<p>When looking at college rankings, which website has more accurate/beneficial stats for?</p>
<p>National</a> University Rankings | Top National Universities | US News Best Colleges</p>
<p>America's</a> Top Colleges - Forbes</p>
<p>BTW, I am just curious/bored... But if you are curious, I am not basing my college decisions on these lists. Lol.</p>
<p>The problem with these lists is they try to provide answers to questions like:
Rank these people from 1 to 100 on who would make the best spouse.</p>
<p>But of the two, I prefer USN - I can’t quite fathom ranking Westpoint, Haverford, and MIT on one scale as Forbes does.</p>
<p>USNews is the credible ranking, although some of the schools rankings go against what most students think (i.e. Columbia above Stanford and WUSTL above Brown). But on the whole, US News reflects the prestige of undergraduate institutions in the United States.</p>
<p>US News and World report is great to look at for raw data, but the rankings are not the end-all-be-all. Forbes rankings are a bit less reputable because it uses sources that are open to manipulation and are less scientific (payscale.com, ratemyprofessor). However, Forbes tries to quantify how successful the university is at graduating successful graduates with good jobs, and attempts to determine where undergraduates are getting a good education. Those things are also important. In researching schools check out Princeton Review rankings, college p r o w ler, and remarks where you can find them. Don’t rely on one or two soruces to find teh right place for you. And don’t believe that if you get into the number one school in any ranking that you are better than the person that is going to state school 201. We haven’t been able to quantify ones worth yet.
Not that you would…but for folks in general.</p>
<p>Forbes is incredibly inaccurate - it means well in its overall intention but the methodology and sources are totally off. For example “Who’s Who” is not highly respected yet its a major criteria point. Similarly “rate my professor” is a bad source as many schools use alternative sites leaving very few data points for these schools.</p>
<p>I prefer Forbes. If you actually read their methodology, they do a good job of justifying why they pick the criteria that they do: </p>
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<li><p>they note that even if RMP scores can be manipulated for certain teachers, they doubt that this will affect the university as a whole, and if it did, it would probably affect other universities in a similar fashion and hence comparisons would still nevertheless be equal.</p></li>
<li><p>The same goes with payscale reports. If you’re investing $XX,000 on a university, you’d like it to be a really good ROI.</p></li>
<li><p>The ‘who’s who’ people add to the prestige of a university, and potentially, although i admit this is a strech, provide future network connections. They also show the quality of people that the university is capable of *producing<a href=“if%20you%20think%20universities%20do%20this”>/i</a></p></li>
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<p>Like all rankings, USN and Forbes look at different criteria. USN looks at which school is the ‘best’ among a multitude of factors (high quality faculty, student retention rate, etc.) Forbes looks at schools as if they were an investment. This is why schools like westpoint are ranked so high (since tuition is really low) but there are some drawbacks to their method, which was the whole controversy with Northeastern. (although i think that was still dumb since NEU wouldn’t have been ranked that low if it wasn’t for other factors as well)</p>
<p>to each his own i guess</p>
<p>Neither is worth the paper they are printed on. Colleges cannot be ranked in any meaningful way. The only thing these rankings accomplish is to motivate colleges to do meaningless, and often harmful things to boost their rankings. People in the know ignore them.</p>
<p>There really isn’t much difference. If you separate the LACs and the Universities in Forbes, the rankings pretty much follow the US News rankings of LACs and Universities. Forbes just tries to combine them.</p>
<p>Your responses are very interesting!! (:</p>
<p>US News in the only ranking any really uses with any uniformity.</p>
<p>^^^ (@annasdad) So, what if you’re not already “in the know”? Suppose you’re a first generation or international student. Suppose you’d really like to get out of state but don’t know anything about schools hundreds of miles away. What do you depend on to make a first-pass selection? Gossip?</p>
<p>In my opinion, colleges can in fact be ranked in several meaningful ways. That’s why we get different rankings with different detailed results. They represent different perspectives (emphasizing cost, selectivity, outcomes, social impact … etc.)</p>
<p>I like this site:
[url=<a href=“http://50topcolleges.com/]50”>http://50topcolleges.com/]50</a> Top Colleges<a href=“Lots%20of%20objective%20information,%20clearly%20presented,%20with%20no%20pretense%20of%20making%20a%20precise%20integer%20ranking.%20%20But%20it’s%20limited%20to%2050,%20and%20there%20are%20many%20other%20good%20choices%20for%20students%20who%20can’t%20get%20into%20those%2050”>/url</a>.</p>
<p>i prefer us news because they classify them into different categories like national universities, regional, liberal arts…</p>
<p>plus they have rankings for other stuff like best value colleges (amount of financial aid & academic), best business (accounting, intl. business…) best engineering… best A schools for B students… everything. </p>
<p>it’s super helpful.</p>
<p>@tk: None of the so-called criteria that any of these charlatans use to rank colleges has ever been shown to correlate to the impact on life of a college’s graduates. And the “best” college for one student may be a terrible college for someone else.</p>
