<p>^^^^ and USNA still manages to garner the largest pool of applicants, and as such, remains the most competetive of the 5! ;)</p>
<p>Listen folks- this is all "ego"....
my hat is off to anyone willing to follow the path of service for our country- don't much care it the road takes them to homeland security, protecting the high seas, soaring the skies, plunging to the depths of the oceans, or transporting our goods from one end of the world to the other, marching on the hot sands or the marines who do it all..... we need all of them, and to me they are all special!!!! :)</p>
<p>So if it makes some happy that USMA is ranked higher, great! They need something to celebrate---especially as we all know the CIC troply is still sitting right where it belongs- in BANCROFT- just where it is going to stay too!!!!! :)</p>
<p>
[quote]
Both sources are based on a good deal of Self Reporting.
[/quote]
</p>
<p>I guess this depends on who you consider "self" - with the US News reports the colleges and universities "self-report". This is like asking Applebee's to grade their Fiesta Lime Chicken.
What Forbes is attempting to do is look at the results of the education. Both recent and not so recent. So that is sort of like asking anyone who has ever eaten Fiesta Lime Chicken at Applebee's in the last 5-10 years to give it a grade.
Very different assessments.</p>
<p>
[quote]
and USNA still manages to garner the largest pool of applicants, and as such, remains the most competetive of the 5!
[/quote]
This is another point that Forbes is trying to make - how "competitive" a school is doesn't necessarily translate into an excellent education. The reverse is even more true - there are a lot of schools that are not deemed as "competitive" (read: popular) as others that offer excellent educations.</p>
<p>^^^ RateMyProfessor is a service where students self report what they thought about their professors - this service has only been around for about 8 years so it is using recent students to give a grade. Who's Who in America is a paid service where you can self nominate, or even if you are "outside" nominated the individual has to pay a fee to be included, that category would be using much "earlier" grads who supposedly - since you can buy your way into publication - have made a name for themselves, so again this category that CCAP is using is essentially self reporting. Given that 50% of the evaluation is based on self reporting the listing is not all that much different from any other list.</p>
<p>A "Best Colleges" survey that ranks Penn at 61, Georgetown at 76, and Johns Hopkins at 81 cannot be taken seriously.</p>
<p>I am an admissions rep at an extremely competitive public university in the Midwest. I have read this thread and found it entertaining. Here though, is the bottom line--and I believe that several individuals have attempted to point this out; each of these rankings need to be taken in context. Results of these types of "lists" are driven by the criteria selected by a particular group with a specific agenda. They are popularity contests..period, and those of us who work in the university world day in and day out take that approach when addressing them. What they are NOT are legitimate research studies- quantitative or qualitative and do not include variables which can be measured in a consistent manner in reference to the higher education "standard"-- the Carnegie Classification system (<a href="http://www.carnegiefoundation.org)--which%5B/url%5D">http://www.carnegiefoundation.org)--which</a> classifies institutions in specific groups according to multiple criterion including size, levels of education offered, public vs private and a multitude of other specific determinants. An institution's quality should be judged on the "success" of its student population based on the TYPE of student population it is serving. An example of one of the variables which is utilized by higher education professionals to truly measure the quality of an educational institution is its attrition rate at the end of the fourth semester. All of the academies do a phenomenal job of supporting and retaining their students. Given the mission of SA's, and the fact that they all reside within the same Carnegie class--that is one of the indicators that we should be concerned with--not whether or not Forbes thinks USMA has more grads in Who's Who than USNA.</p>