<p>If you are an Ivy League type person, anything below top 10 is probably considered a second rate school. I can see that.</p>
<p>But I was just wondering, is top 40 considered that good at all?</p>
<p>I mean, it's still a Tier 1 school, but there are at least 39 schools that are ranked higher...</p>
<p>In your case, what do you consider good enough? Top 10? 20? 30?</p>
<p>I don’t know exact stats, but coming from Michigan and Texas I know you really don’t want to go very much below MSU or Texas A&M. They’re good schools, but people who can’t get into those…</p>
<p>I’m going to my state school and I consider it to be an excellent school.</p>
<p>Ranks are just numbers. Most people here seem impressed when I tell them that I’m going to Carolina. Maybe it’s a southern thing, but I really just don’t that many people who end up going to ivy leagues. Around here, people are impressed with USC, Clemson, Wofford, Furman, etc.</p>
<p>The four I mentioned are good schools and can build you really great connections for finding jobs in the area once you’ve graduated. I know plenty of people who choose Wofford, just because they know that they’ll be able to go there, network, and then graduate with a really great job making a lot of money just because they went to Wofford. Of course the jobs they get are from those who also graduated from Wofford and it limits you to basically South Carolina, but I think most people who go there tend to be okay with that.</p>
<p>Anyways… My opinion, Rankings are superficial and don’t really mean that much depending where you want to end up at.</p>
<p>Irrelevant; quality of education cannot be so easily quantified. Other than the basic approximation of a subjective measure of prestige, college rankings are useless.</p>
<p>I wouldn’t want to go to a school that was extremely poorly ranked, but I didn’t pick out schools solely based on rank. Rank isn’t everything like some ivy league people seem to think!</p>
<p>There are Ivy League schools outside of the top 10 :)</p>
<p>University Of [State Name] and [State Name] State University usually.</p>
<p>Going by the USNWR National University rankings… Boston College at #31 is the lowest ranked college I’d consider a good school.</p>
<p>Prestige and quality are not the same thing. You can get an awesome education at a low-ranked school if you know what to look for.</p>
<p>So NYU isn’t a good school, DreamingBig?</p>
<p>Rankings don’t mean anything, really. If you apply yourself, you’ll get somewhere regardless of where you go.</p>
<p>Rankings are BS approximations that are an estimate of prestige, now the academic quality of a college.</p>
<p>Below the top 50 is when I start to get wary.</p>
<p>NYU is a good school but not a great school. The schools ranked ahead of it are great schools.</p>
<p>Rankings do matter. Not so much to distinguish one school from another but to distinguish groups from groups.</p>
<p>This "good quality education anywhere " stuff is nice but id like a job after school and the truth is some university’s names carry more weight than others.</p>
<p>I slightly cringe when people say “Oh, CSU Granite Bay? You’ll be right up there with those UCLA kids in no time!”</p>
<p>I’d take community college + transfer over that.</p>
<p>
Curious.</p>
<p>
That’s prestige, not educational quality.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>If you want a good job, try going to grad school for something (law, medicine, etc). Don’t rely on your undergrad degree to help you acquire a six figure salary, unless u graduated from wharton and got a job in wall street. That doesn’t happen too often. Otherwise, many undergrad degrees don’t mean anything nowadays. Moreover, once you get to the level of grad school, your undergrad degrees become absolutely meaningless, wearing off the prestige of that undergrad school.</p>
<p>^ Except for majors like Computer Science and Math… Get a Computer Science Degree from Stanford/MIT/Berkeley and you are almost guaranteed a job anywhere in the world.</p>
<p>Just about anything that is actually ranked can be considered a decent or good school worth attending! Colleges are not only about Academics (albeit a MAJOR factor) you gotta look at college life, opportunites for fun, facilities. Some of the higher ranked schools have some “unhappy” student bodies. I believe if the school is Nationally Accreditted or has programs that are Nationally ranked or been Nationally recognized maybe won some competitions, that’s also a definition of accomplishment. Not just a rank on US Newsweek.</p>
<p>OK just thought this over…
Going by USNWR… </p>
<p>Cornell and above= Elite
Rice to Boston College= Great
William & Mary to Lehigh= Good
University of Rochester to UMD= Average
Any school ranked lower than Maryland= Hmmmmm…</p>