I think they are released at the end of August or early September. Is this the year we crack their top 50?
USN&WR undergraduate college rankings
- Thread starter Jim_from_RU
- Start date
I doubt it because last year we were tied for 70. If we are to get back to the top 50 the administration can start by making admissions more rigorous. We are admitting 58%. That IMO is way too high. We should be more on par with UC Davis which admitted 43% this past year. Even better, UC Santa Barbara admitted 32.8% and UC Irvine admitted 36.6%. I brought these schools up because when I attended Rutgers in the early 80's were we always ahead of those schools. In fact those days Rutgers was ranked around 38 or 39. To get back there we need to truly make Rutgers-New Brunswick the flagship school of NJ.
Not quite true.
In those days Rutgers College was ranked that highly.
Cook, Livingston and Douglass were ranked separately.
If this were the case, and I don't necessarily believe otherwise, on what basis was the ranking done when comparing to other universities? Were the other NB colleges that were subject to ranking comprised of just Livingston, Douglass & Cook? What about University College (the other liberal arts & science academic unit besides DC, LC, & RC), and what about the Colleges of Engineering and Pharmacy? How could anyone compare an individual Rutgers-NB college ranking to other comprehensively/singularly-ranked colleges and universities?
Because I don't recall trying to do so while in HS....but my time for that was late 80s/early 90s, so after the integration of the departmental side into a single FAS in the early 80s (but, again, that only affected the liberal arts & sciences departments/colleges, not the professional schools that already had separate faculties in their respective academic units).
I'd love for us to make the top 50, but I don't see anything that's happened in the last year that would lift us that high. We haven't become sufficiently rigorous in our admission standards, nor done anything that would attract many more excellent students than in the past. I'd like to be surprised, though.
Just wondering, do people apply to individual UC schools, or is there one big application and people check whichever ones for which they want to apply? If it's the latter, then some UC schools probably get long shot applications from students who know they have no shot but it's just another box to check.
Again, not sure, but it could be a very logical reason a state university has an acceptance rate in the 30s.
Again, not sure, but it could be a very logical reason a state university has an acceptance rate in the 30s.
If I remember correctly, acceptance rates actually matter less than you would think in the rankings. I believe graduation rate, retention rate, peer assessment, and high school counselors' assessments make up about half of the criteria (by %) used for the rankings. And of course peer & high school counselor assessments are pretty arbitrary metrics, I would imagine.
There is one application that goes out to all of the schools, but is ONLY sent to those schools you apply to. Each school costs an applicant $70 to send. So if you apply to three schools for example, that's $210. If you apply to seven schools, then you pay $490. Each school will receive the same four out of eight essays you have to write, awards, leadership and voluntary honors you've received, transcripts and of course SAT/ACT scores.
The application came out today, but you cannot apply until November 1st.
Shows how things have changed since I applied in the Stone Age -- that is, the late 1960s. Then there was a common application form for the eight undergraduate campuses, and you listed your preferences. The application fee was maybe twenty bucks. I got into Berkeley, my first choice, in January as soon as they got my Achievement score results -- and I was an OOS applicant. Sure doesn't work like that any more!
I believe schools found ways to hype their acceptance rates by encouraging lousy students to apply -- that's why acceptance rate now counts for so little.
Camden, you have to apply from November 1 to November 30 and we won't hear back until Mid March. My son will apply to eight schools. His first choice is UCLA followed by Berkeley, then Santa Barbara and UC Davis. Santa Cruz and Riverside are safety schools. He really didn't like the Santa Cruz campus and found UC San Diego to have too many buildings with grey cement to be ugly. We visited all schools and I just came back from northern California and visited Berkeley, Davis, Santa Cruz and Stanford. He's not going to even attempt to apply to Stanford, because they only accepted 4.7% last year. And what is interesting is that for the first time UCLA accepted 16% while Berkeley accepted 17%. Also, Santa Barbara only accepted 32%. These schools have become extremely difficult to get accepted at. My son has a 4.5 weighted GPA (3.75 unweighted) and a 1,350 SAT score (out of 1600). He will be taking the ACT in hopes of getting a higher score than the SAT score.
