Best College Rankings?

College Search & Selection
1

<p>What are the best and most reliable college rankings out there (i.e. US News, Forbes, Princeton...) and why?</p>

2

<p>Who is the best movie reviewer? The best music reviewer? The person you turn to for which TV shows to watch? It’s the person who’s values and priorities most closely align with your own. Same with college rankings. Or, you could find someone with the opposite values and know to stay far away from anything they recommend.</p>

3

<p>Most people consider US News as the most reliable.</p>

4

<p>I believe this ranking the “best” value-added ranking available (to the public).</p>

<p><a href=“https://www.alumnifactor.com/”>https://www.alumnifactor.com/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

<p>Unlike the USNews and Forbes lists, it is not a proxy for spending and input. </p>

<p>Unlike the Princeton Review lists, it seems to have quality control, it measures something transparent and intelligible, and all of the ranked schools are listed rather than just the top ten or twenty. </p>

<p>Unlike PhD productivity lists, it measures what people think it measures.</p>

<p>Unlike Nobel Prize and Rhodes, Marshall, Truman, Goldwater, Hertz, Fulbright, etc. scholar counts, it gives one a clue as to the experience of the “average” student at different schools.</p>

<p>It measures the experiences of alumni rather than “prestige” or fame.</p>

<p>Moreover, you can change the weight of each of its metrics, which cannot be done with the other rankings.</p>

<p>Sure, one can tear the Alumni Factor ranking apart if he desires, but compared with the rubbish that gluts this board, it’s redolent.</p>

5

<p>@Exodius thanks, I’ll look into alumnifactor.</p>

<p>@MrMom62, ranking colleges isn’t something as subjective as ranking movies or music. There are several objective and universally accepted criteria for ranking colleges and I’m asking which rankings are the most comprehensive, objective and reliable. None of these are subjective values. This has nothing to do with the rankings aligning with my own personal beliefs–if needed, however, I can change the weight on some metrics in a good system (according to Exodius’ above post).</p>

6

<p>It doesn’t need to be subjective, but the minute you start saying that objective measures have varying priorities or weights, you are being subjective. Who decides what objective factors should be counted or how they should be prioritized? That is completely subjective. What is most important to you is not most important to someone else. There are rankings of colleges for strong Christians that are completely relevant to those who value such things that would be completely irrelevant for most other people. Who’s to say someone who wants a party school would be completely wrong in choosing based on the Princeton Review’s list of top party schools, even if you and I think that is a completely stupid way of picking a school.</p>

<p>Different lists exist because people value things differently. If you think Alumni Factor has the features you value most, use that. Someone else might think it’s a terrible list, that doesn’t make them or you right or wrong, you are choosing the ranking that means the most to you.</p>

7

<p>@merlion‌
Why do you want to know? Many of the rankings do not indicate which schools are best in the classroom, if that’s what you want.</p>

8

<p>@MrMom62, I never said that objective measure have varying priorities or weights. You said that they did, and that the best college rankings for me were those whose values and priorities were the most closely aligned with my own. This means that some measures have more weight for some people than others. I was giving an example and saying that if your perception that a college ranking is best if it gives more weight to the things you give more weight, then maybe a good college ranking for you is one in which you can add or subtract importance.</p>

<p>I never asked which ranking was best for me, for Christians or for partiers. I asked which ranking was most comprehensive and reliable in general. I’d like to know which rankings are the best in general, meaning which rankings most accurately represent colleges. The rankings don’t have to weigh anything more than anything else, hence the lack of subjectivity.</p>

<p>I do agree that when one starts saying that objective measures have varying priorities, one is being subjective. So, let me try and reformulate my question, with my “priorities”, and maybe you can give me an answer. What college ranking is historically perceived by the majority to be the most reliable, comprehensive, unbiased and takes into account the most factors without weighing one more than the other?</p>

<p>@mom2collegekids‌ I want to know out of curiosity and because various rankings can wildly differ from one another and it would be nice to know which point of reference is considered the “best” or “most accurate”. I’m not looking for which schools are best in the classroom as much as a much more general, “overall” ranking that takes into account every aspect of school life.</p>

9

<p>

</p>

<p>There are two possible answers to that question - either none of them or the most cited/most popular. </p>

<p>You could say none of them because you’ll never get a majority to agree that any one particular rating system is valid. or that ranking schools is not really possible, or at least not objectively possible.</p>

<p>If you go by most cited/most popular, the obvious answer is USNWR, despite all its flaws. If you say a school is Top 10 or Top 50, and don’t say what your source of ranking is, most people assume you’re talking about the USNWR rankings.</p>

