For good or bad are out:
- Harvard
- Stanford
- Yale
- Princeton
- MIT
- Caltech
- UPenn
- Duke
- Brown
- Pomona
- CMC
- Dartmouth
- Williams
- Columbia
- Cornell
- Chicago
- Amherst
- Harvey Mudd
- Swarthmore
- US Naval Academy
- Georgetown
- Rice
- Bowdoin
- US Military Academy
- Haverford
We knew they had to make it a horse race somehow:
Thanks, explains why LACs took a beating compared to last year… :
"Important Trends
• The rise of juggernaut STEM and research-oriented universities vs. small prestigious liberal arts colleges."
I stopped paying attention to Forbes’ rankings after they ranked New York, London and Tokyo in its top 20 most beautiful cities list; and after they included Palo Alto, but not Columbus, in its listing of best college sports towns.
Is this old or new ranking? If new, why is 2017 ranking coming out now? I think USNWR will soon publish its 2018 ranking of best colleges later this month.
@prepparent Brand new ranking, it’s just how they chose to call them.
@simba9 Not 100% sure but I think they used to rank Fidel Castro in their billionaire list… If my memory is right that was another rather ridiculous move…
PA is a beautiful town, but “best college sports towns”? =))
I get the feeling Forbes looks at where its readership lives or went to school, and then comes up with rankings intended to stroke those readers.
The service academies should be #1-4 if they followed their methodology. They cost the student nothing, they are guaranteed a leadership job upon graduation, their pay includes housing, food, and transportation, and they incur no debt except time.
@TooOld4School: And life and limb, potentially, in service afterwards.
My personal takeaways. Keep in mind that I’m a NJ resident, so that’s where my interest mostly lies. Due to exceeding the character limit, I had to split this post up - if you’re interested in my rambling, it continues into my next reply.
- The first thing I noticed (which I was bound to notice first), was that Princeton went down only one spot overall, but dropped from the #1 Ivy League to the #3 Ivy League. Princeton, Harvard, and Yale will forever be the big three of the Ivy League and at least top 5-10 schools overall (which is reflected on this list), but this is the first time I remember seeing Yale outrank Princeton. I find Princeton's spot particularly noteworthy when it's #1 overall on US News' National University list from last year, which makes me wonder how it will score on the next US News list. The evil part of me also wonders if people from Princeton care that they went from #1 to #3 in the Ivy League, but I'm not really in a position to mock anybody for that because...
- Having been recently accepted to Columbia, I was glad to see it went up two spots from last year. Unfortunately (for me), Dartmouth went up more spots, and Columbia went from the #6 Ivy League to the #7 Ivy League, making it the second-lowest ranked - and with Cornell just one spot behind and ready to overtake it, to boot. Obviously, it's pretty egotistical for me to complain about coming to a school that's ONLY #6 among a group of the best schools in the country and ONLY #14 out of over 600 schools in the country, so I'll stop complaining before I get rightfully beat down for not being appreciative that I got into an elite school. Still, there is one thing I do want to comment on. I suspect the key reason why Columbia doesn't join Harvard, Yale, and Princeton as the top of the Ivy League and the top four of the entire country is because Columbia has the highest tuition costs in the Ivy League. Not surprisingly, Columbia is the lowest ranked Ivy League on Forbes' Best Value ranking, and I'm definitely looking forward to the death of my bank account. On the plus side, at least Columbia is now the #1 school in its state as opposed to #2 in last year's list. Now I'll stop talking about Columbia's placement before I continue making myself look bad.
Side note: I’m scheduled to attend Columbia GS and in retrospect, I would preferred to attend UPenn LPS - not necessarily because UPenn is ranked higher, but because of the lower tuition (although since UPenn is the second lowest ranked Ivy League on the Best Value list, I might be talking nonsense again). However, I’m not eligible to apply for UPenn LPS (and Brown RUE for that matter) because I already have a bachelor’s degree. Which leads me to my next takeaway…
- The eternal absence of my previous undergraduate institution from this list makes me not regret killing my bank account, my sleep cycle, my GPA, and my mental state at Columbia (while working full-time, no less) when on paper, my undergraduate education is complete. Now I don't believe in using rankings as the main factor in selecting a school, boasting about where I attended school, and putting others down for the school they attended. I'd also like to believe that rankings mean little, if anything, and the college that a student attended means little, if anything in the long run; the student's success in the future is determined by the student. But I'd be lying if I said it didn't bother me that I'm the only member of my family's generation to not attend a university on the Forbes list. Because let's face it, rankings are a factor (as minor as they might be) when it comes to academic rigor, the student body, and future salaries, and nobody would ever say "College is what you make out of it" to someone attending Stanford. There are a number of possible reasons to explain why the previous school I attended isn't on the list, but the bottom line is if it can't crack a list of 650 colleges, it's probably not a good school. Between attending the worst school in my family's generation, hearing my dad insult the academic quality of the school - behind my back and in reference to my brother's educational future, by the way, and seeing my brother get to attend a good school after getting every other single thing I ever wanted, the ultimate kicker is being diagnosed with Asperger syndrome, denying me of many social constructs that people take for granted. Fact is, I will never lead a normal life and be just another hard-working, everyday individual with just enough to get by, which is what a degree from a mediocre college is at least supposed to accomplish. I'm stuck as a failure socially, while limited as to how far I can advance professionally. The salary statistics and the lists of famous alumni don't lie. I don't expect my decision to "redo" my undergraduate education to be seen as an intelligent course of action, especially when most people are just trying to get through college and earn a degree, but this year's ranking just reiterated how I feel. View this as a "do as I say, not as I do" stance - I don't recommend anyone else to take my approach on undergraduate education. Just for the record, I did apply to Columbia at the graduate level first (for journalism) and I was denied.