Last edited:
Comparatively speaking, I believe at Rutgers you can apply up to 3 schools in one application for a given year admission but that doesn't necessarily imply the 3 universities/campuses within the system (NB, Newark, and Camden), it means up to 3 individual schools (academic units/colleges) within the overall system umbrella regardless of which university/campus. For example, you could apply to SAS in NB, NCAS in Newark, and CCAS in Camden. Or RBS, MGSA, and SAS (all in NB). Or conceivably, several other logical combinations depending on your area(s) of academic interest, and perhaps seemingly random combinations of three that might raise eyebrows unless you explain your motivation for applying to schools with completely different majors (such as considering pursuit of a dual degree within two different schools).
Aside from cost (incremental $70 as you posted earlier), mind if I ask what's stopping your son from applying to all UC campuses (I believe Irvine and Merced are the only two remaining that you didn't list above). Is it the availability of certain programs of study that he is seeking that aren't offered at those two campuses? Will he really not apply to UCSD (perhaps 3rd highest regarded of all UCs, esp. for the sciences) due to campus aesthetics/ugly buildings?
Sorry, he is applying to UCSD and Irvine. I left that out. Besides not liking UCSD's sterile looking campus, we don't like how all of the biological majors are capped majors, meaning they are impacted and will only admit a smaller percentage, plus they want him to take two Subject Two tests, which none of the other UC's require. If he did get into UCSD, I would be thrilled, but he didn't really like the campus that much. As to Merced, he just wasn't interested. I can understand because his grades are good enough to get into the majority of the UC's and if he can't get into UCLA or Berkeley, he would be very happy at UC Santa Barbara, Davis, Irvine and lastly San Diego. Santa Cruz and Riverside will be his safety schools.
That sounds like a good deal. I just wished that Rutgers-New Brunswick would lower their admittance rate from 58% to around 40%. We need the college of Letters and Science to be more competitive than it is.
The difference is that few in California besides transplants have allegiances to private schools. You have USC, Stanford, maybe the Claremont colleges- then what? Meanwhile how many Catholic schools are within a 2 hour radius of RU- nevermind 3 ivies and NYU in the radius.
The other thing in CA that we see increasingly in NJ that will benefit is more applicants coming from immigrant backgrounds. Mom and Dad who had save a dollar and strive are going to meet requests to spend OOS on Ped, Delaware or Villanova compared to RU with a huge LOL and questioning moms in the Shop Rite line with a bigger one.
If you're referring to SAS, I don't necessarily disagree since it is the largest by enrollment and might have the greatest visibility, but I think the competitiveness should extend to all the schools comprising the undergraduate body. Is there any reason SEBS or RBS, for example, should be any different?
Perhaps I'm wrong, but I don't think that was the point he was trying to make; I think he was trying to suggest that SAS is particularly non-selective. But the only way it can get more so is if the state ponies up more money to make up for the loss of enrollment, or if Rutgers can find a way to attract many more outstanding applicants.
Camden that's exactly what I was getting at. Rutgers has plenty of top notch programs, but SAS is not one of them and is by far the largest. What use to be our peer schools UC Davis, UC Santa Barbara and UC Irvine now admit 43%, 32% and 36% respectively. And that includes their SAS. Their engineering schools are as difficult if not more difficult to get into as Rutgers engineering. Rutgers overall is admitting 58%. That's terrible. Many of our schools used to be according to Barron's either "highly competitive" (Rutgers College) or "most competitive" (Mason Gross, Pharmacy still is). Now Rutgers-New Brunswick is listed as "very competitive" overall? If that's what merging all of the colleges into one SAS then for me, it's been a failure.
I don't think the merger of Rutgers College, Livingston and Douglass had anything to do with this. The problem is that many excellent NJ students who can't get into the Ivy League do not want to apply to Rutgers. There are, as you know, lots of reasons for that, some good and some bad. There is simply no cachet in telling your classmates and your parents' friends that you are going to Rutgers. In part, the problem is circular; because Rutgers is so un-selective, there is no pride in getting in.
NRH California still has private Catholic and Jesuit schools too such as Loyola Marymount, U of San Diego, U of San Francisco, U of Redlands, and Santa Clara. It's not just the private schools you mentioned.
As for first kids going to college, California has plenty of first kids in their family going to college. Is that what you meant?
