Do College Rankings Really Matter?

College Search & Selection
1

<p>This is an issue I have began to think about more and more. I recently read a NY Times article slamming the new "Top 1000 High Schools" for the way they figured out which school goes where. I must also admit I am a victim of the system and have read all of the US News Rankings.</p>

<p>But I am really wondering whether or not these rankings matter when you're searching for a job. Do companies care where your school is on this list, or the quality of the candidate?</p>

<p>How legitimate are US News' rankings, and who are they to tell us which school is the best?</p>

<p>I write this as a student struggling to choose between two school's business programs. One ranked much higher than the other(according to US News).</p>

2

<p>Unless you're a top top top top student, theyre pretty much bull</p>

3

<p>to me, it matters like top10 or top20 or top30</p>

4

<p>The methods of ranking the top 1,000 high schools are 100% BS. Just ranking a school by the ratio of APs to students makes no sense. My school is in the 700s, yet our science olympiad team has made it to nationals 12 times in a row (the team has only been around 12 years). We have also won three times.</p>

<p>As for US News, there's actually somewhat of a method to their madness. As far as college rankings go, US News does a pretty decent job, but remember...rankings are somewhat subjective. While it is easy to tell that Emory (#20) is much better than, say, Drexel (#109), is there really that much of a difference of academic quality between, for example, Wake Forest (#32) and UNC - Chapel Hill (#27)?</p>

5

<p>Colleges ranking not only matter- they are the only thing that matter. If you do not end up in a top20 school you will never make over minimum wage an hour.</p>

6

<p>Seems to me the only way to really quanitfy if/how much rankings matter is to take common majors offered and rank the average starting salary by major (of people who started as freshman right out of high school and finished in say 6 years),adjusting for geographical differences. If you can find that data, you will find and actually quantify the answer to your question. I'm sure the data has been compiled by someone, you'll just have to look to find it.</p>

7

<p>Academic rankings matter a lot. The rest is mostly fluff.</p>

8

<p>that's the biggest bs ever. My undergraduate academics are basically irrelevant to my current life and success (although I loved them). The things that have helped me enormously, however, are my school's alumni network, its reputation, its grad school placement, and its "community" - i.e. people are close and continue to help each other. The academics helped my "analytical skills" sure, but to be frank I could have gained those skills at any top 20. </p>

<p>That's why schools like Cal are ranked lower than places like Rice. Sure Cal has amazing professors, but it doesn't do well on many things relevant to undergrads. Places like Cal and Michigan shine in "vocational" areas like nursing, engineering, etc but I'd much rather be out in the job market with a degree in english from Williams than one from Cal.</p>

9

<p>Starting MIT salaries:</p>

<p><a href="http://web.mit.edu/newsoffice/2003/careers-0305.html%5B/url%5D"&gt;http://web.mit.edu/newsoffice/2003/careers-0305.html&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p>

10

<p>College rankings are the best thing to come along for consumers of higher education since the end of the Inquisition.</p>

<p>The US News rankings, Gourman Report rankings, Rugg's Recommendations, Princeton Review ratings...they are all useful additions to the larger profile of information about prospective colleges. A smart consumer, however, will take the time to learn the strengths and weaknesses of the rankings.</p>

11

<p>"Colleges ranking not only matter- they are the only thing that matter. If you do not end up in a top20 school you will never make over minimum wage an hour."</p>

<p>It amazes me that some people actually believe such ridiculous things.</p>

<p>Rankings mean a lot to people who read this board, but that's about it. Your undergraduate institution can have a big effect on your first job after college; however, after that, it will do little for you and there are much more important things that are going to matter. Whether your undergrad institution was #10 or #100 will make little difference past grad school applications or past your first job.</p>

12

<p>Agreed, rankings only mean something to the status/prestige obsessed
With rare exception I do not know anyone who is working 20 years post college education that even mentions where they went to school and frankly consumers of the services my office offers never ask where any of us went to school. </p>

<p>What is most important is what you do after your education--and yes, I went to a LAC (3rd tier US NEWs but in CTCL) and then to grad school at a top 100 university and I make well over minimum wage
and have a fruitful, satisfying career.</p>

13

<p>its also important to point out that only a handful of schools are known nationwide. for example, if you told someone in new england that you go to cal tech, most would think you were at a vocational school. most people on the west coast have never heard of the amazing LACs east of the mississippi. rice, chicago, uva- terrific schools but the vast majority has no clue what these are.</p>

