<p>I don’t think the U.S. News rankings themselves are prestigious AT ALL. </p>
<p>If you were at a fancy cocktail party, let’s say, in Manhattan or Washington and higher education came up in conversation and you referred to the U.S. News and World Report rankings… you would look really unsophisticated. Seriously, that would be soooo UNCOOL!!!</p>
<p>" you referred to the U.S. News and World Report rankings… you would look really unsophisticated. Seriously, that would be soooo UNCOOL!!! "</p>
<p>They’d probably think it was cool if you implied it was you who had the money and influence to get them to put Penn at #4.</p>
<p>The thin envelopes go out, and the lamentations begin. The stress would try the patience of Job.</p>
<p>Every acts like, “when in Rome, do as the Romans do,” and expects the rankings to be good for a few revelations. There are always a few holdouts, but mark my words, US News seems to whisper, “Come over to the dark side, Luke.”</p>
<p>(13 down, 53 to go.)</p>
<p>@bruno123: I most obviously know that. An Open Curic isn’t a huge deal to me, just something different I think I might like. It shakes up the college list a bit.
I think as long as you’re adaptable to certain situations and have a basic set of criteria, apply to wherever the hell you want.</p>
<p>The U.S. News rankings are declining in rapport with the public, given all the bleeding-heart liberal emphasis on finding “the best fit” for the individual – such nonsense fails to consider students from middle and working class families, who do not always have the luxury of choice.</p>
<p>This year, they’ve decided to include the rankings in a typical monthly issue. If one were interested in the glossy edition that has been sitting on shelves for years, one would now have to order directly from the website.</p>
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<p>Your comments are pretty unrealistic. Go to a top 50 or even 100 school you say is prestigious enough. Prestigious enough for what? Top get a top paying job in finance? Go on to a great law or medical school? Maybe its fine if you want to be a run of the mill accountant, but a lot of the people on these boards are looking to join highly competitive career tracks where prestige matters. Is there a major prestige difference between UC-Davis and Cornell…obviously and for jobs it will have an affect. Now even in the top thirty the difference between Emory and Columbia does make a different or Hopkins and Stanford. Maybe not quite as much as the first example. but in todays competitive world going to the best undergrad schools gives you an advantage come job application time. Greater prestige does not equal an immediate ticket to success, but it does mean a nice leg up from the start on the competition.</p>
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<p>Huh? You need to lop a zero off of that number. There are not 27,000 colleges in the entire world.</p>
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<p>Play along with the premise that that there are 27,000. That way, the folks at Duke can claim that even with their Forbes ranking, they are in the top 1%.</p>
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Mmm… not sure that’s a “bleeding-heart liberal” thing (?)</p>
<p>Actually, most CC people (more than the general public, I think) see the USNWR ranking for what it is, a very flawed ranking with subjective, if not arbitrary methodology.</p>
<p>Except for Princeton, Penn and WashU apologists, no one here takes it at face value. At least I hope not.</p>
<p>^^^Amen. Nobody but the extremely gullible.</p>
<p>"Mmm… not sure that’s a “bleeding-heart liberal” thing "</p>
<p>“Fit” in general isn’t a bleeding heart liberal thing, but I think those who define “fit” as “whatever will make you happiest” would mostly be bleeding heart liberals. Nobody would say that the best football team is the one that makes its players happiest. I think a more mature definition of fit would be something along the lines of “the place whose features are most conducive to getting the most out of you as a student and as a person.” For example, if a kid is quite timid, a school in a rough neighborhood where the student would be afraid to leave his/her dorm alone at night might not be a good fit.</p>
<p>Most people stop taking the rankings too seriously once they realize their younger daughter can’t even get into the flagship state school and they see the children of many of their successful friends having the same problem with their kids.</p>
<p>In college, your pretty much paying for the “brand name”. The education you are getting in college isn’t much an education at all. It’s all really up to you on how well you learn in college, how hard you decide to take academics seriously, and how much you learn at the conclusion of the course. College is all about independent study on a Professor’s time line for exams, midterms, and finals… on expensive textbooks which the Professor regurgitates from and probably wrote him/herself :D</p>
<p>Especially since most students get about 5 months + 9 days off for vacation. Over 4 years, that amounts to 2 years worth of vacation. The remaining 2 years consists of lectures that are half as long as the ones in high school (approx. 16 hrs per week vs. 35 hrs per week in high school). Most lectures skim through and only regurgitate the most important topics that is relevant in the chapter. (based on my experience at JHU, Harvard, and MIT…)</p>
<p>It’s all about the “brand name” diploma AND how to mature as an independent adult and take responsibility for your actions in college. College is really all about giving you the responsibility to take control of your own life and be the decision maker in your own actions (sleep, eat, study, finances, etc…)</p>
<p>College is pretty much a stepping stone towards that new job, a foot in the door for graduate school, a way to rise up in society. It also forces you to think on your feet, gives you more responsibility for your life and education.</p>
<p>It’s really a shame that people think schools outside of the top 100 are terrible, and especially a shame that people think schools outside of the top 30 are terrible. The UNSW rankings are meant to sell magazines. They’re not the authority on the ranking system of U.S. colleges.</p>