Forbes Best colleges list

Parents Forum
1

<p>America's</a> Best Colleges on Shine</p>

<p>Here's their criteria
[quote]
To answer these questions, the staff at CCAP gathers data from a variety of sources. They use 11 factors in compiling these rankings, each of which falls into one of five general categories. First, they measure how much graduates succeed in their chosen professions after they leave school, evaluating the average salaries of graduates reported by Payscale.com (30%), the number of alumni listed in a Forbes/CCAP list of corporate officers (5%), and enrollment-adjusted entries in Who's Who in America (10%).</p>

<p>Next they measure how satisfied students are with their college experience, examining freshman-to-sophomore retention rates (5%) and student evaluations of classes on the websites RateMyProfessors.com (17.5%) and MyPlan.com (5%). They look at how much debt students rack up over their college careers, considering the four-year debt load for a typical student borrower (12.5%), and the overall student loan default rate (5%). They evaluate how many students actually finish their degrees in four years, considering both the actual graduation rate (8.75%) and the gap between the average rate and a predicted rate, based on characteristics of the school (8.75%).</p>

<p>And finally, the last component is based on the number of students or faculty, adjusted for enrollment, who have won nationally competitive awards (7.5%), like Rhodes Scholarships or Nobel Prizes. (Click here for a complete methodology.)</p>

<p>CCAP also compiles a best-value ranking comparing school quality to cost. This year it's dominated by the U.S. military's service academies. The top nonmilitary school? New York's Cooper Union for the Advancement of Science and Art, which awards full-tuition scholarships to undergraduates (valued at $34,600 for the 2009-2010 school year). Public schools also fare well on this ranking, as they typically cost less. (See "America's Best College Buys.")</p>

<p>Some readers may disagree with the way we construct our rankings or the weights we apply to the data. Or they may want to consider other variables, such as campus crime rates or SAT scores. So we also offer a do-it-yourself ranking that customizes the process, allowing users to construct their own list according to personal tastes and preferences.

[/quote]

Here is their top 10:</p>

<ol>
<li><p>Williams College</p>

<ol>
<li> Princeton University</li>
<li> Amherst College</li>
<li> United States Military Academy</li>
<li> Massachusetts Institute of Technology</li>
<li> Stanford University</li>
<li> Swarthmore College</li>
<li> Harvard University</li>
<li> Claremont McKenna</li>
<li>Yale University</li>
</ol></li>
</ol>

<p>and the link to their full list America's</a> Best Colleges - Forbes.com</p>

2

<p>This is by far the worst example of any “Best Colleges” I have ever seen. Being familar with many of these, it is a list that Forbes should have been ashamed to release. What were they thinking?</p>

3

<p>Looks good to me LOL. (Williams parent)</p>

4

<p>Forbes “dares” to construct a list putting LACs on par with universities and doesn’t fall victim to the hype of Ivys. What were they thinking?</p>

5

<p>Yes, I saw this listing also and eagerly scrolled down to find D’s college, Cornell. I scrolled and scrolled and scrolled and finally found CORNELL at # 70. Somehow that just doesn’t seem right, considering a top notch research facility, beautiful campus and amazing financial aid. I guess it all comes down to the fact that I know she is going to an amazing school, #2 in the country for her major, and the perfect fit for her.</p>

6

<p>

</p>

<p>I’m sure they hate D’s school. But as with yours, she is happy and thriving in a school which is a perfect fit for her which is what matters.</p>

7

<p>I don’t see the problem with this list. What, a list is only valid if it retains HYP as the top three? Why … because it must?</p>

8

<p>lol…older daughter’s school is below #250 and is tops in her major…</p>

<p>younger daughter’s first choice isn’t listed…at all…and yes, I scrolled down to #600…</p>

9

<p>I’m no expert but their methodology seems a little, um, suspect? Rate My Professor gets 17.5% weight in student satisfaction? My kids laugh at RMP as the place where the disgruntled or besotted love to hang. </p>

<p>As much as I’m not a fan of US News rankings, I think their criteria make far more sense.</p>

10

<p>My reason for thinking the list is absurd has nothing to do with the fact that a place like Williams is # 1. (Funny that my son and I were just in Williamstown. Beautiful place for a vacation, and we really enjoyed ourselves, but a tiny town in the Berkshires, even with the summer theater festival and three museums there or nearby, is not the kind of setting where someone like my son could be happy for an extended period of time.) </p>

<p>But does anyone really think Penn is the 36th best college in the country, Brown the 45th, Cornell 70th, Wash U. St. Louis 76th, and Johns Hopkins 88th? I don’t want to offend anyone by naming names, but please look at some of the colleges listed before them. </p>

<p>And does anyone think that an Internet survey like ratemyprofessors.com is a scientific way of measuring student satisfaction, worth 17.5% of a score? Talk about a self-selected sample. I don’t think my son has ever been on that website; he uses his school’s own internal database of student course evaluations.</p>

<p>And doesn’t basing ratings on graduates’ average salary, and numbers of corporate executives who went there, unfairly penalize schools with larger percentage of graduates who go into lower-paying fields like academia?</p>

