<p>There's so many different systems that we can see a school ranked in the top ten on one and not in the top fifty on another... This is most likely due to the way the rankings view and value the graduate/undergraduate programs at the school, how much the ranking system looks at research, etc. ...So it makes me wonder, is there one set of ranks that encompasses everything and is the be-all end-all list of college rankings?</p>
<p>And it also makes me wonder... why are these rankings ever even valued and why would a university tailor certain aspects of their school to move up these "rankings?"</p>
<p>There are no good rankings, only interesting data within the rankings.</p>
<p>Some universities tailor their school to move up because despite the clear methodological flaws and, hell, trivial nature of the task at hand, most laypeople will just pick up USNWR and give it credit because it is plastered on every newstand in America.</p>
<p>I don't know of any ranking system that has ever taken into account faculty research strictly on the undergraduate level. Perhaps, because they've always assumed that the same faculty teach both the graduate and undergraduate students -- not always a safe assumption.</p>
<p>USNews has had twenty years to factor in useful information about research and faculty publications; instead, they chose to play around with various stand-ins for "faculty strength" like the % of doctorates on the faculty (as if a buyer's market hasn't existed for young Ph.Ds since, forever), total salaries (w/o differentiating senior from junior faculty), and total expenditures per student (w/o differentiating between money spent on education, as opposed to, money spent on dining hall food, administration and -- wait for it -- portfolio management.) </p>
<p>No, Virginia, there really are no good ranking systems, only interesting data as modestmelody said.</p>
<p>usnews rankings are a joke b/c they are focused on grad school research and reputation but the issue is marketed to high school kids, the majority of whom will never benefit from the Nobel laureate who never teaches.</p>
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usnews rankings are a joke b/c they are focused on grad school research and reputation
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<p>Not true. They are strictly undergrad rankings. For graduate school, NRC rankings by department are the gold standard. The last NRC rankings were published in 1997 but new ones are due out very soon.</p>
<p>JHU would be top ten and Caltech would be number one if US News reverted back to the 2001 emphasis on graduate research output by universities. HYP probably rallied and were mad since they didn't occupy the 1,2,3 spot so they reverted back the next yr and the director resigned/got fired. :-P</p>
<p>I think serious college watchers realize that the particular criteria such rankings use are not useful to individual students, but the data gathered that is buried in the rankings can be quite helpful. The rankings themselves end up being one-size-fits-none.</p>
<p>College rankings are very useful to consumers of higher education. Most people are not knowledgeable about evaluating colleges. Colleges would like the public to rely on their marketing to evaluate their college. College rankings give the general public a basis for comparing colleges. I agree that the data behind the rankings is most important. The SAT 25th-75th percentile tells you a lot about a college. Before college rankings, what did people use to make decisions about a huge investment of money? Consumer Reports has done the public a great service.</p>
<p>Yes college ranking is very use and helpful for a those in the process of attending a university. I tend to use USNEWS often, and if you notice each ranking does not differ far from each other. I would take into consideration of a university ranking before attending.</p>
<p>Phead128 - the Caltech and MIT surges took place in 1999 (referred to by USNews as the "2000 edition of America's Best Colleges".) The change occured not because they decided to measure faculty <em>output</em> (publications) but because of the way the magazine chose to capture <em>imput</em> (i.e. grant dollars per student) for the first time: Cooking</a> the School Books - By Bruce Gottlieb - Slate Magazine</p>
<p>They did all sorts of finagling the following year (probably controlling for overhead costs) in order to return HYP to their rightful places.</p>
<p>I remember that year because Wesleyan got caught in the updraft (no doubt due to its 5:1 advantage in NSF/NIH grants over other LAC powerhouses like Swarthmore and Carleton), leaping from fourteenth to tenth place in a single year.</p>
<p>"Before college rankings, what did people use to make decisions about a huge investment of money?"</p>
<p>Books similar to #9 above. At the time, it was mostly Barron's, and the Cass & Birnbaum book. I used data published there to make my own "rankings", based on my own personal criteria. The data was all there, it was just left for individual eveluators to put them together & form their own conclusions.</p>
<p>Though they didn't have numerical rankings, these guides provided broad selectivity categories that colleges were grouped into: "Most Selective"; "Highly selective+"; "Highly selective", etc.</p>
<p>"The SAT 25th-75th percentile tells you a lot about a college. "
It tells you a lot about the academic capabilities of the entering class,achieved before they even set foot at that college. About what the college offers those students once they arrive, beyond peer group effects- not so much..</p>
<p>One thing about USNews is that they're not ranking the "best universities"; they're ranking the "best universities to attend". That might seem like a small distinction, but it leads to interesting problems, like the bias in favor of private schools (because of low faculty-to-student ratio, etc).</p>
<p>I even find rankings that include faculty publications as troubling. Sure some fields have obvious top journals, but many others have a confusing mix. And even if you can determine the journal level, do two "B" Journals count as one "A"? Then you get into an issue where one department is a world-leader in Power Electrical Engineering, and another is a world-leader in Circuits and Hardware, and another is a world-leader in Control Systems. How do you rank those as 1, 2, or 3?</p>
<p>Personally, I think the best thing to do is figure out your ultimate goal and work from there. If you want to graduate with a degree in biology and go into industry, look at starting salaries, number of offers per student, and percent employed at graduation for Biology. If you want to go to law school, look at the previous year's law school placements from that university and major.</p>
<p>If you have no idea what you want to do, then you need to go to community college or a local school for a year, figure it out, then transfer. For some reason, it's like you're a leper on this website unless you're applying to Harvard, Stanford, MIT, etc. The truth, however, is that unless you know what you want to do, you're better off going somewhere affordable first, then figuring it out.</p>
<p>College rankings can be great and enormously helpful IF YOU UNDERSTAND WHAT THEY ARE BASING THE RANKING ON. No ranking is the be-all, end-all for all students and even the recognized leader, USNWR, has plenty of flaws that stimulate massive debate about the value of this or that variable. </p>
<p>As other have suggested, the key is to look at the data that makes up these rankings and decide which factors have the most value for you and then look closely at how various colleges compare on these metrics. Last year I created 25 different threads examining various data points of the USNWR rankings. You might find something of value in some of these. Here is the master link:</p>
<p>Those rankings are there to sell magazines. They put a quantitative value on what is (and should be) a mostly subjective search. If you love a college that is the top 50, then who cares what is number 1 or 2. I can't see enough measurable difference to warrant being miserable at Dartmouth when you could be enjoying yourself at Lafayette simply because Dartmouth is ranked higher. Even if your school is in the top 100 or 150, that puts it in a small caliber of the some 4,000 colleges in the nation. I like using the rankings to figure what is and is not Tier 4, and that is about it. Go where you are happy, and just blow off the rankings as another way to cash in on stressed out parents and teens who are worried that going to Brown will make their lives suck compared to going to Harvard. It's bull.</p>