<p>Forbes, along with the Center for College Affordability and Productivity, has published rankings that (currently) play second fiddle to USNWR. Since they differ from USNWR, some people find the Forbes rankings “challenging.” For example, #1 this year is West Point. </p>
<p>Interestingly, they have created a site that lets each person “weight” their individual interest in the ranking criteria. This allows a completely customized ranking of schools. </p>
<p>The components of the ranking (in 2009) are:</p>
<ol>
<li>Listings of Alumni in the 2008 edition of Who’s Who in America (12.5%)</li>
<li>Salaries of Alumni from PayScale.com (12.5%)</li>
<li>Student Evaluations from Ratemyprofessors.com (25%)</li>
<li>Four-Year Graduation Rates (16.66%)</li>
<li>Students Receiving Nationally Competitive Awards (8.33%)</li>
<li>Faculty Receiving Awards for Scholarship and Creative Pursuits (5%)</li>
<li>Four-year Debt Load for Typical Student Borrowers (20%)</li>
</ol>
<p>Ace - this is not intended to “match” you to a school (as the new CC Search tool is). It is intended to be a weighted “ranking” of schools. This one is different, in that it lets each viewer decide which components are relatively more or less important to him/her.</p>
<p>It may not be perfect, but I do like the fact that there seems to be a recognition that there’s no such thing as THE Number 1 school. What’s best for an individual student depends entirely on who they are and what they’re looking for. Let’s hope this marks the beginning of the end for the USNWR cookie-cutter approach to rankings.</p>
<p>Interesting, actually worked out similarly to my own preferences (Princeton, Stanford, WashU, Notre Dame) at the top. Odd that Rice was ranked last for me, I had always considered it very similar to WashU</p>
<p>I think this is a terrible ranking, after a few searches.</p>
<p>One of the big knocks of Forbes has been that they overrate the Military Academies because they’re free. So I figured, OK, I can understand the reasoning for that, but what if we were to ignore affordability and debt and money in general, and just select “Very Important” in every category other than the three money ones (Graduation Debt, Tuition Cost, Money made by graduates).</p>
<p>It looks like the best College, according to Forbes, at any price, is…Davidson. Nothing against Davidson, I hear its a very nice school. But is it really better than HYPS? Also, Bard and Washington and Lee are ahead of Harvard, Yale, Stanford, and MIT. Barnard is ahead of Columbia, as well.</p>
<p>pbleic, the student evaluations from Ratemyprofessor.com, salaries from Payscale.com and four-year graduation rates are not telling criteria as they are far from accurate.</p>