - they devalue and eliminate factors that most serious private research universities focus on as their key differentiators . Imagine car & driver ranking the best cars manufacturers each year for decades using similar methods then one day deciding to not count horsepower, 0-60, or torque and replacing it with punishing cars more if they cost a lot and doubling the weight assigned to storage capacity. Suddenly ferrari porsche etc would be bad cars and minivans would skyrocket up the ranks.

That may sound like an exaggeration, but it is absolutely not. Donna Shalala (as much as she is despised by lots of fans) was a highly impactful leader who had a plan for everything and almost always got her plan done. Some of those plans she got done is why canes fans feel so negative about her, but you still have to admit she had a vision and got it done. She had a VERY clear vision for elevating the academic profile to the university. She had it before she arrived. Just like Mario is detail oriented and has his entire vision laid out down into the weeds of what kids should be eating for breakfasts to big stuff like facilities and budgets, Donna had a plan for the academics here. Take a look at the picture below- this shows the most significant devaluations in the rankings, with the far right column the prior methodology and the first numbers column on the left this year's university rankings. The items I have singled out in red have been specific focuses of the university's long term strategic initiatives since Donna's fist day. There has been hundreds and hundreds of millions of dollars of investment by the university directed to those things. Ten mario cristobal contracts of investment. Erased in a single morning by some editors at a magazine that doesnt even exist anymore beyond these rankings.

And yes, a lot of these rankings are a silly group act of simon says where schools game stuff to get a bump. But that's not true of these metrics. These metrics were some of the metrics that most aligned with stuff that serious academic institutions should be striving to do. And thats why we did them. By reducing financial resources/student, then wiping class size out completely, and wiping terminal degree faculty out completely, you're taking a Miami Herbert Business School class that is capped at 19 students taught by a serious expert in their field who provides them with extensive personalized feedback and mentoring and putting it on par with a Texas A&M animal biology class with 300 students in a lecture hall taught by a TA or instructor with a masters who will never know their name or meet them. It's an absolute joke and an insult to academic excellence.

The university of miami attracts high caliber students (devalued at bottom), and invests enormous amounts of money in hiring better and more faculty than most other schools and more faculty than most other schools, and our alumni are much more engaged with giving back than most other schools because of the powerful mark we leave on so many of them long after they are gone.

You all can probably tell this has me angry. It does. I have invested my f***** life into this place because of how much I believe in what it's about, and it is a kick in the **** stomach to have some agenda driven jackasses essentially telling the country that it doesn't matter and we've all wasted half our lives giving so much of ourselves to this thing. Any questions?

Screenshot 2023-09-18 at 5.15.16 PM.png
 
Ok, so fair warning this is gonna be a bit of a rant. But all 100% accurate. Bottom line is this was an all out assault on schools like the U by US News. The methodology had been fairly consistent for decades, with tweaks here and there of course, but usually signaled well in advance and usually small. Until today, when the unveiled mass changes. There is a fairly clear pattern with a lions share of those changes - they devalue and eliminate factors that most serious private research universities focus on as their key differentiators . Imagine car & driver ranking the best cars manufacturers each year for decades using similar methods then one day deciding to not count horsepower, 0-60, or torque and replacing it with punishing cars more if they cost a lot and doubling the weight assigned to storage capacity. Suddenly ferrari porsche etc would be bad cars and minivans would skyrocket up the ranks.

That may sound like an exaggeration, but it is absolutely not. Donna Shalala (as much as she is despised by lots of fans) was a highly impactful leader who had a plan for everything and almost always got her plan done. Some of those plans she got done is why canes fans feel so negative about her, but you still have to admit she had a vision and got it done. She had a VERY clear vision for elevating the academic profile to the university. She had it before she arrived. Just like Mario is detail oriented and has his entire vision laid out down into the weeds of what kids should be eating for breakfasts to big stuff like facilities and budgets, Donna had a plan for the academics here. Take a look at the picture below- this shows the most significant devaluations in the rankings, with the far right column the prior methodology and the first numbers column on the left this year's university rankings. The items I have singled out in red have been specific focuses of the university's long term strategic initiatives since Donna's fist day. There has been hundreds and hundreds of millions of dollars of investment by the university directed to those things. Ten mario cristobal contracts of investment. Erased in a single morning by some editors at a magazine that doesnt even exist anymore beyond these rankings.

And yes, a lot of these rankings are a silly group act of simon says where schools game stuff to get a bump. But that's not true of these metrics. These metrics were some of the metrics that most aligned with stuff that serious academic institutions should be striving to do. And thats why we did them. By reducing financial resources/student, then wiping class size out completely, and wiping terminal degree faculty out completely, you're taking a Miami Herbert Business School class that is capped at 19 students taught by a serious expert in their field who provides them with extensive personalized feedback and mentoring and putting it on par with a Texas A&M animal biology class with 300 students in a lecture hall taught by a TA or instructor with a masters who will never know their name or meet them. It's an absolute joke and an insult to academic excellence.

The university of miami attracts high caliber students (devalued at bottom), and invests enormous amounts of money in hiring better and more faculty than most other schools and more faculty than most other schools, and our alumni are much more engaged with giving back than most other schools because of the powerful mark we leave on so many of them long after they are gone.

