<p>The USN&WR rankings get a lot of scorn here and elsewhere, yet I contend that 99.99% of people on CC researching where to go to school look up the school's rank. That says to me that there's something of value there. People have a need to understand relative value, and USN&WR attempts to fill the need to quantify how "good" a school is.</p>
<p>Are the people who criticize the rankings upset with how the rankings are used by readers, and if so, is that a publisher problem or a user problem? Do they dislike them because they aren't a sharp enough tool? Do they disagree with the value they place on individual attributes, or do they feel the wrong attributes are used? Do they not like that "their" school isn't "properly" valued? Or do they just not believe that higher education can have any sort of quantification? If so, shouldn't adcoms do away with essentially quantifying prospies?</p>
<p>Is there a place for a public (as opposed to personal) ranking system in the college selection process?</p>
<p>Apparently, I was wrong - everyone LOVES the USN&WR rankings!:rolleyes:</p>
<p>College are not commodities and cannot be ranked liked dishwashers in Consumer Reports. Anyone who uses USNWR in deciding which school to attend has been seriously misled. This gullibility is also seen in people screaming for the President’s birth certificate, fearing for Grandma’s safety b/c of Insurance reform, or trying to see the Virgin Mary on potato chip.</p>
<p>^^^</p>
<p>And yet immediatly prior to your post above, you wrote this:</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>You’re proving my point that people NEED something to compare colleges, and USN&WR gives them a STARTING point. Otherwise, there’d be too many schools to sift through, and you’d eventually resort to SOME outside ranking to narrow your field.</p>
<p>I agree that a starting point is necessary. Sadly most people use it as an ending point.</p>
<p>So then, you feel it’s mostly a user problem, and not a publisher problem. Yet most complaints I see are about how the rankings are a terrible thing. Only occasionally do I see it explicitely stated or implied that it is the use of the rankings which is the problem, not the rankings themselves.</p>
<p>I suspect USN&WR has a vested interest in their rankings being perceived as gospel, but I don’t know that more prominent qualifiers about their process and proper usage of the results would prevent readers from misusing this tool. What, if anything, would make their rankings be used in a more appropriate fashion?</p>
<p>It’s kind of like sin: you can know what it is and even be familiar with it, but it’s still a bad thing.</p>
<p>Kei</p>
<p>
Considering how much people are spending on education, maybe you should view it somewhat as a consumer good. If you can spend $200,000 on Harvard and $200,000 on University of San Francisco, one probably gives you more bang for your buck. There are many factors to look into when selecting a college. Prestige and rank are a factor for many people. Most students I know could be happy at many colleges out there. If all else is about the same, going to a college with a higher rank can be an advantage. Prestige is important in our society, or US News rankings wouldn’t have lasted over 2 decades. Going to a highly ranked school (definition of highly ranked will vary from person to person) with lots of national recognition can help when applying for jobs, working with top faculty can help when applying to grad school, and being surrounded by stronger students can make a better undergraduate experience. </p>
<p>The rankings are imperfect and need to be taken with a grain of salt. US News is doing nothing wrong by making a ranking. It’s their right. If people are upset then they should make their own rankings. There are other rankings out there, but they are more flawed and farther from the general public perception. </p>
<p>People on this website are too picky when it comes to rankings. X shouldn’t be that high. Y shouldn’t be that low. When it comes down to it, many of US News’s “misrankings” can be corrected by moving a school fewer than 5 spots. IMO, having an error term of less than 5 spots is pretty darn accurate.</p>
<p>You can’t really argue with some of the general placements anyway. Most people will agree that Harvard is a better university than Boston College. Now on an individual basis that won’t always hold true for every prospective student, but in general it is true.</p>
<p>“If you can spend $200,000 on Harvard and $200,000 on University of San Francisco, one probably gives you more bang for your buck.”</p>
<p>I agree - USF does give you more bang for your buck.</p>
<p>[url=<a href=“http://oldgoldandblack.com/?p=908]Rankings”>http://oldgoldandblack.com/?p=908]Rankings</a> taken with grain of salt Old Gold & Black<a href=“shameless%20self-promotion”>/url</a></p>
<p>When students and parents start the college search process many turn to USNWR to pick out which schools to apply to. They naturally look for the schools with the highest ranking and the ones they consider most prestigious. The magazine makes the whole application process much easier. After one decides how far from home they are willing to travel you can then pick out school by SAT scores and % taken from the top 10% of their high school classes. The complainers about USNWR are usually those who attend schools that are not tier 1 (top 50) or schools nobody knows about. If you’re spending almost 50k a year in tuition you appreciate USNWR.</p>
<p>Because rankings are good for bringing to public attention institutions that 1) have not been widely known (e.g., Harvey Mudd) or for which their reputation is lower than their actual value (e.g., Tufts).</p>
<p>That said, the rankings are virtually useless for selecting a college for a particular student because criteria that reflect a specific student’s needs needs will not be accurately reflected in any ranking. </p>
<p>Primary criteria for our child include these:
- % of students going on to grad school
- Peer rankings by educators
- Breadth of course offerings (e.g., if they have engineering that’s an indicator of broader offerings)
- “Goldilocks” sized student body (too small = fewer opportunities; too large = classes too large)
- reputation
- net cost
- percentage students receiving merit aid - and the average amount</p>
<p>We’ve been using SAT matriculation figures to differentiate between different Tiers, but not to differentiate between schools within a Tier.</p>
<p>Kei</p>