<p>Wake Forest is worthless.</p>
<p>Yeah, these rankings are ridiculous.</p>
<p>Regardless of it's selectivity, Calvin is a great school academically and many of its alumni will speak very highly of it.</p>
<p>What a worthless ranking- Pepperdine is near the bottom of the list and USD is not even listed for California. Both are probably Top 10 in California. What a ridiculous list.</p>
<p>This is why peer assessment is worthless by itself.</p>
<p>please realize that peer assesment between universities, lacs, masters, and comprehesive colleges doesn't match. a 4.0 in a comprehensive doesn't = a 4.0 in university environment. Nor does a 4.0 in masters = a 4.0 in a LAC environment. they are to be compared within each group.</p>
<p>"This is why peer assessment is worthless by itself"</p>
<p>Yeah, I'd rather judge schools by alumni contibution and the over/under on predicted graduation rates!!!!!!!!!!</p>
<p>Trinity over Rice??</p>
<p>Right...</p>
<p>JMU is not considered better than W&M. I don't think it's even close.</p>
<p>That was my main argument as well.</p>
<p>That's not the point. The point was to identify top schools in each state so people could find places close to their homes where they could receive a "good" education. All these schools had ratings of 3.0 or higher, meaning all are "good" schools. Whether it's a good LAC, good private, or good public, it doesn't really matter, everyone finds their fit. US News isn't trying to argue what is better between JMU and WM, they just want you to see that both get high ratings, and both are good schools.</p>
<p>....Because that extra .2 peer assessment score makes them the undisputed 2nd place masters? Hell no. By and large JMU has a reputation as a party school, and while it has good academics, it's nowhere near as selective as W&M...</p>
<p>I think the problem is that you can't put the peer assessment ratings of LACs along with Nationals. They weren't mean to be used that way.</p>
<p>Everyone here derides these rankings as stupid. Realize that these 'stupid' rankings are a heavily weighted factor in US News. Criticize USNWR more, not the OP.</p>
<p>i think the problem, accepted, is that even though now 3 people have pointed that out, no one seems to read posts that make any sense. so everyone is just going to keep on complaining on how "school x can't be better than school y rankings are stupid wahhhhh" even though its easily explainable how this type of comparison can't be made.</p>
<p>Haha jags you are so right.</p>
<p>Morsvenit: No, it is the Op's fault for taking peer assessments of LACs and placing them with Nationals.</p>
<p>I'm not trying to compare the schools. I'm trying to give a list of good schools of all different types in each state that were ranked as "good" schools, so that they can use these lists in their future college searches so I took the US News ranking that was above 3.0 for all different categories and made a thread. This wasn't intended to argue what school is better, i've stated this before people.</p>