Rose-Hulman got on to S22’s radar initially via U.S. News. It’s top-ranked among engineering schools without graduate programs, typically right there with Harvey Mudd. We’d never heard of it back in 8th/9th grade. The U.S. News ranking made us aware of the school, but then actual fit became what mattered. On that, Rose-Hulman really came to the fore over the years.
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S22 and D19 aren’t interested in engineering at all, but I’d never heard of Rose-Hulman until last year here on CC! Interesting the schools that fly below the radar.
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I only found one feature of USNWR rankings useful: its interactive map of ranked colleges. We used the map to plan our college tours, grouping colleges to visit based on their geographic locations on the map.
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We used rankings. How else would we know what colleges have strong programs in certain majors? I google everything and colleges are no exception :). We didn’t live or die by the rankings but it narrowed the field for what programs to dig into. Ultimately people do need tools like rankings unless you spend a lot of time tracking the nuances of higher education but there should be clearly outlined criteria of what is being considered in a ranking. I think things like the major’s average earnings, placement rates, average 4 year graduation rate, teacher/student ratio, number of papers published per capita, and other factors are very important data to have and I’m glad some organizations make attempts to compile these data points. The problem is they throw a lot of other things in there that are less important (selectivity for example). But realistically I am glad there were rankings to form an initial list.
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There was a huge discussion of this topic on this thread a few month ago - search for Malcolm Gladwell and you can probably find it. The flaw in the USNWR rankings is the outsized weight of the “reputation” metric which is a very subjective and soft “data” point. I would LOVE to see the list before “reputation” was factored in. We looked at other stats like retention rate, percentage that graduates within 4 years, and rankings of specific programs which are usually ranked without the reputation metric.
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Same. Never heard of it in CA, but S19 found it in searching for engineering schools. He is currently a junior ME and it has been a great school for him.
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We didn’t use rankings at all. What we did use for both S20 and S22 were the major requirements and classes offered for their major. We were also looking for specialized honors programs within their major. Both my husband and I have a background in both of the majors which made this significantly easier.
S22 went as far as contacting every single math department in all schools he considered. He checked where his DE college credits place him within their program, if/when he could start taking graduate classes, what research options there were, etc. That led to him applying to some and ignoring the rest.
I believe this approach worked really well for us.
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For one of my D’s college search, we used both the CFP and USNWR rankings to help create a list of colleges. 
My son just focused on schools strong in Computer Science.
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We used a combination of things that helped narrow down the initial list to 25 or so. DD started with the top 100 CS programs in USNWR to get the first crop of schools to consider, but then looked at tons of other factors like graduation rate, location, price, size of the CS programs, % of women enrolled, csrankings, payscale, student reviews, etc. Rankings can be helpful but are not the most important factor. Especially since several of the schools she most strongly considered were all somehow tied on the USNWR CS undergrad list.
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We used rankings + career outcomes data + cost + location to make our initial list. None of the Ivys made the cut due to cost, and location ruled out most OOS options.
Our only 2 high cost schools were Mudd and UMich both due to for personal affinity. Our OOS was limited to Purdue, UMich, UIUC, Rose Hulman and CU Boulder.
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I used USNews, CSRanking, THE, QSRanking, Shanghai, Niche, and at least one or two others to pull together an initial list for both D17 (Engineering) and D22 (CS). With varied ranking criteria, they at least provided a long list to start with. Ranking didn’t mean a lot past that point, but now that we’re years later, I don’t think anything was missed.
Much like looking at Consumer Reports, Car & Driver, and a few others when researching cars, I’m fine leaning on some level of expertise to start the process. That’s different than just selecting based on a rating.
I remember being flooded with mail from Rose-Holman when I was in high school, even many years later, so their marketing was effective.
And I suppose flying up front international at 10 weeks would be “privilege” 
. I think we applied for a passport as soon as the ink on the birth certificate was dry.
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Similar here. We used US News, QS World Rankings, Times and Prep Scholar to create a list and validated it with payscale data and pitchbook info (D is having one of her legs into enterprenurship, doesn’t’ want to do 9-5 job)
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D22 had a lot of overlap! UIUC, Purdue, RHIT & Boulder were all on her list, too. She didn’t have any Ivys either, but UIUC CS is practically as tough it crack into!
Has she decided where she is going? Would be curious to hear your take on Purdue and UIUC since they are the only OOS schools in the running for us albeit behind our UC choices.
Since many here graciously offered suggestions about D22’s college search last year (and that thread is now closed), I thought I would share the outcome.
98 uw/103.59 wgpa (Final rank 8 of 568), suburban public HS
35 ACT (33 M/36/36/36)
12 APs (six 5s, one 4 so far)
Most notable EC is preschool choir teacher at church for four years; many music ECs
Religious studies/sociology
REACH
Yale (RD) - Denied
Brown (RD) - Denied
Rice (RD) - Accepted, will attend; net cost 18k
HIGH TARGET
UVa (EA legacy) - Accepted; net cost 53k
SAFETY
Baylor (EA) - Accepted w Honors; net cost 40k
Kansas (EA) - Accepted w Honors; net cost 25k
Thanks to all for suggestions early in the process. D22 is very choosy and had little bandwidth for tons of apps and essays, so finding KU as a strong safety that she liked helped focus the other categories. She is very excited about the overall outcome, and I am very excited about the financial aid from Rice (!). I have learned so much on CC, and I feel very, very fortunate that in an incredibly competitive year, D22 had a couple of great choices at the end of the day.
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Well, they did ask “With what group do you identify?”.
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We started our search by building a matrix of schools based on USNWR rankings for majors in which our son was interested, so schools that did not offer PhDs like RHIT, Harvey Mudd, etc. were not on our radar. We only learned about RHIT because a friend knew someone whose son went there and loved it. Our son got into RHIT, and the only reason he decided not to go there was its location “in the middle of nowhere, Indiana”.
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She’s going to IU-Bloomington! Purdue accepted her for Exploratory Studies and not CS, and it’s pretty much impossible to transfer in. So, she withdrew. UIUC denied her CS + Astronomy and waitlisted her for DGS. It’s all good, though, her two favorites were IU and Pitt from the get-go, and she got into both. She ultimately liked IU’s CS program a little more. She also was accepted to CS at Boulder and seriously considered them. She was waitlisted at RHIT.
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A lot of people post grades here, and it is interesting how many people have a clean 4. At our school. internal grading is on a 14 point scale, unweighted. An A+ is 14, and an A is 13 etc. In the past 30+ years for which there are records, I am told there is not a single clean 14. The Valedictorian ends up in the 13.7-13.8 area. The school doesn’t compute a GPA or a rank apart from a val and a sal. I find the disparity very interesting.
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