<p>Thought people would be interested in knowing that US News and World Report evaluated the service academies for the first time this year in their colleges rankings.</p>
<p>Quote: “Also new this year: The magazine has included the service academies. The U.S. Naval Academy is ranked No. 20 in the liberal arts college category, and the U.S. Military Academy is No. 22. The U.S. Air Force Academy leads the list of “Best Baccalaureate Colleges” in the western region.”</p>
<p>This is just further affirmation that these rankings are crap.</p>
<p>Soylent; Do you believe that the academies "Aren't" that high of a quality school compared to many public and private schools? Later... Mike....</p>
<p>Agreed. Tell me again what military service academies and liberal arts colleges have in common?</p>
<p>Yes, agreed. The academies are way beyond a LAC. I don't know how they can be ranked that way. BUT, because this is the "Air Force Academy" forum, I thought he may have been commenting that because Air Force was ranked the best Baccalaureate College in the West, that he didn't agree with that. But I do agree that none of the academies should be compared with a LAC. Later... Mike.....</p>
<p>perhaps Soylent believes USAFA should be ranked ahead of USNA and USMA, maybe he/she can clarify</p>
<p>You guys took my comment in the totally opposite direction I meant it.</p>
<p>All of the Service Academies are ranked rather low, and why Liberal Arts? The USAFA ranking may be the most fitting, but if anything it should be ranked number 1 on the national list.</p>
<p>You guys may dislike me for my disagreement about how highly admissions weights sports in the application, but I will never doubt that the Service Academies provide the best education in the world.</p>
<p>No one dislikes you on this forum. Especially for expressing your opinion. Disagreeing and Disliking are 2 totally different animals. I do agree with you 100% in the, "Why liberal arts"? The academies are all very high technical schools. Granted, you can get a degree in "History" if that's what you want, but the schools also offer some very technical degrees. Just like Harvard or Yale. You can get great business and engineering degrees or you can get a degree in "English". No arguments here. Later... Mike....</p>
<p>I agree more with the way US News and World Report used to rank the Service Academies as Bachelor-Degree Engineering Schools. They were all in the top 5 with the likes of Cooper Union.</p>
<p>The US News rankings actually do serve some valid purposes and they are carefully done. However, part of what we're seeing is that none of the service academies fit well into any traditional category. They don't fit with national universities because they do not have graduate programs. Putting West Point and Annapolis in the LAC category seems like a mistake, but the fact is that comparatively few cadets at West Point actually major in science or engineering anymore. I believe the last Peterson's summary I saw of WP said there were more history majors there than engineering. I wouldn't expect that of Annapolis, but it may be true there also.
USAFA was obviously not placed in a comparable group of colleges. If you go to the US News web site, you'll see that USAFA is so far ahead of number two in that category that there's really no comparison at all.
As Soylent pointed out, the academies used to be classified as Bachelor-Degree Engineering Schools. You'd think that would still be the case, but maybe the academies now for the most part are liberal arts colleges with a science-engineering core curriculum. If that's the case, then there probably aren't any other comparable civilian colleges in the country.</p>
<p>Could you send a link to the site where it rates USAFA? Thanks, that interests me!</p>
<p>Sounds to me like someone tried to just plop the academies in without much knowledge of them or thought. I assume its the same at the other academies, but EVERY degree awarded at USAFA is a B. of Science, regardless of whether its for engineering or history. So, the ranks for WP and USNA may be valid when it comes to LA, even if that's a horrible place to put them. </p>
<p>I recall 2 years ago that the US News report included best schools at the bachelor's level, master's, and PhD. I remember because, for example, the best chemical engineering degree at the bachelor's level was Rose-Hulman IT while the best chemE at the graduate levels were MIT. I also remember the academies being in there because WP was on the top 5 civil engineering list and USAFA being ranked number 2 behind Embry-Riddle in Aerospace engineering. I suppose they decided to add the academies to the ranks of overall. argh....now I'm all confused.</p>
<p>hornetguy, US News and World Report still rates schools that way (if we're on the same line of thought). They rate engineering schools in categories sorted by the highest degree offered not necessarily by the quality of the school at that highest level. I don't know why they do that because all of the students reading the magazine are looking for a bachelors degree, and if they aren't, they should be reading the graduate school edition.</p>
