No one seems to be talking about the latest Forbes college rankings that came out about a month ago, so I’m starting a new discussion thread here. Anyone surprised? Thoughts? How does the metric compare to USNWR and WSJ/THE? Why do some schools rise/drop so much? Which ranking should we be looking at as the “golden standard”?
Berkely
Yale
Princeton
Stanford
Columbia
MIT
Harvard
UCLA
UPenn
Northwestern
Dartmouth
Duke
Cornell
Vanderbilt
UCSD
Amherst
USC
Williams
Pomona
UC Davis
Georgetown
Michigan
UChicago
Rice
Florida
Brown
UWashington
UNC-Chapel Hill
West Point
UVA
UIUC
Wellesley
WashU - St. Louis
Georgia Tech
Emory
Bowdoin
JHU
Tufts
UCSB
Caltech
Notre Dame
UMD
Swarthmore
Middlebury
UT-Austin
Claremont McKenna
UC Irvine
Colgate
CMU
Texas A&M
Comparing the list from 2019, biggest movers in the T50 are:
Georgetown -6
Harvard -6
Pomona -7
UChicago -7
Middlebury -8
Davidson -9
Bowdoin -10
CMU -12
Wesleyan -14
Boston College -15 (fell out of T50)
JHU -15
Claremont McKenna -17
Swarthmore -18
Brown -19
Washington and Lee -21 (fell out of T50)
Air Force Academy -23 (fell out of T50)
Notre Dame -23
Naval Academy -31 (fell out of T50)
Caltech -32
NYU -55 (fell out of T50)
Harvey Mudd -66 (fell out of T50)
Haverford -165 (fell out of T50)
Bates -190 (fell out of T50)
In 2008, Forbes.com began publishing an annual list of America’s Top Colleges .[1] Post-graduate success (alumni salaries from PayScale and data from the federal Department of Education) constitutes 35% of the score. Student debt levels constitute 20% of the score. Student experience (retention rates reported by the Department of Education and data from Niche) constitutes 20% of the score. Graduation rates constitute 12.5% of the score. Academic success (using both the percentage of a school’s student body that goes on to obtain doctorate degrees, and those students who have won one of a diverse array of prestigious academic awards) constitutes 12.5%. Public reputation is not considered, which causes some colleges to score lower than in other lists. A three-year moving average is used to smooth out the scoring.
Caltech at #40? JHU at #37? And what exactly happened at Bates this past year that caused it to drop 190 spots? I think Forbes needs to go back to the drawing board.
Seems like Forbes’ ranking methodology is particularly suited to those planning a career in the high earning fields of finance, medicine, engineering, private law practice and comp sci. Less so for academia or government. Seems biased in favor of salaries and utilitarian notion of higher education, which may explain the hard hit on places like Bates. To me WSJ seems more user-satisfaction based and USNWR is more peer review influenced with significant counterbalancing for social mobility indicators. I am a huge fan of Trip Advisor, so I find the WSJ approach most balanced and useful for my kids, and in line with my perceptions of success from my professional life.
CMU is ranked one spot ahead of A&M? CMU is way harder to gain admission than many of the publics, especially in-state.
Boston College out of Top 50? No Wake Forest?
West Point is #29 but no Naval Academy?
NYU has a fabulous B-school, arts, intl relations, etc.
Did the publics go up this year due to changing focus on diversity and/or Pell Grants?
If I understood a couple of the more nebulous WSJ/THE criteria, I’d get behind it more. Instead, I go with the US News and then look at major rankings and college outcome data from the colleges.
None of the ranking lists have a clearly defined target criteria they are trying to measure and validating rankings against. Instead they make a formula with a bunch of arbitrary weightings for different metrics and publish the output of that formula. Different formulas and weightings may produce very different output rankings lists, but weightings are generally chosen to keep HYPSM… type colleges on top, so the rankings look correct. It s surprising that Forbes did something different from this historical pattern and selected weightings that put Berkeley on top in the new 2021 ranking.