14

<p>like what heavenwood said if it's like wake and unc or BC and vanderbilt and uva and JHU they're all around the same ballpark if you do well in any of them you're good to go</p>

15

<p>"rice, chicago, uva- terrific schools but the vast majority has no clue what these are."</p>

<p>Whenever people ask me where I'm going to college and I say Rice, 90% of the time, people will ask, "Where's that?"</p>

<p>One girl even told me, "I have no idea where that is. Why don't you go somewhere well known, like Florida State or UMass?"</p>

16

<p>Jack Welch went to UMass Amherst, I don't think "lack of prestige"
has hurt him one iota</p>

17

<p>The idea that prestige really matters is total bs. </p>

<p>The important thing is what you do during undergrad, and then in the jobs subsequent to that. Besides, I believe that there are studies that have shown that the knowledge learned in 4 years of college is typically obsolete in 8 years or less. So I guess the MOST important thing is learning how to learn, I don't believe there are any measurables for that.
If you are letting the prestige of your undergrad institution carry (or not carry) you, then you are never going to go very far.</p>

<p>For one, as people have mentioned, LOCATION will make a huge difference as far as how people in the real world will perceive you. There are really very few schools with a national recognition, and no one besides the people on this board really cares/knows the difference in ranking between the two. And in some cases, the lack of name recognition can and will be startling. I'm willing to bet that the University of Nebraska (my alma mater) would generate more buzz in Wichita KS, or Oklahoma City, or Little Rock AK, than Swarthmore or most any of the other LAC's that people salivate over here, even though there is little debate over on this board over which school has more prestige. In fact, I'm sure that this is probably true most everywhere except for the Northeast. The big schools generate a lot of free publicity for themselves every weekend through big time college sports that these small LAC's outside the Ivy League can never ever muster. </p>

<p>Secondly, as I've mentioned, individual record is way more important. We live in a society that likes to believe it is a meritocracy. It's much, much more important to achieve individual honors to get you ahead than to rely on the honors/achievements of those who graduated before you from some school. If you outwork/outachieve someone than it isn't going to matter where you went to school. Warren Buffett doesn't seem to have let the fact that he went to Nebraska rather than Wharton get him down...</p>

<p>Really what it comes down to is that prestige is an artificial creation of these "top tier" schools...when one of the values in most ranking algorithms is selectivity the state schools of the world (with the exception of those in very populated states) are going to be a disadvantage. Further, because of the selectivity, these "prestigous" schools get to pick and choose the best of their applicants...the more prestigous the greater the number of applicants, the better applicant pool, the better the accepted student population. It then becomes a matter of who wants it more, who has the determination to start studying for the SAT as a freshman, take every last AP course, finish the thirty different applications, and fret hour after fruitless hour on the boards of CC. And when it's all done, I'm willing to bet that the overwhelming majority of "success" that people here attribute to a school has much more to do with the student population, than with the actual school itself. In other words, the population of this school had to be so driven to get to that school in the first place, that they are also much more likely to be driven to succeed in the work place - the school did nothing but separate them out and label them, and the school reaps the rewards of their success.</p>

<p>There is probably more I could right, but this ended up way longer than I imagined...someone is probably going to rip it apart, but whatever...I've said my piece.</p>

18

<p>In the beginning, college rankings mattered to students and alot of students scrambled to compete in getting into a good univeristy. When year 2000 came, college rankings did not matter as much as they were before. Now, it matters if students graduate from college & get into a graduate school</p>

19

<p>"Colleges ranking not only matter- they are the only thing that matter. If you do not end up in a top20 school you will never make over minimum wage an hour."</p>

<p>WoW Mike99, that's a joke right??</p>

20

<p>I'm sure Mike99 was being sarcastic.</p>

<p>
[quote]
The important thing is what you do during undergrad, and then in the jobs subsequent to that. Besides, I believe that there are studies that have shown that the knowledge learned in 4 years of college is typically obsolete in 8 years or less. So I guess the MOST important thing is learning how to learn, I don't believe there are any measurables for that.
If you are letting the prestige of your undergrad institution carry (or not carry) you, then you are never going to go very far.

[/quote]
</p>

<p>I doubt most knowledge is obsolete within eight (or even 100 years). A liberal arts education is supposed to give you knowledge that is timeless, and, like you say, learning how to learn.</p>