It’s irritating that LSU is always listed on those things and LA Tech is always left out. Jerks…
Roger,
If the page is going to stay and remain unidentified, can you at least get the word “Ranking” out of the title? These are subjective, impressionistic “ratings”–fair enough. But getting rid of the not-so-subtle suggestion that these are “rankings” that allow one to make valid comparisons between two institutions (let alone to rank several) will at least answer some objections.
Good thought, Marathon Man. We’re working on some explanatory text lest people take these grades too seriously.
As I noted some posts back, these are subjective grades collected (as far as I know) under non-statistically controlled conditions. They are polling students at the institutution itself, so a lot has to do with the expectations of those students. Comparison between schools is problematic for those reasons.
I think the value of these kinds of numbers (or the ratings in our Visit Reports, too) is that the extremes give you some information. A really high or low rating is suggestive that the category is something to look at more closely, particularly if that category is important.
All in all, I’d rather have as much information as possible - it’s so difficult to get good info about distant schools, and even an in-person visit is limited. One has to understand the limitations of that data, though.
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
We’ll try to clarify the data as best we can, momofdd. I think that there is limited comparison value in terms of student satisfaction with each variable. I.e., a school that has an “A” for food seemingly has better satisfied its students than one with a “C”, even though those grades may not reflect the absolute quality of the food in each case. That data has some use, IMO. A top-to-bottom ranking even has some benefit by reflecting the relative student satisfaction for that item.
Got any wording for a simple way to express this distinction? If we put giant footnotes in, lots of people won’t read them. How about, “Caution - rankings were developed by surveying students at each school. Hence, comparisons between schools show the relative student satisfaction with each category rather than an absolute and comparable rating.”
Seems kind of wordy - maybe with all those essay juices flowing someone can come up with something better. 
There are much better objective guidebooks. The College ******* is an expensive book of random quotes. These are interesting to read once you are choosing between several schools but it is not woth the cost.
I am always looking to find or add supportive information…so please see this as feedback:
-
I would remove the market sway- about CC always looking to help etc.
and simply say; We have now added a report based on students opinions of their colleges.
The reporting is complied by COMPUTER *******, and reports on only elite US colleges. -
I must agree that navigating in this report is impossible… my poor brain cannot recall even the first 5 column headings and of course we cannot “fix” the scroll.
Finally, unless i misunderstand the instructions, clicking on the individual college simply links to the sales site for the book.
However, for anyone currently emerged in the college search… (thank goddess I am through), this provides another set of data to use when doing your due diligence.
Thanks for helping us with all these resources and options.
Is this a joke?
Harvard gets rated A for academics instead of A+, even though its grad schools are the number one in each respective field. The amount of academic resources (as well as endowment) avalible for the undergrads are unmatched.
What a bogus list. It should be removed from such a good site as CC.
Too bad the CC-College ******* “rankings” were not intended as a joke. As several other posters have already commented, they are indeed bogus.
But don’t be too harsh. If your comments are too critical, they will magically be deleted, as appears to have happened to my posting from about a week ago.
Ugh… no Montana?
Guys rating and girls ratings? WTH are these? Sex appeal? Knowledge? Uniqueness? WHAT?
Many of these titles for each grade are way too vague to be useful IMO.
Good work but bad titles. I need more info how these ratings were determined. A grade with a vague title isn’t very informative.
Not trying to come off as an a*s but please give more info on how you came to these ratings.
I plead to the admins of the website to take the list down.
There are numerous complaints for a reason. We all appreciate your hard work and don’t like to see poor content ruining the image of one of our favorite website!
Just because a department is ranked high doesn’t mean that the professors are good teachers. I’ve had plenty of classes with famous/highly regarded professors who can’t teach well.
</code></pre>
If Harvard doesn’t get an A+ for academics, I don’t know any university that will.
I’m not quite sure why you decided to define academics (as I’m well aware of its definition).
Again, just because a school has highly ranked departments doesn’t mean that students are learning. It’s a special balance between research and pedagogy that makes a school that much better.
(Note: I don’t think that Harvard doesn’t deserve an A+. But to say that it deserves an A+ based on rankings alone is a bit myopic in my opinion.)
These rankings r confusing n bugging!! what the hell do they mean anyway??
<br>
<br>
These ratings are from Cornell students, and were compiled by another company.
At the risk of sounding repetitive, these aren’t meant to be scientific rankings, and because they are conducted by survey of students they may not be comparable across schools. If the Cornell students surveyed didn’t give the school a high grade in academics for whatever reason, it may get a lower grade than a less demanding school where the students seemed happier with the academics.
<br>
<br>
I wouldn’t use any ranking, including US News, to make a college selection. The best you can hope for from rankings (or ratings) is to give you bits of information that might be helpful in deciding. US News has a lot of statistical data, which is useful in its own way. Those stats are more or less comparable between schools. The ratings chart we put up is student survey data, which is useful in a different way. Since students are answering what is in essence a satisfaction survey, the answers reflect their feelings rather than any kind of absolute standard.
Don’t take these rankings too seriously, folks - personally, if I were looking at a college, I’d still want to see them. A low grade in a category indicates the students surveyed aren’t too happy with that category for some reason, and it’s probably worth investigating further.
I guess any time one publishes ratings or rankings, it’s going to stimulate debate. As far as I know, the methodology for these surveys isn’t dissimilar to PR’s “Top Party Schools” and “Best College Towns”, and the ratings should be viewed in the same context - interesting info, but certainly not definitive.
PETA just came out with a ranking for “Best Vegetarian Colleges” - I was going to post a link, but I fear people might question their methodology, too.
Based on the feedback in this thread, we’ve changed the name to “College Ratings Comparison” and added this text to the top:
IMPORTANT: These ratings reflect student survey data, and do not provide an absolute standard of comparison between different colleges. They MAY be useful in gauging student satisfaction with a particular area. As with any ranking or rating system, use this data to suggest areas to explore in more detail when you evaluate schools, not as an actual way to compare the schools.
My impression is that some members posting in this thread are concerned that students will misinterpret the data or assign it a greater value than is justified. This will, I hope, clarify the data source and help viewers use the data in a positive way.
Do you include any info whatsoever on art and design schools?