Niche, US news, Princeton review? Are they any other ranking sites?
Different majors have ranking sites that’s are more suited. CSRankings and IvyAchievement are quite good for CS for example.
All rankings have flaws. The most widely used/cited ranking is US News, which is more numbers-based. Niche and the Princeton Review are based partly on self-reported student reviews, so they can be inaccurate.
IMHO, personal fit (in both an academic and a cultural sense) matters more than ranking.
With families submitting upwards of 20 applications at a time, almost all of them to reach schools, rankings have become superfluous. People are searching for one thing: grant aid in whatever form they can find it…
There’s no such thing as “accurate” when there’s no objective measure that is being estimated. It’s like asking who is more accurate when deciding whether a girl/guy is attractive. Or what hair style is best.
If you’re looking for something specific, then look at the methodology of the sites to see which best aligns with what you’re looking for,
Or, better yet, decide what you think is important, and the relative weight of how important they are, and use the raw data to develop a rating that matches what you think is important.
When I was helping my D search, I found 11 different rankings of engineering schools, weighted them by how aligned we were with their methodology, and used that to develop a list to start with.
Then we threw it out, visited schools, and decided which was best for her.
(fwiw, “grant aid” had no role in anything she did).
@RichInPitt has given you the right advice.
Everyone is looking for different things, whether those things relate to availability of a particular major, general location, size of institution, study abroad options, likelihood of gaining admission to graduate programs, academic support services, grant aid, professors vs. teaching assistants, etc. Figure out which specific things you care about, and look at the rankings from that perspective. You’ll soon find that some sites are more relevant to your needs than others.
The only thing you shouldn’t do is believe that overall ranking (from any source) is the right way to choose a college.
The major ranking sites do use objective measurements. The USNWR ranking is based partly on data you can find in the schools’ own Common Data Set files (such as average class sizes and test scores). Each ranking service selects its own set of factors and assigns its own weights to each factor. This selection and weighting process can’t really be described as accurate or not. It’s more a question of whether it is appropriate or not, given whatever it is you’re trying to assess. Questions do surface about the accuracy of some supporting data, but IMO that isn’t an issue that greatly distinguishes one major ranking from another (since they all depend largely on the colleges themselves, or the US government, for their data.) If you mistrust all college performance metrics, then you might prefer expert opinion polls (such as the USNWR peer assessment scores, which years ago were the sole basis for their ranking).
Get a subscription to Ruggs recommendations.
This is my favorite college ranking system (be sure to keep refreshing it) http://www.rankyourcollege.com/ddmethod.html
Generally speaking its the ranking that produces the results that best line up with the rankings you have in your own mind. So the ranking that has the school which in your heart of hearts #2 at #9 is clearly totally off base and biased. And its crucial to know that there is a huge, huge difference between #2 and #9. So much so that you have to question why anyone would suggest to their worst enemy (or a dog) going to #9. Sarcasm on.
Niche and Princeton review are student-driven, so if you want student opinions, yes, those are great. There are literally dozens of publications that rank. Personally, my favorite ranking tool is whichever one puts my kid’s school higher than its closest competition. ?
Fiske Guide was my favorite. It doesn’t rank per se, but rates colleges on academics, quality of life and social life. I think the 1, 2, 3 … kind of rankings are a little silly, and found the descriptions in Fiske helpful and accurate.
Also used Rugg Recommendations to help assess quality of specific majors/programs within colleges.
Does it matter that they are “accurate”?
I think there is a difference between Top 100 and Bottom 100. But if one college is 32 and another is 49 it does not matter.
Well, that’s certainly the conceit. And, it’s certainly cheaper and easier to skim public records for speculative, overly broad categories like “faculty resources” and “expenditures per student” than to do the kind of in-depth, shoe leather, investigative work it takes to produce a Fiske Guide or even the old ISI “Choosing the Right College”. In the end, the rankings are all peddling the same thing: a sense of exclusivity which is like throwing chum into the water for anxious Americans.
Interesting that the top ten ranking changes every time you refresh! Stanford was placed anywhere from #1 to #8! I guess that tells you something about how close the top schools really are.
Hahaha! That site is HILARIOUS! Thanks for posting, @jym626 !
@MaineLonghorn , I got the distinct impression that the “ranking” system they use is, um, totally nonexistent and probably totally not real. But if it is based on something real, well, hats off to them!
I’m pretty sure you’re missing the sarcasm of the website.
The footnotes are an admission that the results are made up…
Niche is fun but idiosyncratic (who knew that Coe College (A-) is better than Bard and Beloit (B+)?). StudentsReview hasn’t been mentioned (I don’t think), but it too is interesting but idiosyncratic (because it is based solely on students’ opinions). Princeton Review at least tries to have survey-based scores for teaching and professor accessibility.
US News, of course, is the ranking system that people still turn to the most. As an earlier poster mentioned, it draws from objective data that one can largely find in a school’s common data sheet. The problem? US News doesn’t do the hard work (because it would be time-consuming and expensive) and actually consider what happens in the classroom. Do students graduate as brighter people? Are students happy with classes? Are professors consistent, knowledgeable, and caring? Are professors accessible, and do they truly work with undergraduates? Yes, US News has some secondary lists that try to identify schools with best professors/teaching, but A) these lists are still questionable, and, B) few people rely on these lists, for people are mainly looking at the overall rankings.
Three final comments. First, isn’t it strange that the US News list just happens to match the societal opinions people have of the institutions? Second, isn’t it strange that the lists for national universities and national liberal arts colleges just happen to begin with the schools with the lowest acceptance rates and then work their way up? Third, imagine if one ranked restaurants the way that US News ranks schools. One would collect all this minute data. How much is the chef paid (and what is her/his pedigree?)?. How difficult is it to get a reservation? How long is the reservation wait? What is the restaurant’s overhead? How large/small are the menu offerings? How is the decor? Then, with all this information, one presents the list of “Best Restaurants.” Of course, someone would finally ask the obvious: “Um. Is the food any good? Is the food yummy?” That’s the US News ranking system–an ordered list that avoids the most fundamental questions that one must ask to even consider what makes a college “good,” let alone better than another.
That tongue-in-cheek ranking website is fabulous. Thanks for the laugh, @jym626!
My pleasure, @CardinalBobcat