<p>What do you guys think are the top 20 colleges? I don't really agree with the US News and World Report and it is also a little out dated (acceptance rates are still 2008). Brown seems like it should be way higher and Wash U seems like it should be way lower in my opinion.</p>
<p>i sorta agree with them what do you think are the top 20?</p>
<p>Everyone has their own opinion about this. I feel there are some that don’t even belong in the Top 20 but that’s just my opinion.</p>
<p>I don’t trust them. For those into prestige whoring, they’re a great metric, though.</p>
<p>Like any ranking, it all depends on the criteria used:</p>
<p>[Methodology:</a> Undergraduate Ranking Criteria and Weights - US News and World Report](<a href=“http://www.usnews.com/articles/education/best-colleges/2009/08/19/methodology-undergraduate-ranking-criteria-and-weights.html?loomia_ow=t0:s0:a41:g26:r16:c0.018967:b27244044:z0&s_cid=loomia:methodology-ranking-category-definitions]Methodology:”>http://www.usnews.com/articles/education/best-colleges/2009/08/19/methodology-undergraduate-ranking-criteria-and-weights.html?loomia_ow=t0:s0:a41:g26:r16:c0.018967:b27244044:z0&s_cid=loomia:methodology-ranking-category-definitions)</p>
<p>So a school like WUSTL spends a bundle spamming to get more people to apply for a relatively set number of fr spots. More applications means the acceptance rate goes down and it’s ranking goes up.</p>
<p>I don’t agree with them. While they may happen to be correct in some aspects, their methodology is COMPLETELY biased. Like for the reason entomom said!</p>
<p>PS. I’m a victim of WUSTL spam >.<. If they don’t accept me after all of that I will be REALLY ****ed (which they probably won’t considering they just want more applicants)!</p>
<p>What happened to college being about EDUCATION instead of which one has the highest average SAT scores? What UChicago did REALLY bothers me. Would you believe just a few years ago they had ~40% acceptance rate? I guess a private school is also a business but in today’s world it just makes me so sad how hard it is to get into colleges.</p>
<p>EDIT: LOVE how it changes the word that starts with a “P” meaning “angry” but not “whoring” XD</p>
<p>USNWR relies on peer ranking as one metric. This basically causes little change in ranking. How many people truly knows the educational quality at hundreds of other institutions (or even a handful)? So people just rely on the old ranking to rate the schools, causing a cycle. </p>
<p>Just look at the Ivies. I think there are so many schools that are better than the lower-tier Ivies, like Brown.</p>
<p>lol i love when i tell ppl im going to MIT and they go is that ivy league? i dont really see how you can rate the top 5 schools against eachother, they are meant for different things really, MIT is engineering based, Harvard is more towards humanities; how is one better?</p>
<p>@entomom: not only the methodology matters, but also the quality of the data, which in US News land is generally utter crap.
@liu02bhs: what’s ironic about the peer ranking is that it rarely changes one year to the next and colleges spend a non-trivial amount of money marketing each other to each other to try to raise it.</p>
<p>To the OP: no, I don’t trust the rankings as far as I can throw them. I’d love my school to be near the top. In which case I’d promote the rankings, but I still wouldn’t trust them ;-). </p>
<p>For what it’s worth, it makes me happy to see that in the largest annual survey of college freshmen, “magazine rankings” are consistently in the bottom half of the reasons students cite as “very important” in making them choose their college.</p>
<p>I think they are the best of a bad lot. Pretty lousy rating system but I can’t find another one that I like better.</p>
<p>I trust the rankings. I think they are useful information. US News does a good job. But, I wouldn’t base a decision on rankings alone.</p>
<p>I would not place much worth in them.</p>
<p>See: [News:</a> ‘Manipulating,’ Er, Influencing ‘U.S. News’ - Inside Higher Ed](<a href=“http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2009/06/03/rankings]News:”>http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2009/06/03/rankings)</p>
<p>and: [How</a> to Game the College Rankings: Tips From Clemson | Mother Jones](<a href=“http://motherjones.com/mojo/2009/06/how-game-college-rankings-tips-clemson]How”>How to Game the College Rankings: Tips From Clemson – Mother Jones)</p>
<p>plus: [News:</a> More Rankings Rigging - Inside Higher Ed](<a href=“http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2009/06/08/usc]News:”>http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2009/06/08/usc)</p>
<p>this too: [Machen’s</a> rankings ploy is just rank - St. Petersburg Times](<a href=“http://www.tampabay.com/opinion/editorials/article1011155.ece]Machen’s”>http://www.tampabay.com/opinion/editorials/article1011155.ece)</p>
<p>@liu02bhs: It would be far more disturbing if the rankings changed a great deal from year to year. Do colleges really change that much?</p>
<p>Anyway, I have mixed feelings about the rankings. I would like to see more emphasis on research and less on selectivity, but at the end of the day USNews could do a worse job of measuring schools. The fundamental question in my mind is why going to a “good” school is inherently a valuable or necessary thing.</p>
<p>@collegehelp: why do you think that US News does a good job? If it’s because their rankings seem “right”, then ask yourself: why do you think they should be ranked in roughly that order to begin with? After 20 years, USNWR rankings have turned into a self-fulfilling prophecy.</p>
<p>@noimagination: the scuttlebutt is that they change their methodology annually to create just enough “churn” to make the rankings seem new and sell the magazines. That they change the methodology annually is fact. Their motivation for doing so, of course, is up for debate. That they intentionally create churn is merely rumor.</p>
<p>I would like to point out the US News rankings do inform people of a lot of good schools that a fair amount of people haven’t heard of. UChicago, WUSTL, and Emory are good examples.</p>
<p>The rankings are rubbish! Thanks to parent2noles (post #12 above) for providing some links.</p>
<p>The overall rank assigned to a school by U.S. News is meaningless, often perniciously so. It combines too many factors, in an inexplicable formula, and much of the underlying data isn’t reliable, is easily manipulated and some of it (e.g., expenditures on secretarial salaries, etc.) isn’t even relevant. Everyone in higher education knows this. </p>
<p>The very idea that we can definitvely rank order schools (that one can tell school #4 from #6) as if they were sports teams who had played a game head-to-head against each other is absurd. </p>
<p>If you want rankings data to get a sense of prestige/rankings/competitiveness/selectivity look at the Barron’s Guide or the Fiske Guide.</p>
<p>I wont trust the USNWR Rankings until Penn is #1.</p>
<p>question on the reliability of the data that US News and other rankings use to rank colleges: to what extent is this data , from the common data set, for example, fudgable, reliable, accurate? Is there an independent service that monitors the data that a college claims, a sort of FDA for colleges to ensure accurate content in the labeling?</p>
<p>One reason that I ask is that I just saw in a book called ‘75 myths about college admission’ that colleges regulary spin or adjust their entrance numbers , such the numbers for the mid 50 pct of standardized tests, to make it look better for the college.</p>
<p>But getting back to the OP : regardless of whether I trust the rankings, and to what extent they can be objectively erroneous, what is important is whether <em>most everyone else</em> trusts those rankings, especially employers, graduate, medical, and law schools.</p>
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<p>Well, just sit tight for few more years and that will probably happen. Penn is the absolute master at playing the USNews rankings manipulation game.</p>
<p>Perhaps a more relevant question is – which are the top 20 colleges for me?</p>