<p>I’m not saying minute differences within the top 20 matter. I actually think USNews should provide an interactive feature where you could come up with your own rankings by weighing the criteria differently.</p>
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Yea, but you still came up with an academic all-stars list and left out many fine schools, suggesting these top 25 colleges are objectively the best. Can you imagine if such a ranking were published? If some person just came up with “the top 25 colleges” without any basis whatsoever, I’m sure people will be angry and rightfully so, since personal biases will come into play for sure. For example, he might purposely leave out Notre Dame because he subconsciously doesn’t like religious colleges. He might leave out Northwestern if he hated the Greek scene and hated the fact that the school is flourishing in spite of it. He might subconsciously undermine the ranking of some college that his child was not accepted to (especially when it’s easy to do so since it’s not prestigious enough and people will agree anyway), and the list goes on and on. </p>
<p>And you still haven’t explained how you chose your top 25 schools. What is your methodology? What made you include Grinnell, for example, and not Reed or Georgetown? How about WashU, Northwestern, Rice, Emory, and Vanderbilt?</p>
<p>The Washington Monthly list is fine in that it has a very specific purpose, though its methodology is still flawed (leaves out Americorps volunteers, for example, in favor of Peacecorps and doesn’t factor in Fulbright and other fellowships).</p>
<p>If your list, on the other hand, were more like Princeton Review’s list of “Best in Classroom Interaction” or “Best Library,” then that’s fine because it would be very specific in scope. But even then, PR did not come up with its lists out of the blue like you did. They had a methodology, whether you agreed with it or not. Princeton Review also does not encourage the top 25 or bust mentality as yours would. It lists 361 colleges as being high quality schools. </p>
<p>In the end, US News is basically just a mega-ranking of various rankings (student/teacher ratio, quality of the student body, alumni giving, peer assessment etc), and what matters is your own re-weighting of the various criteria to determine your own rankings based on your own needs. For example, you might reduce the weight of the peer assessment score from 25% of the overall ranking to just 5% and increase the importance of student body quality and various other criteria.</p>
<p>Your suggestion of a customizable criteria shifting tool is a great one!!!</p>
<p>If you are a software toolmaker there might be a market there for you!!! </p>
<p>And you’re right about Washington Monthly, . . which is a flaw of EVERY ranking system; they each will come up with different results depending upon the underlying criteria used for selection.</p>
<p>EVERY list ever done “came up with an academic all-stars list” that “left out many fine schools”. Too many people then misuse the lists by paying way too much attention to the ordinals, and either bragging that their school is not in the Top 20 or compaling that their school is not listed.</p>
<p>That said, I did another sort and came up with these Top Six schools:
U Chicago
Oberlin
Brown
Weslyan
Vassar
U Michigan </p>
<p>Great… this is is starting to sound like fraternity/sorority rankings, except those rankings actually have a basis (albeit arbitrary): looks, personality, and whatnot. Coming up with rankings is fine but not explaining why you have those rankings serves no useful purpose, and I’m sure any reasonable person would agree. It’s like me saying that the Cubs, Marlins, and Dodgers are the three best baseball teams without explaining why.</p>
<p>toolworker, I also like your idea of a customizable list! Not only would it cut down on the tiresome arguments about whose school is better this year, it would actually be more useful.</p>
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<p>I <em>think</em> you illustrate Kei’s point. All of these lists are inevitably subjective to one degree or other, because in the end, you are comparing things which don’t lend themselves to a direct comparison. Which is better, the top public Ivy, or the top LAC? Or the top military academy? Or the top seminary? Even if we could agree on what those top schools are, the answer depends on what you’re looking for in a college education – and this varies significantly from student to student, a point which the rankings largely ignore. And as Kei correctly points out, using numbered rankings gives a (false) impression of precision and definitiveness.</p>
<p>Kei: Your faults-of-the-current-system analysis is spot on!</p>
<p>We agree on this point. Where we differ is that I think the list of OVERALL top schools should not be restricted to 25 schools. If you do, at least have a methodology that can explain what you can put into the top 25 and what you cannot. In US News, I believe differences in rank among most of the top 25 is insignificant, but it’s not US News’s fault that the minute differences in scores from one school or the next are interpreted otherwise (USN does publish the scores in the first column); it’s the people who don’t pay attention to those scores.</p>
<p>Oh I think USNWR knows EXACTLY what it’s doing. One reason its list gets so much attention (and sells so many copies, which after all is their primary goal) is precisely because it’s controversial. They could very easily provide every bit of information that they currently do in a format that doesn’t rank; say, alphabetically. It’ll never happen.</p>
<p>And BTW the first number for each school is not the score, but the rank – set off by itself on the left side, so that we can’t miss it. That’s not accidental.</p>
<p>But I think we’re missing the point. I believe that Kei’s methodology and list are intended as satire. ;)</p>
<p>Kei, I dunno but I’m totally nauseated by the whole concept of rankings. If I see one more kid post the question is school A more “prestigious” than school B I’m gonna barf. Most every parent in the country is just sitting back hoping their kid will A) graduate from whatever school they attend and B) hopinng they can afford wherever their darling goes and C) hoping they find a job after they graduate if there is no family company in the picture.</p>