<p>manyman, if the military lifestyle isn’t your thing, then don’t go for it. But don’t act like it’s all negative. Military kids and spouses live in some of the most interesting places on earth. I wasn’t married during my decade as a Navy officer, but I lived in Newport, RI; San Francisco; the Azores; Monterey, CA; Rota, Spain; and Honolulu. And I spent months in Greece, England, Scotland, and Germany. I spent an entire year learning Russian, and on my spare time picked up a bachelor’s degree in philosophy and a master’s degree in business (both mostly paid for via my educational benefits). When I got out, my educational benefits paid for the tuition for a year of grad school at both the U. of Toronto (got an M.A. in philosophy) and the U of St. Andrews in Scotland (majored in beer and didn’t get a degree).</p>
<p>And it’s interesting that you imply that one’s family is the most important thing. The integrity of the family is dependent on a free and open society…which depends on a military to protect it. Or would you prefer the Chinese system, where you’re told how many kids you can have?</p>
<p>As the wife of a West Pointer, this topic has been discussed quite a lot at our house this week. Two things I would like to share. When my husband and I were dating, I made some flip remark about the Army and he said: " I am in the Army so that you can be free." The second thing is that though many West Point cadets have the statistics and abilities to go Ivy league, perhaps not so many Ivy Leaguers have what it takes to go Army. It isn’t for everyone, but cadets receive a fine education that is hard to compare to any other education.</p>
<p>Forbes has come up with a position that is easy to argue is utterly ludicrous - that West Point is the best college in the USA. They fail to take into account the non-financial debt incurred, and ignore the fact that the student body and the professors are far from the best, intellectually, in the nation. Anyone who challenges the Forbes list is accused of treason or of being fat and unhealthy.</p>
<p>In a real democracy, the military is viewed with suspicion. It is kept under tight civilian control and its methods and actions are not glorified. War is indeed always evil, and not very often a necessary evil. Every country has competent young people who are willing to kill to order. Only blind patriotism makes “ours” seem more noble and heroic than “theirs”.</p>
<p>And military leadership does not always translate well into civilian leadership - in the military there are severe punishments if your subordinates disobey your orders, and when you ‘advise’ the local civilian leaders what to do, your authority comes from the threat of force, not your charming personality.</p>
<p>For those who claimed I am a high school student going on to an elite college - bad guess. I am, over 50, I have military combat experience, and I certainly attended a bottom-1,000 rank school.</p>
<p>Where are these haters? I don’t see any haters here. Arguing that West Point is not #1 in the nation, or that war is bad, is not tantamount to “hatred”. Can’t you even try to have a rational argument?</p>
<p>You didn’t need to point that out, I could deduce that you attended a bottom-ranked school from your complete ignorance. Our military fights so that people like you can afford to have opinions with no basis in fact.</p>
<p>So if I wasn’t so ignorant I would think that a) West Point is indeed #1, b) war is just a darn good thing, c) those Iraqis would have stolen my opinions.</p>
<p>What a load of nonsense. I would sooner wipe my ass with the Forbes Rankings then read them in earnest. Really, ladies and gentlemen, what has college admissions been reduced to when state schools and fourth-tier colleges outrank Ivy League schools that have produced our nation’s finest legislators, jurists, and executives? By all means, apply to Kalamazoo College and not Brown, Penn, or Dartmouth. Idiocy, my friends, idiocy. Though the USNews Rankings are hardly perfect, they prioritize (though not enough) what matters: Standardized test scores, GPA, and selectivity. Amount of student debt or silly, inane postings on ratemyprofessors.com should have no bearing on any rankings if we are to consider them meaningful, much less valid.</p>
<p>Schmaltz: Funny you mention the integrity of the family in our “free and open” American society that not only does not permit me as a gay man to serve in the armed forces, but also forbids me from legally marrying or adopting children. I’ll take the Ivy League any day, thanks.</p>
<p>keydet: Spare us your self-righteous military propaganda. The mere idea that all of our armed service members execute their jobs altruistically, selflessly, and only for the reason of protecting civilian liberty is facetious at best. They, like their civilian counterparts in universities and colleges, are there for various reasons and have their own motives for serving, selfish and selfless alike. Likewise, I do not know many people whose lives, family, or friends have not been scarred by what you so blithely refer to as service, so you can also spare us your arrogant presumption that critics of the military or its academies do not understand sacrifice, because we do all too well.</p>
<p>That being said, I still think the Forbes Rankings are as absurd as they are useless to freshman/transfer applicants. Fortunately, the USNews Rankings still reign supreme and probably will for the foreseeable future.</p>
<p>Here is the USNWR methodology. We can agree that alumni giving is a pretty ridiculous statistic but it counts for just 5% of the total USNWR score. Sure its far from perfect but at least all the data is from an actual representative sample from that institution.</p>
<p>25% Peer Assessment- The U.S. News ranking formula gives greatest weight to the opinions of those in a position to judge a school’s undergraduate academic excellence. The peer assessment survey allows the top academics we consultpresidents, provosts, and deans of admissionsto account for intangibles such as faculty dedication to teaching.</p>
<p>20% Retention- The higher the proportion of freshmen who return to campus the following year and eventually graduate, the better a school is apt to be at offering the classes and services students need to succeed. This measure has two components: six-year graduation rate (80 percent of the retention score) and freshman retention rate (20 percent).</p>
