OK fellow parents, I"d like to know what’s your go-to for school rankings and quality? I’ve got a rising junior daughter looking at very selective schools a long way from home and a long way from Mom and Dad’s network/experience. We explore school websites of course, but realize that the schools put their best foot forward and these resources have to be viewed through a skeptical lens and taken with a grain of salt.
College Confidential and it’s forums are a relatively new discovery for me and have already been an invaluable resource.
Conversely, ranking services vary wildly based on their criteria and sometimes due to less objective reasons such as advertising dollars and just plain poor legwork/laziness. So I’m asking you guys what is your college bible? As a quick reference for a lot of different aspects, I like Niche but wonder about the rigor of their rankings. It’s a good starting point for me which I then compare against US News, Forbes, T.H.E./WSJ, Money, and Kiplinger. But as I said, you can get ratings all over the place for the same school from different sources. What have you found to be the most useful/accurate for your research? Obviously, this is just for a starting point as nothing beats actual visits and in-person, face to face contact, to get the fit/feel/vibe of the place, but you have to start somewhere and it isn’t feasible to visit every option, especially when some are cross country. What’s your favorite ranking
Just my opinion: I mostly don’t like the rankings much at all.
I realize that this isn’t all that helpful, but I think that you need to do a fair amount of research, and need to find schools where you and your child are comfortable. Different students will do better in different environments. Some very strong students prefer a small university for undergrad. Some will do well in a large school. Some prefer urban settings and some prefer small towns or rural locations.
We did a lot of visits. We started with schools near home.
We scanned a variety of rankings, but not for definitive answers - only for certain programs and to get an idea of which colleges to look at more closely. Something along the lines of looking for top colleges for ______ majors, best _____ programs, colleges most highly recruited by ______ employers. We did such a search on 5-6 different lists for the three majors DS was considering. Over time, certain names kept popping up, indicating those might have appeal for multiple reasons and also offer good alternative majors if he decided to switch. Then we’d use our own wishlist to narrow down the candidates.
IMO, there’s no great way to design the perfect ranking criteria, so none of the lists are going to be the definitive answer for most students. It would be like a ranking of single men to determine the “Best Future Husband”. Silly, right?
Forget the media like NYT or WSJ or some “hot resources.” Many exist for their own purposes, not as a public service.
The “right” college is NOT about someone else’s “ranking.” It takes digging to learn what really matches your kid and where she matches them (what the colleges show, not blogs or self designated experts. Not the glossy marketing materials.) Rather, courses offered in the major, prof interests, research and other opps, activities, career services, etc. Figure whether your kid needs small or large, big fish/littler fish, city, pretty or not so pretty, certain sorts of experiences, etc.
Get a Fiske Guide which wi help you cross reference.
If needed, run the net price calculators.
We created our own set of criteria (not ranking) based on academics, fit, location, school size, finances, and whatever else each kid as well as us as parents cared about,
I’m not a ranking fan but from what I can tell the “go to” ranking for many people is USNWR. I would caution you not to not take ANY ranking blindly – look at the criteria behind the ranking and see how it fits into your child’s particular interests and needs.
One list that I don’t see get talked about a whole lot here, but that I think is VERY important, is the Forbes list of schools by financial health. I think it’s called, “How Fit is Your School?” I mean, most schools get what you’d want them to get, A’s and A-'s, but there are some schools that turn out to be so financially unhealthy that they might have to hugely raise tuition, cut down on services, or so other drastic measures just to keep their doors open. I would never recommend one of those schools to my, or anyone else’s, kids.
Generally it’s only small LACs that have financial issues, but having had a niece attend Sweet Briar, graduating only a year before it almost went under, I agree that it might be worth looking into school finances. I think rankings are pretty silly, though I used the USNWR ranking for a first pass. (We basically looked at schools in the top 75 or so.) My older so picked a school ranked #24 instead of #2 (because it was MUCH stronger in CS), and my younger son picked #21 or so over what was then #8 I think, because he thought it would be a little less intense, and better for International Relations. It was also an easy train ride instead of a plane ride away.
Thanks for the input. How good is Fiske? I’ve seen it but am not very familiar with it. I’ve almost gotten to where I only look at USNWR rankings out of habit and don’t put as much stock in them anymore. When it started out, I think there was genuine intent to have some accuracy and integrity, but over the years, I’ve heard their list get disparaged more and more every year as less about the rankings and more about the advertising it generates. I have almost replaced the with the T.H.E.WSJ list as more genuine.
I like the Hidden Ivies books but how well are they kept up to date? Again, 1st edition was probably spot on. Now that we are on version 3, is it just being recycled or actually redone?
Rankings are very subjective. I think its misleading and borderline dangerous if you consider school A ranked #20 better than school B at #30.
I feel fit and environment is more important than rank. I am going for Biomedical Engineering in college, and Georgia Tech is often ranked #1 in BME. But for me, Michigan is a much better fit in other areas that factor being a higher rank for me personally.