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[quote="<a href="http://www.af.mil/news/story.asp?storyID=123065009%22">http://www.af.mil/news/story.asp?storyID=123065009"</a>]
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<p>Academy academics rank among best in nation</p>
<p>U.S. AIR FORCE ACADEMY, Colo. (AFPN) -- The Air Force Academy was named the best baccalaureate college in the west, and received top rankings in several engineering programs, according to the U.S. News &; World Report's America's Best Colleges 2008 rankings, released Aug. 17.</p>
<p>U.S. News &; World Report evaluated the 320 universities in the nation that offer only undergraduate degrees, and ranked them in four geographic regions: west, north, mid-west and south.</p>
<p>In the west region, the Academy led the list as best baccalaureate college. This region includes Texas, Oklahoma, and every state north, south and west of Colorado, including Alaska and Hawaii.</p>
<p>The ranking was based on a wide range of university-wide statistics, including student-faculty ratio, percentage of full time faculty, acceptance rate, average class size and freshman retention rates. At the Air Force Academy the student-faculty ratio is 8-to-1, 100 percent of the faculty is full-time, the acceptance rate is 19 percent and 81 percent of classes here have fewer than 20 cadets in the classroom.</p>
<p>Several of the Academy's undergraduate engineering disciplines also received top national rankings. Overall, the Academy's undergraduate engineering programs are tied with Pennsylvania's Bucknell University for seventh best in the nation this year. Several undergraduate engineering specialties also were ranked among the nation's best.</p>
<p>The Academy ranked second in the nation in aeronautical and astronautical engineering for the seventh consecutive year, behind only Embry Riddle University.</p>
<p>In civil engineering, the Academy tied Virginia Military Institute, Pennsylvania's Lafayette College and Illinois' Bradley University for the seventh slot.</p>
<p>In electrical engineering, the Academy tied New Jersey's Rowan University for the eighth best in the nation.</p>
<p>The Academy's management department also made the charts, tying for 83rd in the best undergraduate business program rankings.</p>
<p>For the business and engineering disciplines, the rankings are produced after examining a weighted combination of factors. These start with peer assessment by university deans and senior faculty (25 percent), and then include graduation and retention rates (25 percent), faculty resources (20 percent), student selectivity (15 percent), financial resources (10 percent), and alumni giving rate.</p>
<p>The rankings are separated by which universities offer graduate education programs, and those which have only undergraduate programs, such as the Air Force Academy.</p>
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<p>I think this sums it up!</p>
<p>We're the best. The end. :)</p>
<p>Who cares about the ranking?</p>
<p>I agree, first everyone would have to agree on exactly what criteria is used to develop these 'rankings'. I seem to recall several well known schools earlier this summer saying they would no longer support such surveys which ask them to do 'peer assessments' of other schools with which they compete.</p>
<p>Obviously, for schools ranked "highly" they use this for good PR.</p>
<p>Not sure what use it serves besides that. Does this ranking somehow help a h.s. student to decide on one college over another?</p>
<p>The stats can be very useful in deciding which colleges to apply to. I see some students applying to places that are way out of their league (and vice versa). Frankly, some students are wasting their time applying to Harvard and others have no idea that they really do have the stats to apply to a truly selective university. US News is very open about how they arrive at their rankings, and if you don't agree with their methods that's your choice. Some schools have recently made a big show about not getting involved in the competitiveness of US News rankings, but, believe me, they're still working hard to up their scores. University of Chicago announced a couple of years ago that they had thoughtlessly misreported some of their stats and they went up about 10 ranks the next year. You can bet that they were just learning how to "work" the system. However, there is a wealth of data there that needs to be mined by high school students and their parents. For instance, if a school only graduates about 40% of its incoming freshmen, that should be a red flag. If the average SAT score is much lower (or higher) than yours, then you maybe should look at other colleges. Knowing these facts really can help people make wiser decisions about where they spend a very important four years of their lives. Still, there might be very good reasons to leave service academies out of the ranking altogether. The reasons for attending an academy are way different from deciding whether to go to State U or to Cornell.</p>