I agree @eyemgh rankings assume generic fit, which is where they fail most people that rely on them exclusively. I agree with the sentiment about how laborious college selection is. I went to college in another country and it was an absolute shock for me to realize how complex and intricate it was here to get into a college. We were lucky that my older daughter went to an excellent public school in WA state, but I think we still missed some prep opportunities for college. It took us more than 2 years of really hard work to figure things out.
And I think this is one of the tragedies of the US higher education system. It offers some amazing educational opportunities, it is such a pity that only/mostly affluent people can take full advantage of it, from how you setup kids even before they start high school, through the high school planning of classes, volunteering, story building, etc all the way to selecting and preparing for the college admissions.
@iulianc@eyemgh I agree US education (college) are designed for affluent, rich well-connected families. Bottom line is colleges (even though they are nonprofit) act like businesses. It is all about money use US new ranking or any other ranking based on the endowments/endowment per student. You will see the correlation.
Yes, the burden is on the student to figure out things which are ridiculous. Will they focus on school or try to learn how college manipulates them. How does a student know that college is manipulating them?. Based on my experience state school do a good job than a private school in admission and education. But private school have a lot more money to buy the system (from rating, faculty, athletes, students, job opportunities for students by inviting former alumni student to campus for recruiting)
Coming to Calpoly, my daughter applied to Calpoly (got admitted) for its Architecture program ranking (#3 in design intelligence). We did not know about it until we did the research. When asked other people (non-architecture), they did not know about CalPoly.
@bk1366 I can’t speak of other fields, but Calpoly is well known in engineering circles, especially on the west coast. Recruiters from the best known high tech, aerospace and defense companies hire heavily from the school. I have no knowledge of other fields though. Good luck with whatever your daughter choses. The school worked absolutely great for both of my daughters.