Forbes ranking of top colleges

<p>This is the detailed explanation of methodology: <a href=“CollegeLifeHelper.com”>CollegeLifeHelper.com;

<p>I think one reason this ranking by Forbes is not all that useful is due to the fact there is no indication of the quantitative differences between ranks. Meaning, in a class where everyone gets 99’s and 96’s on exams, the actual difference in student quaility based on ranking is minimal. On the flip side, we don’t know if college #50 is significantly better than college #51 and beyond.</p>

<p>I also saw my own school rise from a ranking in the high teens in 2009, to a rank in the 40’s last year, to a ranking in the low teens this year. Nothing about the school really changed over that three year span; like, no one dropped a couple of Nobel Laureates on it, so I have to suppose that the stats Forbes relies on are volatile and also somewhat unreliable.</p>

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<p>It does fly under the radar of people who think there is only one page in the USNews rankings. Anyone who reads the few next pages will see that a list that is anchored by Trinity University and Santa Clara is pretty stout! </p>

<p>And, yes, despite all the (well justified) criticisms hurled in the direction of Bob Morse and his small staff, the USNews remains the best comparative tool we have. However, the best attributes of the Best Colleges editions are at the antipode of what made them famous and buids students and fans in a frenzy every August or September, namely the rather moronic attempt a … ranking. As it is, it appeals to the a crowd that stops at the counter to check the People’s sexiest men alive! And then we debate ad nauseam about the small differences in rankings introduced each year.</p>

<p>^^And yet, there are those who miss the old days of the Cass-Birnbaum guidebooks, when they used a simple selectivity index to combine the so-called research universities and the so-called LACs (“so-called” because both of these terms came into popular usage after USNews made them a big deal) into one big list. It’s unfortunate that you can’t do the same thing today without rewarding the bigger schools for two decades worth of “separate, but unequal” treatment. But, it’s a convention Forbes is trying to walk its way back to - with interesting results.</p>

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<p>:confused: That’s gotta be the “why” Cedarville is ranked higher :rolleyes:</p>

<p>I’m so glad I’ve never been about prestige. Those who follow rankings baffle me. Nothing wrong with it, I just personally can’t understand it.</p>

<p>It’s ridiculous for them to even attempt to defend their usage of ratemyprofessor. I know at University of Maryland, advisors tell students not to even look at that site because the college has its own site for rating professors. That means the data on ratemyprofessors is old and is done by kids who can’t follow directions, yet still feel the need to talk about their professors.</p>

<p>There are many schools where ratemyprofessors is rarely used. It’s very similar to the CC college forums; if nobody else from your school is posting, then you don’t either, so many forums have almost nothing in them. </p>

<p>That the people who made the list call themselves statisticians is an insult to all the real statisticians!</p>

<p>My U is another that has its own system, not RMP.</p>

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<p>I think cross-admit tables of where accepted students choose is probably one of the worst ranking components ever, for several reasons:</p>

<p>1) The availability of financial aid confounds things. A student accepted to Harvard and another elite school might choose Harvard because it will cost him less to go there - which is terrific for him, but isn’t really a measure of the academic quality of either institution.</p>

<p>2) The home state impact. Top students who live in states with excellent public flagships (such as Michigan) will often (smartly) choose their public flagship and not feel at all that they have sacrificed; this is not true for top states who live in states with not-so-good flagships. In other words, different students have different fallbacks – and the patterns of application among those students differ as well.</p>

<p>3) The choice of an 18 yo just doesn’t mean anything in terms of actual quality. It’s just what they’ve heard is good. It’s a function of what their parents - who may or may not be educated in this arena - say, and what their little schoolmates say. Useless.</p>

<p>Pizza- I agree with everything you said but with one exception- cross admit tables are valuable for CC and we should require newbies to study them before their kids senior year. (just kidding.)</p>

<p>Every year dozens of people post here about the “dozens” of people they know that were accepted to Yale but chose a CTCL school, or admitted to Dartmouth but chose Obscure State U because “only a chump would go to Dartmouth”, and prestige doesn’t matter, and a good student can study Classics anywhere even if the university doesn’t have a single professor of Latin or Ancient History, etc. </p>

<p>In reality- which is where most of us live- the number of people who turn down some of the much maligned schools on this board in favor of an obscure school or a second tier public university is extremely small. Yes, students turn down JHU for Michigan or Northwestern for U Va. But statistically speaking, when Yale loses a student it is to Harvard or MIT or Stanford, not to Quinnippiac or Southern Connecticut State College. Despite what you read here that prestige is %^&* or that people who turn down a free ride at Southern Connecticut State College are crazy or that only chumps pay full freight.</p>

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<p>Shhh, Blossom, not so loud. You’ll wake up Pickleball and Tetrazzini. :eek:</p>

