<p>I just ran into [this</a> list of the “best colleges” in the US compiled by Forbes magazine](<a href=“http://www.forbes.com/lists/2009/94/colleges-09_Americas-Best-Colleges_Rank.html]this”>http://www.forbes.com/lists/2009/94/colleges-09_Americas-Best-Colleges_Rank.html). Unlike USNWR, it combines large and small schools into a single list and compares them to each other. Bowdoin comes in at 18th (it’s ranked ahead of Middlebury (25th) but behind Williams (4th), Amherst (8th), and Swarthmore (12th)). Number 1 is West Point!! (I don’t know about that - that’s kind of a narrow and specialized education but the price can’t be beat.)</p>
<p>Certainly an “interesting” ranking. Centre at 14 and Dartmouth at 98? Whitman at 20 and Cornell at 207? Colby at 24 and Duke at 104? </p>
<p>I’d love to see the raw numbers they used to come up with this ranking…</p>
<p>Yeah, those rankings are crapola. </p>
<p>I think Brown or UPenn is towards the very bottem of the list…</p>
<p>Hey, I think it’s kind of helpful in the sense. I can definitely see how all the LAC’s are above the bigger universities: they offer a more personalized, and sometimes more rigorous education. For a lot of kids, that can’t be beat. </p>
<h1>18 though? Really? Not even…10? 15?</h1>
<p>Yes - these rankings are definitely interesting - especially the lofty ranking for Centre College!! [FWIW</a>, here’s an explanation of the methodology employed by Forbes](<a href=“http://www.forbes.com/2009/08/02/best-colleges-methodology-opinions-ccap.html]FWIW”>Methodology).</p>
<p>Bowdoin is a great school, but I put about as much stock in the Forbes rankings as I do in the USN&WR rankings: zero.</p>
<p>Both rankings were creating with one purpose only: to sell magazines.</p>
<p>@redandtheblack: I couldn’t agree more. Colleges shouldn’t be all about marketing, but now they are, and the USN&WR as well as Forbes or Newsweek rankings all encourage it. I think there are about 25 LACs that are about tied right now in terms of a good education, but you would never know that if you based all you opinions on rankings.</p>
<p>Forbes ranking formula is nonsense. They weight the comments from students on RateMyProfessor.com as a significant factor in determining the quality of the school.</p>
<p>I can’t tell you how inaccurate this is. First, anyone can rate a professor on that site. You don’t even need to go to the school. Professors can rate themselves. You can rate a professor 15 times a day and manipulate their rankings. </p>
<p>Further, students only typically rate a professor they have particularly strong feelings about. So any professor is bound to get a larger percentage of “He’s wonderful!” or “She sucks!” comments than the student body at large would produce. </p>
<p>Finally, students in more competitive colleges tend to be more critical of their instructors than students in less competitive colleges. While I risk labeling myself elitist, smarter kids tend to get into more competitive schools and also tend to challenge their professors more forcefully. I’d imagine that kids in Centre are more satisfied with their professors than kids in Dartmouth or Bowdoin. That doesn’t mean that the professors at Centre are better than the professors at Dartmouth or Bowdoin, it just means that the students are generally more easily satisfied. </p>
<p>It is a completely subjective system of measurement with no baseline, and therefore of no use whatsoever.</p>
<p>Or, so that’s my opinion.</p>
<p>@penelope-- Its always been my opinion that more “intelligent” students tend to be more complementary of their professors. (At least, that was my experience in high school-- maybe because people who didn’t do as well were more likely to blame it on their teacher’s “poor teaching skills”)</p>
<p>Anyways, I heard the Forbes ranking took the school’s financial status (and that of its students) into a lot of consideration (hence West Point at #1). In terms of ratemyprofessor, that hardly seems fair as some schools likely encourage this as a tool while others do not.</p>
<p>Hi frogger - I’d say that there’s ‘solicitous’, and then there’s ‘acquiescence’. The students in my upper level classes were always generally solicitous. Complimentary and friendly to the teachers. Why not? Teachers are people and people like to be complimented. They like to be liked. And their grading will reflect, to a point, who they like and who they don’t.</p>
<p>But the acquiescent student blindly accepts what the instructor says as gospel and bases his or her opinion of the course on two criteria - how easy it was and what grade they received. Their opinion of the instructor will reflect that mindset.</p>
<p>Personally, I had courses in which I received straight As that I hated because I felt the instructor wasn’t sufficiently prepared. The instructor liked me because I was solicitous, but if I were to review the course on RateMyProfessor, I’d have expressed a much different view. Conversely, the best course I had in high school was taught by the hardest grader, and it was also my favorite class because I learned more in that class than I had in most others.</p>
<p>I think most advanced students share this characteristic. That’s why I say that a student who earns her way into a Dartmouth, while perhaps solicitous to her instructors personally, will provide a far more critical review on an anonymous site than a less accomplished learner. They simply expect more from the teacher than a grade.</p>
<p>Again, only my opinion. Take from it what you will.</p>
<p>Rankings are important.</p>
<p>It is how we perceive ourselves.</p>
<p>The fact that we differ in the outcomes is based on how we structure the guidelines towards assessment. </p>
<p>In our current climate of political correctness, deviation is expression of error from the formality of common understanding. These understandings will not be allowed without proper punctuation. We need to clarify deviation, if only to subordinate the need to digress substantively. </p>
<p>Wether we perceive ourselves as " just" in order to earmark what constitutes the standard with which we understandably and relentlessly wish to pursue others as the defining principle between the balance of solicitous and and acquiescence is merely the expectation of opinion.</p>
