<p>I attended BC, I graduated from BC, and I loved my experience at BC. With that said, I believe that forbes overrated BC and many other lesser known schools, while grossly underrating some of the best–and most influential schools–in the US. </p>
<p>Although everyone in this forum will agree that college rankings are subjective, at least some level of consistency should be employed. Clearly, Forbes failed at this. When schools like Johns Hopkins, Georgetown, Duke, and Cornell–universities that endow the United States with some of the best doctors, lawyers, diplomats, scholars, priests, etc–are relegated to below-average levels, you really have to question the validity of Forbes’ overall methodology. While some might praise Forbes for trying a fresh new take on how to best assess our universities, their criteria have very little correlation with the actual quality of the institution. I think that’s why you are getting historically strong schools at the top, middle, and bottom of the list.</p>
<p>Just looking at it rationally, this list doesn’t seem to be a very good one.</p>
<p>Nope, this is my first time. I was in going to log into the BC portal, and the web site had a blurb on how BC was ranked 16th according to Forbes. I checked out the list, thought it was quite off, and that led me to this discussion. There is nothing wrong with posting for the first time today, is there?</p>
<p>Superstar, I don’t deny that I am a BC affiliate, but I don’t think that you have a right to accuse me of my bias. All I said was that the actual results were not that bad, according to Forbes’ criteria. I did say that the methodology was flawed, but even with that taken into consideration, I think that most of the schools listed on the top of are not at all “below” the schools people normally highly regard (Ivy League, for example) in terms of educational quality of UNDERGRADUATES. Forbes’ list has the merit of showcasing many overlooked liberal arts schools as well as service academies. In that regard, I think it was a success.</p>
<p>these forbes rankings are fake its like 25% ratemyprofessor lol. superstar is just a hater of BC, he randomly calls me a ■■■■■ and it seems like hes jealous of BC, possibly a reject?</p>
<p>edit: venkat no1 has ever heard of centre college</p>
<p>Which explains the low ranking of Dartmouth and Brown.</p>
<p>Please.</p>
<p>The answer is that their criteria is fine, but where the sources they use to get that information is seriously flawed and results in the creation of peer groups that make no sense whatsoever, objectively.</p>
Having a bias for LACs is fine. In my mind that means having WASP after HPY and putting LACs ahead of their peer universities. That does not mean having Franklin and Marshall as the 5th best PA school and Juniata as 6th over Penn, CMU, Penn State, Pitt, Temple, Villanova, and others. If you look at state schools, New College in Florida the 2nd best non military academy among public schools. Wyoming beats out Texas, Washington, and Florida. Utah State and New Mexico State beat out Michigan. I’m all for smaller schools, but not at the expense of grossly under ranking larger schools.</p>
<p>Williams and Amherst are both above Yale and Princeton in the ranking.</p>
<p>BC is a great school with a significant number of haters, but one is hard-pressed to suggest it is a better school than Dartmouth, Brown, and a number of other top research universities, all criteria considered.</p>
<p>I’m not promoting ANY ranking as being great or even good. I clearly stated in post 128 that the Forbes ranking is flawed. VERY FLAWED. Perhaps it’s even garbage. But the ridiculous methods of argumentation being used to slam it (from people who supposedly went to “top” colleges) continue to amaze me. The US News ranking is saluted by some of you because it results in findings that mostly correlate to your already held opinions. If somehow Centre College and West Point end up highly ranked by US News next year, you’ll dump US News in favor of the West Hampton Yacht Club ranking or whatever other ranking matches your views. Because that’s the way you apparently think…you start with the conclusion and work backward to set up the premises.</p>
<p>Some of you refuse to acknowledge the inherent weaknesses in choosing the criteria in ANY social science study purporting to evalute the “value” of things." They ALL boil down to PEOPLE chosing criteria for a “good college” or “normal behavior” or a “better society.” For a long time I’ve slammed people using quantitative means to come up with qualitative conclusions. So I agree that the Forbes ranking deserves to be slammed, but so do ALL of the rankings, including US News.</p>
<p>Any of you guys ever study the “is-ought” falllacy?</p>
