<p>Wow, those rankings are pretty bad. Chicago is a top 10 school and is barely top 50 on this. You know something is wrong when there are 5 UC schools in the top 26. The top 3 is about all I agree with here lol</p>
<p>These rankings are no worse than any other ranking. They are all compiled using subjective data.</p>
<p>They make no sense. Cal and UCLA top ten, but Michigan 61?</p>
<p>First time I've seen the Banana Slugs get such a stellar ranking.</p>
<p>WVU,</p>
<p>THES, WSJ, and US News all use empirical data for a large portion of their data when creating rankings.</p>
<p>The only subjective part in most of these are the surveys done by companies or peer institutions.</p>
<p>This ranking is probably completely subjective and doesn't have any data behind it, and doesn't state what its goal in ranking is.</p>
<p>actually it is based on some concrete data...</p>
<p>"Selectivity: Selectivity measures the quality of schools' admitted candidates. Selectivity is based on the percent of applicants admitted, SAT scores, and the percent of admitted applicants in the top 10% of their high school classes. An institution's composite selectivity comprises 45% of its overall score." - quote the methodology page</p>
<p>but half of it is based on already existing rankings as well...</p>
<p>"An institution's aggregate published ranking comprises 50% of its overall score."</p>
<p>
[quote]
They make no sense. Cal and UCLA top ten, but Michigan 61?
[/quote]
</p>
<p>*** patiently awaits for Alex to bust through the doors like Juggernaut on steroids to give this ranking a new ahole ***</p>
<p>Totally stupid list</p>
<p>Just as an example:</p>
<p>Amherst SAT average = 1455
Dartmouth = 1,450
Brown 1,435
Penn 1,430
Chicago 1,440
Berkeley 1,335 (Berkeley reputation = graduate school)
Notre Dame 1,380
Cornell 1,385
Columbia 1,440</p>
<p>etc, etc</p>
<p>UCLA 1,290....LOL!</p>
<p>That list doesn't seem that far off to me except for the UCs and maybe Columbia. I'm guessing the UCs come out so high because of the % of students in top 10% of hs class, which for whatever reason comes out higher than for schools with much higher SAT avgs.</p>
<p>Too much California sun on this guy's head</p>
<p>I think you guys have too much US News on your heads. Seriously, any time someone posts different rankings, the amount of criticism is directly proportional to the amount the rankings vary from US News.</p>
<p>its not the distinction from the USNEWS, its the empirical gaps that don't work. When you look at SAT scores, department rankings, student faculty ratios and the like, having schools like Chicago, Vanderbilt and UMich lose out to schools like UCSC and NYU doesn't make a grain of sense.</p>
<p>I get irritated when people rail on US News for no reason...other than Peer assessment scores, the entire US News is empirical, based on fact and logic and clearly identifies what it considers.</p>
<p>That makes it better than most rankings, and definitely better than random people who have strong opinions about colleges but no real information (ie "school X is better than school Y but I have no evidence, just opinion")</p>
<p>Wow yeah, I'd disagree entirely with these rankings as well... the LACs seemed to have gotten placed MUCH lower that they deserve, in general, for one. AND the order was scrambled rather interestingly: </p>
<ol>
<li>Swarthmore College</li>
<li>Amherst College</li>
<li>Williams College</li>
<li>Pomona College</li>
<li>Harvey Mudd College</li>
<li>Haverford College</li>
<li>Middlebury College</li>
<li>Bowdoin College</li>
<li>Claremont McKenna College</li>
<li>Washington & Lee University </li>
<li>Davidson College</li>
<li>Barnard College</li>
<li>Wesleyan University</li>
<li>Colgate University</li>
<li>Wellesley College</li>
<li>Vassar College</li>
<li>Colby College</li>
<li>Carleton College</li>
<li>Grinnell College</li>
<li>Bryn Mawr College</li>
<li>Macalester College</li>
</ol>
<p>I mean honestly, how did this happen? Since when has Washington & Lee and Davidson been considered superior to Wellesley, for example? Or Barnard to Wesleyan, Wellesley, Vassar, and Carleton? Speaking of Carleton, how is it not in the top 50? And how didn't Oberlin make the list when Grinnell did? Lastly, I find it interesting that the LACs that fared best in this rating system aside from the "little three" (Swarthmore, Amherst, Williams) are the California ones. I agree sambouc, the composer of this list must indeed be a Californian. In fact, I'd say it looks like a reaction to the USNWR rankings which favor the northeast; the northeastern schools got (largely) screwed (along with the midwest, interestingly enough) and those in the mid-atlantic, south, and west (in particular) got a major boost.</p>
<p>Yea, the % of graduates in the top ten percent of each class heavily favors publics and LACs that recruit heavily among public high schools. Many, if not most, New England LACs -- including Wesleyan -- recruit among prep schools which are rich in SAT scores but rarely rank their seniors.</p>
<p>johnwesley,
I think you are right about the Top 10% numbers and how this skews the ranking. Consider a few of the highly ranked publics
99% UC Berkeley
97% UCLA
99% UCSD
96% UCSB
95% UC Davis</p>
<p>and these for the Top 20 LACs</p>
<p>1 Williams 90%
2 Amherst 86%
3 Swarthmore 83%
4 Wellesley 85%
5 Middlebury 82%
6 Carleton 78%
7 Pomona 87%
7 Bowdoin 79%
9 Haverford 88%
10 Davidson 79%
10 Wesleyan 68%
12 Vassar 67%
12 CMC 83%
14 Harvey Mudd 90%
14 Grinnell 64%
16 Colgate 70%
17 W&L 81%
17 Hamilton 70%
19 Bryn Mawr 62%
20 Smith 61%
20 Colby 63%</p>
<p>Given the great disparity in school districts across the country and the fact that there are 340,000 Top 10% students in the Class of 2007, this tells you pretty clearly that a ranking with a heavy weighting based on this metric has grave problems.</p>
<p>Like all rankings, once you crank through the data, you get what you get. They are neither "right" nor "wrong". They are simply what you get when you used these criteria. </p>
<p>I agree with gellino that this list appears to be heavily dominated by % top 10% in high school class. They do not say how much weight they give to this vs SAT scores or admissions rate. </p>
<p>There is some concern that colleges are not uniform in how they report the top 10% figure. Some, apparently, consider only those students who came from high schools that rank, then report the percent of THEM that were top 10% at their schools. Others identify those who were NOT top 10%,, then divide by the total number of students, including those from high schools that do not rank. They then calculate the percent who were NOT top 10 (which by this method will be quite small), subtract this from 1, and report the resulting stat. </p>
<p>Agree that many LAC's and northeast colleges recruit lots of students from prep and magnet schools, and can get great students below top 10% if the school ranks at all.</p>
<p>Also, the large publics are unaffected by their athletic recruiting since athletes are such a small part of the student body. At Williams where athletes are 40% of the students, any breaks in academic standards for them show up in the overall stats.</p>