Camden that's really sad. As you know in California the UC schools are highly selective and the majority of kids (90%) who attend UC schools take great pride in their colleges. Now, I realize that the UC school system is the best in the country, but still, if NJ residents want to take pride in Rutgers, then Rutgers-New Brunswick needs to truly be the flagship school and lower their admittance rate to at least 35-40%. I believe that as private schools continue to sky rocket, public universities like Rutgers can benefit and keep those excellent NJ students to look to Rutgers New Brunswick as their alternative. Look what Trenton State did? State school. Changed their name to Princeton's original name of CNJ and in less than twenty years has become a source of pride within the state of NJ. Rutgers, when I attended in the late '70's and early '80's still had that school pride, because of Rutgers College, Mason Gross, Pharmacy and Engineering. Livingston was the "easy" school to get into, while Douglas was the women's college. In fact my younger sister wanted to go to Rutgers College and was rejected. Instead she was accepted and went to U of Michigan. Boy, times have changed for Rutgers and not for the better.
One last comment: I have always been perplexed at how many kids from NJ leave the state to go to college. Maybe it's because the state is so small and you have so many colleges outside the state within four hours driving time. But still, as mentioned before, there is no reason Rutgers shouldn't be looked upon as Wisconsin, UNC Chapel Hill, and the aforementioned UC schools. I think it's an abomination that schools like UCONN and Maryland have passed us in recent years. When Dr. Bloustein was the president undergraduate education was vitally important. That needs to happen and fast.
Yes- that is what I meant with increasing numbers in NJ as well.
The question is do those Catholic schools have the allegiance people have for them here? I'm on the West Coast a few times a year and it's usually all USC/UCLA/Stanford/Berkeley talk, some other UCs like SB and Irvine and wherever transplants come from.
I attended Rutgers in the latter '80s (RC '88) and at that time and for a few more years after, RC, LC, CC, and DC were ranked separately. I think only two of them were included in the "National Universities" group. Rutgers College was ranked very high, but of course it was a fiction because RC was part of the greater university and all four shared the same faculty (FAS) at that time.
I do not know the logistics of the split in the rankings.
Anyway - this and the fact that at some point USNWR began ranking Rutgers-New Brunswick as a whole (long before the actual restructuring) caused most of our perceived drop in rankings. Some of it was a real drop, but this adjustment was most of it.
NRH, yes people do have an allegiance to the Catholic schools here. It's just that because our state is so big and populated they get drowned out by the major schools you mentioned. Another big time religious based school I forgot to mention is Pepperdine. That's a big deal here and it's private.
Agreed. I attended Mason Gross a few years before you. Mason Gross separately is now ranked in the top 5 programs in the country, both undergraduate and graduate.
Contrast the East which has many secular private colleges. There are some in California (e.g. Mills, a women's college), but they haven't got the visibility that places like Lafayette, Lehigh and Bucknell have.
So I'm trying to get a better understanding of how the primary undergrad USN&WR rankings work if they are supposedly an aggregate of all undergraduate programs. Since MGSA is so well regarded (but relatively small enrollment as the arts school), Pharmacy still holds its own (on the smaller side enrollment-wise), Engineering is very reputable, RBS has been improving and is now direct admission from HS (which I assume helps rather than hurts)....so aren't they all incorporated holistically into RU-NB's overall ranking? Is SAS and/or SEBS and/or any other school(s) I can't think of bringing down the average for NB?
RC was the largest school pre-consolidation, and DC and LC were similar size, IIRC, at about 35-40% of RC. Engineering was just a bit smaller than DC/LC. It would appear that SAS has been diluted to a degree, yet the metrics (range of median GPA and median SAT scores, etc) of the incoming class still appear to be competitive.
I think the Honors College will help pull things up as that takes greater hold. Is the Honors College comprised of all SAS students, or can undergrads starting in any of the professional schools also be part of HC?
Is the Pharmacy program somehow not factored in since it's a PharmD-only degree granting program now? I would think it's still included since admission is still directly from high school so there's a component of undergraduate status until the last year or two (of six).
RC was the largest school pre-consolidation, and DC and LC were similar size, IIRC, at about 35-40% of RC. Engineering was just a bit smaller than DC/LC. It would appear that SAS has been diluted to a degree, yet the metrics (range of median GPA and median SAT scores, etc) of the incoming class still appear to be competitive.
I think the Honors College will help pull things up as that takes greater hold. Is the Honors College comprised of all SAS students, or can undergrads starting in any of the professional schools also be part of HC?
