Now the interesting question: did Northwestern^H^H^H^H^H^H^Heastern get meaningfully better for students between 1996 and 2013?
Did they graduate in higher numbers? Did they have better career outcomes? Did more get into better(?) grad schools? What is their median income? Are they happier, did they enjoy college more?
Just a note that this is Northeastern (in Boston) not Northwestern (in Illinois). Northwestern was and is typically a very high ranker.
As for what the improvements are like... hard to say. Some ways to improve the rankings like getting more students you don't want to come to apply (so you can appear more selective) don't actually help at all, while things like small classes even if done to "game" the rankings could actually help.
There's also just the cyclical aspect of things: the quality of your experience is going to be significantly determined by the quality of the student body, so if you have a better applicant pool because of your better rankings you maybe have a bit of a virtuous cycle that's somewhat disconnected from whether the things you changed actually improved anything real on their own other than the ranking.
Almost certainly yes, because the school could presumably attract a higher-quality applicant pool in 2013 than in 1996. This, of course, makes it impossible to tell how much of that value was produced by the university and how much was just selection effects.
From first hand experience, I can say that quality of selection makes a big difference in your university experience. My first university was /modestly/ selective. My second university was not-at-all selective. (I was a terrible university student.) The difference in class discussion and group projects cannot be understated. Students from the higher quality selection university were much more intellectually engaging.
Most colleges have the ability to graduate close 100% of their students.
If a school only admits students who have at least two years at another college with high grades, their graduation numbers will skyrocket.
A highly selective college, like Harvard, could even refuse to grant credit for those two years.
There are less nefarious ways of selecting a class of likely graduators: leadership in extracurriculars is highly correlated with post-secondary graduation.
Foreign students with limited English fluency have very low graduation rates. They could (should?) be excluded.
bit OT but I'm curious what a college that ONLY selects extracurricular leaders would look like. This is coming from a software job where career advancement depends on being the lead in projects. IME people are mostly chill and happy to do the "grunt" work, but what if EVERYBODY wanted to be "team lead"?
> West Point, Naval Academy, etc have a reputation for recruiting extra curricular leaders.
Those are officer training schools, so it makes sense they're ostensibly selecting for leadership skills, because they'll be overseeing enlisted recruits.
>Did they graduate in higher numbers? Did they have better career outcomes? Did more get into better(?) grad schools? What is their median income? Are they happier, did they enjoy college more?
And make sure you control for your inputs. It's harder for the #2 campus of state school to wring "good outcomes" from the children of plumbers and truck drivers than it is for big brand name schools that have plenty of kids of doctors and lawyers in there to drag their average up because even if you do a middling job educating them and have squat for industry connections they will still land internships and go on to get good jobs.
Was it that hard to read and get my alma mater right? ;)
In my opinion as a student who entered Northeastern in the mid 2010's the answer to all your questions is an unequivocal yes. More competitive student body, better profile to attract employers, more student amenities to enhance on campus life (we could have more in this regard imho). Compared to the commuter school of yesteryear it's for sure a much better educational experience.
"better profile to attract employers" -- this is very important in the United States. If you are good student from a below average university, your job prospects are /much/ worse!
I actually think that Northeastern is really good at this even relative to its current peers in the rankings. I have no affiliation but just being around the Boston area I hear many good things about their co-op program.
I've worked with a number of northeastern university grads, and they are consistently well prepared. NEU has co-op program, a standard part of their undergrad, where they get like a year of experience before graduating (5-year undergrad is the norm). who knows if the school is what creates the difference, but grads are really well prepared in general.
Did they graduate in higher numbers? Did they have better career outcomes? Did more get into better(?) grad schools? What is their median income? Are they happier, did they enjoy college more?