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No the rankings are useless because their methodology views ratemyprofessor and who’s who as legitimate sources of information. If you honestly can’t see why that’s a problem, then you don’t have to worry because no school in New Haven, Cambridge, Ithaca, or Hanover would really value your critical thinking skills much.</p>
<p>well in that case i don’t value the ability of those schools to assess critical thinking skills.</p>
<p>Well, yes, but many people are freaking out simply because they never heard of schools in the top 20.</p>
<p>Edit: Not on here - on Forbes and Yahoo.</p>
<p>^ I found it outlandish that CMC was ranked above Pomona.</p>
<p>Georgia Tech is #242 this is total bs.</p>
<p>Oklahoma baptist college is ahead of them</p>
<p>My favorite part of any thread on rankings is all the people who b–tch about them. Seriously, if you don’t like them…DONT READ THEM. Rankings are always going to be there, regardless of your opinion. Now if you are going to argue about methodology, I’ll give you that. Personally I think rankings are a RELATIVELY useful tool. Forbes IMO is weak. US News is a decent ranking IMO because regardless of what they say about methodology…it is largely based on reputation. Which is good, for people who are looking to get a job after graduating. </p>
<p>Bring on the b—tching.</p>
<p>just saw the Georgia Tech as 242… Can they explain how one of the nation’s borderline Top 5, easily top 10 engineering schools is so far down? Legitimately… I know it was biased towards small schools, but has anyone heard of Berry College in Georgia? Me neither, and I LIVE in Georgia. And yet it was around 100 higher than GT.</p>
<p>When West Point was ranked so high in these rankings, I immediately questioned this terrible ranking.
Check homophobia in West Point:
[Lesbian</a> cadet quits West Point, cites ‘don’t ask’ - Yahoo! News](<a href=“http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20100812/ap_on_re_us/us_west_point_lesbian_cadet]Lesbian”>http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20100812/ap_on_re_us/us_west_point_lesbian_cadet)</p>
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<p>And Forbes expects me to believe I’ll get the best undergrad experience here?</p>
<p>The list does highly weight the strengths of LAC’s and that’s a good thing. LAC’s offer the best undergrad education available. For undergrad, Williams, Amherst, Colby, Bowdoin, Middlebury are better than most Ivies any day–and that’s the opinion of many Ivy grads who’ve been disappointed by their experiences at places like Harvard, where undergrads don’t exactly rule and profs really don’t want to bother with them. The Forbes list may be ridiculous but does it really have less credibility than the one put out by that renowned giant of all things intellectual, US News? Seems like a lot of people here don’t want to reconsider their preconceived notions. Given how ridiculous these lists are and how many people think they were handed down from Mount Sinai, it would be a great thing if more lists were published, all contradicting each other, all given similar credibility. The concept of “prestige” might get more muddled and people might have to base their decisions on something more real.</p>
<p>I would argue that for disciplines such as engineering, the large research universities have the benefit that undergraduates can do research on applications that only one or two LACs could afford. I have friends doing aerospace research, gaining experience that is as valuable as anything learned in classrooms. So the blanket statement that LACs offer “the best undergrad education available”… I’m dubious.</p>
<p>god made adam and eve not adam and steve.</p>
<p>What a joke</p>
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<p>^ Great insight, sailfish. Now that USNWR has become deeply embedded in our consciousness, the top schools there just become natural to us. Data that challenge those assumptions thus become harder for us to wrap our minds around.</p>
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<p>It is pretty much a joke when colleges like Centre (I know Centre is a fine school) and Whitman are 220+ ranks above Georgia Tech. I didn’t even have to look hard to find other fine schools buried deep in the ranking, Howard University 584, Drexel University 552, Rochester Institute of Technology 558, Northeastern University 519, Yeshiva University 439, University of Dayton 419, ** Baylor University 349**.</p>
<p>Rochester Institute of Technology being ranked 558 out of 610 pretty much single handily invalidates this list.</p>
<p>What evidence do you have that student satisfcation at Georgia Tech is higher than at Centre and Whitman?</p>
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<p>One of the professors that I know was rated badly by someone on RateMyProfessor.com for a course he’s never taught. He flagged it, but nothing happened and the bad rating is still there.</p>
<p>But I still hope that Forbes can produce a creditable ranking to compete with USNWR in a few years. It took USNWR quite a while to get to this point. If we have two creditable rankings, it would be harder for the schools to game them.</p>
<p>That probably happens for all colleges though, so that probably doesn’t explain the perceived absurdity of some of the placements (because schools are roughly equally disadvantaged). But you’re rightthat Forbes should come up with a better way to measure satisfaction with instructors.</p>
<p>this is just a bad ranking. idc about prestige. I really don’t. It’s the fact that some schools that ARE notoriously good schools are ranked so poorly. Rate my professors? really? come on guys. This thing is sooo messed up</p>
<p>Comparing apples and oranges doesn’t work. Georgia Tech is undoubtedly great for those who know at 17 that they want to be engineers. But it’s a very specialized education and I know a lot of people who went into engineering at 17 and had second thoughts and second careers before too long. Northeastern?? RIT?? Familiar with both, as a grad student at one and parent of an accepted student at the other. Fine schools but I wouldn’t consider either a top choice for undergraduate education, with the exception of the rare student who is totally focused on a particular field of study offered by these schools and not many others. Again, lists and rankings are pretty meaningless including the one published each year by US News. I don’t see why the Forbes rankings should necessarily be considered less valid.</p>
<p>Rate my professors? </p>
<p>Seriously?</p>