Forbes College Rankings 2010 are OUT! Williams is #1

College Search & Selection
161

<p>Garbage rankings. Not only are the actual rankings trash, it’s the methodology that’s most ****ty.</p>

<p>"First, they measure how much graduates succeed in their chosen professions after they leave school, evaluating the <strong>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%)</strong>.</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 <strong>websites RateMyProfessors.com (17.5%) and MyPlan.com (5%).</strong> 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>Oh my, Payscale.com, RateMyProfessors.com, and MyPlan.com. Then there’s Who’s Who in America and a “the number of alumni listed in a Forbes/CCAP list of corporate officers.” At first, I thought “well, maybe these rankings aren’t completely terrible, they’re measuring some part of undergraduate satisfaction, right?” Good luck with that when 67.5% of your methodology is garbage! I’d better go online and 5-star all my profs at RateMyProfessors.com and list myself at 300k on PayScale (which, by the way, only measures salaries for people with undergrad degrees - sorry doctors, lawyers, engineers, etc., looks like the IBankers and old money win again!). I’d better respond to that joke Who’s Who, too; I’ve never even heard of MyPlan.</p>

<p>No matter how you look at it, this another joke in Forbes’ long line of ‘em. Christ, just look at their front page. “Highest-Paid Actresses.” “America’s Coolest Cities.” “America’s Best Fans.” Haha. “The World’s Billionaires” is still more popular than “America’s Best Colleges,” so I wonder how successful Forbes’ management feels this ploy to raise viewership is. It is #2, though.</p>

162

<p>^^^^Best post I’ve read here on CC in eons!</p>

163

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<p>Boy, if only that were the worst outcome to emerge from this poll. In any event, I think that kind of gaming would be pretty easy to spot and even if it became widespread, it would tend to factor out the results.</p>

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<p>Again, it seems as if Forbes can’t catch a break. There are posters to this thread who are convinced of just the opposite – that Payscale does NOT screen for graduate degrees – and, who argue that would be a bad thing (because it would only be measuring the value added by the graduate degee, not the u/g institution.) </p>

<p>Be truthful. If it were the other way around, you’d be the first to accuse Forbes of comparing apples with oranges. </p>

<p>As for self-reporting triple the amount of your true salary, it seems to me that you would have to assume an extremely high degree gamesmanship to motivate someone to register with Payscale, invent a fake cv and then inflate their salary history – all for the sake of improving their alma mater’s Forbes survey ranking. Yeah, I’m sure there are enterprising students and recent grads with nothing else better to do with their time (and money.) My attitude is the same as with ratemyprofessor: Have at it.</p>

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<p>I think your confusing Who’s Who in America with a bunch of other imitator/vanity publications. It’s actually pretty hard to get into Who’s Who.</p>

164

<p>forbes has some stupid criteria for the rankings…</p>

165

<p>Do they just pick names out of a hat?</p>

<p>I would point out all their flawed rankings, but I rather not spend the next year doing so.</p>

166

<p>Maybe Forbes is creating these rankings as a satire against ranking fad obsession in general.</p>

<p>Pretty funny Forbes, you made me question rankings in general as well.</p>

<p>If that is Forbes plan, it’s definitely working.</p>

167

<p>Full PA is even better then the Forbes Rankings.</p>

168

<p>What is even more annoying is the endless number of pages.</p>

<p>What if your university is ranked #500? Do you have to flip through all those pages? Ridiculous. The pages all load so slowly too, ugh!</p>

169

<p>Forbes is so bad at this list… they put GW at 291, Williams as 1, Penn at 36. That’s just crazy.</p>

170

<p>UH…</p>

<p>No.</p>

171

<p>The only rankings that are respectable are USNWR (domestic national univ. and liberal arts) and ARWU (international rankings).</p>

<p>Other than that, Forbes <— LAWL. </p>

<p>Stick with ranking billionaires Forbes! Don’t quit your day job.</p>

172

<p>Forbes Methodology:
Listings of Alumni in Who’s Who in America (10%)</p>

<p>That makes this rather interesting: [The</a> Hall of Lame - Forbes.com](<a href=“http://www.forbes.com/forbes-life-magazine/1999/0308/063.html]The”>The Hall of Lame)</p>

173

<p>I’m not convinced by a lot of the things on rate my professor so hopefully the Forbes College rankings will start to become much more useful. I think a lot of the things written by the public are not all that accurate (also, for overseas colleges, there’s very little comment - see for instance my school, the University of Birmingham in the UK [University</a> of Birmingham - BIRMINGHAM](<a href=“http://www.ratemyprofessors.com/SelectTeacher.jsp?sid=12875]University”>http://www.ratemyprofessors.com/SelectTeacher.jsp?sid=12875) )</p>

<p>Alan</p>

174

<p>lol ratemyprofessors.com?? I think any question about the legitimacy of this can be answered just by going on that site…</p>