<p>Here is a link to Washington Monthly's list of best universities and best liberal arts colleges.</p>
<p>What do you think?</p>
<p>I admire people who do things for others but I don't think the ranking system is valid. BTW, there is another thread about the Wash Monthly article. Check it out.</p>
<p>ummm that's a bit odd. UF in front of Princeton?</p>
<p>What do you mean what do you think? Anyone with a brain would totally disregard those rankings!</p>
<p>uvajoe: you should be happy they ranked your dear old UVA better than USNWR did... :)</p>
<p>Yeah, disregard these ranking right this instant. How dare they rank schools using student's community service, social mobility and quality of research when they could be using categories like alumni giving and reported graduation rates vs. real graduation rates, which really tell us how good the school is.</p>
<p>Can we consolidate this b/c their is a new thread on this five spots down:
<a href="http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/showthread.php?t=90955%5B/url%5D">http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/showthread.php?t=90955</a></p>
<p>Yes! Penn's beating Pton in this one. lol jk.</p>
<p>Wow gentleman, im glad you feel that penn state is a better school than harvard, hmm...wouldn't take advice from you!</p>
<p>INteresting way of ranking. Wierd results that seemed to be there just to contradict common belief among most people and not to give an honest, true ranking.</p>
<p>UVa, I didn't say that any school was better than any other school, I'm just pointing out the arbitrary things that you people like to emphasize. Please tell me how reported graduation rates vs. real graduation rates is a better indication of quality education then the social mobility of the students.</p>
<p>I like the rankings alot. People on CC sometimes fail to realize that a school's ranking should be based less on the scores and donations, and more about college-town relations, social mobility and the other criteria the Washington Monthly had.</p>
<p>This ranking is interesting, amusing and raises some great points, but the methodology is totally weighted in favor of schools that produce large numbers of Ph.D.s. That has absolutely nothing to do with the quality of undergraduate education. If they revise their ranking next year and remove this bias, it will be interesting to see the results.</p>
<p>gentlemanandscholar-
Its the difference between actual graduation rate and PREDICTED graduation rate in US News that is such a good indicator of quality. Of the two basic sources of educational quality (characteristics of the college and characteristics of the students), the grad rate predicted-actual is the best index of college quality independent of student quality.</p>
<p>collegehelp, I tend to agree with then Stanford president Gerhard Casper on the topic of value added from predicted grad rates. He says:</p>
<p>"Let me examine an example in "Value added": The California Institute of Technology offers a rigorous and demanding curriculum that undeniably adds great value to its students. Yet, Caltech is crucified for having a "predicted" graduation rate of 99% and an actual graduation rate of 85%. Did it ever occur to the people who created this "measure" that many students do not graduate from Caltech precisely because they find Caltech too rigorous and demanding - that is, adding too much value - for them? Caltech could easily meet the "predicted" graduation rate of 99% by offering a cream-puff curriculum and automatic A's. Would that be adding value? How can the people who came up with this formula defend graduation rate as a measure of value added? And even if they could, precisely how do they manage to combine test scores and "education expenditures" - itself a suspect statistic - to predict a graduation rate?"</p>
<p>gentlemanandscholar-
I am familiar with what the Stanford President said. He misunderstood the US News predicted grad rate method. However, I agree that colleges should not compromise standards just to raise graduation rates.</p>
<p>Cal Tech, MIT, Carnegie Mellon, and Georgia Tech fall short of their predicted grad rate because of the demading nature of engineering education. Nevertheless, the college of engineering at Cornell has a grad rate about 95%, higher than CIT and MIT. Lehigh exceeds its predicted grad rate. There may be something lacking in the quality of life at the Techs. </p>
<p>SATs are an excellent predictor of graduation rates. So is high school rank. I think there is actually a negative weight attached to expenditures per student in the US News prediction formula. Greater expenditures predicts lower grad rate. Why? Because engineering and technology programs are the most expensive for a college. They are also the hardest programs with the lowest graduation rates..</p>
<p>"Similarly, UCLA, which finished second in our overall rankings, excelled in research and came in first in our social mobility rating because of its astoundingly high graduation rate given its large numbers of lower-income students."</p>
<p>VERY ACCURATE statement. That's basically one of UCLA's goals is to not be a rankings whore but rather try to educate as many as they can, including those who are disadvantaged and had less opportunities. </p>
<p>GO UCLA!</p>
<p>Swarthmore is 21???</p>
<p>W T F :confused:</p>
<p>Honestly I think the rank is quite decent.</p>
<p>Arbitrary, nothing is arbitrary able having MULTIPLE schools on the level of penn state ranked higher than...HARVARD, how could you possibly advocate any methodology that yields these results!? Please gentleman share why you feel that this method works, because if it does...Penn State(and other similar schools) must really be BETTER(ranked higher) than Harvard, Princeton, Yale...and UVA!!!</p>