<p>^ Thank you for clarifying your position. The word “best” is a subjective word, so it’s impossible to come up with any kind of list about the “best” anything without making some people mad. As I’ve stated throughout this thread, it’s not the ranking of the top 25 that bug me (although several omissions do, I’ll admit). It’s the terrible resources they used in their criteria. Messauring a school by the quality of its teachers, the amount of debt afterwards, the quality of life, and the average post-graduation pay are all well and good. But using the resources they did to gather data for those conclusions is the major flaw here. In fact, I would agree that most of the top 25 (I can’t remember which ones are in there for sure) are great schools… and if a ranking came out with better sources for the same criteria, and got the same top 25 results, then that wouldn’t bother me one bit… I don’t go to Dartmouth, Cornell, or any other typical top 25. But because of the absolutely terrible sources, we have one terrible list.</p>
<p>soccersamdude, first off i do not have multiple accounts. Second never did i once say that BC was a bad school. Its a great school and i would’ve probably attended if i weren’t passionate about engineering. My point is, is that this ranking is seriously flawed but yet you keep saying its legit. Thats fine, but i just find it odd that the only advocaters of this ranking are the BC affiliated students.</p>
<p>modestmelody: I found the rankings for Brown and Dartmouth a bit odd, too, but was not at all surprised at the low rankings for the larger publics (Michigan/Berkeley/UCLA), the less generous privates (NYU/CMU/Tulane/BU), the science/pre-med heavy colleges (Cornell/JHU/Berkeley/Purdue/GTech), and the ones with co-op/extended programs (Northeastern).</p>
<p>Venkat89: I think you are seriously devaluing the strength of Franklin & Marshall. From the looks of my current research, it is on par (or a bit below) with Villanova and better than Penn’s public system. It looks like a solid 7-8 (when Penn and CMU are added at the top). IDK about Juniata, however, but it seems a bit below Pitt. The public universities get really wacky in this ranking, I agree, because most of them are larger.</p>
<p>I think people are misunderstanding me here. I personally find all rankings a bit subjective and flawed, some more than others. I, however, see them as a great introductory tool and not as an end-all-be-all ranking. USNWR (the ultimate “end-all-be-all” ranking), although also flawed, has given us an introduction to some of the national universities that were hidden gems to the public eye, namely Rice, Vanderbilt, WUSTL, Caltech back in the days, Case Western, Brandeis, Yeshiva, etc. Forbes list is great because it brings to the public eye the service academies and the lesser known liberal arts colleges. The public already hear enough about the Ivy League through the other rankings to perceive that they are great institutions. Forbes just brings to light some others. It doesn’t really hurt Cornell to be 207 on the list and it doesn’t hurt Dartmouth to be 98 (USNews has them covered well enough), but it certainly helps some other schools that were once overlooked by the public.</p>
<p>And superstar, just because I go to BC doesn’t mean I can’t give a clear and thoughtful opinion over the data. Drop your fallacious thinking, and you’ll see that my comments do make make sense.</p>
<p>While I most certainly agree that there are some SERIOUS errors with Forbes rankings, I think we all need to take a step back. This is nothing to get emotional about, people!</p>
<p>In my humble opinion (and admittedly, I did not look at the list for very long) the Forbes list is more about the overall experience of the student than other rankings. While other rankings- as well as CCers- obsess over GPA, SATs, rigor of academics, and other hard numbers, some people focus on the overall experience of the students. Did they have fun? Did they like their teachers and their community? Did they feel their education served them well? (which could explain NYU’s low ranking, given the reported ‘unhappiness’ level of the students by Princeton Review)</p>
<p>As others mentioned ‘best’ is a broad term. ‘Best’ doesnt necessarily equate to ‘academically best’. Judging by the ranking methodology, it’s clear that Forbes focused more on the experience of the students. </p>
<p>So come on, people. Let’s all take a chill pill.</p>
<p>I don’t even have to read any of this thread. I read the title (understatement of the year?)
and the rankings, and that’s all I needed.</p>
<p>This could’ve been posted by The Onion, and been hilariously satirical.
The methodology is garbage. Absolute garbage.</p>
<p>I ROFLMAOed so hard it hurt haha</p>
<p>Edit: Jenx, you must be joking. Look at the schools on PR’s “Happiest Students” list. Then, look at the USNWR rankings.</p>
<p>See any doubles? Hmm? Now, do you see those schools that have both incredible academic prestige AND ridiculously happy students high on the Forbes list? No, because it uses things like RATEMYPROFESSORS.COM AS EVIDENCE bahahahahahahahaha roflmao</p>
<p>Soccersam, I’m acting like an intelligent person. You should try it; it’s fun.</p>
<p>Oh, and how “happy” of a “college experience” do you think the guys at Westpoint are getting??? I love them for what they do, but when you think “college experience,” do you think “ahhhhhhh Boot Camp”?</p>
<ol>
<li>Stop trying to be condescending </li>
<li>It’s really annoying when you randomly hop in a thread and go OMG WOWZOR! WORST RANKING EVERRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRR! IM GOD! IM SMART UR NOT! HE -HE-HA-HA-HOO</li>
</ol>