(continued)
- The previous undergraduate institution in question is Monmouth (NJ, not Illinois), and the great irony is Monmouth's placement in rankings is hurt for the same reason Columbia's is - cost compared to its peers. Unfortunately for Monmouth, instead of being an elite, Ivy League School with worldwide presence, it's a miniscule, regional university with a mediocre reputation in the area, and virtually no presence outside of the area. So while the top privates are able to justify their cost through their academic reputation, Monmouth faces the problem all lower-ranked privates face - you're theoretically paying more for less. If you can't get into a higher ranked school, you can get the same level of education at a cheaper, public option. The only reasons to attend a lower-ranked private seem to come down to financial aid offers and / or location convenience. I'd like to think Monmouth is at least better than Forbes picks Montclair and Stockton (and Monmouth currently is ranked higher than Stockton on US News), but Montclair and Stockton have the benefit of being a lot less expensive. For what it's worth, Monmouth is at least on the Princeton Review's list of the best 382 colleges, while Forbes picks Rowan, Montclair, Stockton, and FDU are not on the Princeton Review's list - although Monmouth also has a nice "Students Study the Least" slapped right next to it. Regardless, the best colleges are going to appear on both lists.
- As a NJ resident, the biggest surprise is seeing TCNJ ranked above Rutgers (and incidentally, in NJ's own big three of Princeton, Rutgers, and TCNJ, only TCNJ went up). For starters, TCNJ's high ranking in the Forbes list, despite classified by US News as a regional university - which don't do so well on the Forbes list when compared to their national brethren - is a testament to the quality of the school. Now Rutgers vs. TCNJ will probably be a never-ending debate over which is the state's top public school - the TCNJ camp will point to a lower acceptance rate, higher graduation rates, and overall better stats; the Rutgers camp will point to having a larger student body that impacts statistics, more courses offered (especially at the graduate level), and the potential for a higher salary. For me, I don't really see one as superior to the other. Preference really comes down to what you're looking for on a personal level - such as if you want to attend a big school or a small school. Rutgers does have more national presence, but a lot of that stems from serving as the state's flagship institution, being significantly larger, having more courses (again, particularly for graduate students). A co-worker and my brother were quick to call nonsense on TCNJ outranking Rutgers, but they would say that as they are Rutgers people.
- Aside from my personal issues, a reason why I applied to Columbia undergraduate was to assist me in getting into the graduate journalism school. I'll admit that I haven't done as much research on this as I should have, but my understanding is the top ranked schools with graduate journalism are Columbia, Northwestern, and UC Berkeley. Northwestern was previously ranked the highest of the three, but now Columbia is, which gives me another reason to prioritize its graduate journalism over the rest. On the flip side, I know it looks better on a resume to have a different school listed for your undergraduate and graduate degree (flexibility). This has me leaning towards UC Berkeley and not just because of the lower tuition - it looks a lot better to have been in an area completely different from the one I'm in now, especially if I want to continue a career in journalism. And it's only one spot below Northwestern. Then again, maybe the Monmouth degree isn't completely useless if I can list it for my undergraduate education and Columbia for my graduate education. Well, I certainly don't want to get ahead of myself - let's see if I survive Columbia undergraduate first before I start making plans for graduate school.
@ExpertOnMistakes: No one in the real world cares about such minute differences in rankings.
Most wouldn’t even know whether Penn is ranked above Columbia or not (or about RU vs. TCNJ).
@expertonmistakes I agree with @PurpleTitan. D attends Penn and was also admitted to Columbia. Penn is great, but it was a difficult decision for her. I think the best one is the one that is better for you. They are both excellent quality.
Agree with the two previous posts. These rankings are fun to look at and talk about, but there’s no reason to take them that seriously and go into an in-depth analysis.
