@MAandMEmom. no hate for Dean, just joking around. I have several friends that went to Dean in the 80’s before it became a 4 year institution, and they are fine, productive citizens of the state of MA.
@prezbucky you left off Babson and Bentley
Here’s the list from College Factual
- Harvard
- Amherst
- MIT
- Olin
- Holy Cross
- Tufts
- Williams
- Babson
- BC
- Brandeis
And the list from College Niche
- MIT
- Harvard
- Tufts
- Amherst
- Wellesley
- Williams
- NEU
- BC
- Smith
- Holy Cross
- BU
- Mt Holyoke
- WPI
- Bentley 15 Brandeis
- Babson
- UMASS - Amherst
- Clark
- Stonehill
- Emerson
I’ve long said that if you choose the criteria narrowly enough, every college in the US can be #1 in some ranking or other.
This rating makes the colleges into commodities. They’re all wheat. You can make some fine food from wheat. You can get good wheat products at WalMart, so why go to Whole Foods? Okaaaay. I get it. And it has some merit. But (perhaps I’m an elitist, but) I wouldn’t send my kids to most of those colleges. Fortunately, I have (had) the ability to allow my kids to make the final decision. And they chose well.
Specialty colleges are often left out. In the music world, Berklee College of Music is top notch @ https://www.berklee.edu/. How can one forget Olin @ http://www.olin.edu/?
Quality sometimes comes in smaller packages.
So . . . the big question for me is how did Harvard make it on to this crazy list that none of the other “prestige” entries could crack? And not just make it onto the list, but be right up there near the top, while none of the others was even in the running against tough competition like Bridgewater State and Mass College of Liberal Arts.
Sometimes on CC we joke about measuring a college’s “prestigiousity” in units of “Harvards” or “milliHarvards.” And to some extent, that’s what USNWR does, too – it essentially measures how closely specific colleges resemble an ideal model that looks a lot like Harvard or Princeton. That’s clearly not what this particular ranking scheme is doing. so it interests me that somehow Harvard winds up hitting most of the right notes for this screwy rubric, too.
Probably because Harvard has https://www.extension.harvard.edu/ which is much less costly and much more friendly to non-traditional students than regular Harvard or other prestige privates.
Yes, the link to the ranking has the words “online-colleges” in the URL. The ratings methodology emphasizes online learning, among other things. They mention Harvard offers 130 online programs, and 13% of students take classes online… more than the vast majority of other top prestige colleges.
The ranking targets a particular type of student that is very different from the typical CC poster – students focused on online learning at a low cost. I’ve been in this position before. A few years ago, I wanted to take some online classes in a field that interested me, outside of my career field. I ended up choosing one of the colleges on their top 10 in US list, instead of Stanford. At the time Stanford was ~70x more expensive per credit and offered fewer online classes in my desired field, so it was an easy decision.
@Data10 So the headline was jut click bait.
@RightCoaster I worked at Dean for a half s dozen years so I guess I’m sensitive:). I was there during the identity crisis years when then dropped the junior and total confused people. Of late, their enrollment has been pretty good. Better than when I was there for certain. If I had a Boston area crystal ball I would venture a guess that Pine Manor is in trouble.
Where’s Bob’s College of Knowledge ???
@MAandMEmom - I vaguely remember something about Pine Manor being on probation for accreditation and it looks like it was removed from academic probation sometime this year. My daughter’s dance teacher went there and told her many times to avoid that college. I’ve heard great things about UMass Lowell. I would put it above some schools like Bridgeport.
I would have thought Harvard’s financial aid would play a role but then again, some other schools not on the list have excellent aid. So it must be the extension school.
UMass Boston hasn’t even been mentioned. The controversy over the Mt.Ida acquisition by UMass Amherst centers around the disparity of resources between Amherst and Boston.
When I was a kid, I was genuinely confused about how every car dealership could be the #1 car dealership in America.
Haha. Or “9 out if 10 dentists prefer Crest.” I always ask, over what?