<p>Seriously, am I the only one out there that thinks that Usnews using High School Counselors is a bad idea? I'm not sure what they add or why they have any understanding about the Quality, Job Placement, or Academic Experience at thousands of Colleges around the nation.</p>
<p>When I went to High School, the high School Counselors only understood how to get thier students into the state colleges in my home state.</p>
<p>I think(I may be wrong) that the high school counselors are only from public high schools in the U.S. This excludes many important opinions.</p>
<p>A lot of public schools ( in California ) cannot afford school counselors. More likely this will tilt the field of opinion towards what counselors from private schools think.</p>
<p>It’s a really bad idea. How sophisticated can counselors at public high schools in the South and Midwest possibly be?</p>
<p>Just looking at the LAC scores, they had Carleton and Haverford below Bucknell, which is a great school but I wonder if it has a higher score simply because it is larger and counselors are more familiar with it?</p>
<p>If you want to measure informed public opinion, using GCs is not the worst approach. It tilts the results of a few schools in ways you might like, if for example you think the public brand awareness of a Georgetown Universtity is as important as the academic reputation of a Cal Tech. I would expect GC opinions to be less expert, but perhaps also less biased, than the PA scores.</p>
<p>If you want to focus strictly on academic quality, then for national universities, it might be interesting to take the averages of all US News graduate department rankings for each school. Though I’m not sure how you’d translate this to something like a 5 point PA score, or if it would be fair to some schools considered strong at the undergraduate level, but low or off the radar for many of the ranked departments. In theory, the PA scores should account for that.</p>
<p>Not saying it’s a good or not a good idea, but I’d like to point out they only used counselors from the high schools that US News considers to be among the best in America. So, it’s not like they’re choosing counselors from a school that sends all of its grads to State U.</p>
<p>^^^^You mean the east coast counselors who rated IUPUI higher than IU-Bloomington? I’m really impressed that obviously large amounts of counselors are really clueless.</p>
<p>Let’s be honest already, high school counselors know less about academic quality than college admistrators. Unfortunately, their opinions weigh very heavily on what schools students apply to. IUPUI over IU and equal to Wisconsin. Ridiculous!</p>
<p>I blame the IUPUI on counselors that read about it being an “up and coming school”. I would blame the “coast” counselors that rely too heavily on USNWR!</p>
<p>…So I looked through a Usnews book at a bookstore. I couldn’t even find Peer Assessment rating separated out anywhere. They just showed counselor assessment and the combined Peer Assessment and Counselor assessment. Is separate Peer assessment anywhere? Is it online?</p>
I don’t have an elitist bone in my body. I’m also sure a guidance counselor at a prep school in Connecticut would not be qualified to rank state schools.</p>
<p>THE POINT IS counselors are not qualified to rank hundreds of colleges and universities. I mean, do you seriously think a guidance counselor in some fly-over state knows the difference between Colby and Colgate?</p>