Seeing a lot of people complain and/or boast about their college moving up or down in the recent release of college rankings. However, some people don’t seem to care. Hence, this thread: did you use rankings when you chose which college to apply to?
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We did consider ranking buckets, like a difference of less than 20 in school rankings doesn’t matter.
My kid chose which schools she liked better based on her own criteria and research and that differed from any of the famous ranking lists out there.
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Of course it did and does.
While both my kids chose lower ranked schools, they never would have had any school on the list if it had zero notoriety or mainstream cred.
I think it’s just how lists are built.
But if someone has a top 50 school like Illinois or Purdue, is there really a big leap to to #159 Nebraska or #170 Alabama. No.
And many students will have gotten into the others and still chosen the lower ranked.
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No, I haven’t even looked at the rankings. I looked at basic fit first - size, location, availability of majors. Then I looked at acceptance rate and average GPA to eliminate places like Vassar which is too reachy. Then I dove deeper into fit looking at things like clubs, housing, student body diversity, core curriculum. Now I have a solid list of 8 but might add a couple more from a 2nd list of 10 or so that didn’t make my top list.
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We only looked at major specific rankings to help create the initial list. Once we started visiting schools, our D quickly created her own ranking list based on what was important to her.
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Our kids never saw rankings from anywhere before they applied to colleges. The only rankings that mattered to them were the ones they created themselves.
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Not rankings, but acceptance rates, to try to get an idea of academic rigor and caliber of student body, for schools which had a fantastic instrument teacher, but we knew nothing about their academics.
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But people know about schools or hear about schools because of their place in society.
That, in essence, is at least indirectly some sense of rank that even got them on the brain.
My kids didn’t look at this is ranked 10 or 89. I did.
But without them being in some discussion - they wouldn’t have made a list. Otherwise why isn’t u of southern maine or southern Missouri state or Plymouth state u of south Dakota etc on lists etc why - bcuz society doesnt mention them.
So in that sense I think rank does play a part for many - people talk about well known schools which tie to rank, sports or something to get them top of mind.
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My oldest wanted -no Ivy, only East coast, and top 50 Engineering schools that are top 25 in her major (plus within family price range.)
Youngest wanted LACS with strong premed track in ranking approximate range 30-100, but refused to go to schools with 80 percent acceptance. She wanted some selectivity, like 50% acceptance (with 20+ other criterias later mostly fit and merit related.)
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This (your) approach, plus what @momofboiler1 said about looking at the quality (“ranking”) of the major is what my s’s did. Since both of my s’s changed their major guess that review didn’t matter as much 
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None of my kids looked at rankings. With D24, I looked for schools that ranked well in the majors she was initially considering, but that was more for my own information, and her lists were formed without that in mind. She was influenced by cost, majors, research/internship opps, and other factors.
I have perused the ranking lists since then to see how they differ from each other, but they didn’t factor into any decision making.
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We didn’t consider rankings at all when my son was looking because there isn’t a single ranking methodology that uses the things he was emphasizing. Interestingly, the rankings for his final three choices today for Mechanical Engineering are 92, 55 and 2. He had the stats to be competitive anywhere.
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Excuse me, but I know kids who had these schools on their college lists. And I know grads of all three. Just because you don’t know about these schools doesn’t mean everyone doesn’t know about them.
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Sort of. We looked at the rankings of engineering programs that had my son’s field of interest, but quickly dismissed a lot of “top” engineering colleges for personal fit reasons (e.g. location, gender ratios, etc). Surprisingly, my son chose the T10 college his sibling attended, which isn’t well-known for engineering but ticks a lot of other boxes. Familiarity and access to niche learning opportunities were the main factors.
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Although many people will claim they do not consider rankings, only but a few are not influenced by them.
One of the only reasons why I wish US News would focus more on useful criteria. It is the inputs that matter, but the world only cares about the output.
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I sort of agree. But you can only be influenced by something you know about. And if you don’t bother looking at rankings…then…hard to have an influence.
We DID consider specific criteria for our kids for college. It’s not like we threw darts at a dartboard to help them make the choices they made.
Would you buy a car made of the highest quality materials but that looks ugly, guzzles up gas and is no fun to drive ?
For me, both inputs and outputs matter.
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We looked at East Coast liberal arts college rankings in a general sense when putting together a visit list but didn’t limit to just top 15-20. Also looked at what roadtrips made sense. Flying into Boston, we looked at the Maine 3 (Colby, Bates, Bowdoin - all top 25 and near each other), Tufts (university, but smaller size), and a couple of LACs in CT/NY area (like Vassar, Skidmore, Conn College, etc.). We did skip Williams and Amherst (ranked 1 and 2) because they seemed too “reach.” We also skipped Middlebury because northern Vermont was a bit out of the way for us and wasn’t the best fit. On another trip we visited small colleges in PA/VA/NC. Basically, the range for colleges (USNWR) was #6 to #46, as there were so many great ones to consider, all offering different experiences. Daughter chose to ED school ranked #24 because it really was the best overall fit for her.
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good
You know kids who had Southern Missouri State (I know about - in fact, I lend them money), Southern Maine, Plymouth State and U of South Dakota?
That’s pretty good…I wouldn’t think so and you never hear of that type school on this website - or rarely.
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