Well they are better as long as they attract better students. This is the most important factor when trying compare educational institutions from the perspective of a potential employer. Actual curriculum is secondary (as well.. it should be to be fair).
> Well they are better as long as they attract better students.
Which is debatable, given the prevalence of legacy admissions.
Of course, universities with an established name would also attract the best and brightest. That doesn't mean they produce the best and brightest, though.
It’s not debatable. Those who attract the best students will be considered top, of course provided they have the resources to give the students.
What’s legacy admissions got to do with it? If 30% of students are legacy and 60% are the best in the world, the 60% will carry the school. You can say the same about affirmative action.
Nobody believes colleges produce the best from nothing. They produce good results by starting on third base (great students) and letting them run as fast as they can. Some of those will become the best. That’s how it works.
> We are talking about school rankings, not professional researcher rankings
That's how university rankings work. This is widely known stuff.
If you think that Stanford is up there because they have brilliant students, you are objectively wrong. In fact, there is no standardized way of comparing students of two different institutions other than research work and citations, which makes them, again, part of the academic body.
There are literally standardized tests used in admissions. Looking at the averages of those standardized test scores of Stanford students vs other schools will tell a story about the student body that does not come as a surprise to most of us.
"Stanford is committed to a holistic review of all candidates. We consider the vast array of information provided in and with each student’s application, whether that information includes test scores or not. Students may continue to self-report test scores in their application if they would like. Applications without test scores will not be at a disadvantage." [0]
This paints a very different story.
Also, the fact that there is a percentage reserved for legacy admissions, invalidates your point completely.
Do you think that Stanford's legacy admission policy makes their student body indistinguishable from that of Pasadena City College? Or that no standardized scoring system would reveal any population-wide differences in academic ability between a school which admits 1 of 25 applicants from another that admits 25 of 25 applicants? Hell, admissions rate alone is probably enough to tell a pretty good part of the story.
