<p>the methodology is suspect, as are some results, so take these with a grain of salt:</p>
<p>America's</a> Best Colleges 2008 - Forbes.com</p>
<p>America's</a> Best Colleges sorted by Rank - Forbes.com</p>
<p>Americas</a> Best Colleges: #1 Princeton University - Forbes.com</p>
<p>
[quote]
They based 25% of the rankings on 7 million student evaluations of courses and instructors, as recorded on the Web site RateMyProfessors.com.
[/quote]
</p>
<p>I'm surprised that this isn't the only time I've seen a study use a site like this for their statistics.</p>
<p>Regardless, it's still interesting to see other publications ranking colleges, especially since Forbes differs from US News by combining research universities with LACs. Thanks for sharing, even if it did only tell us what we already knew! :)</p>
<p>For Princeton to have ranked so high I guess they didn't include smarminess as a negative.</p>
<p>sounds like someone's a little jealous.</p>
<p>in any case, i'm going to have to add that i still think ranking schools in this manner is retarded.</p>
<p>You need some ranking to tell you that Princeton is #1? Psh... =P</p>
<p>cornell is ranked 121 in forbes rankings...lol....</p>
<p>'Student Satisfaction' is too subjective to be used adequately in any college ranking list.</p>
<p>However, I learned something pretty sweet..
Duke may only be #81 but.. 1340-1570 for SAT range.. this means Duke is going to go up in USNWR.
I'm not surprised- all of these Ivies are looking to accept people with interesting backgrounds while Duke goes and accepts the good test-takers who don't really have anything else to offer..</p>
<p>yeah....the ivy's have tons of students who didn't do well on the SAT...that's the 75th percentile for each SAT section or princeton is 790....</p>
<p>Duke (1340-1570)
Brown (1340-1540)
Dartmouth (1330-1550)
U-Penn (1330-1520)
Columbia (1330-1540)
Cornell (1290-1500)</p>
<p>Hmmm.. I wonder who wins overall..</p>
<p>Not going by those numbers I say penn/columbia. And yeah this ranking is horrible, stanford not in the top 10? -__-</p>
<p>Caltech number two!</p>
<p>(Got waitlist-rejected from Princeton. ): ... and yes, I still camp a bit on this forum. The URL of it pops up above the Caltech one in Firefox. :D )</p>
<p>My point is that schools like Penn and Columbia may be rejecting people with better academic qualifications for either yield protection OR accepting people with worse academic qualifications with 'better extracurriculars'. </p>
<p>The student body of Duke may overall be more qualified academically than Penn/Columbia/Cornell/Brown..simply because of their method of admitting students.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>I know which group I'd rather go to school with.</p>
<p>Btw, lower SAT scores may reflect a less privileged socioeconomic/educational background, and not necessarily some sort of intellectual inferiority.</p>
<p>Well keep in mind that Forbes is taking a different angle. They never said "where do the smartest kids go to school?" or "which is the most prestigious institution". I agree that they hammered Dartmouth a little too much, but it's amazing how accurate the top of the list can be even when they use a dog's breakfast methodology.</p>
<p>I like #13</p>
<p>
[quote]
Btw, lower SAT scores may reflect a less privileged socioeconomic/educational background, and not necessarily some sort of intellectual inferiority.
[/quote]
</p>
<p>'May' is the key word.</p>
<p>I'm also basing this off from what I've seen on College Confidential and from my peers... actually those with more privileged socioeconomic backgrounds may actually be more likely to get in with lower scores because they can take on more 'interesting extracurriculars'. </p>
<p>Trust me.
You can be poor and get above a 1500 on the old SAT easily without test prep if you are smart enough.</p>
<p>Here is a very clear, concise and detailed explanation of the Forbes Ranking methodology. Sounds pretty good to me. Rather than giving outsiders (see US News Peer Assessment), some of whom know nothing about a school, the right to decide how good or bad it is, why not give the same weighting to those who know -- the students who attend the school (see Forbes methodology).</p>
<p>Methodology</a> - Forbes.com</p>
<p>The problem with using ratemyprofessor is that students at better schools generally expect more out of their professors.</p>
<p>It's all relative!</p>