<p>Although some may quibble about individual rankings, I think most people do acknowledge that the USNWR rankings are broadly representative of the top schools in approximate order. You’ll find few schools that don’t deserve to broadly be where they are and you’ll find few that aren’t there that should be. Is anyone really going to argue that among national universities, HYP don’t deserve to be somewhere in the Top 10, even if perhaps some might argue they shouldn’t be exactly where they are? I might quibble that WashU is too highly ranked, but I wouldn’t argue that it doesn’t deserve to be somewhere in the Top 25.</p>

10

<p>The following pages describe methods used by several college rankings. Each ranking uses a different approach, reflecting a different perspective. If there were a single set of universally accepted criteria, we would not have different rankings.</p>

<p><a href=“http://www.usnews.com/education/best-colleges/articles/2014/09/08/best-colleges-ranking-criteria-and-weights”>http://www.usnews.com/education/best-colleges/articles/2014/09/08/best-colleges-ranking-criteria-and-weights&lt;/a&gt;
<a href=“Ranking America's Top Colleges 2014”>http://www.forbes.com/sites/carolinehoward/2014/07/30/ranking-americas-top-colleges-2014/&lt;/a&gt;
<a href=“http://www.kiplinger.com/article/college/T014-C000-S002-how-we-rank-the-schools.html”>http://www.kiplinger.com/article/college/T014-C000-S002-how-we-rank-the-schools.html&lt;/a&gt;
<a href=“http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/college_guide/feature/overall_score_overall_score_re.php”>http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/college_guide/feature/overall_score_overall_score_re.php&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

<p><a href=“Academic Ranking of World Universities - Wikipedia”>http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Academic_Ranking_of_World_Universities&lt;/a&gt;
<a href=“QS World University Rankings - Wikipedia”>http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/QS_World_University_Rankings&lt;/a&gt;
<a href=“Times Higher Education World University Rankings - Wikipedia”>http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Times_Higher_Education_World_University_Rankings&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

<p>The “50 Top Colleges” site aggregates the results of 6 other rankings. Its set of 50 is very similar to the US News set of “full need” colleges.
<a href=“http://50topcolleges.com/”>http://50topcolleges.com/&lt;/a&gt;
<a href=“http://www.usnews.com/education/best-colleges/paying-for-college/articles/2014/09/15/colleges-and-universities-that-claim-to-meet-full-financial-need”>http://www.usnews.com/education/best-colleges/paying-for-college/articles/2014/09/15/colleges-and-universities-that-claim-to-meet-full-financial-need&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

11

<p>The Alumni Factor describes its ranking approach here:</p>

<p><a href=“https://www.alumnifactor.com/what-we-measure”>https://www.alumnifactor.com/what-we-measure&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

<p>and here:</p>

<p><a href=“https://www.alumnifactor.com/node/5900”>https://www.alumnifactor.com/node/5900&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

<p>Apparently, most of their data comes from alumni -completed questionnaires.</p>

<p>They state,
“We did not let our subjective judgment of what is important in an education lead to values-based weightings that might favor some schools more than others.”
However, 4 of their 15 factors pertain to alumni income and wealth. This reflects a judgement that the best colleges produce the highest-earning, wealthiest alumni. </p>

<p>If you’re inclined to evaluate colleges more from the perspective of knowledge-creation than wealth-creation, you may not find some of their results too plausible. </p>

12

<p>Personally, I feel that the LinkedIn industry-specific rankings and other rankings by grad results that can’t be easily gamed are the most reliable.</p>

13

<p>I felt like the USNWR & the Alumni Factor taken together gave me a good overall sense of where a college ranked.</p>

14

<p>Maybe USN and Forbes, though I prefer my DIY tiering: <a href=“Ivy-equivalents - #31 by PurpleTitan - College Search & Selection - College Confidential Forums”>http://talk.qa.collegeconfidential.com/college-search-selection/1682986-ivy-equivalents-p3.html&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

15

<p>

</p>

<p>The wealth metrics are ridiculous, but you can remove them from the rankings. I think that the remaining metrics offer a better reflection of what people want from college (to the extent that one can make general claims about that) than any other publicly available ranking does.</p>

<p>Whether the views of a few-hundred alumni resemble the sentiments of all alumni is a different concern. Moreover, each alumnus has a different view of what it means to be “intellectually developed…”</p>

<p>Still, the ranking comes off better than the alternatives.</p>

<p>I don’t know why so few other compilers of rankings allow consumers to change the weightings.</p>