<p>Where is Anna’s dad when a good fight’s a brewing?</p>

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<p>Forbes is not really stomping on new grounds by mixing research universities and LACs. A few years ago the Atlantic Monthly jumped into the fray and produced a comprehensive ranking. Their “first annual issue on College Admissions” was in the November 2003 issue of Atlantic Monthly. A trip down memory lane reveals these past discussions:</p>

<p><a href=“http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/college-search-selection/38715-does-anyone-have-complete-atlantic-monthly-college-rankings-list.html[/url]”>http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/college-search-selection/38715-does-anyone-have-complete-atlantic-monthly-college-rankings-list.html&lt;/a&gt;
or
<a href=“http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/college-admissions/39338-college-ranking-lists-us-news-google-page-ranking-atlantic-monthly.html[/url]”>http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/college-admissions/39338-college-ranking-lists-us-news-google-page-ranking-atlantic-monthly.html&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

<p>Forbes, in an attempt to grab a market share among all the publications that pretend to have the qualifications to “rank” colleges, has chosen to be different and probably controversial by design. After all, they could not duplicate the Mother Teresa rankings aka the Washington Monthly, and settled on contracting Richard Vedder and his CRAP “think”-tank.</p>

<p>You can expect more copycats as this one [The</a> 50 Best Colleges & Universities 2011-2012 Top School Rankings](<a href=“http://www.thebestcolleges.org/rankings/top-50/]The”>http://www.thebestcolleges.org/rankings/top-50/) indicates. In the end, there are probably many different paths to the top of the mountain, and as long as one is careful to understand that the methodology can be chosen to deliver the DESIGNED outcome, no real harm can be done. </p>

<p>And, thanks to the Forbes magazine, we have something equally rotten to rival with the non-sensical garbage rankings of graduate schools produced in China and the United Kingdom!</p>

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<p>I think Pizzagirls’ point about cross-admits has validity. The point, as I understand it, is that a very large fraction of the top-stats kids in Michigan and Virginia don’t even bother to apply to Yale or JHU or Northwestern, because they’re perfectly happy to attend their very fine public flagship which is their first choice. Those kids by and large are NOT going to apply to Yale or JHU or Northwestern as back-ups even if they think they have a shot at getting in, because they know those schools are even harder to get into than their number one choice. So when all is said and done, the Yale-UVA cross admit data are only telling us, if anything, the preferences of those who preferred Yale in the first place; those who preferred UVA won’t end up in the cross-admit data, because they won’t apply to Yale in the first place. (There’s all sorts of statistical evidence of this which I’ve posted elsewhere, but if you don’t believe me, just compare the numbers of students from Maryland and Virginia attending various Ivies and other elite private colleges and universities; Maryland wins that comparison in a landslide. Now compare middle 50% SAT scores at UVA and at UMD-CP; Virginia wins in a landslide. That’s because top students in Maryland generally eschew their state flagship in favor of top privates, while to students in Virginia, at least a large fraction of them are perfectly happy to go to UVA). </p>

<p>And this isn’t just a public-v.-private thing. I think if you look closely at the cross-admit data for various pairs of schools, the more selective school wins almost every time. It’s almost a perfect correlation. But is that because there’s that clear a pecking order of applicant preferences? Or it because few applicants are dumb enough to apply to a school that is MORE selective than their #1 choice as a back-up? I think it’s the latter. And if it is the latter, then cross-admit data tell us only that, as between School A and School B where A is more selective than B, the cross-admits will consist primarily of people who preferred school A, because those who preferred B by and large didn’t apply to A. What it doesn’t tell us is how many people preferred B to A, or how that group compares in number to those who preferred A. Some students–many, actually–genuinely prefer Notre Dame to Harvard. For many, Notre Dame is their dream school. Those kids by and large won’t apply to Harvard; they might apply to Boston college or holy Cross or Georgetown as back-ups to Notre Dame if their motivation for wanting to attend Notre Dame is partly religious, for example. But very few people who have Notre Dame as their dream school are going to also apply to Harvard as a back-up in case they don’t get into Notre Dame. But a fair number of people who apply to Harvard will also apply to Notre Dame as a sensible fallback option; if admitted to Harvard, those student will choose Harvard almost every time. Which tells us something about the applicants who preferred Harvard, but it tells us next to nothing about the applicants who preferred Notre Dame.</p>

<p>In short, in my view cross-admit data is pretty much worthless, except possibly in comparing schools of roughly equal selectivity.</p>

<p>Nor does it take into consideration kids who don’t want to go to a huge university no matter how “well ranked” it is or their ability to ‘get in.’ Nor does it take into consideration kids who don’t want to be in an urban environment. Very few people actually chose a college or uni based solely on ranking in my opinion. I don’t have a problem with a some methodology that mixes big unis and the LAC culture especially if solidly entrenched in outcomes based statistics…not saying Forbes is “perfect”…but i don’t have a problem with a listing that bunches the top notch LACs with the top notch unis. To each his own regarding the learning environment. I do enjoy looking at the cross-admit data for colleges that actually post cross-admit data.</p>

