<p>Hi, I have seen a few sites with academic ratings, such as PrincetonReview,**************, and others. Which of these two is more accurate, and are there any more accurate lists out there(that actually list alot of different colleges).</p>
<p>This would be really helpful for me when trying to look at how different colleges rank academically.
Thanks.</p>
<p>There isn't one that is more "accurate" than the others, since they all include subjective factors. What you need to do is understand what the ratings mean, how they are determined, and what parts of that you care about.</p>
<p>Maybe the best thing about the various ranking sites is that you can glean a lot of information from them that might be especially relevant to you. For instance if you are looking at financial aid, US News compiles quite a bit of data on that. </p>
<p>Don't get overly hung up on these ratings! You need to remember that the whole rest of the world (including your future employers) doesn't know diddly-squat about the "rankings." They will be more aware of good solid schools in their own region. Also, your transcript will tell the important story.</p>
<p>I was looking at the academic ratings because I want to go to a school where I can get a better education then at another school.</p>
<p>right, but do you really think there is a difference between a school rated #15 vs #20?</p>
<p>not really, but when you look at PR they having an academic rating at 60 (I think) on a scale out of 99, and the other one gives them an A- or an A I believe. Thats a big difference, and one of these must not be accurate, or neither.</p>
<p>Not to mention that there's nothing objective about what is getting a better education, nor do most rankings even attempt to do this.</p>
<p>Now this one: <a href="http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/visits/college_rank_summary.html%5B/url%5D">http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/visits/college_rank_summary.html</a>
uses the place (that for some reasone got turned into asterix's when I posted its name) for its information.
Is it any more or less accurate then the academic ratings found on princeton review, because one college I was looking at seemed to not be as selective as other colleges that had that high academic rating, and in addition to that I have not seen it mentioned on this forum.</p>
<p>The Fiske guide is very good, so is Loren Pope's "Colleges that change lives".</p>
<p>US News Best Colleges is probably most accurate although it does not rate many specific majors, just business and engineering.</p>
<p>The Gourman Report gives ratings by specific majors and is pretty accurate for universities but its formulas tend to favor universities, not LACs.</p>
<p>Rugg's Recommendations also gives broad ratings by specific majors in three tiers from most selective, very selective, to selective. Rugg's is also very helpful. Rugg's tends to favor LACs.</p>
<p>These ratings give you some direction as to which schools to investigate in more detail.</p>
<p>The best is to look at a number of different indicators: US News, Times (for internatioanl students), stats from the Wall Street Journal which show where students go to best grad schools from, where scholarship winners for the Rhodes or Marshall go, as well as Fiske etc.</p>
<p>You'll get this sort of ranking over and over again:</p>
<p>Tier 1: HYPSM
Tier 2: Columbia, Penn, Dartmouth, Duke, Brown, Chicago
Tier 3: NU, Georgetown, Cornell, JHU</p>
<p>Note that all Universities on Fiske's "Elite College" list are on this ranking, and it also includes NU which is not on Fiske's Elite College list</p>
<p>You can argue about which schools are better within a tier, and you might add a few more to each, but this is a pretty rough but accurate sketch about which schools are the best for undergrad, as well as reputation</p>
<p>One other caveat to this list is that in a Post 9-11 world where many of the most important and presitigious jobs are now on Capitol Hill, in the major Washington Think Tanks, in the Foreign Service , the CIA , Homeland Security, the Embassies of Foreign Countries, and large international and NGO organizations, the Georgetown School of Foreign Service has emerged as the school of choice for those who will be making a mark in the world in the years ahead. </p>
<p>This School, more so than when I attended it over two decades ago, is now connected in its classrooms and with its alumni to the major players of the last several US Presidential Administrations and to Heads of State on all continents.</p>
<p>According to US News, all of the schools you mentioned are tier 1.</p>
<p>thats because according to thoughtprocess there are max 5 schools per rank. so your local state u is like tier 85308.</p>
<p>i.e. don't take much stock in people who go "OMG HYP>>>>Columbia"</p>
<p>The USNWR peer reputation ranking is a more accurate "academic rank" than the actual overall USNWR rankings, which include non-academic criteria like alumni giving and selectivity in the overall number. These criteria are "non-academic" in the sense that class size or selectivity have no measure whatsoever on faculty quality or overall institutional stength. It is much easier/less costly for a school to be more selective and climb the USNWR rankings by meeting the criteria USNWR measures, than to actually build world-class faculty, departments, libraries, etc. The USNWR peer reputation rank also tends to more closely match more academic-focused rankings like those of the National Research Council, or London Times.</p>
<p>lol I meant tiers within the top 25 or so schools since those are the ones most people care about at this site</p>
<p>USNWR peer reputation is terribly biased in so many ways, competely favoring schools with strong grad programs etc., don't use the UNSWR peer review score. If you do, atleast weight it with relevant undergrad measures.</p>
<p>Jags, if you look at pretty much every piece of data, HYP is better than Columbia (and penn, duke, brown, dartmouth) by a bit. You can just ignore facts too. that works i guess.</p>
<p>A "better education" is a very subjective determination. It's entirely possible to get a more rigorous undergrad experience at a big state school than a very selective private school. Big state schools generally aren't overly concerned with retention rate, and may suffer less grade inflation. </p>
<p>Liberal arts colleges would claim they usually deliver a better education than universities. For some students, that is likely true.</p>
<p>
[quote]
Jags, if you look at pretty much every piece of data, HYP is better than Columbia (and penn, duke, brown, dartmouth) by a bit. You can just ignore facts too. that works i guess.
[/quote]
</p>
<p>I would take Columbia over Harvard or Princeton anytime...its famous humanities core is, in my opinion, a gem that outshines anything at the other two.</p>
<p>Tier 1: HYPSM
Tier 2: Columbia, Penn, Dartmouth, Duke, Brown, Chicago
Tier 3: NU, Georgetown, Cornell, JHU</p>
<p>this is, by CC standards correct?</p>
<p>and I've been thinking that NU was very underrated for its undergrad experience. hmm.</p>
<p>"The USNWR peer reputation ranking is a more accurate "academic rank" than the actual overall USNWR rankings, which include non-academic criteria like alumni giving and selectivity in the overall number."</p>
<p>These scores are so subjective and potentially misinformed that I wouldn't give them more than fleeting credence. I think people tend to vastly overrate how knowledgable the people who fill these things out are about schools other than their own or a minimal few peer schools.</p>
<p>They may be subjective, but unfortunately they're the best factor USNWR has to in any way attempt to measure "academics". None of the other factors USNWR uses have anything to do with academic measures like quality of the faculty or strength of academic programs. And, as stated earlier, the peer reputation rank is also much closer to the real academic rankings like those of the NRC, Times, or Shanghai. It's certainly most likely that these rankings influence the USNWR reputation score, but since they use much more rigorous academic criteria than USNWR, then that means the peer reputation ranking is indeed, even if indirectly, a more valid academic measure than the overall rankings.</p>