<p>It’s a bit old, but I did a search and there were no big discussions on it.</p>
<p>[America’s</a> Best Colleges sorted by Rank - Forbes.com](<a href=“http://www.forbes.com/lists/2008/94/opinions_college08_Americas-Best-Colleges_Rank.html]America’s”>http://www.forbes.com/lists/2008/94/opinions_college08_Americas-Best-Colleges_Rank.html)</p>
<p>I think it’s pretty ridiculous. I don’t know what kind of parallel universe these people live in to think that New College of Florida should be ranked above Penn or… Randolph-Macon over Dartmouth. o_o;</p>
<p>Methodology:</p>
<li><p>Listing of Alumni in the 2008 Who’s Who in America (25%)</p></li>
<li><p>Student Evaluations of Professors from Ratemyprofessors.com (25%)</p></li>
<li><p>Four- Year Graduation Rates (16 2/3%)</p></li>
<li><p>Enrollment-adjusted numbers of students and faculty receiving nationally competitive awards (16 2/3%)</p></li>
<li><p>Average four year accumulated student debt of those borrowing money (16 2/3%)</p></li>
</ol>
<p>That's some dumb criteria, especially the first 2 lmao</p>
<p>well student evaluations of professors are important, you don't wanna dread going to a class because your professor sucks haha</p>
<p>What makes these rankings any less ridiculous than the USNews rankings? The schools on top may have lower perceived prestige, but you are probably basing your definition of a "good college" on the US News rank.
You assert that Dartmouth is clearly a better school than Randolph Macon, but what is this based on? Who's to say that Randolph Macon doesn't give a better education? Selectivity really doesn't have any effect on the quality of the education, and neither does research - these are 2 of the biggest driving factors for name brand prestige. </p>
<p>Most of the people on this board will immediately discount a ranking if the Ivy League schools are not all in the top 15 or so (with Harvard, Yale, or Princeton as number one of course), but the Ivy League is simply a sports league that happens to place academics in front of athletics and has very "prestigious" member colleges.</p>
<p>Uhm...maybe the fact that Dartmouth doesn't use ratemyprofessors.com? It uses the student assembly course guide, meaning there are almost no evaluations for the profs at Dartmouth. And it was quantitative. </p>
<p>That's such a RIDICULOUS site to base faculty ratings.</p>
<p>Well the ratemyprofessors.com is really bad because when someone does poorly in a class then they would probably give their prof a bad rating, and vise(vice?) versa for a good grade.
And if someone can get on the Who's Who list, then it probably has to do more with the person rather than the college they attended. Also, the weighting for it is waaaay too high.</p>
<p>no but what the who's who's list does is show that anybody can come out of any college. Take Warren Buffett, he came out of the University Of Nebraska and look where he's at now, or the University Of Massachusetts, who had a Nobel Prize winner recently</p>
<p>and yes Dartmouth does have a RateMyProfessors.com[/url</a>] site.....[url=<a href="http://ratemyprofessors.com/SelectTeacher.jsp?sid=1339%5DDartmouth">http://ratemyprofessors.com/SelectTeacher.jsp?sid=1339]Dartmouth</a> College - New Hampshire - RateMyProfessors.com</p>
<p>teachers at small liberal arts colleges such as Randolph-Macon are usually better than teachers at well-known research universities because they are focused solely on teaching. That's why I'd rather go to a school like Harvey Mudd than Georgia Tech for engineering. And it shows on ratemyteachers.com except for really bad liberal arts schools haha</p>
<p>Pierre. Reading the numerous articles in response to the Forbes ranking will tell you that Dartmouth out of all the schools listed, Dartmouth had by far one of the fewest number of reviews on the site. </p>
<p>And yes, I'm aware that there is a section on the website for Dartmouth. Good job. I wasn't disputing its existence, I'm saying that the main source of student response comes from the Student Assembly website. </p>
<p>And thanks for justifying why a liberal arts education is good. You would think that you could use that same justification to explain why Dartmouth always gets screwed over in the national universities rankings. I mean, the professors at Dartmouth are mostly there to teach, not to research.</p>
<p>I agree, I have no clue why Dartmouth gets screwed over, the professors are great at Dartmouth compared to other ivies, i'll give you that</p>
<p>and yes you're right, Dartmouth does have fewer ratings on ratemyprofessors.com than other schools</p>
<p>Eh. Then again. I've heard Forbes is owned by Princeton and Fortune is owned by Dartmouth.</p>
<p>Owned in quotation marks.</p>
<p>haha yeah I don't trust any of these rankings </p>
<p>my parents are like "why do you want to go to Clemson instead of Georgia Tech, it's ranked lower by US News", Clemson's just a better fit for me though</p>
<p>HAHA. this is laughable. penn is 61. crazy.
penn's a GREAT school. whoever did this ranking is obviously oblivious to that fact. either that or they went to princeton.</p>
<p>like I said, all rankings are bogus, even US News.....I think US News rankings can be just as ridiculous, there's no way of ranking colleges</p>
<p>I think that HYP pay money to US News to stay in the top 3 lol. Hasn't Yale been number 1 less than H and P though?</p>
<p>Steve Forbes went to Princeton, so.. that may be why it's #1.</p>
<p>...Yep. Like I said.</p>
<p>I hate rankings......... and even more the arguments on CC about rankings.</p>
<p>well Princeton is a #1 caliber school, that's not surprising or anything, I think Princeton is better than Harvard personally</p>