Is the Pharmacy program somehow not factored in since it's a PharmD-only degree granting program now? I would think it's still included since admission is still directly from high school so there's a component of undergraduate status until the last year or two (of six).
Agreed, but a few secular ones out west are very high visibility - Stanford & USC (NIRH's mentions), Caltech. There just aren't nearly as many of them or as densely located within a smaller geography.
Oh, sure, I know about Stanford, etc. Also don't forget about the Claremont Colleges, which are excellent. Still, the culture is not nearly as dominated by private schools as is it "back east." The overwhelming majority of good California high school students want to go to the University of California if they can -- that's why the tenth campus at Merced was necessary.
Honors College is not restricted to SAS students. Undergraduates entering any of the colleges can be part of the Honors College. See the following link:https://honorscollege.rutgers.edu/information/frequently-asked-questions
I don't think you can talk about SAS "diluting" anything, since it is merely a consolidation of the scores for Rutgers College, Douglass College and Livingston College.
Thanks for the clarification regarding Honors College. Good to know that it's comprised potentially of students across the board from all the NB undergrad schools. Come a long way since they had separate honors programs within the colleges with very different requirements.
Fair point. Poor choice of word as I mistakenly made SAS a proxy for RC (in which case my perspective is that the RC standard could not be maintained upon the establishing of SAS - and likely wasn't expected or even a goal). But as RU MAN has been advocating here, it will be interesting to see over time if SAS can be elevated to what RC was before (or even higher). I think the push to increase the OOS % at New Brunswick, even if modestly, should help a bit.
By the way, didn't University College-NB also get folded into SAS or is it still a separate unit? It is/was afterall, merely another parallel arts & sciences college to RC/DC/LC but with a focus on serving non-traditional students.
Fair point. Poor choice of word as I mistakenly made SAS a proxy for RC (in which case my perspective is that the RC standard could not be maintained upon the establishing of SAS - and likely wasn't expected or even a goal). But as RU MAN has been advocating here, it will be interesting to see over time if SAS can be elevated to what RC was before (or even higher). I think the push to increase the OOS % at New Brunswick, even if modestly, should help a bit.
By the way, didn't University College-NB also get folded into SAS or is it still a separate unit? It is/was afterall, merely another parallel arts & sciences college to RC/DC/LC but with a focus on serving non-traditional students.
Rutgers could improve their graduation rates by lowering their acceptance rates. For one, you're getting better students who are more likely to do well academically and secondly the classes won't be so congested and then students won't have to take an extra semester to take classes that they were unable to get into because they were full. Even when I graduated in 2012 there were many kids who couldn't graduate on time because the classes they needed were filled up.
Rutgers Pharmacy should be a top five program but they're not. New Brunswick and NJ in general is literally surrounded pharmaceutical companies.
Rutgers Pharmacy should be a top five program but they're not. New Brunswick and NJ in general is literally surrounded pharmaceutical companies.
Good point. But the Claremont colleges are some of the best small liberal arts colleges in the country; Pomona, McKenna, Harvey Mudd and Scripps. All of these colleges are ranked as high or higher than the colleges you mentioned. And let's not forget Cal Tech.
I believe University College got folded into SAS. SAS is certainly not meant to be a proxy for RC. At current rates of state support, and current Rutgers standing among high school students in New Jersey, it will be a long time, if ever, before the RC numbers are matched.
I think the key word is "small." I think you'd find that there are so many private colleges in the east that the proportion of private college seats to public college seats is far higher here than in California.
Well, you're painting a pretty dismal picture and that's unfortunate for Rutgers-NB. I was hoping the recent string of construction, proposed master plan recommendations for future construction, Honors College, and other improvements to the campus would hopefully help bump things upward.
Perhaps contrary to what I mentioned earlier, from the perspective of SAS (rather than NB undergrad overall), it's probably not helping SAS's incoming student profile to lose the former pre-business students as they are now direct admits to RBS. Previously, they would be entering as freshman into one of the arts & science colleges before applying to the business school in their 2nd year. They may not all be top HS students but the current RBS profile demonstrates they've increased their competitiveness.
Because the overall student population is taken into account in the rankings, it really doesn't matter much what the individual schools do so long as a loss by one school (SAS) is made up by another (RBS). I agree that the construction and Honors College will help, but I would be surprised if they made a big difference. I think it's very important that the Honors College be a big success so that we have a better shot at the top high school undergraduates.