Forbes Ranking is a joke
From the Forbes “methodology” page cited above:
Alumni salaries, too, may in fact say less about the school’s actual effectiveness than about what kinds of students they attract, their major choices, and their career choices.
At one point in recent years, up to 40% of recent graduates at #1 Harvard were choosing careers in investment banking and business consulting. Harvard doesn’t even offer an undergraduate business major. If anything, those career preferences may suggest Harvard isn’t quite as effective as some other schools at motivating students for careers in the academic fields it actually teaches, or in related fields such as law and medicine, or in relatively low-paying public service jobs. Or else it’s just very good at admitting the kinds of students who are attractive to IB/BC firms, whose high salaries are too great to resist especially after spending $250K on a college education.
I’m not convinced that the Harvard (/Yale/Princeton/Stanford) brand isn’t a significant factor in some alumni salary outcomes. If you think it is, and that’s worth something to you, fine. Just don’t confuse that with a significant difference in academic quality between those and some other schools ranked farther down on the Forbes list.
take a school like TCNJ. They have a large % of education majors. ie LOW SALARIES for alumni . By not separating
that out from say the business school what do you think that does to over all ranking Forbes methodology uses. Frankly it still ranks higher than Stevens LOL. So if you looked at value and considered the separate majors TCNJ that’s why TCNJ ranks so much higher in most other lists. I totally agree, this speaks to the notion of prestige and not actual results/value.
@PurpleTitan First of all, I said the difference between Columbia and UPenn in the rankings wasn’t the key issue in why I probably would have preferred UPenn LPS over Columbia GS, the key issue is the cost, which is supposed to be lower at UPenn. The comparison between the two was really intended as a lead-in to my next thought, which was related to why I’m not eligible to apply to UPenn LPS - I already have a bachelor’s degree, and as much as I don’t want to admit it, rankings and reputation influenced my decision to apply to Columbia GS.
In any case, there are people who certainly do care about “minute differences” - even if it’s not a big care, it’s still a care. When you look at UPenn being ranked above Columbia or not, you’re obviously talking about elite schools, and it’s only human for the elite to want to be the elite of the elite. You don’t want to just be the best, you want to be THE best. That’s what leads to articles and threads comparing and ranking the Ivy League schools. Overall, I think this is a non-issue so long as you’re at an elite school because of the obvious opportunities you can receive, but Columbia’s placement is still going to be an interest to me when that’s where I’m currently heading. If the rankings are of any interest to us, our school’s placement and status among its peers is bound to be an interest to us because that’s part of our background. We wear the clothes of our college and put college decals on our vehicles for a reason.
As for Rutgers vs. TCNJ, that’s an interest for me as a NJ resident since those are the two top public schools in the state (and traditionally #2 and #3 overall behind you-know-who). I suspect those outside of NJ don’t care too much about comparing these schools, but there is a debate over which is superior in the state and people in the state know about Rutgers vs. TCNJ. Just refer to the top Urban Dictionary definitions of TCNJ, which make sure to trash Rutgers and explain why TCNJ is superior. Anyways, the fact that two Rutgers people I know were quick to criticize the Forbes list for ranking TCNJ higher seems to indicate people (at least those who attend these schools) do care about this minute difference.
Overall though, much my interest in this list stems from what’s not a minute difference in rankings - to go to a top #20 school from a school that’s not even on the rankings in the first place.
@Much2learn Thanks, and I agree that when it comes to the elite schools, it really depends on which one is a better fit, not which one is ranked slightly higher. There’s no denying both are among the best for students. Like I said above, the key reason why I suspect I would have preferred UPenn just comes down to supposedly having a lower cost than Columbia. Again, the only reason I made the comparison is because both have options for older students (GS at Columbia, LPS at UPenn), and the factor that disqualifies me from applying to UPenn LPS (having a bachelor’s degree) led into my next thought.
@simba9 As I said from the beginning of that rambling post, that “in-depth analysis” is really just my personal thoughts on the rankings. It’s not meant to be intelligent analysis intended to make sense of the list and help others, it’s my commentary on it. It’s my approach and response, and I don’t feel there’s anything wrong with anybody’s approach to responding to this list so long as they recognize their approach and response aren’t law. Besides, our responses to these rankings are obviously prompted by looking at them, and posting about our responses is what leads to us talking about them. Plus, I also wanted try to explain why I take components of these rankings seriously and my response is such. I believe everyone else has the right to respond as they see fit and if they don’t take rankings seriously, they shouldn’t have to.
@pdlhaene Which is perfect example of what I wrote above - it’s for us to decide if these rankings are a joke or not. There’s no right or wrong answer here, we either take the Forbes ranking into consideration when picking a school, or we don’t.