Forbes 2014 Rankings

College Search & Selection
1

<p>Forbes released its 2014 college rankings today: <a href="http://www.forbes.com/top-colleges/list/"&gt;http://www.forbes.com/top-colleges/list/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p>

<p>9/10 of the top 10 were also top 10 last year.</p>

<p>Columbia seems to have gotten quite the shaft for no apparent reason.</p>

<p>Public school rankings fell considerably from last year's rankings.</p>

<p>Liberal art college rankings went up considerably, with Davidson and Haverford getting the biggest boost (Haverford is understandable as they messed up on the data for the school last year).</p>

<p>Press article on the methodology and other trends: <a href="http://www.forbes.com/sites/carolinehoward/2014/07/30/americas-top-colleges-2014/"&gt;http://www.forbes.com/sites/carolinehoward/2014/07/30/americas-top-colleges-2014/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p>

<p>Thoughts?</p>

2

<p>WHERE IS EMORY? Obviously a top 100 school. Penn State is definitely in the top 100, it has the biggest alumni in the world. </p>

3

<p>I believe Emory (and CMC, and maybe some others) were excluded because their lied about their numbers.</p>

4

<p>Ouch, I don’t know about some of these, haha. What did poor JHU, CMU and Vandy ever do to Forbes? And Wesleyan over Middlebury? </p>

5

<p>This list is hilarious. WUSTL at #63, one below U of Rochester… UofR admin must be happy. </p>

<p>Harvey Mudd at #53, one below Colorado College? Obviously you cannot really compare the two but IMHO this just shows you how silly the rankings are.</p>

<p>JHU, CMU and Vandy stuck out to me also.</p>

6

<p>It is now the silly season for college ranking wanna-bes.</p>

7

<p>what is going on with this list?</p>

8

<p>Also, I was just wondering if anyone knew the rating criteria?</p>

9

<p>If you look at alumni acheivements, Vanderbilt is very unimpressive. Worst than URochester at producing American leaders, winning student awards, or getting PhDs, for instance (on a per capita basis). JHU and CMU aren’t that great either (except for maybe getting PhDs, and getting in to elite professional schools in the case of JHU).</p>

<p>By those criteria, Wesleyan edges out Middlebury as well.</p>

<p>Looking at alumni outcomes is great because it really weeds out the pretenders who are high in USN by gaming the rankings there from the schools who truly have outstanding students. Also, those outcomes rankings are not dependent on school-reported data, which schools can lie about. In fact, people have pieced together that Middlebury probably is lying about its numbers. Google “USC ranking rigging Middlebury”.</p>

<p>Read the comments.</p>

10

<p>Oh, and WashU is also in that category with not a large percentage of impressive alumni (along withe CMU and JHU).</p>

<p>Mudd does waaaaaay better than Colorado College in winning student awards or producing Ph#s, but much worse in producing American leaders (probably because it is so young). Being #2 and #3 in two key categories is impressive, though.</p>

<p>Y’all should read up on anchoring. Because y’all anchor to the USN ranking (despite its flaws), you think that any ranking that that deviates from that one is crazy, but I feel that some subcomponents of the Forbes ranking paint a better picture of what schools are truly elite and which ones are fakers gaming the USN system.</p>

11

<p>

if that’s true, I don’t know how reliable the rankings are.</p>

12

<p>@AmbiD77: The OP give a link to the methodology used for the rankings: <a href=“America's Top Colleges 2014”>http://www.forbes.com/sites/carolinehoward/2014/07/30/americas-top-colleges-2014/&lt;/a&gt; </p>

13

<p>I know, that info is from this <a href=“http://www.collegeconfidential.com/college_rankings/forbes.htm”>http://www.collegeconfidential.com/college_rankings/forbes.htm&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

14

<p>Forbes is hopeless.</p>

15

<p>@PurpleTitan how can we “look at alumni outcomes”. It sounds like you have done some research in this area, care to share any resources? Or are you just saying that we can trust that Forbes is measuring this correctly?</p>

16

<p>@AmbiD77‌ here is a very detailed overview of the methodology:</p>

<p><a href=“http://centerforcollegeaffordability.org/uploads/2014_Methodology1.pdf”>CollegeLifeHelper.com;

<p>The Ratemyproffessor ratings are only 10%.</p>

<p>edit: Reading this I’m not sure I agree with their measure of “success”. I’d rather look at outcomes (e.g. employment) than self-reported salary, and couldn’t care less about the list of “american leaders”. Just my opinion!</p>

17

<p>Funny how the top ten is HYPSM+WASP+Military Academy…</p>

<p>I feel like distinctions within the top 10 or 15 are not huge, just because there is some subjectivity within the the rankings (e.g. ratemyprofessor). But I do agree with @PurpleTitan‌ that this ranking is great at separating the truly elite colleges from the ones that just game the rankings through things like test scores.</p>

18

<p>@ormdad‌ thanks!</p>

19

<p>@ormdad:</p>

<p>I think we can trust that Forbes is measuring this correctly (in the component rankings). Why not? They have no dog in this fight.</p>

<p>As for employment, that is ideal, but the schools self-report that, and there are all sorts of problems with that method (schools may get only a small percentage of responses, have different majors going in to different professions, play with the numbers, or flat-out lie).
As a proxy, I’d rather use those 3 Forbes subcomponent rankings, as at least they can not be fudged or influenced by lying schools.</p>

20

<p>It would be nice if they grouped colleges and controlled them based on major type.</p>