<p>Darnit, Williams :P</p>
<p>[America’s</a> Best Colleges List - Forbes](<a href=“http://www.forbes.com/top-colleges/list/]America’s”>http://www.forbes.com/top-colleges/list/)</p>
<p>Eh, Amherst has been rated below Williams in Forbes for a while. The worse news is dropping down to 4th.</p>
<p>I’m not complaining about the ranking; I think it’s great they recognize the LACs to be above most big-name schools. I do think, though, that they should take into account the 5 college system. With that being considered, Amherst would be vying for #1 easily. At that point, though, it’s splitting hairs!</p>
<p>I think the key is that the ranking comingles top LACs with undergraduate university programs rather than treating them as a different class of institutions. One can quibble about the specific rankings (Swarthmore lower than Haverford? Kind of nuts), but the overall concept is good.</p>
<p>Given that they ranked Columbia about #40, I would not pay too much attention to these rankings.</p>
<p>A cursory review of them indicates that their criteria favors small liberal arts colleges.</p>
<p>Not really- Princeton and Harvard were in the top ten. They are just calling it like they’re seeing it: take equally bright kids and put them into a SLAC with an exclusively undergraduate focus versus in a large research university where faculty priorities can lie elsewhere (graduate students and post-docs rather than the encumbrance of their undergraduate students) and it is no surprise that the top LAC grads go far. If you’re lucky enough to get in, go to Williams, Amherst or Swarthmore undergrad and then HYPS for graduate/professional school.</p>
<p>Well said, Dad2. The differences between Columbia at #40 and, say, Yale at #14 are negligible. I think the high ranking of SLACs serve mainly to dispel the grandeur engendered by the big names of the members of the Ivy League.</p>
<p>The Forbes ranking is a joke. Carnegie Mellon ranked behind Transylvania University? LMAO! What a joke. Take Forbes ranking (and the magazine) and throw it in the trash.</p>
<p>All ratings systems are going to have some apparent disconnects given that they use defined (and confined) criteria. The same can certainly be said of USNWR (Dartmouth below Penn as an undergraduate college? Reed way low on the LAC list?).</p>
<p>Quote: “Swarthmore lower than Haverford? Kind of nuts.”</p>
<p>Not really, when you consider that 27% of a school’s score in the Forbes ranking is based on student satisfaction. Which school do you think has happier students? I can tell you it ain’t Swarthmore.</p>
<p>As for educational quality, I have a son who recently graduated from Harvard and a daughter who graduated from Haverford. As far as I can tell, there wasn’t much difference in the quality of the education they received, nor has there been much difference in the quality of the graduate/professional schools they and their peers attended.</p>
<p>I was certainly not dissing Haverford, which is a great college. I have no doubt that a Haverford education is at least on a par with Harvard. Also, I agree that Haverford is a “happy” place, that in common with Pomona and Carleton. That said, Swatties are by and large a happy (albeit intense) bunch.</p>