Don’t understand how on earth the likes of Centre College, Quinnipiac, Stetson, Hofstra, Montclair State, Rowan, NJIT, Seton Hall, UKentucky, Ole Miss, UMass (Amherst AND Lowell), UAlaska Fairbanks etc are higher than UNCW. Forbes are absolutely clueless IMHO.
I prefer USNWR. As @LucieTheLakie said, comparing research and regional Us with LACs is comparing oranges to apples. Much better off separate tbh.
How did Pomona drop 6 places in a 1 year cycle? Someone please explain that one to me.
Out of the total number of schools ranked, 6 spots isn’t much of a change.
@youcee I attended UCLA undergrad and grad. Again, it’s all how you define it but you are understating when you dismiss it as “running a section” as if that is some minor function of the class. The professor gives a lecture and answers a token number of questions during them. The grad student TA assigns much of the homework (with discretion what to assign in many cases), answers most of individual students’ questions, provides 100% of the individual feedback on students’ work and is responsible for 100% of the students’ grades. To me that is not an immaterial portion of the educational process. People have radically different experiences in the same classes based on their TA’s. And in my experience there was very little oversight or quality control. I had a couple fantastic TA’s, a lot of oaky ones and a few truly awful ones – one’s who write so badly that their comments dumb down papers substantially. I would estimate that over half my undergraduate classes at UCLA had grad students doing the grading, etc. a vast majority of my pre-major courses and some of my major ones. A few of my grad school classes even had more senior grad students grading. Again, I loved UCLA, which is why I went back for grad school. But I wouldn’t minimize the impact of grad students on students’ educations there.
@LBad96 I’ll guess they’re there because they graduate a lot of students with lower stats, with relatively little debt, and the students like their school (based on the dubious RTP measure but whatever).
Are current undergrads satisfied? Is it likely I’ll graduate on time or incur a ton of student debt? Will I get a good job and be a leader in my chosen profession?
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It’s not trying to replace USNews which weights prestige and where the high stats kids go more heavily.
@youcee to be clear I’m referring to what I perceive to be the common practice of TAs taking over lectures.
My niece majored in comp sci at Berkeley - she complained about foreign TAs taking over lecture of the main section after the first few weeks of the term.
My experience was at Stanford and with very few exceptions you got the prof. My kids are at top tier LACs and of the things they complain about - and they do complain - the quality of the classroom experience isn’t one of them.
My personal opinion is that the elite LAC is the best for undergraduate prep. In my model, where I assume affordability, you can get the more practical side of education later. Econ before business or accounting. Math or physics before engineering, and so on. English before communications.
I’ll also add that I’m not alone in this view by a long shot. I know several faculty members at big schools who send their kids to the LACs. Three of my close friends are on faculty at UW. Their kids go to Whitman, CMM, Wesleyan and Vassar. All of those children could have walked into the best of large research schools with scholarship $$, whereas they are full pay at their LAC because of their parents’ incomes.
I agree wholeheartedly with @MiddleburyDad2 , with the caveat that different people have different goals, and those who see undergrad years as little more than a stepping-stone to a job may find another path more in line with their needs.
@marvin100 , agreed. if undergrad is part education/part job prep, then, yes, go to a university and study accounting, engineering, etc. if getting right to work is your ambition, then maybe the availability of more “practical” degrees is something on which the student should focus.
@MiddleburyDad2 Interesting, my experience in the same major at Cal was much different, but that was a long time ago. I actually never had that happen with TAs taking over. Our child at UCSB did not have TAs teaching lectures at any point the first year. That’s something we’ll have to pay attention to when our younger child is deciding next spring.
True, @marvin100, and different people have different preferences. I liked the variety of large, medium and small class sizes at my mid-sized “national university.” My older sister shuddered at the idea of a small LAC and had to “go big”; she thrived in that environment and became a pediatrician. My younger brother thought both of our schools were way too big for many of the reasons discussed above, and he had a great experience at his NE LAC, where he was also a standout athlete. All of us went on to graduate school(s) in different areas, and none of us would trade our undergrad experience for any other’s. (That said, I must add that my younger brother who went to the NE LAC is now living a life of leisure, having positioned himself perfectly for the “Internet revolution” to come at a time when my older sister and I were trying to figure out how to set up an “e-mail” account.)
A few years ago, a couple of Vanderbilt profs did a survey that reflected @MiddleburyDad2 anecdotal observation. Basically, they found that children of university faculty are about twice as likely to attend a liberal arts college than other children (http://www.cbsnews.com/news/where-professors-send-their-children-to-college/). But, like @marvin100 and others have noted, different students want different things from their undergrad experiences, and there are plenty of great universities that can provide them.
Where do liberal arts college faculty send their kids? Was that included in the survey?
^ Should the reader of that article infer anything from the picture of Washington’s Quad, @MiddleburyDad2 ? 
@UWfromCA , certainly agree - how could I not? - that great outcomes come from all kinds of undergraduate college experiences.
that said, we probably have to be more specific about what “small” and “large” mean. there’s large on the UW or Ohio State scale, and large on the Harvard scale. Harvard large is still pretty small. Stanford large is still pretty small. UW large is 800+ with kids sitting in the halls of Kane hall watching the lecture on a monitor.
if you stayed here and tried for 100 years, you’d never convince me that is as good an educational experience as a class with 15 to 20 students where the professor knows who you are and actually gives a damn and engages with you as part of teaching the course. of course, you have to hold constant for the variables, especially in this crowd, where so many tend to want to prove the general point by appealing to the exception.
of course, any donkey knows that a shi**y prof teaching a small lecture is not going be a good experience, whereas a large lecture by an engaged and compelling lecturer is likely to be. I had assumed that goes without saying.
No Cornell? 
@UWfromCA , well whaddya know. I guess my comment was timely.
FWIW, I don’t buy the $100,000 family argument. First, a lot of families earn that much now. It’s not the cutoff it used to be. So it’s quite broad cut of the sample set. Second, it depends on what kind of family earning more than 100K we’re talking about.
Bottom line: well educated people, whether at big, medium or small schools, know the top and middle LACs. I don’t work with anyone who isn’t aware of, say, Skidmore College. Not one single person, I’d bet, who runs in my professional circles would not have heard of Skid.
I think it comes down to paying for it.
Pace (essentially a more overpriced, less efficient UHartford) and WVU also ahead of UNCW.
Forbes are nothing short of daft. Utter rubbish these rankings are.
@LBad96 is this a shtick or are you serious abou UNC Wilmington? Does it really matter
FWIW, I have some differences of perception with both USN and Forbes. Frankly they are all flawed on some way. But after the top 50, who really cares?
@MiddleburyDad2 I attend UNC Wilmington, so yes I am serious. Of course all ranking systems are flawed. I just figured that I’d point out the obvious flaws of this one. It’s more Forbes not knowing what they’re ranking than my school not being good (it’s terrific).
As timely as an article from April 2011.
Did you mean Swarthmore?
Yes, larger schools generally have larger class sizes. Is “800+ with kids sitting in the halls” an attempt to prove the general point by appealing to the exception? UW (30,000 undergrads) has 60% of classes with under 30 students and 23% with over 50; USC (18,500 undergrads) has 70% with under 30 and 13% with over 50; Stanford (7,000 undergrads) has 80% with under 30 and 11% with over 50; etc.