<p>
</p>
<p>The sample included students from 43 states plus the District of Columbia. States missing from the sample were Alaska, Delaware, Iowa, Mississippi, North Dakota, South Dakota, and West Virginia.</p>
<p>“Go to whichever is cheapest” is pretty good advice if you are choosing between schools you think are reasonably close in quality. Referring to findings as “totally bogus” or “totally crap” is not, if you haven’t made any effort to understand the approach, its strengths and weaknesses, and simply have an emotional aversion to the findings. If you have some principled objection to the idea of rankings in general, well, o.k.</p>