<p>Hi, everyone, </p>
<p>There have been some interesting examples of topic drift in this long thread, as there usually are in long threads, but I wanted to turn back to the issue that interested me in the thread, and invite anyone else who desires to participate in a calm, civil discussion to discuss that issue. I believe (but please correct me if I am mistaken) that the OP is looking at ways to go beyond the college rankings published by U.S. News and World Report magazine since the 1980s to find colleges that might be good matches for us (if we are students) or our children (if we are parents). </p>
<p>The U.S. News and World Report annual issues have never particularly set my agenda for looking for colleges. My oldest son is in high school, and in the next two years should refine his college application list, but I never refer him to U.S. News to find names of colleges nor do I particularly care how each college he thinks is interesting is ranked. He is beginning to develop a college list, still subject to a lot of change, that may skip over quite a few highly ranked colleges in the U.S. News rankings in favor of colleges that have characteristics he particularly desires. That’s fine by me. </p>
<p>There are, depending on how you count them, more than 3,000 or perhaps more than 4,000 colleges in the United States, and plenty more in other English-speaking countries that would be glad to have American students. Several hundred of those colleges have explicit open-admission policies, so getting in is not a problem. I have, for personal reasons developed years before College Confidential existed, occasionally tried to figure out what subset of a few hundred colleges might be a starting list for parents shopping for colleges. My latest attempt at such a list is found in the thread "[168</a> Noteworthy Colleges](<a href="http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/showthread.php?t=405031]168">http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/showthread.php?t=405031)" and I take care to note that </p>
<p>1) my list is not at all based on the U.S. News rankings, </p>
<p>2) I acknowledge any such list, including mine, is debatable, </p>
<p>and </p>
<p>3) no such list could possibly exhaustively list all colleges that might be suitable for your kid. </p>
<p>But it’s a start. This thread too is a start to look at what a subset of colleges might be that may or may not have a high U.S. News ranking, but might offer really good learning opportunities for your child or mine. I’d like to discuss here with all of you how you shop for colleges, and what characteristics you look for as you decide which of the thousands of available colleges to pass up entirely.</p>