<p>^ “Impact on life of a college’s graduates” is a big and rather fuzzy concept. Yes, a correlation to that would be hard to demonstrate. Rankings that do attempt to compare “impact” (or “outcome”) first have to identify discrete goals (such as social mobility, high income, awards and distinctions), then come up with measurements for each of them. Even if the measurements (such as payscale.com data for alumni income) completely capture what they purport to measure (which they usually don’t), there’s no assurance at all that commensurate impact will occur on the life of any given individual. In fact, some social science research (e.g. Dale & Krueger 2011, 1999) seems to show that, for anyone smart enough to get into the most selective schools, the choice to attend one of those schools or a less selective school ultimately makes no significant impact on lifetime earnings.</p>
<p>So, personally, I don’t have too much confidence in “impact” rankings per se. They don’t measure impact of the academic program per se, they measure the ability of the college to attract people most likely to succeed. For some people, that in itself may be worth comparing.</p>
<p>But annasdad, you didn’t answer my question. What is a better approach to choosing a college if you aren’t already “in the know”?</p>
<p>Figure out what you want from a college (programs, social scene, size, atmosphere, etc.) , make an honest list of your constraints (grades, test scores, geography, money, etc.), and use the many available search tools to develop a list. Then visit if possible - otherwise use communities like this one - and ask a lot of hard, probing questions. Refine the list based on the answers. </p>
<p>That way, you can make a reasonable assessment of the impact each school is likely to have on your life. </p>
<p>My D is applying to 11 schools. Neither she nor I know nor care where any of them rank.</p>
<p>Oh, and I would add - if prestige is one of your important factors, then by all means, consult the rankings - because that is the only thing they reliably measure. But be aware that the only thing prestige gives you is bragging rights, and that only for a limited time. Five years after you graduate, nobody will care whether you went to Harvard or Northern Michigan.</p>
<p>I don’t put any stock in the rankings, but just having looked at the Forbes rankings for the first time, too many school rankings really seem out of whack there. It’s important to make your own assessment as to which school is right for you/your child.</p>
<p>Disagree beyphy wrt your point 2…</p>
<p>Per your quote:</p>
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<p>I think all rankings are flawed but Payscale is particularly flawed because:</p>
<p>1) It surveys baccalaureate degree earners only. </p>
<p>For instance, ~ 65% of the graduates of your future alma mater, UCLA, obtain post-bac degrees over a time of, say, five years. So only ~ 35% of UCLAs pool is eligible for the survey. I would state with a great deal of certainty that the 65%-set graduated with higher honors, at a higher %-tile rank than the 35%-set, and were better candidates for professions and for grad school.</p>
<p>I understand that Payscale wants to measure a us name-brand unfettered, unfiltered through its alumni’s graduate education, L, M, B, school, whatever, but to eliminate its best candidates for the various professions seems to defeat the purpose of measuring a us name-brand.</p>
<p>Within the term bac-holder set, the us that benefit from the survey are us that have many professional bac degrees offerings, those that produce a larger proportion of BS degrees in relation to BAs, and, legitimately, the Ivy us and cs, even though these latter produce many, mostly post-bac, grad degree holders. </p>
<p>2) It is too passive a data-collection survey.</p>
<p>It cannot possibly mirror a u or cs term bac-holders and professional mix by soliciting salary information via its website. To obtain an accurate snapshot, it would have to have access to a us alumni base and actively survey a sample size wrt professions within this group, collecting salary information.</p>
<p>Furthermore, by passively taking information from those that choose to survey, the economic downturn would less be factored in because the under or unemployed would be less inclined to survey as Payscale isnt a job-placement website. So we can undoubtedly downgrade all median salaries for all us and cs because of the downturn, though the Ivies would be more recession-proof undoubtedly.</p>
<p>And Ive actually seen some us and cs median salaries increase from before the economic downturn to now, an insignificant time period to factor in increases in salary across the board. </p>
<p>3) It has no method of verification of salaries. </p>
<p>Payscale doesnt ask for tax returns, etc. </p>
<p>Some of the things I think Payscale does well are:</p>
<p>1) It details the differences of salary wrt geography very well. </p>
<p>We know that theres a premium of a salary for the Bay Area over the rest of CA, including SoCal, Los Angeles area. But this is a macro concern, and we already knew that NYC, Bay Area, etc, have to offer salary premiums because of cost of housing, etc.</p>
<p>2) It details very well that tech professions such as engineering at their various grades pay essentially the same without regard to name-brand of u or c. </p>
<p>Where name-brand, CIT, MIT, comes into play is the amount/proportion of grads that are placed higher up within the various grades.</p>
<p>Ah, i didn’t know all of those things about payscale. Consider my point 2 retracted.</p>
<p>Both have useful and interesting data that go into their rankings, they baoth have critteria that way too soft andf fuzzy to be of any use, and the rankings themslves are fairly useless for most prospective students’ purposes.</p>
<p>Think about it: are you going to trust a second rate newsmagazine to rank and decide which schools are best for you and your interests?</p>