“seem to have been compiled without meaningful, disciplined analysis”
I dont know what kind of analysis it is that you are expecting. A ranking?
Top 10-20?
Ruggs Recommendations is a fast way to find out which colleges offer which majors and the relative strength of those depts and majors , based on the recommendations of experienced college counselors . It is a unique tool that is different and subjective, but informative if you know what to look for.
DS’s college counselor, who has been in the business for 25+ years, reached for it first when we asked which colleges were the best for BOTH… and … AND had really smart students.
I then decided to order it for myself- I already had copies of Fiske guide , CTCLs, the admissions game and too many other reference guides to remember…
We found it very helpful and reliable in narrowing our search to colleges that had highly reputable depts in the 2 diverse , completely unrelated majors that DS was interested in pursuing, and also enrolled students with tip top SAT scores.
Ruggs helped us find colleges that filed all 3 bills.
DS was accepted at 13/15 of those colleges.
If you are looking for guides that give general facts about colleges, or if you have no idea what you want to major in, then Ruggs is not for you.
"I don’t know what kind of analysis you are expecting? A ranking? (#20)
The issue with Rugg’s is that they appear to get things wrong, so their de facto rankings are exactly what I find objectionable. There’s no curricular reason, for example, for St. Olaf, Furman and Lafayette to be “Tier 1” colleges for computer science while Allegheny, Colgate and Swarthmore are not. As good as the former group may be, the latter group is stronger on average in CS judging by course offerings. The recommendations in this sense create a false sense of authority that can be detrimental to finding the best program within the best college for a given student. In some cases the recommendations may be satisfactory – or even good – but a significant degree of chance is involved.
Oh good grief. Swarthmore isn’t Tier 1 in CS?? They have arguably the BEST CS department at any LAC (as far as I’ve been able to tell)! And yes, they’re WAY stronger than St. Olaf, which we’ve been looking at very hard (don’t know anything about Furman or Lafayette).
I guess the general message is that any given single resource should always be taken with a grain of salt. But yeah, that’s appalling, @merc81.
These guides aren’t updated that often (the worst offender was a FisKe 20… that referred to Apartheid as a cause that rallied students) so you can safely buy the 2013+ edition at bargain price. Or you can “carpool”, each parent in your group buys a new one (plus the older ones), and you swap the new ones.
Ruggs was recommended by several of my instructors through the UCLA College Counseling Program. I use it now in a high school setting to help my students start looking at schools offering particular strong majors. Fiske is great to read about schools. Ruggs gives you lists, broken down by majors. Then the lists are broken down from very competitive programs to less competitive, but still recommended programs.