<p>Congrats to Haverford for making the top ten (above most ivies). All rankings are imperfect but H. deserves a great reputation.</p>
<p>Cost of Haverford app: $60
Cost of apps to schools further down the list, where kid was rejected: $125</p>
<p>Seeing Haverford top those two schools and forwarding the link to all my friends who say, after I tell them where DS is going, ‘Haver what? Why didn’t he apply to XYZ?’: priceless</p>
<p>I don’t believe in rankings…</p>
<p>…but I’ll make an exception in this case.</p>
<p>Not trying to take anything away from Haverford but the rankings do raise a few questions when DePauw is placed ahead of Penn, Cornell, and Vanderbilt.</p>
<p>Eh, don’t try to pretend like your post is not trying to take anything away from Haverford’s consistent success with Forbes and US News. </p>
<p>What people seem to forget is that college rankings are a way to sell publications. US News sells well in its college rankings because everyone sees what they expect to find as top American universities. If a brand name university weren’t highly ranked, people would just not buy the publication, and so goes the viscous cycle.</p>
<p>Forbes is the underdog and it stirs up controversy every year because they do not score “reputation” or “selectivity” as a leading factor in the “best colleges,” and they also compare baccalaureate colleges alongside large universities, which pushes out a lot of favorites from top spots. </p>
<p>I personally feel Forbes misses the point of college, i.e., it’s not to earn big bucks afterwards and be powerful, and a college education is not a commodity. If it serves any real purpose, it’s satisfying for parents to know their money is potentially, possibly, being well spent. “Best colleges” ? I don’t think any ranking can measure what’s best since one person might want that perceived Ivy prestige, another might want pure financial gain, and another might want that close, quaint and small college environment.</p>
<p>What I’m quite proud of, though, is that regardless of methodology, Haverford (among others like Williams, Amherst, Swarthmore, Carleton, etc.) still comes out on top. The Small Liberal Arts College is woefully underestimated, but always competes among the best.</p>
<p>Well said. Forbes rankings heavily weight extrinsic value (salary, debt after graduation etc.) and this makes LACs high on the Forbes list as great choices for a well-rounded education AND a smart place to study and be successful after college. Perfect no, but a decent guide nonetheless.</p>
<p>These rankings are fun to look at and even more fun to argue over!</p>
<p>I see a lot of volatility with this ranking which suggests to me that the metrics used are in units that measure insignificantly small differences. Haverford is 7 this year and Swat is 16 but last year HC was 14 and Swat 7 (Wellesley was # 6 in 2009 and it’s 19 this year, ect…). I don’t recall my brother or friends who went to Swat telling me in the last year that their school imploded and I think HC is similar to what it was last year as well. The only difference I’m familiar with is that this year, HC has a Rhodes winner which is one criteria used by Forbes. HC provided the exact same education before this winner and will likely do the same next year even if there is no Rhodes winner as well. </p>
<p>I think though these rankings are somewhat useful when aggregated together like a Venn diagram. All rankings have their limits and may only capture one facet of “quality” but certain schools are consistently in the top 10-20 in US News, Newsweek, Forbes, WSJ, Atlantic monthly, PhD rankings, HHMI/NSF funding, ect… and Haverford is one of them. I’ve seen some other threads with this topic where people are defensive, irked and argue over this ranking but when you consider that there are about 2500 undergrad schools in the US, it puts into perspective how little a few rungs difference at the top matter or should matter for any ranking.</p>
<p>[America’s</a> Top Colleges - Forbes](<a href=“http://blogs.forbes.com/michaelnoer/2011/08/03/americas-top-colleges/]America’s”>America's Top Colleges)</p>
<p>1 Williams College
2 Princeton University
3 United States Military Academy
4 Amherst College
5 Stanford University
6 Harvard University
7 Haverford College
8 University of Chicago
9 Massachusetts Institute of Technology
10 United States Air Force Academy
11 Northwestern University
12 Claremont McKenna College
13 California Institute of Technology
14 Yale University
15 Carleton College
16 Swarthmore College
17 United States Naval Academy
18 University of Notre Dame
19 Wellesley College
20 Colby College </p>
<p>[America’s</a> Best Colleges - Forbes.com](<a href=“http://www.forbes.com/2010/08/11/best-colleges-universities-rating-ranking-opinions-best-colleges-10_land.html]America’s”>America's Best Colleges)</p>
<ol>
<li>Williams College </li>
<li>Princeton University </li>
