<p>This is ridiculous.</p>
<p>how is it not reliable? it’s not like people would spend the time to go on there and lie about how bad a professor is to increase their forbes ranking lol</p>
<p>Man this ****ed off the people attending ivies more than i had anticipated…</p>
<p>^ The one thing that I did like about this ranking was that the Military academies were ranked higher. But whether we like it or not, schools are not (and IMO, should not be) ranked by which one turns someone into a “better person.” While that would be ideal, it’s not a university’s job to create better people…it’s a university’s job to educate people. If a school happens to make you a better person, then great. So if you want to title this ranking “the best schools on average who make the best changes in people’s lives,” then fine. But academically speaking, this should not be titled the “Best Colleges.” This just adds to Forbes list of ridiculous lists, many of which are completely unrelated to education.</p>
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<p>Did Forbes just pull a list out of their ass?</p>
<p>The list is insane-- ppl like USNews because despite all its criticism it does a fairly accurate job of, in effect, ranking schools into tiers based on how well-perceived they are in general-- People can bicker about whether there school is ranked 8th or 12th but in general they put the best schools where they belong, near the top. Forbes rankings lose all credibility with their off-beat system. The idea of something being the “best” may be subjective, but Forbes approach to ranking colleges is utterly insane.</p>
<p>“how is it not reliable? it’s not like people would spend the time to go on there and lie about how bad a professor is to increase their forbes ranking lol”</p>
<p>No, but they are incredibly unreliable because only a small percentage of students actually use that site to rank their proff’s. Not to mention, a significant percentage of the people who actually do rate proffs will rate them poorly because they did a poor job in that teacher’s class. I knew TONS of people in my dual enrollment classes that did horrible in the class because they were simply lazy and did not try at all. Who did they blame their poor performance on 90% of the time? That’s right, the teacher. Forbes is using a completely subjective source (ratemyproff) as a HUGE piece of their criteria. Just one of the reasons this ranking is completely messed up. </p>
<p>Btw, I am not attending any Ivy or top 25 school. There are MANY other schools that are completely wrong.</p>
<p>“Did Forbes just pull a list out of their ass?”</p>
<p>Yes… is this the first Forbes list you’ve seen? haha.</p>
<ol>
<li><p>Listings of Alumni in the 2008 edition of Who’s Who in America (12.5%)</p></li>
<li><p>Salaries of Alumni from PayScale.com (12.5%)</p></li>
<li><p>Student Evaluations from Ratemyprofessors.com (25%)</p></li>
<li><p>Four-Year Graduation Rates (16.66%)</p></li>
<li><p>Students Receiving Nationally Competitive Awards (8.33%)</p></li>
<li><p>Faculty Receiving Awards for Scholarship and Creative Pursuits (5%)</p></li>
<li><p>Four-year Debt Load for Typical Student Borrowers (20%)</p></li>
</ol>
<p>This is the criteria for choosing the schools. I truly do not understand this system. As everyone has said, ratemyprof.com??? WHAT??? It is an unreliable source - no doubt about it. I think Forbes should go out and survey college kids and realize that many of them don’t consider ratemyprof.com to be a great source. You can’t cite that - I’m sorry…it’s like using Wikipedia (while sometimes accurate) for a huge research paper. </p>
<p>Second, is the Who’s Who in America really that big of a deal? Who cares if your alumni get published in some stupid book??? The whole rating is based on what people went on to do/post-grad stuff - salaries, who’s who, awards, and debt. What about fun stuff during graduation? Seriously - how about you survey the kids who GO to college there and see if they like it? </p>
<p>Another thing - did Forbes get Cornell College and Cornell University confused???
“Other schools generally considered to be America’s best still rank high–Amherst (No. 8), Yale (No. 9), Stanford (No. 10) and MIT (No. 11). But our approach to evaluating performance also yields some hidden jewels. Among liberal arts colleges, Centre (No. 14) and Union (No. 26) rank in the top 30 of all institutions. Boston College (No. 16) far outperforms Dartmouth (No. 98), Duke (No. 104) and **Cornell (No. 105). **And among flagship state universities, Illinois (No. 132) outranks Big Ten Conference rival (No. 200) Michigan.”</p>
<p>Cornell COLLEGE ranks #105…Cornell U (the IVY) ranks #207…as far as I know…Cornell College usually isn’t talked about with Dartmouth and Duke but who knows with Forbes…</p>
<p>Oh, and just for reference…
BU is #342
NYU is #355
George Washington University is #429
while…
Kalamazoo College is #52</p>
<p>Zoes noes harvard is not number one this list must be flawed!</p>
<p>Clemson is in the 400s/500s, this list is ridiculous if they aren’t at least in the top 200 :p</p>
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The military academies and the College of William and Mary. Not that that makes the list any better…</p>
<p>Even after looking at the methodology, I don’t understand how a ranking that can put Princeton #2, Williams #4, Middlebury #25 and Colgate #29 can possibly rank Dartmouth #98. You would think that whatever criteria puts those four schools in the top 30 would, at least, put Dartmouth in the top 30 too. Or even how if West Point is #1 and Air Force is #7 that Annapolis is still #30. It’s confusing because many top schools do rank highly on this, but not all, and there seems to be no rhyme or reason as to which ones do and don’t rank highly.</p>
<p>Yeah - I have to agree with bayvcroberts. After reading the methodology, this is indeed the dumbest list i’ve ever laid eyes on…</p>
<p>Soccersam-- how do you account for the fact that Brown and Dartmouth both essentially don’t use Ratemyprofessors because we internally review classes and post that information up in more detail in a statistically significant way, with almost 100% participation (in the 50% or so of classes that use the Critical Review, those that don’t use CR are usually much higher level and so you know all about it long before you get there).</p>
<p>How do you account for the fact that the Who’s Who list is not considered meaningful or respectful by anyone, and is largely seen as a ****ty scam to get money out of people?</p>
<p>How do you account for the fact that say, URochester says it’s essentially free to stay a fifth year to double concentrate? Or schools that encourage co-ops which delay graduation but put money in your pocket? There’s a reason the federal government uses 6-year graduation rate and not 4-year…</p>
<p>The concept of these dimensions is great, the actually places they’re drawing data from is a joke.</p>
<p>This has been extensively discussed in past threads.</p>
<p>Rolling in the aisles laughing at this one. Is Forbes trying to position itself next to MAD magazine? Or are their editors just trying to play this straight, issuing this as an "April Fools " type issue of the magazine and enjoying the actions of any fools who take it seriously.</p>
<p>gellino:</p>
<p>Dartmouth students don’t use rate.my.prof very much – extremely low participation. Dartmouth has an internal online prof-rating/comment that students use instead.</p>
<p>No actually I think the real reason we don’t like this ranking is because there aren’t enough ivies or schools of prestige at the top like: Princeton, Caltech, Williams, Harvard, Amherst, Yale, Stanford, and Columbia.</p>
<p>This brings back memories of laughing through the Gourman report.</p>
<p>Forbes is notorioulsy bad with their lists. They had one for the 100 most powerful women in the world, and they ranked the only elected Head of State of a nation in the top 20 in world population, the President of the Philippines something like 45th.</p>
<p>I hate rankings lists PERIOD.</p>
<p>Bogus Results… Not sure if it’s on purpose (to generate more attention / all press is good press) or just incredibly poor methodology. Does make me suspect of whatever they print.</p>