Personal college ranking

Parents Forum
21

For D22, it was less about % priorities at first and more about a sequence of filters that winnowed the options down to a very small list.

schools in California
  ↳ schools at or below the UC (in-state) price
      ↳ schools with good Natural Resources departments

From there, it was a fairly even balance … to play the % game, we’ll say …
40% academic strength/reputation
40% vibe on-campus
20% proximity to home

For my two class-of-2025 students, we’re still early and will see how things shake out, but both are drawn to schools with good reputations and high rigor. Beyond that …

  • one of them is focused on “access to a great wood shop / fab program”, with a possible path towards mechanical engineering or design
  • the other one is a little more open-ended, but seems to be mostly looking for her people (kind, creative, quirky, smart), with a bit of a “do they have a good math program and maybe can I study bugs or birds?” filter
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22

S24 says must have D1 football, geographic location, size, campus in that order. Note the absence of any talk of academics :grimacing:

5 Likes
23

We only have one daughter who is still in school. I guess that her ranking might have considered:

  • Good DVM program
  • Good large animal program
  • Horses and cows (I am not sure of the order between these two).
  • Other large animals (she has gotten to meet at least pigs, llamas, alpacas, bison, a young sheep, and a water buffalo)
  • Location
  • Cost of attendance
5 Likes
24

Son:
Engineering
Can Swim
Not in a city
No foreign language requirement

Daughter:
Strong quantitative biology program (computational, bioinformatics, biophysics etc)
Good research opportunities
Ballet with performance opportunities for non-major
Midsized or Honors to make big school feel small
Direct flight home

5 Likes
25

S21 - 99% CS department, quality and depth of classes and quality of cohort.
0.1% each - housing, food, ultimate frisbee, parkour, distance, etc.

D24 - 20% - Exploratory program for undecided students
20% - cost
20% - business/marketing department
20% - weather and outdoor activities
20% - other

S31 - TBD :slight_smile:

7 Likes
26

Wouldn’t most of the others also have gradations of “good enough” versus “better than good enough”?

27

For S22 - he really didn’t have a ton of preferences at the time, but will tell you what he is thankful for now.
At the time:

  • good engineering
  • a marching band
  • cost. He went back and forth on this a bit though.
  • people not knowing his hometown by name
    Now:
  • warm weather
  • own room in the dorm
  • cost moved up a lot.

D24 has many more things she thinks she wants

  • own room in a dorm
  • weather that includes snow
  • engineering
  • foreign languages
  • ability to be picked up within 4-5 hours in case of a shooting (can be by anyone, not just me)
  • near a small/medium city with things to do
  • cost. She really thinks college is way too expensive.
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28

D22:

Nerdy/quirky vibe, little or no influence from Greeks/exclusive social clubs
Defined campus (ideally with some kind of wall or fence on the perimeter)
Walkable attractions nearby
Small to midsize, or at least a small honors cohort
No freezing winters
Peers’ you-did-good ranking (HT NiceUnparticularMan)

D26:

“Not too close to home”
“Not the same places that everyone goes”

D29:

TBD, but she’s my math kid.

2 Likes
29

Not sure how one would use “rankings” for the list below, consequently, they were a mere afterthought to get a sense for the perception/reputation of colleges under consideration.

DD18

Advantages:

  • inclusive / diverse
  • liberal arts
  • no rigid “core curriculum”
  • technically out of state (unless Ivy)
  • urban (specially: Manhattan), at minimum lively/walkable town/neighborhood
  • an “actual” campus
  • school spirit (whatever that means precisely)

Disadvantages:

  • (perceived) cut-throat environment
  • hard to switch majors
  • jocks
  • too preppy
  • trucks with gun racks
  • strong greek

In approximate order of priority - which seemed to shift after some visits made her realize the importance to her of some over others.
Some of those were clearly highly subjective, or impossible to define - but it helped the process of elimination nevertheless.

4 Likes
30

I guess that you could say that the “required” factors are good enough/not good enough, if you want, but we saw them yes/no. Well, not entirely true, since “diverse” is a continuum by any measure.

So the college had to have all of them to make the list, but then things like food/accommodations, “vibe”, how the campus looks, general fit (I know I forgot to add those) would be compared.

We probably would have tweaked the list closer to application deadline, since we really didn’t know what we were doing, initially.

31

Your D18’s priorities are near identical to what my D24 is looking for! :heart:

1 Like
32

Interestingly, I think I knew what you meant right away, because my S24 thinks in a similar way.