<p>“But statistically speaking, when Yale loses a student it is to Harvard or MIT or Stanford, not to Quinnippiac or Southern Connecticut State College.”</p>

<p>But you’re not getting that many top students in Michigan, for example, prefer Michigan over Yale enough that they don’t apply to Yale in the first place. That’s the uber-preference. I think you east coasters really get so wrapped up that you don’t get how strong the appeal is of good state flagships to top students out here.</p>

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<p>Interesting point. My son was also accepted to our state flagship UIUC, which offered him $71,000 over 4 years across 3 merit scholarships. For my son’s intended major of computer science, UIUC is top-notch, it’s just way too big a school for him. Because our family income is below $60k/year, Brown was nevertheless substantially cheaper. However, if our income had been in the $150k/year range, there would have been no contest: UIUC would have been the only logical financial choice.</p>

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<p>Before even starting to ascertain the worthiness of cross-admit data, should we not wonder if the numbers that float around constitute data? As far as I know, there was a 2004 report named “A Revealed Preference Ranking of U.S. Colleges and Universities” by Christopher Avery, Mark Glickman, Caroline Hoxby, and Andrew Metrick. See [A</a> Revealed Preference Ranking of U.S. Colleges and Universities](<a href=“http://www.nber.org/papers/w10803]A”>http://www.nber.org/papers/w10803). </p>

<p>Except for the occasional lifting of the veil by admission deans such as Stanford’s that has shed lights on the preferences of its admitted students, I would have a hard time locating verifiable and plausible numbers, or call them data. On the other hand, there have been a couple of utterly unscientific attempts to compile lists on College Confidential that have been easily debunked as pure junk. </p>

<p>From my vantage point, the information about cross-admits reported by students in these fora accounts easily for the biggest heap of baloney one could imagine. And that is charitable.</p>

<p>Pizza, sorry to disappoint you but I spent my formative years in the Midwest.</p>

<p>I agree 100% that many top students in Michigan, Virginia, California and yes- even Ohio, look no further than their state flagship.</p>

<p>What am I not getting? Colleges have no valid way to measure the number of students who don’t apply. They can only track who does apply, and what happens then.</p>

<p>I don’t have any issue (and I’m not wrapped up in anything) with students who apply to their own state flagship, even if it’s a less well known option than Michigan or Virginia. My point is that the oft- stated wisdom on CC that their kid was admitted to Well known U and obscure U and chose obscure U because only chumps believe the hype about well known U-- I question the veracity of that statement. Having seen a fair amount of cross admit data, there is really nothing surprising in it. Some kids get into Harvard and Stanford and prefer Stanford. Duh. Some kids get into Smith and Bryn Mawr and prefer Smith. Yawn. The surprises are not really surprises if you understand different ethnic/religious groups- kids who choose Stern college over Barnard, or Holy Cross over GW. In these cases the ratings aren’t even relevant. But I’m suspicious of the urban legends of the kids who regularly turn down Harvard for … if it were as frequent as we’re led to believe, Harvard’s yield numbers would be half of what they are now.</p>

<p>I think it’s great that in many parts of the country the state flagship is as good as or better than any private option within a few hours drive. I do not live in a state where that is the case, but have lived in states where that is true, and for the majority of top students in those places, college application season is still a breeze. Engineering or Arts and Sciences? check. Foreign Language requirement fulfilled? check. Safety school or two selected in case something catastrophic happens? check.</p>

<p>Why do you assume that people who now live on the East coast didn’t actually come from somewhere else? I know all my friends in Milwaukee and Minneapolis who hail from Philadelphia and Boston and New York LOVE their public U choices!!!</p>

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<p>And you would be right! Obviously, the urban legends are based on facts. It DOES happen that students decide against attending a prestigious school. On CC, we debated (forever and a day) the decision by the girl who picked Baylor over Harvard. And we all know that the goat herder from Waco picked Rhodes over Yale. But what those true stories DO trigger are plenty of fabricated stories.</p>

<p>For instance, in the past decade, there was ONE student from my HS who went to UT-Austin and turned down Harvard, MIT, and Stanford to attend a public school. He did that for a number of reasons, including finances and major. Yet, the story that students from my school ROUTINELY turns down the Ivy League, MIT, and Stanford is told over and over to freshmen. The reality is that the students who do get that “fat envelope” from HYPS, et al. do attend. There is, however, one notable exception, and that is, as Clinton mentioned, the unabated draw of Notre Dame and its religious appeal.</p>

<p>PS It is good to also repeat the example of Stanford versus Berkeley. The number of cross-admits is sky high; the number of students who ENROLL at Cal and turn down Stanford? You can count them on your TWO hands. Yet, if you believe the stories, there are hundreds of them … every year!</p>