<li>Amherst College </li>
<li>United States Military Academy </li>
<li>Massachusetts Institute of Technology </li>
<li>Stanford University </li>
<li>Swarthmore College </li>
<li>Harvard University </li>
<li>Claremont McKenna College </li>
<li>Yale University </li>
<li>United States Air Force Academy </li>
<li>Wellesley College </li>
<li>Columbia University </li>
<li>Haverford College </li>
<li>Wesleyan University </li>
<li>Whitman College </li>
<li>Pomona College </li>
<li>Northwestern University </li>
<li>California Institute of Technology </li>
<li>University of Chicago</li>
</ol>
<p><a href=“Forbes List Directory”>Forbes List Directory;
<p>1 United States Military Academy
2 Princeton University
3 California Institute of Technology
4 Williams College<br>
5 Harvard University<br>
6 Wellesley College<br>
7 United States Air Force Academy
8 Amherst College<br>
9 Yale University
10 Stanford University
11 Massachusetts Institute of Technology
12 Swarthmore College
13 Columbia University
14 Centre College
15 Haverford College
16 Boston College
17 Northwestern University
18 Bowdoin College
19 Vassar College
20 Whitman College</p>
<p>HC Alum</p>
<p>I agree entirely with your post (nothing new there). No ranking system is even close to perfect but schools that consistently show up in the various lists are there for some useful underlying reasons.</p>
<p>Thanks.</p>
<p>Yeah, the emotion spent arguing this/other rankings on CC and why one’s favorite college isn’t where you want it to be seems odd. For example, arguing why a school at #50 should be #25 instead (out of 2500 schools) is a difference of the top 2% to the top 1%… imagine then arguing smaller rank “differences”</p>
<p>I have a son who recently graduated from Harvard and a daughter who graduated several years ago from Haverford. As far as I can tell, there wasn’t much difference in the quality of the education they received, nor has there been much difference in the quality of the graduate/professional schools they and their peers attended. I agree with the poster who wrote that, despite the pedestrian quality of the dorms and the food, HC is a really, really, really wonderful college.</p>
<p>^ Haverford couldn’t ask for a better endorsement. Thanks for sharing it.</p>
<p>HC Alum hits the mark… College rankings feed on the psychological construct of winners and losers as if the rankings were the Superbowl of colleges. Kudos to the colleges (like Haverford) that eschew rankings, and simply focus on quality education.</p>
<p>Do I smell another fruitless debate about college rankings? Count me in!</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>Or it means that the ranking is not meant to distinguish among the top colleges. I suspect that the top liberal arts colleges score very similar on measures like graduation rate and alumni salaries, which means that small annual fluctuations (and there will be fluctuations when a college graduates only 300-600 students per year) can easily shuffle that group. </p>
<p>However, the rankings might be quite stable and meaningful on a larger scale. Given that there are about 2,000 four-year colleges in the US, moving 10 spots up or down the ranking really constitutes only a 0.5% change - not my definition of volatile.</p>
<p>You are the right person to ask or judge. After graduation from Harvard & HC, how the candidates received in the world? Position, starting salary, # of job offers, # graduate school offers? That’s the real test of the college. We need to assume here, when both candidates went to top-notch schools, they both are academically eligible.</p>
<p>I went to Haverford way back when. In 1981 (possibilty 1982), The Chronicle of Higher Education did a poll of 5000 college professors on where a student got the best quality ‘Undergraduate’ education. They came up with 9 schools where they found this (in alpha order:</p>
<p>Amherst College
Bryn Mawr College
Carleton College
Dartmouth College (only Ivy!)
Haverford College
Pomona College
Reed College
Swarthmore College
Williams College</p>
<p>I imagine if they were to take a similar survey today, these schools would still remain on the list. Perhaps, a few new schools like FW Olin College of Engineering would be added. There is a difference in education quality. Within narrow bands of 10 or so, there are few differences in quality, with the differences stylistic in nature. After the nightmare of college acceptances went out in March, my son chose Haverford, in spite of the fact that he is a legacy. My attendance at Haverford made HC less desirable to my son. I think with 2 new dorms and the announce 4+1 with Penn for a BS and ME in 5 years, is a great program. </p>
<p>It is hard for me to compare HC and Drexel as the only thing they share in common is geography with differences in style, quality, type as well as the type of student that attends. Good Luck!</p>