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<p>I take it this is supposed to be a joke, considering all of these schools are in the top 13 on their list.</p>
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<p>Should that really be enough to take them from top 30 to #98? Dartmouth ranks #1 on Payscale.</p>
<p>This just goes to show that a ranked number 10 school isn’t any different from a ranked number 25 school and so on…</p>
<p>Why don’t we actually try to look at the methodology first before bashing the rankings?</p>
<p>It’s actually supposed to be mathematical, so there isn’t any bias anywhere.</p>
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<p>How do they find this out?</p>
<p>I think they use Ratemyprofessor.com</p>
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<p>Graduation rate is very mathematical (even though it gives public schools a huge disadvantage), and I guess “employment success” is based on % employed after college. I’m not sure how each school calculates that.</p>
<p>Apparently, they use Payscale.com data.</p>
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<p>This is self-explanatory. </p>
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<p>I’m not sure how they calculate this at all. </p>
<p>So that’s it. It’s just the problem with the methodology.</p>
<p>Let’s look at 76-100. You have Vandy, Penn, UCLA, and Dartmouth listed in the same teir as Centenary College of Louisiana, Hillsdale College, Huntington University, and Wesleyan College (GA).</p>
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Wasn’t Who’s Who a scam they try to get high school students to pay for? It costs over $700 to order the book anyway.</p>
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I doubt everyone reports to PayScale.com and didn’t Dartmouth have the largest salaries according to that website anyway? How do they tumble to the 80s?</p>
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My school doesn’t use Rate My Professor. We have our own in house rating system. I wonder how this was taken into account when Penn was ranked bellow 75th place. I wouldn’t be surprised if many other colleges did this inhouse too.</p>
<p>The rest is somewhat legit, but 50% of the criteria are pure ********. At least the US News PA asks semi reputable sources instead of random websites.</p>
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<p>It might be based on starting salary, which is relatively lower for Dartmoth.</p>
<p>I love how everyone is so ****ed off about this! </p>
<p>25% on an unreliable source is not a good idea. Did they go through every evaluation on that site (rate my prof .com) ?</p>
<p>Nobody in my 20 person office has ever even heard of Payscale. I never did until they got their crap in the papers.</p>
<p>Payscale.com is notoriously unreliable for this sort of thing—almost as big a joke as the “ratemyprofessor” nonsense. First, payscale.com is based on self-reported data by a self-selected group of alums, so it’s not a scientific sample and no effort is made to verify possibly inflated salary claims. Second, the data are for alums with terminal bachelor’s degrees only, so schools where a high percentage of graduates go on to graduate and professional programs will effectively be penalized by having many of its highest-earning alums pushed out of the data. Third, the figures aren’t adjusted by cost-of-living; $100K in Manhattan is a middle-class wage, while $100K in Des Moines is a handsome living. Without adjusting for regional differences in the cost-of-living, the data are pretty much junk. Fourth, no effort is made to normalize for occupation. A school where a large percentage of graduates who go into the Peace Corps, Teach for America, or other low-wage public service jobs is going to be penalized, as is a school that produces a lot of teachers, social workers, and others whose entry-level and mid-career salaries will naturally be lower because of the occupation they chose, not because it somehow reflects a cap on their potential earnings had they selected a more lucrative career. A relevant comparison would be, do doctors who were undergrads at School 1 make more than doctors who were undergrads at school 2? The kinds of gross across-all-occupation comparisons made by payscale.com are pretty much meaningless.</p>
<p>I wonder whether Forbes realizes how much it makes itself a laughingstock by publishing this garbage? It almost makes US News look professional and responsible in comparison—though it gags me to say so, because I think US News is pretty much a bad joke, too.</p>
<p>USC and CMU also drops off the face of the earth.</p>
<p>Another thing that is ridiculous about ratemyprofessor.com: It doesn’t seem to have any system for keeping current. Checking out my own school’s page, there are plenty of people reviewed who are no longer teaching at this school – so schools could be being punished (or rewarded) for professors who are no longer even around. Likewise, there are plenty of profs (including very good ones) who have not been reviewed at all. </p>
<p>My sense at my school, and I’m sure this is true at others, is that ratemyprof was a lot more popular when it first came out, and very few people use it today. So, not only is it and unreliable sample, but it’s out of date to boot!</p>
<p>So according to Forbes, Kalamazoo College in Michigan is better than UM, UPenn, Duke, and Johns Hopkins. W-T-F??? Dumbest ranking ever.</p>
<p>This list actually makes me appreciate US News and World Report lol</p>
<p>Laughing - and somewhat outraged (that this trash is called newsworthy). Same silliness in NC, according to Forbes Salem College is higher ranked than UNC Chapel Hill - Duke - Elon - and Wake Forest.</p>
<p>Kalamazoo is at least a good school. Forbes Salem College? Now that’s ridiculous.</p>
<p>they ranked the UC’s so low o_o</p>
<p>Nyu #355…</p>
<p>While I am mildly surprised that BC is #16, I do agree: Their methodology is terribly flawed.</p>
<p>But in converse, aren’t all college rankings flawed?</p>
<p>Modest, our schools are neck and neck! Haha! :D</p>
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The Forbes rankings also take into account unwritten bonuses. For example, schools with Forbes in their name get an automatic 500 ranks boost.</p>
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At least this list got one thing right…</p>