You all can probably tell this has me angry. It does. I have invested my f***** life into this place because of how much I believe in what it's about, and it is a kick in the **** stomach to have some agenda driven jackasses essentially telling the country that it doesn't matter and we've all wasted half our lives giving so much of ourselves to this thing. Any questions?

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UM Is 90th in the WSJ rankings and UF is 15th in the same.

I think that should be closer to even and not that large of gap. we're closer to FSU in the WSJ report than we are to UF who we've always competed against for the best college in FL. it simply isnt one ranking that has us low. its a lot of them that have gotten worse under Frenk.
 
UM Is 90th in the WSJ rankings and UF is 15th in the same.

I think that should be closer to even and not that large of gap. we're closer to FSU in the WSJ report than we are to UF who we've always competed against for the best college in FL. it simply isnt one ranking that has us low. its a lot of them that have gotten worse under Frenk.
I only have one rant in me. The WSJ rankings are even more of a joke. For very different reasons. Culture war propaganda not rankings. WSJ invented an entirely ned methodology this year, they didnt even bother keeping big chunks like USnews. What most of the WSJ metrics are actually measuring is regional cost of living and wage differences. Pull students from high cost of living regions to your lower cost of living region and then see meaningful number of those students stay in your region to start their career after graduating = bad school because their salary after graduating isn't much higher than what they could have made in manhattan if they hadn't ever gone to your school.
 
I only have one rant in me. The WSJ rankings are even more of a joke. For very different reasons. Culture war propaganda not rankings. WSJ invented an entirely ned methodology this year, they didnt even bother keeping big chunks like USnews. What most of the WSJ metrics are actually measuring is regional cost of living and wage differences. Pull students from high cost of living regions to your lower cost of living region and then see meaningful number of those students stay in your region to start their career after graduating = bad school because their salary after graduating isn't much higher than what they could have made in manhattan if they hadn't ever gone to your school.

What ranking-giving website would you find most accurate? That ranking USNews posted seemed way off to me.
 
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It’s a private school, of course it’s expensive. The issue is that as the tuition goes up, and it becomes more competitive to get in, merit aid is tougher to come by. I was a Foote fellow, my stats wouldn’t get that today, and that was 20 years ago. I would barely get a half ride today, which means that odds are, I would have not attended the institution, had that been the case then.

The issue is that Frenk isn’t the fundraiser Donna was, and it’s tougher to justify spending 250k on an undergraduate education when you aren’t at an Ivy or near Ivy.
Honestly this was something that I didn't get when I was there in the early 2000s. The school was ranked better than it is now, but 1) it was still only in the mid 40s and 2) most people (at least where I am from in the DC area) still considered it a party school and wondered why I went there not realizing it was a top 50 (they would refer to it as 'Suntan U'). The cost was less comparatively than it is now, but the tuition, room and board costs were still ~$32K per year which was higher than most schools back then (yeah - crazy how much the cost has gone up in ~20 years).

So you had a school that was towards the top of costs, but was only decent for rankings and not even that for perceived rankings. I was fortunate enough to get a 75% scholarship, but even "just" having to pay 25% was still expensive especially when you include room & board, etc. Yet there were some (definitely not all) kids that did not get much if any assistance and clearly did not come from a lot of money who were taking on a ton of student loans to go to school there and weren't even majoring in anything that Miami was particularly strong in. And these were not even kids from Florida.

It made no sense to me why you would take on so much debt to go to a 'pretty good' school if you did not have the financial backing to pay the tuition for you (there were certainly plenty of kids who did have that backing). I loved my time at Miami, but if you told me that I would have to take on $75K+ in loans, back then there is no way I would have gone. With how you would have to take on now... forget about it.
 
I only have one rant in me. The WSJ rankings are even more of a joke. For very different reasons. Culture war propaganda not rankings. WSJ invented an entirely ned methodology this year, they didnt even bother keeping big chunks like USnews. What most of the WSJ metrics are actually measuring is regional cost of living and wage differences. Pull students from high cost of living regions to your lower cost of living region and then see meaningful number of those students stay in your region to start their career after graduating = bad school because their salary after graduating isn't much higher than what they could have made in manhattan if they hadn't ever gone to your school.
So they all suck and nothing to do w the fact that the schools leadership has failed. Donna seemed to do fine in improving the academic ranking and quality of the school.
 
It was 19% this class.
Wait until the football team is good again!

My Junior year was 2001 and way more kids that were accepted decided to come to Miami than they were expecting. They had some of them in the study lounges and others across the street at the hotel. The next year the SAT scores of applicants when up and needless to say, they accepted less people. Amazing what a good football team will do your ability to be more selective with your accepting of applications.
 
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What ranking-giving website would you find most accurate? That ranking USNews posted seemed way off to me.
I would not use any ranking for making decisions on where to go college or what colleges to hire graduates from. Elements of the rankings can be informative. The data some rankings have aggregated can be informative. Even just the idea that what university is the best fit for you must be best for me- garbage. It is a very personal context driven thing. In terms of academic experience and quality, The University of Miami is far and away the top in Florida. For most undergraduate tracks. But not all. And if someone coming for a bachelors tells me they didn't receive much scholarship or financial aid and their family isn't wealthy enough to pay without it hurting the finances, I'll tell them do not come here and look at UF or FSU and also not to sleep on Miami Dade Honors College. Then look us up again when you're thinking of grad school.
 
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