<p>How the heck is University of Alabama ranked ahead of the following colleges
-UCR
-University of Denver
-University of Kansas
-University of Arizona
-University of Missouri
-UMass - Amherst
-University of Oregon
-University of San Diego
-Ohio University
-Florida State
-University of Kentucky
-University of Utah</p>
<p>etc</p>
<p>You are guaranteed admission at Alabama with a 3.0 GPA and 950 on your SATs. I'm not saying it's a bad school, but I don't believe that it should be ranked over the schools I listed. Does anyone know how their rankings work?</p>
<p>"The complete explanation is on the usnews.com site. Just read the methodology. Your answers will be there.."
Thanks, I didn't see that before. I was asking because a friend of mine lives and dies by these ratings. He applied to Alabama solely because of these rankings. After looking over their grading criteria, it appears very flawed. 30 % of their rating is based on how much money the school has. 25 % of the rating is based on what other teachers "think" about the school, which is very subjective.</p>
<p>I’m trying to convince my friend that he has better options than Alabama. We are both California residents, and I don’t believe that Alabama is worth its high out of state tuition. I can see someone going there from Alabama; you can get a quality education from a solid state school at an affordable price.</p>
<p>25% is based on what other university presidents think of the school. that is a pretty good barometer as university presidents are supposed to know how good the schools they're competing with are.</p>
<p>Yes, 25% is based on peer evaluation, but I'm a bit puzzled by the 30% based on how much money a school has. Yes, money can allow a school to pay more faculty, maintain smaller class sizes, buy top student with merit scholarships and the like, but there is no explicit part of the ranking that is based on endowment, unless I have missed something.</p>
<p>IMO, USN&WR Rankings have some problems. Here's the basis for their rankings:
25% peer assessment,
25% Retention (Frosh, 6-yr grad rate)
20% faculty resources (class size, % PhD's, S-F ratio)
15% Selectivity
10% Spending per student
5% Alumni giving</p>
<p>1) how well do their peers really know the institution, other than by how highly they are ranked? This tends to be a self-reinforcing measure.
2) Schools with good reputations attract good student. The more good students they attract, the more selective the school. The more selective the school, the higher its ranking. The higher its ranking, the better its reputation. Round and round we go.
3) Schools with good students tend to retain those students, and those students, being good students, are likely to graduate on time.
4) Faculty resources are a pretty good measure, but only if undergrads have access the faculty.
5) Do good schools graduate good students because they did a terrific job of educating them or because they were good students to begin with?
6) Schools tend to move very slowly up or down in the USN&WR rankings because reputations change slowly. If a U drops 10 places it has likely been in decline for some time. A U that rise 10 places probably started improving a number of years ago. </p>
<p>The net result is that USN&WR's rankings tend to tell us what we already know. There is little difference between acceptance rates and their rankings. good students=good school and vice-versa.</p>
<p>When you live in California, the one state that has truly mastered the two-tier university system, it's just in poor taste to leave for Alabama.</p>
<p>The rankings are kind of dumb - who cares what percentage of alumni donate? In some ways that shows that the school has more money, but that's not always true - just look at the differences in giving rates to Harvard and Princeton, and then check their endowments - huge difference.</p>
<p>Tuscaloosa sucks anyway.....Less than 200,000 people....On the bright side, the U of A has added a lot of prestige to the would-be-otherwise 'overlooked hick town'. Peace!</p>