<p>20% Faculty Resources- Research shows that the more satisfied students are about their contact with professors, the more they will learn and the more likely it is they will graduate. We use six factors from the 2007-08 academic year to assess a school’s commitment to instruction. Class size has two components: the proportion of classes with fewer than 20 students (30 percent of the faculty resources score) and the proportion with 50 or more students (10 percent of the score). In our model, a school benefits more for having a large proportion of classes with fewer than 20 students and a small proportion of large classes. Faculty salary (35 percent) is the average faculty pay, plus benefits, during the 2006-07 and 2007-08 academic years, adjusted for regional differences in the cost of living (using indexes from the consulting firm Runzheimer International). We also weigh the proportion of professors with the highest degree in their fields (15 percent), the student-faculty ratio (5 percent), and the proportion of faculty who are full time (5 percent).</p>
<p>15% Student Selectivity- A school’s academic atmosphere is determined in part by the abilities and ambitions of the student body. We therefore factor in test scores of enrollees on the Critical Reading and Math portions of the SAT or Composite ACT score (50 percent of the selectivity score); the proportion of enrolled freshmen who graduated in the top 10 percent of their high school classes or (for institutions in the universities-master’s and baccalaureate colleges) the top 25 percent (40 percent); and the acceptance rate, or the ratio of students admitted to applicants (10 percent).</p>
<p>10% Financial Resources- Generous per-student spending indicates that a college can offer a wide variety of programs and services. U.S. News measures financial resources by using the average spending per student on instruction, research, student services, and related educational expenditures in the 2006 and 2007 fiscal years. Spending on sports, dorms, and hospitals doesn’t count, only the part of a school’s budget that goes toward educating students.</p>
<p>5% Graduation Rate Performance- This indicator of “added value” shows the effect of the college’s programs and policies on the graduation rate of students after controlling for spending and student characteristics such as the proportion receiving Pell grants and test scores. We measure the difference between a school’s six-year graduation rate for the class that entered in 2001 and the rate we predicted for the class. If the actual graduation rate is higher than the predicted rate, the college is enhancing achievement.</p>
<p>5% Alumni Giving Rate- This reflects the average percentage of living alumni with bachelor’s degrees who gave to their school during 2005-06 and 2006-07, which is an indirect measure of student satisfaction.</p>
<p>^ I also don’t understand this resentment for West Point either, let alone the military. </p>
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<p>5 years is not all that long. It’s only 5 years out of what, 70-90 years of your life? You’re not really missing out on much other than a couple of years out of your early 20s–you graduate West Point at the age of 21 or 22 and you’re done with your obligation by the age of 26-27. You’ll still have PLENTY of time to start a family afterward. And “tearing apart” your family by being on the reserves is putting it a bit too harshly. The chances of you being deployed when on reserves is a LOT smaller as compared to being deployed while on active duty.</p>
<p>ETA: And if you really think about it, who takes ANY sort of college ranking seriously? It’s not going to change the truth about the quality of colleges, nor should it have a significant influence on anyone’s opinions, regardless of WHO makes the rankings.</p>
<p>Every ranking has some bias and flaws. Forbes’ ranking criteria is arguably as “absurd” as it gets. For whatever its worth, use this “Academic Ranking of World Universities” for 2008ARWU2008 as your guide. According to the Economist - world’s top business journal, the most objective, reliable and widely used worldwide college rankings are compiled and published by China’s historic Shanghai Jiao Tong University. Here are its top rankings:</p>
<p>Our daughter was admitted everywhere she’d applied - Harvard, MIT, Princeton, Penn and other top colleges. She chose Stanford because it is not only global hub of science, engineering and technology next only to MIT but it is truly among the best in every field of study and discipline you can think of. </p>
<p>Number of departments ranked in top 10:</p>
<p>Stanford 32
Harvard 25
MIT 17
Princeton 13</p>
<p>Outside classroom, Stanford offers its students a diverse experience unlike any best of breed academic institution. It has top athletic programs that have produced Gold-medalist Olympians and legends like Tiger Woods and John McEnroe.</p>
<p>Harvard and other Ivies have nondescript engineering and technology programs. Not sure why Princeton is so highly rated despite no law, business, or medical school. Penn, on the other hand, has top 5 law, business, and medical schools, but doesn’t get that kind of respect. Puzzling, these rankings.</p>
<p>Students looking for broad academic experience at a large university should consider ‘number of top 10 ranked departments’ at each school instead of some overall ranking based on fuzzy biased criteria. Students looking at a certain speciality might seek an MIT or a West Point. Students wanting smaller liberal arts program or girls-only might focus on a Swathmore or a Welselly instead. Students and parents concerned with costs should not bother with Ivies and instead focus on in-state schools like UMichigan, UC Berkley, GaTech, UViriginia, etc. which have outstanding specialitiy and general academics.</p>
<p>“Schmaltz: Funny you mention the integrity of the family in our “free and open” American society that not only does not permit me as a gay man to serve in the armed forces, but also forbids me from legally marrying or adopting children. I’ll take the Ivy League any day, thanks.”</p>
<p>Wayward_trojan: Your beloved Ivy league educated Civilian leaders are the ones that have decided not to allow gay men in the military. Maybe you should write them a letter instead of complaining about it on here.</p>
<p>Hah hah, good one. Now we know that if you say “hater” it doesn’t actually mean “hater”. Maybe you use “hater” to mean “fine people who reasonably assert that West Point is not in fact #1”.</p>
<p>i know im about to get buried with “your a treason” and “yay americas” but i agree with sorghum whole-heartedly. i dont entirely know why we’re in the middle-east right now but i know its not for our “freedom”. terrorists are terrorists, you cant change that, and hitting the beehive with a large stick won’t do much to keep those bees away. as evil as they are, i feel that so much more could be done for the world with a reduced military and more democracy. american lives are saved, iraqi lives are saved, and billions of dollars are saved, especially in an economy where tens of thousands are losing their jobs and forced into poverty along with their families.</p>