Cominbed Ranking: Universities and LAC's

Applying to College
21

<p>The problem with USNews is not its transparency or lack thereof; the problem is that it's so relentlessly promoted that it has a Heisenberg effect on its own results. See, the thread on 1966 SAT averages and measure the effect for yourself:
<a href="http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/showthread.php?t=355053%5B/url%5D"&gt;http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/showthread.php?t=355053&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p>

22

<p>this is pretty silly</p>

23

<p>Personally, I think the US News' only flaw is the ability to be manipulated by the data the schools give to it.</p>

<p>However, collegeboard, NMS program, and WSJ rankings all have top schools that are ranked with a high correlation to US News.</p>

24

<p>pomona should be WAAAAAAAYYYY higher. Northwestern, Cornell, Berkeley, UCSD and Michigan are NOT better than pomona. And no, i dont go to pomona.</p>

25

<p>US News has a very major flaw: they tell you not what they want to measure but only how they are doing it. Are they looking for the college with the best academics, or the college that provides the best overall undergraduate experience, or the college that provides the best teaching and research conditions for its faculty? Or are they trying to measure how successful students will be? Have you ever read a study (except for US News) that did not outline its objective?</p>

<p>Washington Monthly is very clear about its objective - "we ask what colleges are doing for the country", and that's why their methodology includes among other things PhD production rates, the number of students on Pell Grants and the amount of money spent on community service. What's wrong with that ranking? Of course they cannot compete with US News but I don't think they want to, unless of course US News is trying to measure how good colleges are serving the country as opposed to individual students or faculty.</p>

26

<p>US News provides every bit of data it has, so you can make what you will of it.</p>

<p>I consider the US News to be a ranking of "best all-around colleges for academics"</p>

<p>The only part of it I strongly dislike is the P.A. score</p>

27

<p>that's a very interesting point, b@r!um. No one would write a grant proposal without first outlining what they were trying to capture by their research. The USNews is basically just a grab bag of hermeneutics made all the more sexy by appearing together in one place.</p>