<p>I was wondering how much credence I should put on those lists that PR makes every year with topics ranging from "Great Professors" to "Reefer Madness", since I found some colleges that I thought I would be interested in and they were on lists that I don't think fit with me. Should I disregard those schools or delve deeper?</p>
<p>ie. of the thousands of brochures I got,one school that caught my eye for its intellectualness is Reed. However, PR descibed it as rather liberal and "hippie" like and I am more conservative. But I like the academics and rigor of their program. Advice? (I have been looking at other colleges too, this is just one good example)</p>
<p>It's true that Reed is a rather hippie liberal school. But this does not mean it is any less intellectual. Maybe they could use some conservatives like you to help balance out the whole political enviornment.</p>
<p>youre conservative?
do you support mass murder?
do you support persecution?
are you a racist!?</p>
<p>Just kidding, but there are some traces of truth/relevance to those questions.</p>
<p>its a big generalization, but it provides a great start; basically, if it says its very liberal, you can count on not finding a large conservative popultation there!</p>
<p>People at schools like Reed and Wesleyan, which are both 'more' liberal than the average college, will not shut down your views. However, you should be prepared to defend your views and your beliefs using fact and not rhetoric/religion.</p>
<p>That is, if you're fishing for debates. Truth be told, the age of activism is dying. </p>
<p>Just to let everyone know, it saddened me to have to say that :-(</p>
<p>it made me pretty sad when I looked up some of the colleges I'm looking at.. like illinois institute of technology... it has some pretty bad stuff:</p>
<p>Rank List Category
#13 Class Discussions Rare Academics
#14 Long Lines And Red Tape Academics
#11 Professors Get Low Marks Academics
#13 Professors Make Themselves Scarce Academics
#18 This is a Library? Academics
#5 Campus Is Tiny, Unsightly, Or Both Quality of Life
#20 Dorms Like Dungeons Quality of Life
#19 Is It Food? Quality of Life
#12 Least Happy Students Quality of Life
#20 Town-Gown Relations Are Strained Social</p>
<p>after reading that it immediately went down my list to one of my last choices, but still it has some decent programs apparently and I want to go to chicago...</p>
<p>Generally, the PR does a pretty good job. If you want a second opinion, there's the college ******* though...its pretty similar though, I don't now how different of scores you'd get.</p>
<p>jason4444, that post really upset me. I don't want to argue, I was just wondering how relevant these lists are.</p>
<p>ajr62807, that is exactly what has been happening to me. I'm really worried I will make a horrible choice.</p>
<p>I just wanted to know if this qualities are super-apparent, or if they are just a part of a college. Because it seems like only a few colleges get tons of great spots on the good lists whilst others are not.
Should I continue looking at Reed?</p>
<p>I'm just afraid that I will have my back to the wall all the time. As much I enjoy politics, I will want to take a break and make friends and have fun. Thanks for the suggestions.</p>
<p>katia, no offense, but if you dont want to defend/debate ur beliefs at reed, than you might not want to go there</p>
<p>The Princeton Review lists are not methodologically sound. They are based not on random samples but on voluntary samples. As such, they have no statistical validity. Now, having said that, a college that shows up on a lot of those lists has a fairly high probability of being the way the list says. I wouldn't pay any attention to relative rankings, but if a school shows up on the party, reefer madness, and never studies lists, don't expect to be very challenged at that school unless you go out and challenge yourself.</p>
<p>Reed is liberal, but so what? Most colleges probably are, overall. If you don't want your beliefs challenged then, by all means, go somewhere that you can be sure everyone will agree with you. That way, you don't have to think.</p>
<p>If you're sure you want a school that tends to really pound you on academics that is not so liberal, try the University of Chicago.</p>
<p>Yeah, Chicago might be good for you, but beware it will have it's share of marxists and anarchists due to the nature of the school, especially since it's extremely awesome for philosophy.
Yet, the sheer number of much more conservative econ kids will make up for that, in your case atleast. Plus Chicago's awesome, as long as you get in :-P</p>
<p>The PR rankings are absolute garbage. If you go onto their website and say you are an alumnus from say Harvard, you can go on to rank Harvard as having the worst academics and the most drinking and just as being the worst school in the country and it will accept it.</p>
<p>Some examples of just some idiotic things the PR rankings have said:
1) ranking Cal Tech as having the 2nd worst professors
2) ranking Columbia as having the 6th best college town and NYU as the 11th (though NYU is in a much nicer part of the same city)
3) ranking Washington and Lee as the most conservative school in the country one year and not even having it in the top 20 the next</p>
<p>So to be honest I don't trust the Princeton Review rankings one bit.</p>
<p>USNEWS plays the inconsistency game a bit too, needless to say all rankings suck. The brody ones are terrible too...</p>
<p>I liked fiske because they really didn't rank, they just had commentary which is important. People need to get over this prestige bit. There's pretty much no difference in undergrad education in say the top 50 lacs/univs. Harvard probably doesn't rank too well as far as education goes since undergrads are given the boot, pretty much...</p>