I think it’s good for a starting point or for getting ideas on alternates to a college you like. IMO it’s too positive - not truthful, which can sometimes be negative - to use for making final decisions, but it can give you an idea of some of the “vibe” of a school. You sometimes have to think about what it ISN’T mentioning to get a true picture or idea of what the issues are. Since kids don’t always read between the lines, I think many potential applicants don’t notice that.
“I’ve got a rising junior daughter looking at very selective schools a long way from home and a long way from Mom and Dad’s network/experience.”
If you are shopping very selective schools nationally, USNWR is hard to beat. If you are looking for hidden gem schools, not so much.
USNWR gets knocked for making the fine distinctions of ranking Penn #8 vs. Duke #9. But their methodology is completely transparent and is based on lots of metrics that people care about (and which otherwise would have to be dug out of each school’s common data set).
So as a shopping/consumer guide, we found it extremely helpful. Not the overall rankings, but the ability to zero in on different components we cared about.
For researching merit and financial aid, I found Kiplinger most helpful.
But focusing on rankings and what someone else purportedly chews for you is missing what it will take to get in.
OP what are you trying to figure out, if the Forbes list is better than USNews? So really, Columbia didn’t appear in the Forbes top ten but did show in USN, so which is right? These are all top colleges.
Do not assume being top in one hs is all it takes.
You have nothing to lose by buying Fiske. And looking up what others say. But then doing your own research, deep enough, not the front web pages.
I expect the primary reason why rankings vary wildly is they rank according to wildly varying criteria. None of these criteria will match exactly what you are looking for. Most will probably apply high weighting to things that are not important to you, and completely ignore other criteria that is important to you. The best college for you is not the one ranked highest according to the arbitrary and varying criteria used by USNWR, Forbes, Money, Washington Monthly, … Instead it’s the college that best meets the criteria that you personally value.
When I was looking at colleges, I made up my own ranking based on a weighted average of the criteria I value; which I found helpful in flagging colleges to review in more detail. A general website ranking could be used for this purpose, in a very rough and imprecise way. My ranking had MIT and Stanford as the top 2, but Harvard and Yale did not appear in the top ~100 since I was planning to study fields of engineering for which Harvard and Yale were quite weak and/or not available as majors. I reviewed the colleges flagged by my ranking in more detail and used the additional information to decide where to apply/attend.
Here’s the rub- I could tell you that Harvey Mudd is a better place to study math than Dartmouth even though Dartmouth is “ranked” higher on someone’s list. I could tell you that Middlebury is often considered the top institution for modern languages but that Notre Dame is a better bet for Latin while U Chicago might be the top choice for “dead” Semitic languages. The rankings may or may not reveal that Williams is a superb place to study Art History, or that Fordham has an interesting program in Media Studies which is highly regarded.
Does any of this matter if your kid wants to major in biology??? Maybe- a rigorous college attracts a well prepared and highly motivated student body. Or maybe not- if your kid really, really, really wants to major in bio with a lot of interdisciplinary work in psychology/cog sci and therefore, needs to kick THOSE tires.
Tell us what’s important to your kid and we can be helpful.
USNWR is a very efficient way (in my opinion) to get a quick gut check on a place you’ve never heard of. Especially if everyone from your kids Catholic HS “clusters” at Holy Cross, Providence and Seton Hall, it’s nice to get a broader view. Or if everyone from your town in New Jersey loves U Delaware but hates U Maryland. So the rankings can really help you decide if a college is worth doing some homework for.
But we can be more helpful once we know what your kid is looking for.
I like the Fiske Guide and it has been recommended by high school and private tutors. I found the 1-5 star ranking of academics, quality of life & social helpful.
In addition, I had my kids start with 280+/- colleges that have a Phi Beta Kappa chapter. They narrowed the list by location, size and potential to be admitted, then researched programs that were of interest.
If your child knows what they want to major in, do a more specific search on best schools for that particular major. USNWR and best value schools were two of our initial resources. Then we delved deeper with our own criteria. We paid special attention to post graduation outcomes.
One of the problems with Fiske is that the book tries to put a positive spin on all of the colleges profiled and really downplays the bad side (cons) of the school. For example, USC is located in south central LA and safety is a concern for many students but is hardly mentioned in the material. In addition they only feature something like 300-400 colleges but there are over 3,000 colleges in the US. With that said, I think the book gives a good overview of most colleges and is a good starting point in the initial search. Other sites to consider:
Per a few on CC, the area around USC has improved. It was even said recently. That really shows how 2nd hand sources can be incomplete or even unreliable. Or slanted.
So what if Fiske is positive? It’s an index, not your determining resource.
I used to work for one of these publications. This was ages ago but the point was to make sense, not be perfect. And to sell (or in today’s world, generate interest.) No guide can digest and tell the best college for YOU.
Or where you’ll get in. Rely too much on rank at your own risk.