11

<p>I use RMP for XU, but I don’t put too much faith in the “he/she is biased toward certain people and for that I got a terrible grade” tales, because usually I presume these were the people who just didn’t try and got a bad grade and are blaming it on the professor. XU is down at 121, and, although I admit tuition is a little high, we have an excellent student retention and graduation rate. The NCAA has given XU attention especially for weighing heavily on athletes about their academic priorities and graduating student athletes at one of the near-the-top rates in the NCAA.</p>

<p>Also, just because your school doesn’t send people off to be Forbes corporates that means they’re a lesser shool? Give me a break.</p>

12

<p>As a grad of CMC, I kind of like this list :)</p>

<p>But in all seriousness it’s an interesting methodology. I will say I always find it interesting that in my graduating class at CMC (of ~220 students) back in the the mid-90s, we had 1 Rhodes Scholar, 4 fullbrights, 2 marshalls, 3 NSF and 1 Intel fellowships (last two are particularly impressive given the small number of science majors). In addition, we were a target school (CMC and Pomona) for the top I-Banks and Consulting firms, had a large number of top tier law school admissions, 100% acceptance for medical school applicants and a significant number of students entering grad school at top institutions. I went into consulting (with a science and math degree and several summers + senior thesis research at a national lab) and eventually went to Kellogg for business school. In my class at Kellogg, there were 11 CMC grads (we were the 3rd most represented undergrad instutution). </p>

<p>CMC is decidedly pre-professional and definitely not the perfect fit for everyone, but I think it’s sometimes underrated on a national level b/c it’s younger and less well known. It’s definitely got a sports focused culture – when I went there over 50% of the student body participated on a NCAA team (and we were pretty competitive at the DIII level) and all students are pretty politically involved (one of the main reasons I went there as a science major was that I didn’t want to be around science majors all the time :slight_smile: and I had a strong interest in history and politics too). Overall, students are pretty happy and pretty successful in their chose fields and given the methodology Forbes used, it makes sense to me that it’s on the list (although I too agree that the weightings given certain things like RMP are silly)</p>

13

<p>I think this is a silly ranking, but I’m always happy to see Williams #1!</p>

14

<p>By all accounts, Williams is superb school. But I think that the large, and esp. the large public, universities which many students attend because it’s the most convenient and cost-effiective option and/or the only type of school which offers their unusual major, are going to have a tougher time making people happy than a small college with 1500 students. My D refused to even visit Williams once she learned they don’t offer campus tours in the winter. That fact told her all she needed to know, and no ranking list or parental prodding could have convinced her otherwise. However, 100% (or close to it) of the kids who end up attending Williams specifically chose that school over other options, whereas at a state school you will always have a segment of students who would have preferred other places but for practical and financial reasons ended up there instead. That does not necessarily mean that the quality of the education is much lower at the large university (though it may be), but just that the student “fit factor” is lower. What if you’re a kid who wants small and nurturing, but plans to major in animal husbandry? You’re going to be much more limited than if you want to major in English, and will liikely have to attend a large state university despite your size preference.</p>

15

<p>The GFG, Williams has 2000 students and my daughter and I most definitely toured on a snowy winter’s day. Perhaps they didn’t offer tours over Christmas break? </p>

<p>It’s definitely a self-selecting school where student happiness runs high. I’m not sure how Rate My Professor helps Williams out here because it isn’t heavily used by Williams students. They have their own private system for discussing profs and classes.</p>

16

<p>electron, I’m sure that’s EXACTLY what helped Williams out on this list; they have no ratings on RMP, so there are very few bad ratings from disgruntled students looking to blame someone for their grades.</p>

17

<p>We know quite a few kids who go to Ouachita Baptist in Arkansas (they give good merit money), so it was interesting to see them placed above Indiana, Oklahoma, Baylor, Kansas, and Texas Christian University. There are loads of people around here for whom TCU is their dream school…pretty funny that Forbes has it at 426, whereas UT Arlington (that those same folks would never ever consider) is just a bit further down at 472. Glad to see that my son’s school is ranked higher than UT in Austin, when UT would have never admitted him. Funny that University of Dallas (lodged between two highways and perpetually on the “ugliest campuses” lists) ranks 20 places above NYU.</p>

<p>Of course, this is probably all silliness that’s fun to mock…but what if it’s true?</p>

18

<p>

Their methodology is just a disaster. I think bclintonk summed it up well here: <a href=“http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/1065417675-post15.html[/url]”>http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/1065417675-post15.html&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

19

<p>Lets see. I can get an account on Ratemyprofessors without giving my name or anything.</p>

<p>I could then proceed to give high ratings to profs at my DDs school. And low ratings to profs at its peer schools.</p>

<p>Any of us could. So too could the ad cons at any school (though if they were found out the consequences might be greater)</p>

<p>I could give good ratings to the nearest local college to my house, to improve property values. I could give poor ratings to the school that rejected me 33 years ago.</p>

<p>hmmmmmm.</p>

20

<p>I’ll take the RMP over the Who’s Who pay us $ and you are on the list.</p>

<p>I have no issues with Williams being top – I’m a LAC lover and think purple cows are the most interesting mascot, but really the methodology is horrid.</p>