<p>America's</a> Top Colleges</p>
<p>I have to ask... Which idiot made this list and why is it so messed up? Hopkins at 78? LOL.</p>
<p><em>cries in a corner for not going to a top 50 school</em></p>
<p>Whoever makes this list certainly does not like Cornell.</p>
<p>^
Or WashU or Hopkins or Berkeley.</p>
<p>Lol, what are their rankings? I did not go past Cornell.</p>
<p>I really wonder how they rank schools…</p>
<p>[url=<a href=“CollegeLifeHelper.com”>CollegeLifeHelper.com]Methodology[/url</a>]</p>
<p>No one with a decent amount of knowledge would take that list seriously anyway.</p>
<p>@Metronomic - That is a very subjective statement to make, much like the entire rankings system. Just because you disagree with a particular list does not mean that those who happen to agree with it lack a “decent amount of knowledge.” In my personal opinion, the Forbes list does seem to be pretty far off on a lot of its rankings, but it’s not completely inconsistent with other views (i.e. it isn’t like this list places Harvard at #200). I do appreciate that it ranks both universities and LACs together however.</p>
<p>On a positive note. USA Today ranks Ithaca as the #1 college town for population of 250,000 or less: </p>
<p>[Best</a> college towns (and cities) ranked - USATODAY.com](<a href=“http://www.usatoday.com/news/education/2010-09-08-collegedestinationsONLINE_ST_N.htm]Best”>http://www.usatoday.com/news/education/2010-09-08-collegedestinationsONLINE_ST_N.htm)</p>
<p>Onto my critique of the methodology:</p>
<ol>
<li>Student satisfaction
WAY too much weight is put on RateMyProfessor.com. They should flip the weighting and put it more heavily on freshman-to-sophomore retention rates. VERY few professors have more than a handful of evaluations on RateMyProfessor making them unreliable, and often misleading; usually attracting extremes of either really good or really bad, with students in the middle unmotivated to post a review.</li>
</ol>
<p>Student satisfaction is really hard to measure too. On any given day Cornell is probably more stressful than all but a handful of other schools (but not as much as some would have you believe). But I think most look back on that experience as very rewarding.</p>
<ol>
<li><p>Post-Graduate Success
Payscale.com is not the most reliable source for pay. I have no idea what those other publications are, but trying to measure “prominence” of alumni is really difficult. Alumni network size would probably be the least-bad estimator simply because large alumni networks afford students more opportunities. Second, Cornell has a HUGE variety of majors. Sure, our Engineers will set a high bar for after graduation pay, but most Cornell students aren’t going for high paying banking or Engineering jobs. Other schools cater much more to higher paying professions. </p></li>
<li><p>Student debt
Meh, I don’t think this belongs in the rankings. It’s an important factor, but I think it’s more useful for each individual student to decide if a particular college offers sufficient aid, based on other merits.</p></li>
<li><p>Four-year graduation rate
I would think this would have to do more with quality of the students rather than the school. Yet Forbes claims selectivity isn’t a factor in their rankings. </p></li>
<li><p>Academic success
Umm, only counting a few awards and some PhD’s is hugely biased towards certain majors. It seems (only scanning the methodology), that prestige in science/engineering is not properly accounted for. Not all majors are conducive to PhD’s either. What about pre-med students who go on to be M.D.s or those who get their J.D.'s in law? What about those students who get a specialized Masters degree (or really any Masters degree?).</p></li>
</ol>
<p>@csdad - I actually laughed when I read that list, because it puts Bridgeport, CT as #3 for small cities. I lived in Bridgeport for most of my childhood, and it’s probably one of the worst cities in CT, if not the worst. In some parts of it, hearing gunshots is pretty commonplace.</p>
<p>That’s not to mock Ithaca’s place on the list of course, I’ve never been there and I’m sure it’s a great college town.</p>
<p>Bridgeport is a crazy place. It is surrounded by some of the richest and most exclusive towns in the entire country and then you cross the line and hit that. You do not won’t to go there ever. It is the worst place in CT along with New Haven (Yale) and hartford. Do not go to that place for college under any circumstance with any SAT scores you achieve.</p>
<p>I’ve always been curious about Connecticut. Feels like a different country.</p>
<p>Why does that list also claim that Buffalo and Trenton are top areas?</p>