<p>I mean we're begging for other rankings to get into the market to diffuse the USNWR's, but when you spell nationally prominent school names incorrectly - it says a lot about the operation. </p>
<p>America's</a> Best Colleges - Forbes.com </p>
<p>"Students accounts from Ratemyprofessors.org were taken into account" - very reliable.. this whole operation is a big ol' FAIL IMHO. Better luck next time Forbe (no S).com</p>
<p>-shrug- May not be even close to 100% accurate, but still a fun read through. That is kinda hilarious though that they spelled some names wrong. There’s probably more than a few errors if you really look at it.</p>
<p>We’ve been to the hospital at Hopkins and the gift shop has a t-shirt that says: “It’s Johnsssssss.” Ooops.</p>
<p>Another reason I don’t put much stock into these kind of rankings.</p>
<p>The mistakes do call into question the diligence used to compile the rankings. For example, take Monmouth College. Monmouth College is a small liberal arts college in Illinois and is ranked #484 in the Fobes ranking. However, I can’t tell whether the ranking is for Monmouth College (in Illinois) or Monmouth University (in New Jersey). The contact link is to Monmouth University in New Jersey – not Monmouth College in Illinois. And the list of “famous alumni” is from Monmouth University, not Monmouth College.</p>
<p>Additionally, Monmouth University, a school with over 4,500 undergraduates, does not appear in the rankings, while Monmouth College is listed. I don’t know if the ranking for Monmouth is truly for Monmouth College – or if it is actually the ranking of Monmouth University.</p>
<p>From the Forbes.com website:</p>
<p>487 Monmouth College NJ 33,750 1,328 </p>
<p><a href=“Forbes List Directory”>Forbes List Directory;
<p>More mistakes…The University of Pittsburgh is rated #201, with a total student population of 81, undergradute population of 62, and graduation rate of 3%.</p>
<p>???</p>
<p>I think they should have emailed the article to their mom to proofread.</p>
<p>^^ HO HO, I’d be happy to pay 14K as oos in Pitt…Good buy…</p>
<p>and Drew has a higher ranking than Mich…LOL</p>
<p>Is this a joke?</p>
<p>undergrad teaching quality is important, and USNWR doesnt get at it well. But Ive looked at ratemyprofessors, and it seems often to be dominated by a few kids with a grudge against a particular faculty member. </p>
<p>If you know anything about web 2.0, user generated info, etc, I think you know that to be meaningful you need some kind of editing/moderating, at least crowd moderating, determination of reliable users, exclusion of bad data points, etc. Done right, I am told, it can be very powerful. Look at Wikipedia, where bad info can be deleted, where edit wars result in intervention by editors, or even votes by editors, etc. Its not quite the anarchy most anon rating sites are. AFAICT ratemyprofessors is such an anarchy, and really is not reliable at all.</p>
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<p>LOL!!</p>
<p>Seriously, though, anyone who would base 10% of their ranking on “Who’s Who in America” and 17% on “RateMyProfessors” can’t be taken seriously.</p>
<p>The only kids who post on ratemyprofessor are the ones who really love the prof OR really hate him/her. That is a ridiculous source.</p>
<p>Hmm…maybe Forbes.com is secretly owned by USNews, and they have devised this new ranking system to make the USNews ranking system look good by comparison.</p>
<p>Hey, don’t you be messin’ with ratemyprofessor (not that I got high ratings, or anything…;))</p>
<p>^^They must love you, Garland.</p>
<p>Oh, please. Why do they even bother to print this garbage?</p>
<p>Student Evaluations from RateMyProfessor.com (17.5%): a spotty, unedited and unmoderated grab-bag of comments, typically on a small fraction of a schools’ professors, from a small self-selected (i.e., non-scientific) group of students, including many with a gripe against a particular prof. Zero credibility.</p>
<p>Student evaluations from MyPlan.com (5%): ditto.</p>
<p>Salary of alumni from Payscale.com (15%): unverified, self-reported “data” from a small self-selected group of alumni (or people who identify themselves as alumni, as this is also unverified). Excludes alumni with graduate and professional degrees as their high earnings might skew the results in favor of schools that produce a lot of financially successful professionals. Figures not adjusted for regional variations in cost of living, even though according to one popular cost-of-living calculator it takes a salary of $101,000 in New York City to buy the same standard of living you get for $50,000 in Minneapolis-St. Paul. Credibility: maybe about a 1 on a scale of 1-5, where 5 is high. </p>
<p>Listings of alumni in Who’s Who in America (10%): Oh, I remember that publication. It’s the one that keeps sending me and all my friends letters saying we can buy our way in to its listing of the nation’s noteworthies for a small annual fee. The letter and the “data” are both garbage.</p>
<p>Alumni on Forbes/CCAP Corporate Officers List (5%): OK, that sounds like a valuable list. But what about successful alumni who make major contributions in other areas, like medicine, law, academia, the arts, government, or what have you? Don’t those count?</p>
<p>Seriously, the Forbes ranking must be some kind of bad joke. It would be hard to come up with a ranking methodology LESS CREDIBLE than this one (though it might be fun to try). I don’t like to think ill of people; so being generous, perhaps this was just their little insiders’ way of mocking the US News ranking, which is also based on a bunch of seriously flawed (but slightly less obviously so) metrics?</p>
<p>Yeah, MDmom–the four random students who posted did love me, though I got poor “easiness” marks. Who knows what the other several hundred over that same timeframe thought, though. In all seriousness, RMP is good for my ego, but terrible science.</p>
<p>Funniest thing, though, is I got lower easiness marks than my H (on ratemyteacher). He works very hard to be a curmudgeon, so he’s appalled that someone thinks he’s not draconianly difficult.</p>
<p>
That’s getting back at 'em!</p>
<p>I also noticed that they listed the OOS cost for some state colleges rather than in-state. This so called ranking is totally bogus.</p>
<p>^^^Good catch! Could I interest you in editing my D’s college papers?^^</p>
<p>I am so grateful that you aren’t easy, Garland! All but one of the handful who posted about me loved me. I’m not too easy, but I teach easy courses.</p>
<p>I do like the concept of the Forbes ratings - how do kids do once they get there in terms of graduation rates, and after. But the method is absurd. I’m generally not a reader of Forbes, but I thought they were a bit more professional than this.</p>