Roger, to the extent students at each school are deciding their school’s ratings, this cannot possibly be called a comparison, which implies a centralized review of all the schools with clear-cut criteria across the board, by objective third parties.
But it bothers me most that these ratings are showing up along with the college visits data, providing the innocent with the impression that the same statistical approach was used for the visits and for these so-called ratings. That is, the college visits compilations are of value because they represent the averages of each visitor’s ratings, with long-hand comments that augment the numbers’ understanding.
You make it look, in effect, like these ratings were garnered in the same fashion, and it is highly misleading.
And I don’t buy that if one doesn’t like this approach, one can ignore it: the problem is that too many kids with read the info at face value, thinking if there is a rating, it must be true. Statistics lie, and here is proof.
I would vote to move away from this tainted connection, ASAP. Thank you