<p>I take what I will.</p>
<p>Best wishes.</p>
<p>Rankings are important.</p>
<p>It is how we perceive ourselves.</p>
<p>The fact that we differ in the outcomes is based on how we structure the guidelines towards assessment. </p>
<p>In our current climate of political correctness, deviation is expression of error from the formality of common understanding. These understandings will not be allowed without proper punctuation. We need to clarify deviation, if only to subordinate the need to digress substantively. </p>
<p>Wether we perceive ourselves as " just" in order to earmark what constitutes the standard with which we understandably and relentlessly wish to pursue others as the defining principle between the balance of solicitous and acquiescence is merely the expectation of opinion.</p>
<p>I take what I will.</p>
<p>Best wishes.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>im not going to even try comprehending that.</p>
<p>Rankings are wholly unimportant. Rankings cannot measure colleges against each other on a substantive level, simply because each student has his or her own specific sets of needs to be fulfilled. Rankings cannot take these needs into account, so the ranking that any given school achieves has no bearing on the school’s suitability to any particular student.</p>
<p>A person who uses relatively arbitrary rankings as a measurement of success is deluding herself. How difficult it is to obtain acceptance from a particular college is not necessarily an indication of the quality of the education you’ll receive, nor is it an indication of the college’s suitability to an individual student’s character.</p>
<p>For that information, you’ll simply have to do the leg work, explore the campuses that interest you, and make the determination for yourself. Please don’t use rankings do to this for you - you’ll be bitterly disappointed with the resulting experience.</p>
<p>Rankings have value in that they provide context. If you want to apply to “good” colleges, it’s not practical to start with a list of all 4,000 colleges in the United States and then research them from scratch to determine which ones are “good”. It’s much more sensible to use someone’s (preferably several someones’) definition of “good” as a starting point. That’s what the rankings are for. What’s foolish is to view them as objective and somehow “right”. They are simply guidelines, and as such they are worthwhile.</p>
<p>I absolve thee of all rank and tribulation towards such trivial measurements.</p>
<p>You are hereby granted rights and degrees of reprieve from all insults, real and imagined.</p>
<p>You are geniuses and I recoginze all as right and just.</p>
<p>As ranking is unacceptable, rank merely underscores the right to equanimity.</p>
<p>We are all equal and thus without differentiation.</p>
<p>We will all suffer the ignomious distinction to being equal.</p>
<p>Thus taxes must be imposed as we need to defer this equality with a stimulus that affords the comforts of our new found egalaitarian democracy to redistributive fairness.</p>
<p>May you all share in the dustributive qualties of a pragmatic government adjusted for political purposes.</p>
<p>May you all disappear and offer solace in your absence.</p>
<p>Amen, AMen, OhMen, an any other opportunity to swindle mankind out of its inheritance.</p>
<p>I actually think I’m beginning to see the light. Is there, like, a P.O. box I can send money to or something?</p>
<p>I just don’t believe college rankings have any value, even as a contextual filter. You really have to be introspective if you’re going to find the college that’s the right fit for you. Rankings can’t help you do that.</p>
<p>If you discover in your introspection that you are a person who learns best through doing, for example, you probably don’t want to go to the top colleges on the ranking list. They will provide you instruction and theory, but you’ll be more interested in a college that provides the best internship and work/study opportunities. So, if you want to stay in a particular area, like Boston say, you might choose Northeastern, with its great work/study program, over MIT, which bases its instruction on sound theory and principles. This, even though MIT is ranked far higher.</p>
<p>Of course, my analysis is focused on where the student would get the most knowledge out of the education based on her learning style and interests. If the goal of the student is the most prestigious degree, regardless of the education she’ll receive, then by all means follow the US News rankings slavishly. She won’t get as much out of the experience, but maybe she’ll make some contacts that will get her a job.</p>
<p>I don’t think the carping about rankings will ever make sense to me. The fact is, ranking is a common part of life that determines an assortment of things from who the hottest celebrity is to who is allowed to give what orders to whom in the military. Yes, they are imperfect (what isn’t?) and probably feed too much unhealthy hyper-competitiveness into the admissions process but with a BA becoming increasingly standard for most types of employment that was bound to happen sooner or later. I think the most legitimate complaint about ranking may be that their too often based on ambiguous or capricious factors…
However, as for the Forbes list, I actually think its a terrific way to rank colleges. Things like student satisfaction, post-graduate employment, likelihood of graduation in four years and student debt are some of the most critical elements to consider when choosing a college but it can be overwhelming to collect such info on your own. It’s certainly a far better way to rank a school than the alumni-giving percentages and peer institution reviews. As for “top” schools ranking lower than some “lower end” schools, I think its important to understand that for most schools outside of ivies, our understanding of what is a “good” school and a “not-so-good” school is often largely based on ranking systems that may not have the best methodology. Forbes has developed a pretty good one, imo.</p>