For the last few months, I have scoured the college ranking lists of Forbes, USNews and Princeton Review, looking for the reasons that gave Williams the #1 college title last year. Please don’t misinterpret my curiosity as anything prideful, but Williams College is an interesting choice to be the best undergraduate institution in the nation, seeing as how there are a plethora of more well known schools. We know who Harvard, Yale and Princeton are no matter what country we’re from, and those may be the only schools our parents know.
And behind those tall names, other schools such as NYU and UCLA boast worldwide notoriety. And I mean “behind those tall names” specifically as it pertains to their respective positions on these rankings, as I honestly do not see any of these as “better” or “worse” than the other, to a degree. I see colleges more as a tiered hierarchy than a ranked one, in that there could be a list of 50 interchangeable schools in the first tier that a person could attend, and this school would be equal in the return as the 49 others.
Any other thoughts on this? I’m interested in hearing other viewpoints on this topic.
rankings are worthless. harvard yale princeton get to go to the front of the rankings line and students (and their parents) who need validation apply to those schools in very large numbers and the cycle goes on year after year after year. there is no real reasons that harvard is better than any other of the 3000 + colleges in the united states. but that is how these rankings work. (self fulfilling prophecy)
Rankings are to sell magazine since there is no official ranking or absolute way to rank. Yes tiers are a better idea, if you search the forum you can find previous discussions on this topic. But if you want to see how each of these organizations roughly use the inputs there is usually a statement on methodology.
I would look at the world university rankings (QS, Times higher ed, USNWR ) . Most of those rankings ignore admission rates and SAT/ACT student scores which can be manipulated. Instead, they concentrate on citations and peer rankings which are probably a better indicator if you are focused on research
However, a student focused on research (PhD student or a research-oriented undergraduate) would probably be more interested in the research in his/her major area, rather than the school as a whole.
The only ranking that matters for you is one based on characteristics that determine how well a school fits you. This is unlikely to exactly match any published ranking.
Rankings are the stupidest concept and a waste of time. The US News has named Princeton the #1 school in the country the last few years. Does anyone really think Princeton is the #1 college in the country (except for Princeton grads)? Stanford, Havard and Yale continue to have lower acceptance rates. Of the 8 applicants who were accepted to all 8 Ivies + Stanford and MIT the last 2 years, 4 chose Harvard, 2 chose Yale, 1 chose MIT and 1 chose Alabama. Not a single one chose Princeton.
Regardless of how US News or any of these other rankings slice and dice it, most people know that the most selective schools (not necessarily the best) in the country are the 8 Ivies + Stanford and MIT. Selectivity is in itself a self-perpetuating cycle. The more applicants a school reject, the more applicants they seem to get. I guess people just like to get rejected. Since these schools enroll a collective 16,900 students out of roughly 3.2 million or 0.5% of incoming freshman each year, their impact on the overall college enrollment landscape is negligible. All the brouhaha surrounding these schools only impact a very small minority of college applicants, but thanks to the prestige worshipping media and websites like this, they are thought to be much more impactful than they really are to the large majority of college applicants. An overwhelming majority of kids go to their state schools, including many top students.
The major college rankings measure and compare features such as:
financial resources
student selectivity
faculty distinctions or research output
class sizes
graduation rates
post-graduate outcomes (including average alumni salaries, rates of alumni earned doctorates, alumni in national leadership positions, etc.)
A “top” college will tend to out-perform lower-ranked colleges in many of these areas. In addition, it will tend to offer better need-based financial aid than much lower-ranked colleges.
If I could choose to attend a much higher-ranked college at a lower cost, I’d be inclined to make that choice. I’d rather have smaller classes, more distinguished professors, more accomplished classmates from all over the country, better facilities … and certainly, a lower net cost … even if the long-term outcomes were not much better at all. I mean, if the airline offers me a free upgrade to first-class seats, I’m gonna take it. I won’t get there any faster, but at least the ride will be more pleasant. And if I’m wealthy enough that the cost difference is trivial compared to my comfort, well then, maybe I’ll pay it.
