Working from k21769’s ideas, here’s a hypothetical ranking system I could really get behind:
Rank colleges by various measures (SAT scores, endowment, college town, etc.), then create something like the CC Supermatch feature which lets students decide the weight to put on those variables.
A low-income first gen student who cared primarily about being able to make a good living out of college could weight heavily for things like graduation rate, financial aid, social mobility, and average salaries while giving less weight to athletics, the town, or PhD production. A wealthy intellectual might want to emphasize SAT scores and Ph.D production but not weather or financial aid. A gay athletic recruit might care about the percentage of kids playing sports (likely better support at schools with high participation), athletic scholarships, LGBTQ environment and percentage of kids living on campus but decide they like big lectures so don’t care about the percentage of classes with more than 50 students.
Most students would want good rankings on the school’s academic reputation or graduation rate, but who says students should give all measures the same weight as some magazine does? For instance, some will care about the percentage of students who do community service; some won’t give a hoot.
The biggest problem with a ranking like this is that it wouldn’t sell magazines (or the virtual equivalent). Rankers want headlines. “Harvard edged out by Stanford this year!” is much more exciting than, “Well, on some measures Stanford is better, on some Harvard wins.”