A comparison of the 2019 and 2021 weightings used in the Forbes formula is below. There are 2 majors changes. One is they dropped the Niche survey, and the second is they added a new “Return on Investment” category that divides by the net price of the college. I’m guessing the latter category relates to why publics that have a lower net cost for in state often had large increases compared to 2019. All of the colleges that had >20 place increases as listed in the first post were publics. All of the colleges that had large decreases were higher sticker price privates or military, particularly LACs.
Salary – 20% in 2019, 20% in 2021 Niche Survey – <20% in 2019, 0% in 2021 Retention Rate – >0% in 2019, 10% in 2021
Debt – 20% in 2019, 15% in 2021
Forbes Leaders List – 15% in 2019, 15% in 2021 Return on Investment – 0% in 2019, 15% in 2021
Graduation Rate – 12.5% in 2019, 15% in 2021
Fullbright/Truman/… Rate – 12.5% in 2019, 10% in 2021
No the changes occur every year, because by reshuffling the criteria, “news” is made. If the criteria remained the same every year, the results would remain largely the same - thus it wouldn’t “produce” the links and coverage that this is meant to produce.
Yep… This is why lists really have a small impact but always good for bragging rights. When I started this journey like 7 years ago with my daughter people were citing like Niche etc and using it where it made them feel good. I am at fault a bit when Michigan was the number 1 public or best campus or 40 majors in the top ten… Oops… Did it again …
But some of these ratings are just silly at best. My daughter went her second 2 years to Beloit college. Probably ranked like 275 or something. But it was a great school for her and her friends that went there.
Yes, thanks. Success (salaries) 35% – benefits schools w/ focus professional degrees like engr/business. How many years out does it look? Seems like T20 would gap higher over time. Debt 20% – benefits public unis and T20ish that are need blind. What about students that are low SES in public/private? Retention rate 20% – benefits high income and high stat unless adjustments are made for Pell Grants, diversity Grad rate 12.5% – should this be higher weighted than retention rate? Again income and stat driven (AP/dual credits, need met, etc.) Academic success 12.5% – benefits LACs due to PhD focus?
It seems like a darn good ranking with some tweaks for where you start out relative to where you finish.
Those are old weightings from a formula used several years ago. The weightings look similar to the 2017 formula (anything 2018+ includes Forbes leaders list), but do not match exactly. I posted the 2021 formula weightings in an earlier post, which includes things like a 15% weighting for “return on investment,”. It sounds like ROI divides by sticker price for the college. I suspect this relates to why publics generally had a large improvement in rankings over 2019, when “return on investment” was not part of the formula.
A comparison of the top colleges using the 2 formulas listed in this thread is below. As noted, publics do much better with the new formula. Caltech does much worse.
2017 Forbes Formula – (35% salary + Forbes leaders list, 20% debt, 15% retention rate, 12.5% grad rate, 12.5% post-grad PhD/awards, 5% Niche survey)
1 . Harvard
2. Stanford
3. Yale
4. Princeton
5. MIT
6. Caltech
7. Penn
8. Duke
…
29. Berkeley
…
48. UCLA
2021 Forbes Formula – (35% salary + Forbes leaders list, 15% ROI, 15% debt, 15% grad rate, 10% retention rate, 10% post-grad PhD/awards)
1 . Berkeley (up 28 from #29)
2. Yale
3. Princeton
4. Stanford
5. Columbia
6. MIT
7 Harvard (down 6 from #1)
8. UCLA (up 40 from #48)
…
40 Caltech (down 34 from #6)
It’s a made up list of same schools rearranged slightly every year. Any grade schooler could put together the same list, and if it gets published in Forbes, it’ll be hailed as the most insightful list yet. It still bewilders me that people obsess over those things.
Caltech would have been by far the priciest college for our family (average income for SF Bay Area) as per their Net Price Calculator. Not quite sure how they were so off from a great number of schools that we looked into. I didn’t dig deeper because my daughter wasn’t interested in applying after a tour. But maybe that hurts the ROI?
…