My opinion is evolving.
Most chefs can make something brilliant with first class ingredients.
The best chefs can do it with whatever is at hand.
If your college of choice relies on only having the very best get into it, yet some other state supported school gets an education to people who otherwise wouldn’t get one AND still puts out considerable research AND gets students into grad schools … well, one of these colleges is only doing half a job.
Tomorrow I may have evolved a slightly different position, but today … yeah.
I think tk covered pretty well the factors that make some colleges better than others.
College rankings are a wonderful contribution to consumer rights. College is the biggest investment that most people make next to a house (depending on where you live). With good college rankings like US News, consumers of higher education can make better educated decisions and we no longer are at the mercy of the college/university marketing machine.
As for Williams, it is one of the top 5 Liberal Arts colleges. The distinction of being number one belongs to Harvey Mudd.
My opinion, in order:
Harvey Mudd College
Pomona College
Williams College
Amherst College
Swarthmore College
Bowdoin College
Claremont McKenna College
Carleton College
Wellesley College
Haverford College
Washington and Lee University
Wesleyan University
Vassar College
Middlebury College
Hamilton College
Colgate University
Barnard College
Oberlin College
Grinnell College
Williams does have a very high yield (accepted students who decide to attend) but does not have the top SAT scores or the lowest admit percentage.
@“Erin’s Dad” raises an interesting question I am also curious about. If a school has the lowest admit rate, is that the end all, be all in determining excellence among peers? Not many top school rankings include Cooper Union, with a 7.7% acceptance rate that UPenn, Dartmouth and other prestigious institutions.
The best school will have the best treatment effect for the student. It can be hard to separate selection and treatment effects when looking at typical outcome measures.
You forgot the human element: Who you’re stuck sitting next to can make all the difference in the world, even in first-class. The sad fact is that great wealth is no guarantee of a diverse or terribly invigorating student body. Not to pick on LACs entirely, but it does seem to me that for all the lip service we pay to high scores, class standing and sheer brilliance, an awful lot of their alumni seem to fall off the face of the earth once they graduate.
@collegehelp obviously you’re three hours behind the rest of us. Many of us would disagree significantly with your order even while agreeing with your group.
@circuitrider what are you talking about? When you look at LAC graduates as a percentage rather than a whole number they BLOW away graduates from National Universities. Go online look up the famous graduates from Williams, Amherst, and Middlebury and recognize how each of these schools has one tenth the number of graduates of the major research universities. It’s not even close.
Generic rankings make even less sense for LACs and other small schools than for large schools, since fit to the individual student is a much larger factor at a small school than a large school. A large school may offer an acceptable fit for most students, even if it is an optimal fit for fewer. A small school may not be able to offer an acceptable fit for as large a percentage of students. For example, small schools usually have more limited academic offerings in terms of courses and majors. The non-academic social environment may not be able to cover as many potential interests (e.g. at a small school, a fraternity and sorority system large enough to be interesting to those interested in joining may be too dominating of the social scene for those not interested in it).
For example, Williams College and South Dakota School of Mines and Technology are both small schools that are unlikely to be of interest to many of the same students. Or compare Harvey Mudd College to Sarah Lawrence College. Or Evergreen State College to United States Military Academy.
Sorry, but, in this context I’m not talking about Wordsworth and Hawthorne. Everyone knows they graduated from Bowdoin nearly two hundred years ago. But, off the top of your head, can you name three little ivy graduates under the age of siixty?
some amherst graduates under 60:
albert II, the prince of monaco
uhuru kenyatta, the president of kenya
drew pinsky, dr. drew
dan brown, wrote the da vinci code
david foster wallace, wrote infinite jest (he would be under 60 if he didn’t die)
jeff jordan, vc at andreessen horowitz