Even if there is always some sort of underlying distribution, for him most things are more like they have to meet a certain threshold, get past a certain filter, pass a litmus test, or whatever. And that can be a high standard. But among the colleges that do meet all those standards, he really isn’t further ranking them by those factors (not as far as I can tell), they are all on the “good” list more or less equally.

And then maybe a few things remain a relative ranking, but I have been a little surprised at how few.

I actually think this is a very mature attitude, in that I think he basically recognizes the practical wisdom of not letting the perfect be the enemy of the good. And so he is basically looking for colleges that will be very good in every way that matters to him, not the “better” school in one way that will not be very good for him in some other important way. And I really appreciate that.

But that being said, we’re now at the phase where we have identified a few too many colleges like that, and I think he would benefit from cutting a few more. He also has one favorite which he is applying to early, so that’s good. But then depending on how things go with that college, he might want to decide on an ED II school. And then depending on how things went with that, he might just need to decide where to go to college among two or more colleges that were all good in every important way.

And it is not clear to me exactly how he would make those decisions if his favorite doesn’t work out. Nor does it have to be clear to me, of course–I completely agree all his colleges would be great for him, and he could pick one out of a hat and I would be cool with that.

But it is definitely an interesting byproduct of his way of thinking that even sitting here in September, I really only know how he personally ranks two, maybe three, of his colleges.

33

I feel very much the same about D24. I know all of the things she is considering, and which are most important. I know the list she’s come up with so far and I like it. But I have no idea what her favorite on that list is, or what her application plans (ED, EA, etc.) are.

1 Like
34

My S24 wanted to apply to an REA college (his favorite), so that has kept the early round simple (he has two colleges that are exceptions to the restriction, so it is just that three). There are a couple early scholarship deadlines to keep in mind, but that’s about it.

But then if he gets to the ED II/RD round–I really have no clue at this point. He did say immediately after one visit he thought it was a “possible ED II”, but he has liked others too, and we are visiting a few more still this fall, so . . . yeah, we’ll just have to see.

Although I am not really complaining. It is his life, and he is approaching it in a way I think makes sense for him, so carry on.

1 Like
35

S22 - Engineering/CS kid

  1. Strength of engineering school, and CS/CompE programs - validated by rankings, depth and breadth of academics, quality of peer cohort
  2. Career Outcomes - median salary, 75th %ile salary - validated by college scorecard
  3. Target recruiting center for careers of interest - quant, consulting, tech
  4. In-state tuition (or) equivalent
  5. Proximity to home - closer the better (OR) a record of placing kids in bay area/PNW
  6. Warm weather
  7. Quality of dorms, food etc.
  8. Diversity on campus
  9. Purple to blue political climate
  10. College sports
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36

what type of school fit the bill - i.e. who was in the consideration set?

37

We started with the UCs and CSUs - All of the UCs + CalPoly + SJSU + SDSU. To this list, we added CA privates - Mudd is the only school that made the cut. Then we added OOS targets - UIUC, UMich, and Purdue. And then we added an OOS safety - Rose Hulman, CU Boulder.

All of them on the good to great spectrum for engineering and CS. Not all schools met all the criteria but we narrowed down acceptances to 4 schools in the end based on the top 5 factors - Purdue, UIUC, UCSB, Berkeley.

Berkeley won out because it checked pretty much every box and was the cheapest and closest.

1 Like
38

That’s awesome the student had such great options and that the likely #1 upfront school came through.

RHIT definitely stands out as an outlier.

UCB hit #1-5. Not sure about 6-8, and 10 :slight_smile: I kid - they made the ACC (not sure how, but they did it!!)

39

Ya, it was our true safety school in case we go bust on the rest. And we gave Berkeley a pass in the end for #7 and #10 :wink:

1 Like
40

Kid 1 - Physics major aspiring to grad school

  1. Location: in-province
  2. Academics: highly selective with a wide range of majors
  3. Campus: contained with a culture evenly balanced between academics and social life
  4. Diversity

Kid 2 - Electrical Engineering

  1. Location: at least close enough to be able to come home on the weekends but preferably the ability to live at home
  2. Academics: offers Electrical or Computing Engineering, medium selectivity
  3. Offers co-op
  4. Program structure, course offerings, academic supports

Cost wasn’t a factor because tuition is regulated so it was pretty similar at any of the schools under consideration, though living costs are quite variable.

If Kid 1 were to do it all over again they would have swapped a contained campus for a school located in a major urban area (which is what Kid 2 ended up choosing).

2 Likes