<p>Do you really think rankings really matter to choose a college. For example, I have chosen two colleges one is 70 and the other one is 81 in Best Midewest colleges. Any advice ?</p>
<p>There’s not going to be some noticeable difference when rankings are that close.</p>
<p>Rankings should just be used as a general guideline.</p>
<p>For example, it would be crazy for a person to go to the #50 school, rather than the #55 school, for example, just because it is higher ranked.</p>
<p>Further, in a particular major, a school you might want to go to might actually be “better” than a higher ranked school.</p>
<p>That being said, “prestige” and “labels” are nonetheless important.</p>
<p>When I was in my 20’s, I was dating a girl who was a Wellesley graduate, and my mother was VERY impressed by this, much more so than if the girl had graduated with a 4.0 from U Mass.</p>
<p>Rankings are useless nonsense - very harmful useless nonsense, since they lead some people into making very bad decisions. They are one person’s opinion, based on arbitrary criteria that mean nothing in terms of quality of education delivered. If you really want to pick a school on a ranking based, in part, on what high school guidance counselors think by all means do so, but you’re likely to be very, very sorry.</p>
<p>US News arrives at its ranking by applying a number of criteria, and then giving a percentage weight to each criteria.</p>
<p>Some of the criteria they use are of no importance whatsoever to me.</p>
<p>Plus, the numbers, to a certain extent, are subject to manipulation.</p>
<p>For example, a school could implement a marketing campaign to attract more applicants, just so the school can then reject them, and show how “selective” they are.</p>
<p>USNWR rankings are incredibly silly, IMO. When rankings are a composite of several factors, each given somewhat arbitrary numeric weights, what are you measuring?</p>
<p>Could it truly be said, for example, that among LACs, that Grinnell is “better” than Kenyon, because it is higher “ranked”.</p>
<p>You wouldn’t go to one over the other because of their rankings.</p>
<p>You would go to the one that feels like the right “fit” for you.</p>
<p>No.</p>
<p>10char.</p>
<p>For some, the rankings are the be all and end all. Never mind that lower-ranked college x has a better program than higher ranked college y; some will still go for the latter.</p>
<p>Any given student will have his/her own rank order of school desirability, which may or may not be similar to any of the published rankings.</p>
<p>Outside of CC, if you say “college rankings” most people will think you mean football or basketball. </p>
<p>It’s also my observation that people consider schools they’ve heard of as “good” and schools they haven’t as “less than good.” (e.g., my in-laws think Rowan in NJ is better than Amherst.)</p>
<p>Like everything else in life, “what matters” comes down to perspective, personal experience, and priorities.</p>
<p>I guess it depends on what you think of the ranking criteria.</p>
<p>If for example, you look at a list, and can say (for the schools you know) – that looks about right. Then it may be useful information for the schools you don’t know.</p>
<p>Next – do you care. Example. Michigan is ranked about 25 or so. If you’re looking for a small liberal arts college, it really doesn’t matter where Michigan is ranked. It could be #1 or #500 – it’s not the school for you.</p>
<p>Third – don’t take it too seriously. If you’re talking about a school ranked 40 vs 50, even if you agree with the ranking system, it probably makes little difference.</p>
<p>Finally – this is probably one of the best statements I’ve seen on how to use rankings – not surprisingly, it comes directly from USNWR:</p>
<p>“However, the editors of U.S. News believe rankings are only one of many criteria students should consider in choosing a college. Simply because a school is top in its category does not mean it is the top choice for everyone. A prospective student’s academic and professional ambitions, personal preferences, financial resources, and scholastic record, as well as a school’s size, atmosphere, and location, should play major roles in determining a college choice. Moreover, it is crucial to remember that schools separated by only a few places in the rankings are extremely close in academic quality.”</p>
<p><a href=“http://www.usnews.com/education/best-colleges/articles/2011/09/12/frequently-asked-questions-college-rankings-2012?s_cid=related-links:TOP[/url]”>http://www.usnews.com/education/best-colleges/articles/2011/09/12/frequently-asked-questions-college-rankings-2012?s_cid=related-links:TOP</a></p>
<p>a) rankings matter
b) if one college is #23 and one is #25 it couldn’t matter less</p>
<p>it depends alot on your priorities as well. to me 70 and 81 in the best midwest colleges would be a huge difference, but that’s not everyone’s perspective. maybe one college has something that’s really important to you and another doesn’t. that would matter more than ranking</p>
<p>Rankings have importance only because students and parents believe they have importance. If that belief did not exist, the importance would not exist. On an annual basis tens of thousands fret over the rankings of the colleges and firmly believe that their lives will be ruined if they don’t get into a high ranked college and are devasted if the college they like drops one position in the newest annual USNews rankings. As irrational as that is, it is. You hear the shock every year from such believers when changes occur and it is already happening on this site with the latest rankings released Monday – posters expressing shock over such things as UChicago being ranked the same as Stanford as if it just can’t be that such a thing would happen because somewhow Stanford must be ranked higher. They never ask themselves the simple question: why the heck does it matter? </p>
<p>The one factor that no ranking system actually considers is the quality of teaching, i.e., whether the professors are any good at teaching and you can find those that can’t at every high ranked college.</p>
<p>My family likes to think of college ranking as a super useful atlas of all the popular and well regarded LACs and universities around the country, good for basic higher education literacy. It’s not infrequent that people find on there schools that they’ve never heard of or never paid attention to before and otherwise would never will. The ranking is also a great composite of certain helpful information like tuition, retention rates, faculty-student ratio, and so on, all in one place.</p>
<p>I also trust that the guidance counselors and school administrators contributing to the peer assessment scores know more about most of the universities than I do as a layperson, and that solid numbers like retention rate, faculty-student ratio do mean something, even if they’re not measuring factors terribly relevant to my needs. It’s too bad that some people don’t know how to use a ranking properly, but that alone doesn’t render the work “harmful useless nonsense” for everybody.</p>
<p>I agree with xrCalico. My S decided that he would consider LAC’s from different parts of the country, but since he was not familiar with any of them, he needed a starting point to direct his focus and the US News rankings provided that. That does not mean that he assumes that school X is better than Y because rank(X) < rank(Y), but that he trusts that the US News system is unlikely to be so dysfunctional that LAC’s it ranks highly have little to recommend them. A few gems could slip by without a thorough examination by using this process, but one must allocate limited resources in some fashion, and US News appears likely to be an improvement on pure randomness.</p>
<p>College rankings should, and probably do, matter more to the colleges themselves than to the student. If a college is not very famous (they prefer to call themselves “prestigious”), then it won’t get many applications. If it doesn’t get many applications, then it doesn’t make money off of the application fees. Not to mention less people to pay tuition…</p>
<p>Regardless of the rankings, finding the right fit is the single most important factor in your success and happiness. Here’s a useful article for those of you who are searching or selecting a college.
[Top</a> 10 Tips on How to Select a College | Top Colleges Blog](<a href=“http://www.top-colleges.com/blog/2007/03/23/top-10-tips-on-how-to-select-a-college/]Top”>http://www.top-colleges.com/blog/2007/03/23/top-10-tips-on-how-to-select-a-college/)</p>
<p>Another reason why people choose better ranking colleges is that they offer better job prospects ?</p>