@fallenchemist that may be how 10 percent of the “honorable” people look at it. but most people look at it as going to a prestigious university will give me more opportunities and a better alum network. Most people don’t find their fit they just go to as prestigious of a university as possible because this is where most big companies recruit.I do agree wit @micmatt513 you can start worrying about fit and campus style and whatnot when you are comparing between two similarily prestigious schools, like if you get into all of the top 20 schools you can look at fit because you’ll have tremendous job prospects either way
It worked great even for me, and I’m only 10 years of out high school (although I used Fiske, not Barron’s). Did the same thing with MSAR+Princeton Review for medical school too.
^^Ok, this is how my daughter - a senior in high school, applying for colleges now - formed her list.
I bought her a Fiske Guide to Colleges, and a guide called “Excellent Schools for B students” (or something like that, I’ll have to go look at the title again…) We also checked out from the library, Colleges that Change Lives, and the Washington Monthly Guide to Other Colleges, something like that…
Her final list includes two schools that we first read about in the Washington Monthly guide, and one school we read about in Fiske.
We also found out about the Midwest Student Exchange Program list. Since D seemed to prefer mid-sized public campuses on our initial college visits, and the MSEP list is full of those at great tuition rates, she and I looked up every single school on that list in Minnesota, Wisconsin, Missouri, and Indiana. We used college data.com and the school’s websites to see average incoming freshmen profiles, list of majors, etc. and see how she’d fit in. (We did this with schools we read about in college guides, as well.)
She added two schools from the MSEP list.
We never looked at US News and World Report - or Forbes. For one, I didn’t want to discourage her if it turned out the schools she liked were ranked low. I have no idea what her school’s rankings are, and neither does she. I never knew mine, and everything turned out fine in my college career and life, so…
P.S. We did look at the online Washington Monthly’s rankings - which ranks schools by factors such as community service hours required to graduate, financial aid given to needy, etc. I found a couple of private LACs on that list that I liked for her, but by that time, she had made up her mind not to attend a small LAC.
That is an opinion, not a fact, unless you can point me to a survey that proves your assertion. Personally I think it is closer to 50-50, but I have no proof either.
@fallenchemist sorry for the wording but most of MY friends and kids at MY school try to get into the best colleges possible for the best post-graduation opportunities. A lot of my rich friends, look for fit and the type of campus they like and whatnot
That’s great, but do you really think YOUR friends at YOUR school are representative of most of America? The very fact that you describe a lot of your friends as “rich” answers that question immediately. Your original statement had no qualifications about being only about your sphere of friends, but was stated as being about the whole country, or even the whole world. There are a lot more middle and lower class people in economic terms than there are of everyone else. Be careful of making sweeping statements based on personal knowledge only.
I’m sorry about that and i never said a lot of my friends were rich i said a lot of my rich friends which could mean i only have about 5 friends that i consider rich and 4 of them look for fit and whatnot but a large percent of my friends are middle class and the few of my friends that I consider rich(parents make well over 300 k) their siblings don;t seem to care about post graduate oppurtonities as much as the middle class kids do
Well, I was giving you the most favorable scenario because if you only know 5 rich people, that isn’t representative of anything, just a small number of anecdotes. I don’t mean to beat this to death, just saying that this is why surveys are required and they have to be random and very carefully constructed. Because if we could just go off personal experiences and claim that “that’s just the way it must be for all”, you and I are at a standoff because our experiences don’t seem to be at all the same. It would be interesting to know just how pervasive the impact of these rankings are, since they draw so much attention from the media every year. But I think that would be a VERY hard study to do right.
The fact that it puts Pomona as the #1 school in the country gives the list no credibility.
(As does a lot of other crazy placements of schools on that list)
U.S. News does a more accurate assessment but is still flawed. Any thoughts?
I agree with you completely, @Dave_Berry. And many students that get into very prestigious universities are burnt out and do not try very hard, especially since they think they already made it. I know this doesn’t apply to everyone, but I do believe this mindset affects a significant amount of these students at top 30 universities. Is there evidence to back this up?